# 771 continues after rain-fade



## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

If this has been answered or addressed before, please direct me to a thread, I could not find one....

All of my receivers (range from old RCA's to a couple H20's) seem to recover fine after a rain-fade event except my sole HR20 - it will persist in a 771 error until I reboot it. How do I begin to debug this one ?


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## smimi10 (May 22, 2006)

I would love to help you with this, as I have the exact same issue that you do. I had D* come out and replace some older coax with new, and make sure there were no splices in the cable runs on the outside of the house. It almost acts like there is water getting in somewhere and taking a while to dry out. 

But like you, it only affects my HR20-700. I wonder if that unit is just more sensitive to rain fade and the software is not good at recovery?

Anyway, I am waiting on our next rain event to see if the problems persist.


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## Indiana627 (Nov 18, 2005)

Yes, sounds like water getting into the wires somewhere. In the end of my Slimline, I have all four coax cable connections (where they connect to the LNBs at the end of the arm on the dish) covered with rubber booties that I got at Radio Shack. I've never had an issue. I'm not sure if these booties are 100% weatherproof, but they are pretty tight. You'll see them a lot of times on cable company connections on the outside of your house.


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

The problem happens even when the cables are not wet (rain stays out SW of me). Even if it was wet, wouldn't it affect all receivers ?

Mike - I am also waiting for the summer rains to start, so I can do further experiments. I am well grounded, and I have a locker installed in my attic, so I kind of doubt any explantions by way of signaling.


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## jodyguercio (Aug 16, 2007)

Thats does seem strange as if it was a matter of water getting in somewhere it should affect all of your rcvrs. Even if it was in one of the LNBs themselves it would still cause a system wide problem. Could be a buggy HR unit.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

JeffBowser said:


> If this has been answered or addressed before, please direct me to a thread, I could not find one....
> 
> All of my receivers (range from old RCA's to a couple H20's) seem to recover fine after a rain-fade event except my sole HR20 - it will persist in a 771 error until I reboot it. How do I begin to debug this one ?


Jeff,

I have posted in a couple of theads about the issue - I've seen other people complain as well.

Does yours: after rain fade, tuner one (and only tuner one) does not come back; box acts incredibly slow including bringing up the guide, changing channels etc; reboot takes care of the problem?

If so, that is exactly what I am experiencing, and IIRC only since the latest NR.

See: http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?p=1507245#post1507245


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

Yes, this describes my situation to a T, although I have not yet had it happen enough times to definitively say if it only affects tuner 1 every time. I can't say as to what it was like prior to the last NR - it has been our dry season here, and we have been in a 2 year drought to boot, so rain fade has not been rare, period. Thanks for the thread pointer.



raott said:


> Jeff,
> 
> I have posted in a couple of theads about the issue - I've seen other people complain as well.
> 
> ...


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## smimi10 (May 22, 2006)

raott said:


> Jeff,
> 
> I have posted in a couple of theads about the issue - I've seen other people complain as well.
> 
> ...


This is also my experience exactly.

This afternoon we had thunderstorms in the area, and some heavy rain here at the house. I lost signal, as expected during a heavy rain event.

However, three hours later, not a cloud in the sky anywhere, and Tuner 1 is 771. I did a menu restart and it came back just fine.

This is also only happening since the last NR as far as I can tell.


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## thsmith (Jan 31, 2008)

I too have the same issue but seems to not be related to rain. Always tuner 1 and a soft reset clears it for a day or so. I have changed cable feeds to mutliswitch, swapped B band converts and so far no resolution. D* is coming out Thursday and I am not hopeful. I am really pissed as they are making me wait 8 days and I have the service plan.

At this point I am ready to pay the $200 cancellation fee and switch to FIOS.

D* customer service is failing fast.


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

On a side note, the service plan does not guarantee you swift attention, that's not the point of it. I will, however, agree that DirecTV's customer service has now descended to nearly par with the cablecos. So be it, I come here for customer service and do my own debug and work anytime I possibly can.


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## vollmey (Mar 23, 2007)

Hey Jeff, 

I too have the same problem with HR20-700. I thought I had gotten rid of it because I had not seen the 771 issue with locals for at least 6 months or so, until a few weeks ago. Last year at this time I had the same problems, went away during the summer months and returned somewhat last fall.

I can't figure it out. But, I know it has nothing to do with wet cables or anything on our end except for maybe a software issue on our side.


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## davring (Jan 13, 2007)

You are right about being dry! I have read of your described problem although I have not experienced it at all on any of my equipment. I am running the current national software. I wonder fi this has anything to do with their "improved" ability to watch recorded programs during loss of signal?


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## mweathers (Sep 4, 2007)

I also have this exact same problem. Always tuner 1. A reboot brings it back. I have also swapped the b-band converters. Still effects tuner 1 only. I never had this problem until the latest software release. I wish someone at DirecTV would post here that they know of the problem and are working on a fix. This gets very frustrating.


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## Hansen (Jan 1, 2006)

JeffBowser said:


> If this has been answered or addressed before, please direct me to a thread, I could not find one....
> 
> All of my receivers (range from old RCA's to a couple H20's) seem to recover fine after a rain-fade event except my sole HR20 - it will persist in a 771 error until I reboot it. How do I begin to debug this one ?


Yesterday, I had the same problem with 1 out of 3 HR20-700's we have in our house. We had really bad storms (black and purple on the doppler radar) and had extended loss of signal due to the storm. 2 of the 3 receivers came back fine but 1 of them would not recover on Tuner 1 and had the searching for signal error message. I had to do a menu reboot to get it to come back.


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

That's interesting - are they all at the same software level ?



Hansen said:


> Yesterday, I had the same problem with 1 out of 3 HR20-700's we have in our house. We had really bad storms (black and purple on the doppler radar) and had extended loss of signal due to the storm. 2 of the 3 receivers came back fine but 1 of them would not recover on Tuner 1 and had the searching for signal error message. I had to do a menu reboot to get it to come back.


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## Hansen (Jan 1, 2006)

JeffBowser said:


> That's interesting - are they all at the same software level ?


They are all running CE:12:07 0x0220.


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

raott said:


> Jeff,
> 
> I have posted in a couple of theads about the issue - I've seen other people complain as well.
> 
> ...


Me, too. Except that sometimes only one tuner is affected and sometimes both. I'm wondering if a tuner is affected only if it is on an MPEG4. But, this sounds very much like the same thing I am seeing.

No way it is water in the wires in my case. I have 2 HR20-700s. The one that is almost always tuned to MPEG4 has this happen a lot. The one that is rarely tuned to MPEG4 rarely has the problem. Both are connected to the same multiswitch, dry inside about 6 feet from the boxes.

I'm wondering if there is a software problem that causes the HR20 to not recover from the 771 if a tuner is tuned to MPEG4 when the signal loss occurs.


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## bpratt (Nov 24, 2005)

> I'm wondering if there is a software problem that causes the HR20 to not recover from the 771 if a tuner is tuned to MPEG4 when the signal loss occurs.


Two night ago I was watching the 5:30 news on one of my local MPEG4 channels when a large flock of geese flew over my house and caused a 771 error. The error did no go away, so I turned on another TV which is connected to a second HR21-700 and tuned to the same channel. It had no problems. I went back to the first TV and tuned to a different channel and then back to the original channel and the 771 error disappeared.

Looks like a software problem to me.


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

Wow, that's one huge flock of geese 



bpratt said:


> Two night ago I was watching the 5:30 news on one of my local MPEG4 channels when a large flock of geese flew over my house and caused a 771 error. The error did no go away, so I turned on another TV which is connected to a second HR21-700 and tuned to the same channel. It had no problems. I went back to the first TV and tuned to a different channel and then back to the original channel and the 771 error disappeared.
> 
> Looks like a software problem to me.


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

Hansen said:


> They are all running CE:12:07 0x0220.


Sorry to hear this has not been addressed in the CE software. I'd feel better knowing they are at least aware of and working on the problem.


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## thsmith (Jan 31, 2008)

JeffBowser said:


> On a side note, the service plan does not guarantee you swift attention, that's not the point of it. I will, however, agree that DirecTV's customer service has now descended to nearly par with the cablecos. So be it, I come here for customer service and do my own debug and work anytime I possibly can.


Jeff, I have trouble shot the problem as far as I can with out replacing the disk, multiswitch or DVR.

I reconize protection plan does not imply priority service, obviously. The issue I have is I pay these people a lot of money every month and they can not get someone out for 8 days? I can get a dentist, doctor, internet and mechanic appointment faster than that.

Direct is going downhill fast as far I can tell. Never had these type of service support issues with direct before.

Fios just keeps looking better and better to me, price and better scan rate than Direct.

I am not a hater, been through alot with Direct since 2001 but when someone else has a just as good or better offering then its time for a look.


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

Eh, in the end you will go with what service you prefer, it is of no matter. They all have their issues. I stay with DirecTV because their offering is superior to the cableco's here in S. Florida, and when hurricanes hit, I have TV back as soon as I fire up my generator. The cableco's are off for weeks and months. Customer service is hit and miss everywhere, it plays almost zero in any decision I make anymore. I believe now, after further information, that we are looking at a software problem. I have yet to see DirecTV not fix a problem, although they don't always fix it as fast as some people would like.



thsmith said:


> Jeff, I have trouble shot the problem as far as I can with out replacing the disk, multiswitch or DVR.
> 
> I reconize protection plan does not imply priority service, obviously. The issue I have is I pay these people a lot of money every month and they can not get someone out for 8 days? I can get a dentist, doctor, internet and mechanic appointment faster than that.
> 
> ...


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

This just happened to me again on one of my HR20-700s. Tuner 1 had 0 signal on all sats. Tuner 2 was just fine. Menus were very slow to respond. My other HR20-700 was fine. To repeat, the only thing I can differentiate between the two boxes is that the one that has the problem frequently is almost always tuned to an MPEG4 HD feed, while the one that rarely has the is rarely tuned to an MPEG4 HD feed.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

Heavy rains last night - sure enough, I woke up this morning with the box running very slow and tuner 1 gone.


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## thsmith (Jan 31, 2008)

JeffBowser said:


> Eh, in the end you will go with what service you prefer, it is of no matter. They all have their issues. I stay with DirecTV because their offering is superior to the cableco's here in S. Florida, and when hurricanes hit, I have TV back as soon as I fire up my generator. The cableco's are off for weeks and months. Customer service is hit and miss everywhere, it plays almost zero in any decision I make anymore. I believe now, after further information, that we are looking at a software problem. I have yet to see DirecTV not fix a problem, although they don't always fix it as fast as some people would like.


AFter 8 days Direct finally made to house, describe the problem and what I have done so far. Tech thanked me for troubleshooting problem and replaced HD-DVR.

Even though I doubt that was the issue I thanked him and we will see.

I guess I will stay for the time being with Direct.

