# 721 latest bug:(



## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

My unit freezes on grey screen overnight, its done this twice requiring reboot to do anything. today multiple reboots.

New phemenon the power and red lights all flash as a pretty display for a long time with many flashes. It did it this am while recording twilight zone with the grey screen it still recorded the show in bits and pieces with my reboot efforts

a new day a new bug.....

last software was pretty decent this one not so hot.


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## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

It's not the machine, Bob, it's YOU! I'm surprised you haven't figured that out yet. :lol:


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## Bill R (Dec 20, 2002)

Bob,

Is _sounds_ like a LOS (loss of signal) problem.

There has GOT to be _something_ wrong at your home (electrical???) that is causing all your problems. My 721 has been very stable since the last couple of updates.

The fact that you have had to replace so many receivers (not just the 721) should make you realize that you need to have a PROFESSIONAL look into your what is causing so many failures with your satellite equipment. Yes, DISH Network hardware DOES fail but it is not nearly as unreliable as yours appears to be. There MUST be some other problem.

And, just for the record, I have had DISH Network service for about as long as you have. I have never had to have a receiver replaced by DISH. Yes, I have suffered through the software problems, especially with the DishPlayer and the 721 when it was new, but nowhere near the reliability problems that you have had.

As I said, get a professional to look over your electrical system. Otherwise, when you switch to DirecTV (if that ever happens) you could have the same type of problems.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Bob, didn't you say a couple of months ago that you were going to go the DTivo route and be done with Dish?


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## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

Odd thing about sayng its me. EVERY problem I reported has in time shown up for others. You guys said the SAME thing about the 65 timerr bug, which was fixed a couple upgrades ago. Same for lost tuner dishpro connection. Same for the non responsive go to guide cant do anything there bug. Just wait a bit and others will report the same problem here. historically it always happens

I would have direct now if it werent for the thousand dollar estimate for tree severe trimming or removal for 101. Thats a budget buster at the moment, in a couple months it might be possible. My neighbor aross the street is talking of taking out a huge pine too. That might make my removal unnecessary

One BIG storm might solve some of these

Since your all so sure its ME, I challenge you Go thru all the old posts here and find my 721 bugs that ONLY occur to me.

From your statements it should be most of my problems.......


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## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

BTW I reported going to sirrus bluegrass crashed my 721. havent there been other reports of this too? 

the grey screen freeze shows video on the very edges of the screen. very wierd. My signal strength is 125 on most transponders. If you want the numbers for each transponder I will be glad to put it up.

I checked my signal strength, around 98 for all non spotbeam transponders


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## Bill R (Dec 20, 2002)

Bob Haller said:


> From your statements it should be most of my problems.......


Bob,

I was referring to all the DISH receivers that you have had replaced. How many has it been? I have lost count but I think it is over a dozen (counting all the models you have owned). THAT isn't normal. And even accounting for the software problems, there _must be_ something wrong at your home if that many failed. I know ar least a couple of dozen people in my area that have DISH and NONE of them have anywhere near the problems you have with hardware (and I know NO other person on the forums that have had as many problems as you had). True, DISH software is not always as robust as it should be, but, I don't think faulty software accounts for all your hardware problems.

Please notice that I am NOT saying that you have not had the problem you described and that you have not needed to have a lot of equipment replaced. What I am saying is that I don't think you can blame DISH for all your failures; there _must_ be something else wrong that is causing all your equipment to fail.


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## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

Bill the last time you said this I posted a summary of my replaced receivers and why they failed. To review as best I remember 

Had several 4000 series die from worn out card readers readers from rebooting that way. 721 lost tuner 2 on legacy. 5 or so churned thru lost tuner 2s on dishpro lnb and switch finally determined to be bad switch or LNB twin. Note 508s ran perfectly on the sat feeds that wouldnt run the 721. advanced tech saisd it was a 721 software issue.

508s, excessively noisey hard drives most of which the drives stop altogether. presently I have one 508 that requires excessive rebooting but its still operational. I think its hard drive too, noisey down in the basement where they live. Jen is particually bothered by the noise, so I relocatred them to the basement.

I had 2 dishplayers, that were never RMAed. they had more than their share of software troubles, and drives did fail from time to time. but never a need to return a box.

I did have that one 4900 that someone tripped with a glass of water and fried
the box It went back under warranty E never said a thing

Now Bill could you please corelate these troubles with power line issues?

The flakey duquesne light may well have caused issues but I put my boxes on UPS years ago. I figured the