If you ever have a chance to deal with a company like HSU they are an excellent example of customer service, consistantly. Excellent customer service is out there although getting harder to find.


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

Just wanted to bump this thread as it is still a big issue to me. I shouldn't have to check my HR20s every time it has rained just to make sure they haven't lost one or both tuners. I can understand having rain fade for a few seconds or a few minutes, but the receivers should recover and work normally afterwards. They don't. I've lost recordings as a result. And it is inconvenient and annoying to have to check them almost daily to make sure the tuners are still working.

FWIW, I'm getting signal strengths in the mid-high 80s on 103c and mid-high 90s on 110 and 119. I understand that 103c signal strength may be a little low, so I had them send a tech out to peak the dish. He seemed to have no knowledge or equipment to fine-tune 103, so he just peaked again on the older birds which did little to help.

I'm open to suggestions if anyone has any. Has anyone successfully gotten a tech who knows how to do fine adjustments to get the 103 signal higher? At least that might help the problem not happen so often. 

The real answer is to fix the software, though.


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## hookemfins (Jul 3, 2007)

I was having the problem of having to reboot after heavy rains. Last week I got the new slimline 5 lnb dish. Tonight we had a severe thunderstorm roll through and for the first time the hr 20-700 came back online without a reboot. My new HR 20-100 was still running on ESPN but I was locked out from doing anything else, so I had to hit reset. I think that was from power flickers. But since it was still showing ESPN it recovered as well from the rain fade.


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

Happened to me twice this weekend. A 771 rain fade, even for justa few mins, and tuner 1 requires a reboot to work again.


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## Carlucci (Apr 2, 2008)

I can now report this happening for me as well. I got an HR20-700 recently, and I wasn't sure that rain fade was the cause of the problem, but now I'm sure.

After a short-lived but heavy rain storm, with the sun now shining brightly, my 771 condition persisted. Changing the channel got one tuner working again. I hit record, then changed the channel again, and still had the 771 on the other tuner.

After rebooting, the tuners immediately began working again.

Should I call it in to DirecTV as an issue?


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## mweathers (Sep 4, 2007)

Still happening with me. I live in Atlanta. We had lots of rain this weekend. I checked my HR20-700 yesterday (Sunday) and had lost Sat 1 again. After reboot, it came back. I also have a new HR21-100 in my bedroom. It did NOT lose Sat 1. That really makes me believe it is a software issue. This is getting old. Like someone else said, we shouldn't have to check our signal strengths every day to make sure we still have both tuners. There are so many of us having this exact problem with Sat 1 (only) that I have a hard time believing it could be anything else OTHER than a software problem. Hopefully, this problem will go away with the next software release, whenever that is....


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## hookemfins (Jul 3, 2007)

For those with the problem, which dish do you have? New Slimline 5 LNB or the original 5 LNB? As I said, I have the new slimline and it passed the first test.


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## Humnahey (Aug 26, 2006)

hookemfins said:


> For those with the problem, which dish do you have? New Slimline 5 LNB or the original 5 LNB? As I said, I have the new slimline and it passed the first test.


I am glad to see I am not alone with this problem! Everyone else has pretty much summed up the problems I am having with BOTH my HR20-700s. A fix for this soon would be nice

I have the old 5 LNB dish.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

hookemfins said:


> For those with the problem, which dish do you have? New Slimline 5 LNB or the original 5 LNB? As I said, I have the new slimline and it passed the first test.


Slimline hooked to an HR20-700 (among others).

Is anyone experiencing this issue that has either an HR20-100 or an HR21? From my brief scan of this thread, it appears everyone with issues is having them on the HR20-700.


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

raott said:


> Slimline hooked to an HR20-700 (among others).
> 
> Is anyone experiencing this issue that has either an HR20-100 or an HR21? From my brief scan of this thread, it appears everyone with issues is having them on the HR20-700.


I have a slimline connected to 2 HR20-700s and 1 HR10-250.

I mostly see this behavior on the HR20 that is usually tuned to an MPEG4 HD channel. My other HR20 is usually tuned to OTA and it rarely has this problem.


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## maestro35 (Apr 7, 2008)

Definately. Happened twice this weekend with rain fade. I have HR20-700 and HR20-100 with the old sidecar 5-lnb dish. Sure enough, the HR20-700 did not recover, it required a reboot both times to restore programming, where as the HR20-100 recovered automatically within a few minutes.


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

Happened to me again today (been getting some seriously heavy rain here lately). Tuner 1 stays out after a rain fade, period. This is an HR20, I can't recall right now if it is a -100 or the -700. I think a 700, though. No amount of jockey OTA recordings fooled tuner1 back up.


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## rcodey (May 28, 2007)

raott said:


> Slimline hooked to an HR20-700 (among others).
> 
> Is anyone experiencing this issue that has either an HR20-100 or an HR21? From my brief scan of this thread, it appears everyone with issues is having them on the HR20-700.


Had Directv installed last week with a HR20-100. Constant problem with SHO-HD,TNT-HD and to a lesser extent ESPN-HD. One minute 771 message,change channel and return to 771 message channel and there is a picture. Tech came peeked dish and changed BBCs and problem remained. They are sending new DVR. The one thing I noticed is that these channels are from 110 satellite and when the 771 message appears the sat test shows tuner 2 signals as 0. When the pictures is there the sat test on tuner2 shows signal as 90. Wonder if it is a software problem? I also noticed that the info banner at the top of the screen will briefly show the previous channel number and name when changing channels when the 771 problem is present. Whenever I do a front panel reset or menu reset the 771 problem will be briefly gone and the banner will correctly give the changed channel number and name.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

rcodey said:


> Had Directv installed last week with a HR20-100. Constant problem with SHO-HD,TNT-HD and to a lesser extent ESPN-HD. One minute 771 message,change channel and return to 771 message channel and there is a picture. Tech came peeked dish and changed BBCs and problem remained. They are sending new DVR. The one thing I noticed is that these channels are from 110 satellite and when the 771 message appears the sat test shows tuner 2 signals as 0. When the pictures is there the sat test on tuner2 shows signal as 90. Wonder if it is a software problem? I also noticed that the info banner at the top of the screen will briefly show the previous channel number and name when changing channels when the 771 problem is present. Whenever I do a front panel reset or menu reset the 771 problem will be briefly gone and the banner will correctly give the changed channel number and name.


You are describing a different issue. What you are describing sounds indicative of a cable or alignment issue.

The 771 issue that we are experiencing only occurs during rainfade (which is expected) but once the rain is gone, tuner one never comes back without a reset.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

I am running 2 HR20-700's and had a weakend of heavy rain without any rainfade nor -771 messages. None.

What I did notice in reading through this entire thread is (finally) at post 16, we learned that the problems were being reported on firmware version 0220.

I am running a newer version.

Assuming the OP's dish is aligned OK (which is often not a safe assumption), then the problem would appear to be related to the 0220 firmware itself.


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

Happened to me yet again yesterday afternoon. At least the massive t-storms are gone for awhile now. As to hdtvfan's response - I don't much pay attention to firmware levels normally, but I can say that this problem did not exist for me last summer\fall during rainy season. Until a couple weeks ago, I had not had much rain, nor any rain fade to know when the problem started exactly.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

JeffBowser said:


> Happened to me yet again yesterday afternoon. At least the massive t-storms are gone for awhile now. As to hdtvfan's response - I don't much pay attention to firmware levels normally, but I can say that this problem did not exist for me last summer\fall during rainy season. Until a couple weeks ago, I had not had much rain, nor any rain fade to know when the problem started exactly.


I also got a real taste of major rain this past weekend (thankfully in our area). Thunderstorms and lightening seem to be more of a candidate for "issues" than the rain itself.

Last year in anticipation of the D10 sat activation, I had my dish re-aligned, and since then have had not only no signs of rain-fade, but also no -771 error messages.

That's not to say the dish alignment alone is the solution, but I know from surveying my immediate 14 DirecTV friends in my area that only 6 of us have had their dishes re-aligned in the past 2 years, and we are the only ones in the group without similar symptoms. In addition to firmware version "issues", proper dish alignment is a key factor is stable reception.


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

This is not an alignment issue, may as well end that discussion now before this thread gets sidetracked. I have 90+ on most all transponders, and quite a few 100's. Further, rain-fade has not been an issue for me in the past, but when it is raining 4+ inches an hour, and said rain-storm is directly inline with my lookup angle, then it is what it is. The issue is, when you lose a sat signal, be it for rain, birds, or santa claus, tuner one does not come back until you restart. This is with the current national release for the HR20-700.


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## smimi10 (May 22, 2006)

hookemfins said:


> For those with the problem, which dish do you have? New Slimline 5 LNB or the original 5 LNB? As I said, I have the new slimline and it passed the first test.


I have the Slimline dish hooked to one HR20-700 and one R15. I am running the last national release of software on the HR20.


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## Carlucci (Apr 2, 2008)

Is there a picture guide to know which dish you have? Mine is pretty new so I assume I have the slimline, but I need to know what to look for.


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## ulbonado (Nov 29, 2007)

I had this problem last week on an HR21-700, although in my case it was tuner 2 that was out. Until seeing this thread I hadn't understood what was happening, but now I get it. It rained on Friday, and I kept getting 771 errors on tuner 2 all weekend until I rebooted. It's been fine since. Additionally the signal test showed good numbers for tuner 1, but a lot of goose eggs on 103(c) for tuner 2. After the reboot, both are fine. This was the day after the 0221 software update came down, so I initially thought that had caused it, but now I suspect the rain was the more likely culprit.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

hdtvfan0001 said:


> I am running 2 HR20-700's and had a weakend of heavy rain without any rainfade nor -771 messages. None.
> 
> What I did notice in reading through this entire thread is (finally) at post 16, we learned that the problems were being reported on firmware version 0220.
> 
> ...


You are missing the point of the issue. It is not whether the dish is aligned properly or not (mine is), the issue occurs after the rain fade passes and skies are clear, tuner one (in my case) does not come back online and will not come back until the box is rebooted.

My R15 and never has an issue.

And per my sig, I am on the National Release, not a CE version of firmware.


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## gigascott (May 3, 2006)

I recently upgraded to the HR21-700 with the slimline 5 LNB dish when I previously had the HR10-250. I have the latest 0221 software release and am also experiencing the 771 rain issue. I have noticed that I don't have a problem getting the SD channels when this happens and it seems to be only the new mpeg-4 HD channels that it has a problem with. Is this what others are seeing? This is very annoying and it resulted in me having to watch the Blue Harvest episode of Family Guy in standard definition... yes, my life sucks... 

-gigascott


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

gigascott said:


> I recently upgraded to the HR21-700 with the slimline 5 LNB dish when I previously had the HR10-250. I have the latest 0221 software release and am also experiencing the 771 rain issue. I have noticed that I don't have a problem getting the SD channels when this happens and it seems to be only the new mpeg-4 HD channels that it has a problem with. Is this what others are seeing? This is very annoying and it resulted in me having to watch the Blue Harvest episode of Family Guy in standard definition... yes, my life sucks...
> 
> -gigascott


Hi gigascott,

It sounds as if you might be experiencing normal rain fade which, as I understand it, is more likely to occur on the HD channels because the signals are more susceptible. If that occurs, then your SD might keep working. You might want to check your signal levels on the 103c bird. Mine are in the mid 80's which I gather is typical, if not optimally peaked.

The point of this thread is that when the HR20-700s lose signal due to rain fade, *they never recover*. One or both tuners are effectively dead, showing 771, until the box is reset. I have seen this go on on for days before I realized it and it caused me to miss several recordings. When this happens, checking signal strength on any satellite using the affected tuner(s) will show 0% and the box also operates sluggishly.

Since this started, I check my HR20s every time it has rained and usually have to reset at least one of them to get both tuners working again.

Don't want to minimize your concern, but I *really* want to make sure this thread is not derailed. It is an important bug that needs to be addressed ASAP. Fairly basic functionality of the DVR is broken.

If I had any confidence that calling DTV about this would not be a total waste of time and energy, I would do that. But, with any luck, airing the issue here will make someone who can make a difference aware of the problem.


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

Tuner 1 is out, but I have experimented by turning back on my SD duplicates, and successfully tuning them in. I agree that there may be a MPEG 4 component to this issue, but as pointed out above, it most certainly is not a aiming issue, nor a traditional 771 rain fade issue.



gigascott said:


> I recently upgraded to the HR21-700 with the slimline 5 LNB dish when I previously had the HR10-250. I have the latest 0221 software release and am also experiencing the 771 rain issue. I have noticed that I don't have a problem getting the SD channels when this happens and it seems to be only the new mpeg-4 HD channels that it has a problem with. Is this what others are seeing? This is very annoying and it resulted in me having to watch the Blue Harvest episode of Family Guy in standard definition... yes, my life sucks...
> 
> -gigascott


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

JeffBowser said:


> Tuner 1 is out, but I have experimented by turning back on my SD duplicates, and successfully tuning them in. I agree that there may be a MPEG 4 component to this issue, but as pointed out above, it most certainly is not a aiming issue, nor a traditional 771 rain fade issue.


As best I can tell, the issue is most likely to occur (maybe only occurs) when the tuner is tuned to an HD MPEG4 channel at the time the signal is lost. It is probably more accurate to say it is an issue with the 103c satellite than to call it MPEG4. The terms may be fairly interchangeable right now since most of the MPEG4 channels are coming from 103c.


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

I have been wanting to try that theory, but rain fade for me is (aside from last week), a very rare thing, and adding to that, we mostly watch nothing but MPEG4, since our favorite channels, and my locals, are MPEG4.


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

JeffBowser said:


> I have been wanting to try that theory, but rain fade for me is (aside from last week), a very rare thing, and adding to that, we mostly watch nothing but MPEG4, since our favorite channels, and my locals, are MPEG4.


I base the theory on the fact that one of my HR20-700s is almost always tuned to an MPEG4 channel on 103c, and it almost always needs to be reset after a rain to get both tuners working. My other HR20-700 is rarely tuned to MPEG4/103c and it rarely has this problem.

(Before anyone jumps in with this, both HR20-700s are in the same room connected with 6' cable runs to the multiswitch which is also nice and dry in the same room. I've already tried swapping cables and BBCs between the boxes, but it makes no difference.)


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

That's quite telling. I hope someone at DirecTV is paying attention here.



cover said:


> I base the theory on the fact that one of my HR20-700s is almost always tuned to an MPEG4 channel on 103c, and it almost always needs to be reset after a rain to get both tuners working. My other HR20-700 is rarely tuned to MPEG4/103c and it rarely has this problem.


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

JeffBowser said:


> That's quite telling. I hope someone at DirecTV is paying attention here.


Me, too


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## Carlucci (Apr 2, 2008)

JeffBowser said:


> I have been wanting to try that theory, but rain fade for me is (aside from last week), a very rare thing, and adding to that, we mostly watch nothing but MPEG4, since our favorite channels, and my locals, are MPEG4.


Jeff, could you not just get on the roof and block the dish with cardboard or something?

I would be willing to try this today with my system, if you think it would be a good test case. It would also rule out the "wet line" theory.

If you think it's a good idea to try, please give me a specific test protocol to follow, and I'll block out my dish. If this will expose me to excessive space microwaves, I'll send my son instead. 

Carlos.


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

:lol: Send your son :lol:

I suppose I could, a big wet towel may be enough, and my dish is on a pole 5 feet off the ground, easily done.

Now - ask me if it bothers me enough to go that far..... 

Anyhow - if you would like to try, and are not as lazy about it as I am, I would suspect you could just soak a thick towel and put it over the LNBs. Do this while tuned to an MPEG4 channel, and when not, and see if it makes a differ, is how I would do it. Mind you, I strongly suspect DirecTV is already aware of this and likely has a fix inline somewhere......



Carlucci said:


> Jeff, could you not just get on the roof and block the dish with cardboard or something?
> 
> I would be willing to try this today with my system, if you think it would be a good test case. It would also rule out the "wet line" theory.
> 
> ...


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## finaldiet (Jun 13, 2006)

I have 2 HR 20-700's and they went out last night for about 20 minutes. We had very heavy rain and hail and this is really the first time I've had this happen. Showed 771 and also one tuner out, but I don't remember which one. Everything came back on without a re-boot. Earl lives close by and I havn't seen a post from him, whether he had any problems.


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## smimi10 (May 22, 2006)

Another rain event here today, and tuner 1 was 771 for several hours after the rain moved away. Restarts fix it every time. 

I'll keep my fingers crossed that D* somehow understands what is going on and will be able to fix it.


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## FriscoJoe (Mar 22, 2007)

Add me to the list. DFW got blasted overnight...and I get 771 on tuner 1 only ...several hours after the storms pass.

HR20-700...0x1FE.


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## smimi10 (May 22, 2006)

Happened yet again with the storms we had in the DFW area in the early morning. Got up this morning, about 3 1/2 hours after the storms passed and Tuner 1 was 771. Restarted the receiver and all was well.

HR20-700...0x1FE as stated several times in this thread.


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

I think I've figured out how to forestall the problem. DFW got blasted again last night. What I did was change yesterday evening's network records to OTA. I then recorded and MPEG4 show late yesterday evening and it was fine, so the HR20 had survived the evening storm. Before putting the HR20-700 on standby and going to bed I tuned to two OTA stations. Got up this morning after another monster storm, turned on the HR20, and both tuners were AOK. Since the storms don't seem to be over, I did the two OTA tuner thing and put the HR20 back on standby. Will keep doing this until the weather clears, and hopefully won't experience any tuner 1 outages. I'm guessing that deactivating the sat tuners is what does the trick. Whatever software problem causes this is bypased if neither sat tuner is active at the time of the rain fade.


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## Carlucci (Apr 2, 2008)

I have some new intel. It's been too windy (and today, rainy) to get up there and block it out manually, but I must have had rain fade last night, because when I woke up this morning, the problem was back.

Tuner 2: No problems at all.
Tuner 1: displayed 771 message

but here's where it gets weird. I set tuner 2 to record, and then changed the channel to make tuner 1 try to change. Tuner 1 would go to any of my DTV local channels (NOT OTA), with no problem. channels 2,11,13 here in Houston would tune via tuner 1, but it still had the 771 message displayed the whole time. I couldn't make the 771 message go away.

Doing a system test showed tuner 1 FAILED, even though it was clearly able to tune to the DTV locals.

I hit record while tuner 1 was on a local channel, and sure enough, my playlist had both the tuner 2 and tuner 1 shows being recorded and I was able to view them both.

Leaving tuner 2 recording and attempting a variety of other non-local channels via tuner 1 led to the 771 with no signal. returning to a local was successful.

It's getting increasingly frustrating. 


Carlos.


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## z28lt1 (Aug 28, 2007)

Add me to the list with a similar problem, lose tuner 1, slow response, doesn't recover, any I need to reboot. Unfortunately for me, my problem is not just with rain. I've got super long cable runs, in a house that probably is mostly wired with RG 59. So, it appears that I have a weak signal and my HR20 drops it often. MY HR10-250 would do that on rare occasion, but would recover in less than a second. The HR20 never recovers, so I need to reboot several times a day. My other HR20, that has two stories less of cable runs, has absolutely no issues, and never needs to reboot. Signals on the 99 sat are lower than the others, maybe an alignment would help me a tiny bit.


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

You sound like a good candidate for either a Sonora signal locker, or a SWM. Either should help. The signal locker helped me on my longer runs, but I do not currently have any RG59 runs.



z28lt1 said:


> Add me to the list with a similar problem, lose tuner 1, slow response, doesn't recover, any I need to reboot. Unfortunately for me, my problem is not just with rain. I've got super long cable runs, in a house that probably is mostly wired with RG 59. So, it appears that I have a weak signal and my HR20 drops it often. MY HR10-250 would do that on rare occasion, but would recover in less than a second. The HR20 never recovers, so I need to reboot several times a day. My other HR20, that has two stories less of cable runs, has absolutely no issues, and never needs to reboot. Signals on the 99 sat are lower than the others, maybe an alignment would help me a tiny bit.


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## smimi10 (May 22, 2006)

mbuser said:


> I think I've figured out how to forestall the problem. DFW got blasted again last night. What I did was change yesterday evening's network records to OTA. I then recorded and MPEG4 show late yesterday evening and it was fine, so the HR20 had survived the evening storm. Before putting the HR20-700 on standby and going to bed I tuned to two OTA stations. Got up this morning after another monster storm, turned on the HR20, and both tuners were AOK. Since the storms don't seem to be over, I did the two OTA tuner thing and put the HR20 back on standby. Will keep doing this until the weather clears, and hopefully won't experience any tuner 1 outages. I'm guessing that deactivating the sat tuners is what does the trick. Whatever software problem causes this is bypased if neither sat tuner is active at the time of the rain fade.


Good information. Unfortunately, I took down my OTA antenna when I went to the Slimline dish and now use D* for my locals.


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

smimi10 said:


> Good information. Unfortunately, I took down my OTA antenna when I went to the Slimline dish and now use D* for my locals.


That's too bad. I kept my antenna for two reasons. One is the April storms. The other is that I like having an antenna hooked up to my TV for those rare instances where I want to record two things but still want the ability to watch a third.


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## 94SupraTT (Nov 18, 2005)

JeffBowser said:


> If this has been answered or addressed before, please direct me to a thread, I could not find one....
> 
> All of my receivers (range from old RCA's to a couple H20's) seem to recover fine after a rain-fade event except my sole HR20 - it will persist in a 771 error until I reboot it. How do I begin to debug this one ?


Sweet! I'm getting this now too. My HR21 is my only receiver that has the 771 error after rainfade. Horray!


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

JeffBowser said:


> You sound like a good candidate for either a Sonora signal locker, or a SWM. Either should help. The signal locker helped me on my longer runs, but I do not currently have any RG59 runs.


I have one of each installed - maybe *that's* why I have almost no fade ever....


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

Those won't do anything for rain fade.



hdtvfan0001 said:


> I have one of each installed - maybe *that's* why I have almost no fade ever....


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

JeffBowser said:


> Those won't do anything for rain fade.


The signal to the receiver is amplified a bit. True - it won't affect rain fade itself, but it will help send the optimum signal level to the DVR/receiver.

My Sidecar has only perhaps one instance of signal fade from weather per year - and that would be from a severe thunderstorm with lightning in the immediate area (and dense clouds). I have seen torrential rains here with no channel or signal loss as a result.


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

This is interesting - I was at my uncle's house Sunday watching the Masters when a rain storm moved through, and we got the 771 rain fade for about 5 minutes. He has the exact same setup I do, except he has the Slimline instead of the side-car like I do. His tuner 1 came right back up. Can this possibly be dish related ?


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

JeffBowser said:


> This is interesting - I was at my uncle's house Sunday watching the Masters when a rain storm moved through, and we got the 771 rain fade for about 5 minutes. He has the exact same setup I do, except he has the Slimline instead of the side-car like I do. His tuner 1 came right back up. Can this possibly be dish related ?


The side car has the two [110 & 119] connections exposed to the weather, but.....


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

Well, my sidecar is slowly rusting away, I may have to have it replaced anyway, I may make a phone call. Almost hate to do it, though, my signals are very good.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

JeffBowser said:


> This is interesting - I was at my uncle's house Sunday watching the Masters when a rain storm moved through, and we got the 771 rain fade for about 5 minutes. He has the exact same setup I do, except he has the Slimline instead of the side-car like I do. His tuner 1 came right back up. Can this possibly be dish related ?


Jeff- I have the slimline and have the issue.

Do you know what model receiver your uncle has? I tend to think it is a specific software/model issue.


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## ulbonado (Nov 29, 2007)

I have a slimline and have the issue too. Musta just gotten lucky.


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

I also have a slimline. This happened again when it rained over the weekend.

This time, Tuner 2 was still working but Tuner 1 got 0% on 103c until I rebooted. This is a little different than I have seen before; in other occurences, one of the tuners showed 0% on all satellites until I rebooted. This time only 103c was affected.


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## reweiss (Jan 27, 2007)

I had the same problem and it kept getting worse by the week. It would give me the erro every week, then every few days and then finally multiple times a day.

D** came out and found that I had a couple of potential issues. When they spliced my cable for my HR-20 they left the copper middle wire a bit too short and it was probably create a "short" when the cable heated and cooled. Also, water might have been getting into the cable screw-on ends. They re-cut them, put a new screw-on end and after it was conncted, coated it with Silicon. I've had no problems ever since.


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## vikecowboy (Jul 30, 2007)

Had this problem one time with my HR21-700. Did a reboot and it went away. Don't think it is isolated to the HR20 family.

Only noticed this with the latest software. Seems like the receive cannot automatically recover from losing signal due to weather.


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## kinsale (Oct 17, 2007)

I lost both tuners with the 771 error. A reboot got them back or so i thought. When trying to record on both tuners I could only get one to record. Apparently I have no signal on the second tuner. What gives?? Any ideas on how to get it to record on tuner 2?

thanks
Ian


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## bdowell (Mar 4, 2003)

Have had same issues here  And during the CE download window the other night was talking with someone else that was experiencing the problems.

Rain fade or other signal blocked issues causes one of the tuners to go out and never return until after restart of the box. (HR20-700).


For those that haven't spoken up about this issue in the current CE issues thread, please do. It does need attention asap.


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## bdowell (Mar 4, 2003)

kinsale said:


> I lost both tuners with the 771 error. A reboot got them back or so i thought. When trying to record on both tuners I could only get one to record. Apparently I have no signal on the second tuner. What gives?? Any ideas on how to get it to record on tuner 2?
> 
> thanks
> Ian


restart the receiver and it should go back to functioning normally until it loses signal again.


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## kinsale (Oct 17, 2007)

bdowell said:


> restart the receiver and it should go back to functioning normally until it loses signal again.


i just rebooted again and still nothing on Tuner2. i'm at a loss! Any other ideas guys??


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

reweiss said:


> I had the same problem and it kept getting worse by the week. It would give me the erro every week, then every few days and then finally multiple times a day.
> 
> D** came out and found that I had a couple of potential issues. When they spliced my cable for my HR-20 they left the copper middle wire a bit too short and it was probably create a "short" when the cable heated and cooled. Also, water might have been getting into the cable screw-on ends. They re-cut them, put a new screw-on end and after it was conncted, coated it with Silicon. I've had no problems ever since.


The problem we are seeing is not that we get 771's too often or that we having dish aiming, cabling or moisture problems. The 771s I get are legitimate - due to very heavy rains.

The problem is that the HR20-700s don't ever fully recover from the 771 error until they are rebooted. Once the rain is over, both tuners should begin seeing good signal again -- but they don't. One or both tuners are out of commission until the box is rebooted. This seems to occur when the tuner in question is tuned to 103c when the rain fade occurs.


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

cover said:


> The problem we are seeing is not that we get 771's too often or that we having dish aiming, cabling or moisture problems. The 771s I get are legitimate - due to very heavy rains.
> 
> The problem is that the HR20-700s don't ever fully recover from the 771 error until they are rebooted. Once the rain is over, both tuners should begin seeing good signal again -- but they don't. One or both tuners are out of commission until the box is rebooted. This seems to occur when the tuner in question is tuned to 103c when the rain fade occurs.


That's interesting about 103c being the culprit. Is there something that identifies what channels come off of 103c? My guess would be that it's the MPEG4 nationals.


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## jbharr1 (Oct 19, 2007)

i have this issue.

HR20-700
0x1f3

if it loses signal during rain it never comes back until i reboot.

just started happening about 2 weeks ago.

I called DTV and they instantly want to send out a tech. I don't have protection plan so I turned it down. My setup is pretty solid and I don't have a multiswitch, lines run directly from dish to DVR. i switched cables but tuner 1 is the only one that goes out. sure seems like reciever or software issue


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

This happened again yesterday. Heavy rains in the area. After the sky cleared, Tuner 1 was OK but Tuner 2 had 0%. Reboot fixed it as usual.

And, again, this happened the one of my 2 HR20s that has a high probability of being tuned to one of the new MPEG4 HD nationals at any given time.


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## smimi10 (May 22, 2006)

It happened to me again on Thursday night as storms moved through the DFW area. After the rain had passed and Tuner 2 came back, Tuner 1 was '771'. 

Restart fixed it as usual.


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

smimi10 said:


> It happened to me again on Thursday night as storms moved through the DFW area. After the rain had passed and Tuner 2 came back, Tuner 1 was '771'.
> 
> Restart fixed it as usual.


Me too. I thought I'd figured out how to avoid it. I changed my network program recordings to off-the-air stations for Thursday evening, and removed two scheduled MPEG4 recordings that I didn't care about anyway, then made sure to the receiver was tuned to off-the-air stations before going to standby. That had always done the trick before, but when I turned the receiver back on Friday morning tuner 1 was DOA until reset.


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## Fuzzybear (Dec 29, 2006)

I too have had this problem with Tuner 1 going to 0's after rain or wind for months now. This has driven me friggin crazy because my SD receivers and (2) H-20's recover fine, but my HR20 Tuner 1 gives me 771 until I reboot. 
The transponder numbers on Tuner 1 are all zero's too during these episodes. 
Does anyone know of a potential fix? D* of no help what so ever....


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

Your avatar always catches my eye, even though I prefer them natural :lol: 

As far as I know, we are all just sitting around waiting for a NR software release. I hear that there is a CE that does cure the issue, perhaps someone who monkeys with beta software can confirm....


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## Fuzzybear (Dec 29, 2006)

Oh yeah the Avatar........as my wife always reminds me, "if you can touch them they are real"!

Thanks for the reply.


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

:lol: Fair enough!



Fuzzybear said:


> Oh yeah the Avatar........as my wife always reminds me, "if you can touch them they are real"!
> 
> Thanks for the reply.


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## too hip (Aug 8, 2007)

Lost tuner 1 on a 700 after a rain storm on Monday. Reboot fixed. Slimline Dish.


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## ajc68 (Jan 23, 2008)

I started having a 771, Tuner 2 issue about three months ago with one of my two HR20-700’s. Before that I had no problems since upgrading to HD and a Slimline a year earlier. A simple reboot used to fix it, but over time it got progressively worse. After trying every scenario imaginable multiple times, I isolated the problem to one of my four cables coming in directly from the Satellite. That cable is completely dead now. Rain is not an issue as it hasn't done much of that the past few months in Los Angeles. Although, the problem may have started during the time we were having heavy rain a few month back. Also, I have a long run, probably 125-150 feat (x4).

Anyway, is there a way to get my HR20-700 to run on one cable (i.e. one tuner only)? I could do this easily in the setup with my old TiVo. I’ve tried doing a setup with one cable and it still thinks there are two tuners, so I still get the error message and dead recordings. I’ve also run a splitter to try and fool the DVR. For a while it worked, but then after a reboot it thinks there are two tuners again, but will only work on one (of course). What can I do since replacing the cable is not an option at this point?


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

ajc68 said:


> I started having a 771, Tuner 2 issue about three months ago with one of my two HR20-700's. Before that I had no problems since upgrading to HD and a Slimline a year earlier. A simple reboot used to fix it, but over time it got progressively worse. After trying every scenario imaginable multiple times, I isolated the problem to one of my four cables coming in directly from the Satellite. That cable is completely dead now. Rain is not an issue as it hasn't done much of that the past few months in Los Angeles. Although, the problem may have started during the time we were having heavy rain a few month back. Also, I have a long run, probably 125-150 feat (x4).
> 
> Anyway, is there a way to get my HR20-700 to run on one cable (i.e. one tuner only)? I could do this easily in the setup with my old TiVo. I've tried doing a setup with one cable and it still thinks there are two tuners, so I still get the error message and dead recordings. I've also run a splitter to try and fool the DVR. For a while it worked, but then after a reboot it thinks there are two tuners again, but will only work on one (of course). What can I do since replacing the cable is not an option at this point?


I am not an expert on this, but you may want to look for posts about the Single Wire Multiswitch (SWM). A normal coax cable splitter will not work.

Not that I have any authority here  , but if you have any additional questions about this, please start a new thread. I'd really like to keep this thread on track, since it appears to be a software problem that affects a lot of people.

Thanks


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

JeffBowser said:


> Your avatar always catches my eye, even though I prefer them natural :lol:


Heh, I tend to prefer natural, too. But there is something to the philosophy that says, "If I can touch them, they're real"


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

Back to topic, heavy rain came through yesterday afternoon. Now, over 24 hours later, Tuner 1 shows 0% on all sats. Tuner 2 is normal. I'm sure a restart will fix it - always does. 

Really hoping they've fixed this in the new NR that is rolling out. Can anyone confirm or deny?


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## FriscoJoe (Mar 22, 2007)

Strong storms in DFW again last night (a weekly event). Woke up this morning with no tuner 1. Reset fixed. Still on 0x1FE. Anyone see this problem with 0x22B? No mention in the release notes...though it could fall under "Stability".


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## hookemfins (Jul 3, 2007)

Heavy rains last night and my hr 20-700 came back online but the 100 needed a reboot. However my original H10 (nonHD) only lost a signal for a few seconds.


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

FriscoJoe said:


> Strong storms in DFW again last night (a weekly event). Woke up this morning with no tuner 1. Reset fixed. Still on 0x1FE. Anyone see this problem with 0x22B? No mention in the release notes...though it could fall under "Stability".


"Second Tuner Detection" in the release notes. I'm hoping that it addresses this problem. Will know next time DFW gets slammed, probably soon.


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## z28lt1 (Aug 28, 2007)

I didn't have the issue due to rain fade, I would just lose a tuner quite often, and needed the reboot to fix it. So far, over 48 hours on the latest NR and I haven't had the issue at all. Previously I would average about 4 reboots in a 48 hours period, and don't recall having made it through a 48 period without any reboots required. So, this seems like very good news.


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

Had this happen again on Friday night. Both of my HR20s lost a tuner during heavy rain and never recovered. As usual, a reboot fixed it. Both of the boxes have received the latest NR software (ox22B, if memory serves).


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

This happened again within the last couple of days, resulting in blank recordings.

I can't understand why DirecTV can't / won't fix this problem with basic functionality of the DVR. Media Sharing, new logos, and other extras where they seem to be focusing development effort are nice to have, but not at the expense of reliability. 

I'm tired of having to do a signal check on both tuners and, usually, reboot the HR20 every time it rains. But, if I don't, chances are one tuner will be down and I'll get blank recordings.


I assume others of you are also still having this issue?


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

Likewise.



cover said:


> This happened again within the last couple of days, resulting in blank recordings.
> 
> I can't understand why DirecTV can't / won't fix this problem with basic functionality of the DVR. Media Sharing, new logos, and other extras where they seem to be focusing development effort are nice to have, but not at the expense of reliability.
> 
> ...


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## RobertE (Jun 10, 2006)

cover said:


> This happened again within the last couple of days, resulting in blank recordings.
> 
> I can't understand why DirecTV can't / won't fix this problem with basic functionality of the DVR. Media Sharing, new logos, and other extras where they seem to be focusing development effort are nice to have, but not at the expense of reliability.
> 
> ...


Haven't encountered this issue on any of my four HR2x.


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## rfjf (Dec 2, 2007)

RobertE said:


> Haven't encountered this issue on any of my four HR2x.


Hopefully this helps someone:
I have an HR21-700 since about feb 08. everything ran perfect up until 2 weeks ago. Since I would get SSS 771 on tuner 2 during the lightest of rain or bad weather for about 2 weeks straight. Reset after reset. 
I checked my signal strength and on a clear day after a reset only 77 to 79. I made a little adjustment on the height of the arm that leads to the Lnbs (In my area of NY it calls for a height of 35 i raised it to 36) and now my signal strenght is at 95 to 97. 
Last night in New York we had some Huge Thunderstorms trees down everywhere type for about 4hrs and I had brief 771 on both tuners never longer than 2mins and mostlty on the HD stuff but not the reset types like b4.
Not 1 reset through it all and after the storm S Strength still at 95.
So i guess b4 you go crazy like I did with missed recordings check ur s.strength and if ur in the 70's to 80's try and get that up in the high 90's. Made a diff. 4 me so far.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

cover said:


> This happened again within the last couple of days, resulting in blank recordings.
> 
> I can't understand why DirecTV can't / won't fix this problem with basic functionality of the DVR. Media Sharing, new logos, and other extras where they seem to be focusing development effort are nice to have, but not at the expense of reliability.
> 
> ...


Yes, had this issue last week.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

rfjf said:


> So i guess b4 you go crazy like I did with missed recordings check ur s.strength and if ur in the 70's to 80's try and get that up in the high 90's. Made a diff. 4 me so far.


This is a different issue than simple low signal levels and poor alignment.

This issue occurs when rain fade happens (even a perfect alignment, if the storm is bad enough, you will get rain fade), tuner 1 does not come back after the storm has passed requiring a reset to get the tuner back.

Anything scheduled on that tuner gets a blank recording.


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## Thaedron (Jun 29, 2007)

Add me to the list of people having this issue. Just noticed the problem after some severe weather this weekend. R10 never complained. HR20 needed a reboot to clear the 771 error. I might buy the issue being related to damp/wet coax somehow, but if that were the case, how does rebooting a receiver dry out the coax...???


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

Well, glad to hear at least I'm not alone .


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## Thaedron (Jun 29, 2007)

I might suggest that one of the best ways for this issue to be raised is in the weekly CE release issues threads. Assuming of course that 1) you are experiencing this issue and 2) that you're running a CE release at the time that it happens.

I'll try to remember to do this the next time I see the issue. Though the coming week looks pretty quiet on the weather front.


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## DarkAudit (Sep 10, 2007)

At least three blank recordings after last night's rain in Morgantown. Tuner 1 no signal all transponders all satellites. Not the first time this *week* this has happened. Reboot always brings it back.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

This issue is still not fixed. We had bad weather on Tuesday night. Tuner One was out when I came home from work on Wednesday.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

Happened again yesterday. Bad storm in the morning, came home last night to find PTI was a blank recording and no signal on tuner one.

I hope when folks talk about rain fade not being an issue with D*, they keep in mind there is an entire model of DVR (HR20-700) that has a tuner that will not come back from rain fade until it is reset.

To summarize for those at D* paying attention to this:

- Seems to occur on the HR20-700
- After a storm or other rain fade where the tuners go out, tuner 1 (and AFAIK only tuner 1) will not come back (no problems with tuner 2)
- A reboot always fixes the problem.
- Been going on for at least the begining of this thread.


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## K4SMX (May 19, 2007)

I've never experienced this issue on any of my -700's, with numerous total rain fades, but quite obviously, it does effect some receivers. Whenever I have encountered a issue like this, i.e., one which continues after an RBR, I always try a cold re-boot before concluding it's a hardware problem. Some strange things can get "fixed" that way. At the end of the day, do a Menu > .....> Reset > Restart Recorder and pull the plug when the front panel lights go out during the reboot. Then plug it back in the next morning. If that doesn't fix it, I'd ask for a replacement. It's a reproducible hardware problem, if a cold reboot doesn't fix it.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

K4SMX said:


> I've never experienced this issue on any of my -700's, with numerous total rain fades, but quite obviously, it does effect some receivers. Whenever I have encountered a issue like this, i.e., one which continues after an RBR, I always try a cold re-boot before concluding it's a hardware problem. Some strange things can get "fixed" that way. At the end of the day, do a Menu > .....> Reset > Restart Recorder and pull the plug when the front panel lights go out during the reboot. Then plug it back in the next morning. If that doesn't fix it, I'd ask for a replacement. It's a reproducible hardware problem, if a cold reboot doesn't fix it.


I said -700 based purely on anecdotal evidence from others in this thread. Obviously it must not affect all -700s.

I've previously done a cold reboot (in fact, we had a power outage a couple of weeks ago for several hours) - it did not change the problem.

As far as I can tell, this issue started with a National Release back in the feb/march timeframe - I noticed it happening to me about the same time others started reporting it. I had not noticed this issue prior to that.

I may have to ask for a new box but am not thrilled with the prospect of $19.99 shipping, another two year commitment and losing my OTA (or paying for it if they won't throw in an AM21 for free).


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## K4SMX (May 19, 2007)

raott said:


> I said -700 based purely on anecdotal evidence from others in this thread. Obviously it must not affect all -700s.
> 
> I've previously done a cold reboot (in fact, we had a power outage a couple of weeks ago for several hours) - it did not change the problem.
> 
> ...


You are absolutely not required to extend your commitment when replacing defective leased equipment. See this post.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

K4SMX said:


> You are absolutely not required to extend your commitment when replacing defective leased equipment. See this post.


Thanks for the link, I had not seen that before.


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## dinotheo (Sep 22, 2006)

I have the same exact problem. If I get hit with nasty storms, it is a crap shoot on which of my receivers will need a reboot. For me, it seems to affect my HR21's more often than the others. 
I also need to hard boot it. A reset does not always work. (With a reset sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't)


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## K4SMX (May 19, 2007)

If you have multiple HR receivers, all doing the same thing, that sort of makes me start wondering if there might be some compatibility problem with a particular type/version of LNB or multi-switch.


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## dinotheo (Sep 22, 2006)

K4SMX said:


> If you have multiple HR receivers, all doing the same thing, that sort of makes me start wondering if there might be some compatibility problem with a particular type/version of LNB or multi-switch.


I would have thought the same thing but the problems got a LOT better since 254/255 went out (I've had one unrecoverable 771 error since 254/255 went out) and they did not exist prior to 022d. As a matter of fact the first time I saw the problem was the same day that my receivers were upgraded to 022d. I never had a 771 before 022d. 
I also had DTV swap the LNB and I would move receivers back and forth between the WB68 (which I have since replaced with an SWM8) and the WB616. Lastly I paid a separate company recently to come and tweak my dish. My 101/110/119 signals are in the mid 90's. My 103/99 are in the upper 80's. The problem still persisted.
This made me pretty confident that the problem was software.


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## K4SMX (May 19, 2007)

You've done a _lot_, but it just seems strange that you have this problem at your installation with all these different receivers, while others with the same software versions and multiple receivers don't. From what you say, in addition to the LNB swap, you've also tried every single type of multi-switch device. What are we missing? Do you know if both your LNB's were the same brand/version # or different ones? It appears you have "bad Karma installation syndrome."


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## dinotheo (Sep 22, 2006)

I have recently (as in last night) swapped out the WB68 for an SWM8. I am hopeful that this will help me. I remember a thread about 771 errors where someone changed the length of the BBC cable (my memory is hazy though) and this seemed to fix their problem. So far I have only moved 1 receiver (HR20-100) onto the SWM8. By this weekend I will move an HR20-700 an HR21-700 and whatever the installer drops off for my HD swap. (Hopefully an HR21 and not an HR23 as I have an AM21 waiting to go onto that receiver).


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## K4SMX (May 19, 2007)

That 3' cable between the HR20-100 and the BBC "fix" has to do with the Satellite 110 Tuner 2 bug only, whereby the 110's on tuner 2 drops drastically in strength after the first tuning to a 103(c) channel. Temporarily removing the BBC on tuner 2 yields normal strengths. Many HR20-100 refurb's had this problem, with several members receiving up to three in a row.


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## Metalface12 (Oct 31, 2007)

Well, here we are again. 6th tech visit in 9 months. 771 on both HR20-100's almost daily. Replaced the following:

LNB's
Multi Switch (twice)
BBC's
Coax runs to boxes

Nothing worked. 

Love DTV but this is pathetic. 

If DISH had YES I would be there but I am stuck with this or Comcrap.

DTV, just fix the issue please.....


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## newsposter (Nov 13, 2003)

just found this thread. yesterday after a storm, i had 771 on tuner 2 for hr20. 2 tivos were fine, no issues. So i just changed channels on the hr20 and it went away.

Only when i got to this thread did i remember i had tuner 2 110 issues so i'm not sure if this was a storm issue or just my 110 issue popping its head up again because i didnt notice what station was 771. 

But it sounds like universally tuner 2 is bad on all our machines! why?


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## K4SMX (May 19, 2007)

I dunno. I am slowly developing something of an aversion to Thomson receivers in general.


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## JustMe2 (Aug 22, 2008)

JeffBowser said:


> If this has been answered or addressed before, please direct me to a thread, I could not find one....
> 
> All of my receivers (range from old RCA's to a couple H20's) seem to recover fine after a rain-fade event except my sole HR20 - it will persist in a 771 error until I reboot it. How do I begin to debug this one ?


Same Problem here with HR20-700 not recovering from a rain fade without a reboot.


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

With the continued presence of that da**ed tropical storm and it's flipping feeder bands, I am on the verge of driving my HR20 down to DirecTV headquarters and tossing the effing thing at the director of engineering's head. I'm sick to death of having to reboot to regain tuner 1. Gad, DirecTV, fix it already. It used to work, so I know da**ed well it's possible to make it work again.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

Mods - have any of your contacts at D* acknowledged they know about this problem? 

It is truely a nuisance to come home and have shows not record simply because it rained earlier in the day.


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## vman8126 (Jun 14, 2007)

I just upgraded from a R15, to a R22 yesterday and had issues with Tuner 2 and 771 from the start, but it was only on the HD channels....(The R15 has been flawless)....I am using a 3LNB dish currently so I know I would only get the 70's HD channels, but I could only get 3 of them with the R22...The others would all say "searching for sat on tuner 2"and error 771......The interesting thing is that checking the signal strength results in good signal on both tuners...Also the 110* sat has all n/a or 0 readings.........After almost 4 hours of several calls combined on the phone with Directv and numerous resets and cable swaps yesterday, they told me the R22 is a new receiver and may be more designed for the 5LNB dish.....They recommended that I take it back and exchange this one and see if the same issue occurs....I have an appointment later in the week for a 5LNB dish anyway, but I want to make sure that it just wasn't the receiver that was defective.. It seems however that this is looking more and more like a software issue, as mine took the 0255 update during set-up yesterday, and seems like many are having the same issue with the R21's as well.. .......I'm going to exchange it now and I'll post results later today..............


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## vman8126 (Jun 14, 2007)

Update:

So I exchanged the R22 for another one, but before I hooked it up, decided to check the 110* signal on my other two basic receivers, and lo and behold, they were extremelly low as well........(Don't ask why I didn't think of that yesterday)....Anyway, I began to suspect the dish was out of alignment.....Due to a bad mounting D* job originally, where the mounting base began pulling the side strip of my house away and D* would not come fix it without a $50, charge, I re-bolted and nailed the sidding back in....The reason I noticed in the first place was that my signal would drop at the same time every day, when the sun was aiming directly at the dish, and upon inspection, noticed the dish was actually pulling away from the house because the siding was bowing out as well.....After my repair, my signal levels returned to 90's and no more daily drop outs..........Anyway, before setting up the new R22, I decided to give the dish a nudge with the 110* signal generator on and the signals on 110* shot right up............Got the new R22 DVR receiver set up and had numbers where there were just 0's before......And all HD channels in the 70's are working fine now.........But the D* installer WILL be mounting the new 5LNB dish on the roof eve this time instead of the siding of the house..............


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

raott said:


> Mods - have any of your contacts at D* acknowledged they know about this problem?


I guess the sound of crickets chirping means "no".

Heading on vacation for a week, it would be wonderful if I could count on shows being recorded during that time rather than having a thunderstrom knock out a tuner for an entire week.

I guess I'll have to double record the exact same shows on the R15 so I can be sure they record.

To reiterate for anyone at D* paying attention:

1- The issue occurs when rainfade knocks out the signal. 
2- One of the tuners on my HR20-700 will not recover (continues to 771) after the sky has cleared (for me its ALWAYS Tuner One)
3- A reboot takes care of the issue
4- None of the other receivers in my house (an R15 and old Tivo) have the issue
5- This seemingly started for me (and others) with a National Release back in the Jan or Feb timeframe.


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

+1



raott said:


> I guess the sound of crickets chirping means "no".
> 
> Heading on vacation for a week, it would be wonderful if I could count on shows being recorded during that time rather than having a thunderstrom knock out a tuner for an entire week.
> 
> ...


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## scarzy (Oct 14, 2007)

I have the issue as well on one of my HR20-700 boxes. The other does not have this problem.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

Try a full power-down (unplug) for about 20 minutes, and then power up again to see if it clears things out.


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## SabresFan29 (Aug 16, 2007)

I've had this same problem with HR20-700 after storms. Needless to say, my wife is not too excited!

I am also now getting a 771 on tuner 1 everytime I record something. I've tried tried rebooting from the menu, RBR, and unplugging the sytem. I've also swapped the BBCs. The issue continues to occur on tuner 1. Am I at the point where I have a bad tuner? Should I request D* send a new box? I have protection plan.

Thanks!


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

hdtvfan0001 said:


> Try a full power-down (unplug) for about 20 minutes, and then power up again to see if it clears things out.


Been there done that. This is a software bug that started with a national release.

A second option would be for D* to fix the bug that they have been given detailed information on since March.


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## dinotheo (Sep 22, 2006)

Been having this problem since about May. Never ever happened before.


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## paulman182 (Aug 4, 2006)

vman8126 said:


> I just upgraded from a R15, to a R22 yesterday and had issues with Tuner 2 and 771 from the start, but it was only on the HD channels


Are you really getting HD on an R22 or do you mean some other DVR?


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## Thaedron (Jun 29, 2007)

While DirecTV may or may not be monitoring this thread, the best way to get this issue noticed is to log an issue in the appropriate thread for the software release that you are currently running. 

The more reports the better.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

Thaedron said:


> While DirecTV may or may not be monitoring this thread, the best way to get this issue noticed is to log an issue in the appropriate thread for the software release that you are currently running.
> 
> The more reports the better.


Done.


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

I have, a number of times.


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## vman8126 (Jun 14, 2007)

paulman182 said:


> Are you really getting HD on an R22 or do you mean some other DVR?


Its an HR22-100 HDDVR........I upgraded from an R15 DVR.......

Been working flawlessly since I adjusted 3LNB dish and got good strength on the 110* sat, even after some strong thunderstorms yesterday when it went 771, I didn't have to reboot to get signal back........Will have 5LNB dish installed thursday anyway, but enjoying the few HD channels I am getting for the time being................


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## bigrig (Aug 7, 2002)

I've got this issue with my HR21-700. Tuner 1. I wish the box was smart enough to know a tuner is out and not try to record shows on that one.


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## too hip (Aug 8, 2007)

Had it happen to me again last night. 


After you lose a tuner the one thing I noticed this time is that it reports I have a Round 18" dish installed. What??

After a reboot it reports correctly as a Slimline. 

Theres no doubt in my mind it's software related. NR or CE for at least the last 6 months.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

too hip said:


> Had it happen to me again last night.
> 
> After you lose a tuner the one thing I noticed this time is that it reports I have a Round 18" dish installed. What??
> 
> ...


That is interesting. Next time mine does it I will see if mine is also reporting a Round 18 inch dish.


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## newsposter (Nov 13, 2003)

no rain here in over a week but today woke up to 771..it was on E! because my wife had recorded something last night. Flipped channel up and down and came right back

this is crazy

and my IR receiver just went out so i have to use RF mode


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## K4SMX (May 19, 2007)

newsposter said:


> .....and my IR receiver just went out so i have to use RF mode


That idea probably wouldn't have occurred to the average CSR. Sounds like a good reason for a new receiver.....nothing intermittent about that problem!


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## PearlMikeJam (Sep 25, 2007)

Just had a tech out because D* *called me* last week claiming my signal strength was weakening. I described the subject issue and he went to some of the test channels in the 480s and 490s. One of the channels told him that the BBCs were not functioning properly. This is the third time I have had BBCs replaced in less than a year.

It would not surprise me if the BBCs were part of the blame for this as they are not made too great, but the HR20 should have a tough time tuning HD channels if the BBCs were completely bad. The software still seems like a logical origination point for the issue, but it may be in conjunction with the BBCs since fewer of the other HR2x models have this issue when the BBCs are build into the units.


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## K4SMX (May 19, 2007)

PearlMikeJam said:


> ......since fewer of the other HR2x models have this issue when the BBCs are build into the units.


It might be said that it remains to be seen what problems might occur with those internal BBC's......


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## newsposter (Nov 13, 2003)

K4SMX said:


> That idea probably wouldn't have occurred to the average CSR. Sounds like a good reason for a new receiver.....nothing intermittent about that problem!


ill take my slightly flaws hr20 to the other horror stories i've been hearing on here...dont like the idea of a refurb less than 1 year into my new machine


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## K4SMX (May 19, 2007)

Was your HR20-100 actually new when you got it or was it an HR20-100-R? There's no question but that you might fail to "improve your lie" by swapping receivers, to put it in golfing terms.....  

Are you having any problems with the RF remote? Reports are not real favorable about the -100's RF remote functionality.


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## beejpowers (Oct 5, 2004)

So this has finally happened to me too.
I have an HR21-700 in the basement that went out yesterday during the rains. Signal came back to the HR21-100 in the bedroom and the SD-DVR80 and HR10 also in the basement. 
Just tuner 2 was out on the HR21-700. I did a software reboot and it came back up with 2 tuners but lost all locals. I did a sencond reboot and then EVERYTHING was back to the way it should be.
Again, today, tuner 2 went out after rain. I RBR'd it this time and everything came back fine.


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## OnTheEdge (Sep 6, 2008)

Oh well, I was hoping that someone would have the fix for this...... looks like I will be working with DTV until it is resolved. CS wanted to replace my reciever but I'm not sure I want to go down that road. I really believe that this is a software related issue and has nothing to do with water or anything getting wet. As I had stated I can swap the cables and tuner 1 will still aquire with no issue and tuner 2 will not.


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## Greggbb (Jun 30, 2008)

I have been using DTV non-HD receivers for about 4 years, and never had this problem before. In the 2 months since I got an HR21, about once a week a rainstorm freezes my Tuner 2 with a 771 and requires a reboot even when the other non-HD boxes in my house come back from the rain rade. Is this confirmed as a software bug, do we actually know that DTV is working on this? Has anyone had this fixed with just an equipment swap?


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

Yep, I'm convinced it is a software issue. My HR20 shows this issue after every rain fade event. It was fine for a while, then tuner 2 was the problem, now tuner 1 is the problem (or vice-versa). I just wish they'd fix the issue already.


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## GAM (Jun 3, 2007)

I agree it is a software issue. My HR21-700 started doing this as well. Tuner 2 does not come back unless the unit is restarted. If hardware was the problem the tuner would not come back but it does and works fine until the next rain fade event.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

Heavy storms last night. Woke up this morning to a 771 on Tuner One. 

Sure hope this is fixed in the next National Release.


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## Carlucci (Apr 2, 2008)

I've finally had it with this issue! My HR20 has been updated twice in 2 weeks, most recently with the update that includes the 1080p support, snd still I have the problem.

I called today to demand a resolution, I pay the extra for the protection plan, so they sent me to that group. The guy there told me he was going to escalate it to the "Net Escalation" team so they could contact me and run through some stuff. He said in his instructions it said that complaints on this issue should go to the net Escalation team. I should hear back from them in 2 days.

Carlos.


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## rudeney (May 28, 2007)

Do HR2x’s connected to a SWM experience this? Dinotheo replaced his WB68 with a SWM8, did that help for those receivers? If the SWM does seem to solve these problems, maybe the solution is to either DIY or try to convince D* to upgrade you (of course the former being much easier than the latter).


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

Interesting theory, Rodney. I'm about to get a SWM myself (I have some old RG58 runs, and a need to easily integrate OTA on a couple other runs). It would be nice if that also fixes the 771 issue. I haven't had a rain fade event since August, so I can't tell myself what has or has not changed recently.


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## Carlucci (Apr 2, 2008)

So, 10 days after my initial call, I still haven't heard from a technician. I guess the promise to send it to the "net escalation" team was just blowing smoke.

I called back yesterday and the guy promised me a call back. Never got one. I called back again today and the guy finally scheduled an appointment to come look at the system (2 weeks from now), which we all know will be fruitless.

DirecTV, I have been a loyal customer for 10 years, but you are about to lose me over this one! 

Now I'm not only pissed about the crappy performance of the DVR, but now I'm angry about the poor customer service in not living up to your promises.


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## Tybee Bill (Oct 21, 2008)

HR20. When I was in my house in Fla I had problems with 771 long after it rained (every day). 
An inspector came by to check up on one of there techs and he said my Sat wasn't grounded, wrong boots on the cables and I had an old style dish.
He said he would have it fixed. Never did.

My GA setup has the same dish and is grounded. Don't know what kind of boots on the cables but it works fine with all my boxes, even after rain.

I don't think it changes in lattitude


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## Carlucci (Apr 2, 2008)

The guy came out today, listened to my symptoms and was about to check the lines and replace the BBC's, until I mentioned that I was also getting lockups when trying to use VoD. He then immediately went to his truck and returned with a brand new HR-22.

So, we'll give this a try and see how it goes. I gotta say I like the piano black finish. Looks good!

I'll post back here after my next bout with rain fade. We should be getting a lot of rain this week in Houston. We got some heavy rain today and I didn't get any fade.


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## Carlucci (Apr 2, 2008)

Had about 10 minutes of rain fade today. When the rain cleared, both tuners came back! 

So, without changing anything else, but replacing the HR20 with an HR22, my problem seems to be gone.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

Carlucci said:


> Had about 10 minutes of rain fade today. When the rain cleared, both tuners came back!
> 
> So, without changing anything else, but replacing the HR20 with an HR22, my problem seems to be gone.


Glad its fixed for you.

It is still a problem on my HR20. Heavy rains over the weekend, woke up Sunday and the box was running very slow and sure enough, changed the channel and got 771 on Tuner 1.

As usual, a reboot took care of the issue.


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

Still an issue for me, too. 

I had heavy rain/wind in the last couple of days. This morning I noticed that one of my 2 HR20-700s was responding slowly. Tuner 2 was stuck on 771. As always, a restart fixed it. 

I suspect that I will have a number of blank recordings because of this. It was actually trying to record 2 things when I found the error. Obviously, only one was actually recording.

Again, I'll point out that this practically always happens after rain fade on the HR20-700 that is usually tuned to and recording MPEG4 HD channels. My other HR20-700 is tuned to OTA channels most of the time, so I rarely see this problem on it.

It appears that the HR20-700s at least are not capable of re-acquiring the sat signal after rain fade, at least on MPEG4 channels. 

I wish DTV could work on these very serious functionality/reliability problems before moving on to MRV, PC viewing, and so on that very few people will actually use.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

cover said:


> It appears that the HR20-700s at least are not capable of re-acquiring the sat signal after rain fade, at least on MPEG4 channels.
> 
> I wish DTV could work on these very serious functionality/reliability problems before moving on to MRV, PC viewing, and so on that very few people will actually use.


It seems that this is simply not a priority or cannot be fixed. It's been reported for almost a year now. It started with a software update last winter and no update has fixed it yet.


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## rudeney (May 28, 2007)

cover said:


> It appears that the HR20-700s at least are not capable of re-acquiring the sat signal after rain fade, at least on MPEG4 channels.


I have four HR20-700's and we almost always watch MPEG4 channels (HD snobs). I have never had this problem, and we get a good bit of rain here. I don't believe this is strictly a software or specific receiver model problem. My guess is that it's a hardware issue related to a bad tuner, BBC, cabling multiswitch or LNB.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

rudeney said:


> I have four HR20-700's and we almost always watch MPEG4 channels (HD snobs). I have never had this problem, and we get a good bit of rain here. I don't believe this is strictly a software or specific receiver model problem. My guess is that it's a hardware issue related to a bad tuner, BBC, cabling multiswitch or LNB.


This started for me and others after a software update last year. I did not have the issue before that update.

After a rain fade event, the DVR becomes very slow (ie going through menus or changing channels is so slow its painfully obvious something is wrong), you get the message a tuner is out (for me its always tuner one) and a reboot always corrects the problem - not to mention, other receivers in the house are unaffected. Sounds like software to me.


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

raott said:


> This started for me and others after a software update last year. I did not have the issue before that update.
> 
> After a rain fade event, the DVR becomes very slow (ie going through menus or changing channels is so slow its painfully obvious something is wrong), you get the message a tuner is out (for me its always tuner one) and a reboot always corrects the problem - not to mention, other receivers in the house are unaffected. Sounds like software to me.


This also describes my situation and the symptoms of the problem I see here. It certainly seems like a software issue.

If it were a hardware problem, it is doubtful that restarting the box would fix it 100% of the time. It is also doubtful that the problem would occur only after losing signal due to rain fade.


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## rudeney (May 28, 2007)

I have a theory (and you are welcome to call it half baked  ) that this is a combination of a hardware problem *and* a software problem. I believe that if there are hardware problems that degrade the signal or cause intermittent failures, then the software has a hard time recovering from that. 

I came up with this idea when I had a loose connection to one of the tuners on my HR20 where it plugged into the multiswitch. I had experienced occasional black/gray recordings and IKD's, but nothing very "regular" that I could really point to. One day, tuner #1 lost signal and the unit became sluggish and eventually totally unresponsive. Rebooting fixed it for a few minutes until a background recording tried to fire up again. Anyhow, fixing that connection solved the problem. Since then, I've switch to a SWM8 and have had absolutely ZERO problems like this.

I definitely agree that there is a software problem, but I believe will that if your hardware connections are operating at 100%, then it's very unlikely that you will experience it.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

rudeney said:


> I definitely agree that there is a software problem, but I believe will that if your hardware connections are operating at 100%, then it's very unlikely that you will experience it.


I agree for the most part however, hardware connections can be at 100%, and the issue still happens when there is rain fade.

The only time I ever have this issue, is after a rain fade event. This issue started for me, (and others) sometime after a software update at the begining of the year, never had the issue before.

I do not know the specific combination that causes it, all I can do is report it (which I have done repeatedly). My only other option is to get a new box.


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

raott said:


> I agree for the most part however, hardware connections can be at 100%, and the issue still happens when there is rain fade.
> 
> The only time I ever have this issue, is after a rain fade event. This issue started for me, (and others) sometime after a software update at the begining of the year, never had the issue before.
> 
> I do not know the specific combination that causes it, all I can do is report it (which I have done repeatedly). My only other option is to get a new box.


Ditto.

I have no confidence that a new box would resolve the problem. If it is pure software issue, as it appears to me, then a new box - at least a new HR20-700 would have the same problem.


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## rudeney (May 28, 2007)

raott said:


> I agree for the most part however, hardware connections can be at 100%, and the issue still happens when there is rain fade.
> 
> The only time I ever have this issue, is after a rain fade event. This issue started for me, (and others) sometime after a software update at the begining of the year, never had the issue before.


The reason I hesitate to believe it's strictly a software issue is that I have four HR20-700's (installed 9/2006, 3/2007, 2/2008 and 8/2008) and I've never had this problem on any of them, and we do get plenty of rain fade here in Birmingham.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Try a Red Reset Reboot!!!


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

So, if this is a hardware problem, it has now managed to "jump" to my other HR20-700 which has been largely unaffected - my theory being that it spends most of its time tuned to OTA rather than satellite.

It seems unlikely that my 2 boxes, 4 tuners total, have a consistent hardware problem that affects only recover after rain fade, started after a software update, and is always fixed by a menu reset. Let alone that several others here are reporting the exact same thing.

Smells like software to me.


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## Jewduh (Feb 12, 2007)

Yesterday we had some snow, 771s followed. After I cleared the snow off the dish one of the tuners came back the other didn't... until after a reset. I could go into more detail but, it's been covered pretty well. I just recommend a reset after any serious rain or snow...


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## Jewduh (Feb 12, 2007)

too hip said:


> Had it happen to me again last night.
> 
> After you lose a tuner the one thing I noticed this time is that it reports I have a Round 18" dish installed. What??
> 
> ...


Nice catch. I'm willing to bet that this is the crux of the issue. The software is probably getting a little too smart and autodetecting the dish as a single LNB after the rainfade...


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

jodyguercio said:


> Could be a buggy HR unit.


Buggy is relative.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

some_raisins said:


> I had a tech come out here today, and luckily the problem was happening while he was here. There were no weather boots on a lot of the connections, the lines weren't grounded, and I had the old B Band converters. He fixed all of that, but I was still getting zero's and mid-50's on a lot of the signal strengths for 101. He swapped out my HR20 for an HR21, and the signal strengths all stayed the same. He swapped out my NLB with a new one and then I was getting high 90's & 100's for everything on 101. He swapped out the HR21 for my old HR20 and the signal strengths stayed in the high 90's & 100's. So, for me, the problem was the NLB.


You are describing a different problem.

This issue at the heart of this thread is very specific. After a rain fade is over and done with, one tuner refuses to come back (the other comes back fine), the box begins to run incredibly slow and the only thing that fixes the issue is a reboot.

This issue began, for a number of us, at the begining of last year soon after a national release.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

If you get the "771 Searching for ..." go into the Menu and make sure that you have the Correct Dish Selected as some people have reported that the problem was that somehow the software caused a deselection of their 3 LNB or 5 LNB and instead Selected a Round 18" Dish which doesn't allow for two tuners so you get the Message.


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## Sixto (Nov 18, 2005)

Just had this problem tonight.

Noticed that Leno and Letterman weren't going to record on Monday because only 1 tuner was available.

Looked further. Tuner 2 had zero's. This is a SWM setup.

Lots of snow here last two days.

A reboot fixed the problem. HR20-700.


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## Guest (Dec 21, 2008)

First of all, I'm new the forums and DirecTV. Been very useful so far, thanks for all the information. But yea, I just switched to Direct last week after a long and frustrating run with Comcast cable.

But, I'm already having some 771 problems and issues just like Sixto described above. First of all, after a decent snowstorm earlier this week, I was getting 771 messages, but after a Menu Reset, everything came back. Well, then, a few days later, we got an ice storm. Since then, my main HR21-700 hasn't had a second tuner. I've tried Menu Reset, RBR, and complete power downs to no avail.

Let me try to explain the situation a little better, see if anyone has any insight. If I go straight to signal strenth, I only get signal on Tuner 1. If I go to "repeat satellite setup", I can only change tuners from single to dual. The "dish type" and "switch type" are greyed out. So, regardless, after running a test there, I show "no signal on Tuner 2", but if I check "signal strengths" from inside the "repeat satellite setup", I see signal on both tuners, which is very odd. Would that lead one to believe that the tuner inside the receiver has died?

And for what it's worth, I'm still awaiting the new 0x02AF update here in central Illinois. Thanks in advance for any insight, and again, thanks for all the great information you guys have provided so far in my switch to DirecTV.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Some people get this message after their dish type has been reset in error by Directv to 18" Dish so you may have to go back into Guided Setup and make sure that you have your dish selected properly. If it thinks it has an 18" dish then it knows not to activate Tuner 2. This is just one possible explanation.


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## Guest (Dec 21, 2008)

Where can I get to "guided setup" or any place else where my "dish type" and "switch type" won't be greyed out? I can't seem to find any path that let's me change those settings.

And for what it's worth, even though they are greyed out, I am showing a Slimline-3S dish with SWM switch.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Normally you Select Menu, then Setup and then you can go to Repeat Guided Setup. Normally when a channel or something is Greyed Out it means it is not selected or active. That may be your problem. 

You may want to call Directv tell their tech people about this and see what they say. I wouldn't let a front line Level One person diagnose this problem unless you think they know what they are talking about because they normally read from a script. Talk to a technical person.


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## newsposter (Nov 13, 2003)

Sixto said:


> Just had this problem tonight.
> 
> Noticed that Leno and Letterman weren't going to record on Monday because only 1 tuner was available.
> 
> ...


you just saved people some money. I thought i read that swm cured this issue and while im not forking out 200 bucks to solve their problem, i bet some people would


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

This is still an issue. Thunderstorms on Wednesday night, came home yesterday after work, box was running slow, changed a channel and got the tuner 1 is out message.


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

x2 - our first real rain down here in months, and I can confirm, my tuner 1 does not recover, although this new firmware seems to dog down much less than it used to when that happens.



raott said:


> This is still an issue. Thunderstorms on Wednesday night, came home yesterday after work, box was running slow, changed a channel and got the tuner 1 is out message.


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## dreadlk (Sep 18, 2007)

I got this error last night during heavy rain, it happened when I switched to CNN which is sat 101 TP27 (according to Chart). Which has a lower signal in FL than most of the other TP's on 101 except for 31 which is even lower.

I thought maybe I could be a hero on the forum  and figure out a method to get rid of the 771 without resetting the receiver, after hours of playing around with it I had no luck, so I rebooted and all was back to normal. 

Here is what I found during the play time:

Sat 99 Tuner 2 was dead on both odd/Even Numbers TP
Sat 101 Tuner 2 was dead on both odd/even
Sat 103 Tuner 1 and 2 worked
Sat 110 Tuner 1 and 2 Worked
Sat 119 Tuner 1 and 2 worked

The system was still saying that it was a5 lnb setup, so I did not mess with that. I am pretty sure that in my case the system setup was not the culprit as I never changed it and after reboot all was fine.

I tried doing a few things and I found that if I exited the signal meter right when it was on a certain TP it would change the channels that I could view to exactly what was on that TP. So that’s the first indication that it’s the hardware inside the receiver that is stuck, I am not sure if the software is trying to make the change and the hardware is not complying or the software itself is stuck.

Second piece of Evidence: From what I can gather from looking at the Signals, is that Tuner 2 was stuck putting out 22khz and the Multi switch could not get off of the 99/110/119 side of the stack.

Hope this helps fix the problem.


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

After heavy wind and rain last night, I woke to find both of my HR20-700s sluggish and one tuner reporting zero signal strength on all sats and transponders while the other tuner reported normal signal strength on all sats and transponders. As usual, my trusty HR10-250 showed normal signal strength for both tuners on all sats. And, as usual, a menu reset fixed both HR20-700s so that both tuners started working again.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

cover said:


> After heavy wind and rain last night, I woke to find both of my HR20-700s sluggish and one tuner reporting zero signal strength on all sats and transponders while the other tuner reported normal signal strength on all sats and transponders. As usual, my trusty HR10-250 showed normal signal strength for both tuners on all sats. And, as usual, a menu reset fixed both HR20-700s so that both tuners started working again.


Same here. Was out of town last night when we had heavy rain. Came home tonight to put PTI on and, surprise, instead of playing it asked me if I wanted to delete. Sure enough, Tuner 1 was out.

I guess, at this point (since this has gone on for 14 months), the best option is to pay the shipping fee, possibly incur a new two year commitment to circumvent the shoddy programming.


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

And once more. Heavy rain last night. This morning, one of my two HR20-700s had one tuner non-responsive while the other tuner continued working fine. Both tuners on the other HR20-700 were fine. As usual, a menu reset fixed the condition. 

If this problem consistently affected one box or the other or even one tuner or another, I would be willing to consider that it might be a hardware problem. But, it often affects one box but not another and sometimes affects both. Tuner 1 or Tuner 2 could be the problem in any given instance, seemingly at random. 

There does seem to be some correlation with MPEG4 sats. If the box is tuned to / recording an MPEG4 HD channel when the signal fade occurs, it is more likely to need rebooting because one tuner flakes out. As far as I can tell, if both tuners are on OTA or MPEG2 when the signal fade occurs, both tuners tend to recover.


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## smimi10 (May 22, 2006)

For what it's worth, I had a very similar experience.

You can read what resolved it for me here:

http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?p=1895481#post1895481

That's the post with my particular situation's resolution. You can read the entire thread if you want the underlying details.

Not saying this will fix it for you and you may even have read through it, but I wanted to offer it up.


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

smimi10 said:


> For what it's worth, I had a very similar experience.
> 
> You can read what resolved it for me here:
> 
> ...


Thanks for the input but, from what I gather, it was a separate issue that affected the -100 boxes and has now been fixed in software.

This problem that I and others are having has been around for several months and only occurs after signal is lost due to rain fade. The start of it did seem to coincide with a software release, but it has been so long now that I don't remember which one.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

cover said:


> This problem that I and others are having has been around for several months and only occurs after signal is lost due to rain fade. The start of it did seem to coincide with a software release, but it has been so long now that I don't remember which one.


Jan/Feb 2008 (yes, thats right, 2008 not 2009).


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## smimi10 (May 22, 2006)

cover said:


> Thanks for the input but, from what I gather, it was a separate issue that affected the -100 boxes and has now been fixed in software.
> 
> This problem that I and others are having has been around for several months and only occurs after signal is lost due to rain fade. The start of it did seem to coincide with a software release, but it has been so long now that I don't remember which one.


Well, I have a -700 box, so I wasn't part of the -100 issue and mine did manifest itself during times of rain-fade as well. You can see some of my replies up-thread a ways.

All I am trying to suggest is to not discount anything in the signal chain.


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

Thanks - I appreciate any help. I just can't believe that it is a hardware problem when it seemed to start with a software release and, more importantly, since it often only affects one of my three boxes (though not always the same one), it only affects one of two tuners on a box (which one is seemingly random), it only occurs after signal fade, and a menu reset always fixes it. Just smells like a software glitch to me.


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## dreadlk (Sep 18, 2007)

I had this happen again last night. 
I was watching a recorded dvr show and had left the receiver on channel 264 (BBC). The rain started and within 5 minutes I saw a flashing 771 message. I stopped went back to live TV but the Tuner was already messed up.

If it only takes 5 minutes of rain induced signal loss to mess up an HR2X Directv is going to have a lot of trouble when the rainy season comes


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

dreadlk said:


> I had this happen again last night.
> I was watching a recorded dvr show and had left the receiver on channel 264 (BBC). The rain started and within 5 minutes I saw a flashing 771 message. I stopped went back to live TV but the Tuner was already messed up.
> 
> If it only takes 5 minutes of rain induced signal loss to mess up an HR2X Directv is going to have a lot of trouble when the rainy season comes


I'm afraid only DirecTV customers will be having a hard time. This problem has been going on since the last rainy season and DTV is either unaware of it or unwilling or unable to fix it.


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

Sorry to be a broken record, but again today after rain last night... 

One of these days something that my wife cares about is going to end up a blank recording because of it rained and I didn't reset the HR20 in time. Not looking forward to that.


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## cover (Feb 11, 2007)

And once again last night, had to reboot both HR20-700s because Tuner 1 on both was non-responsive. This was several hours after storms had passed. As usual, everything worked fine after the menu reset.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

Just had a fast moving storm move through. The rain fade lasted all of about 45 seconds. I just checked and sure enough, Tuner 1 is out, resetting the box right now.


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## onan38 (Jul 17, 2008)

raott said:


> Just had a fast moving storm move through. The rain fade lasted all of about 45 seconds. I just checked and sure enough, Tuner 1 is out, resetting the box right now.


Same thing here 2 HR21-100's happened tonight during storm and also happened the other night after rain storm but on both units tuner will not recover and have to reset both boxes.


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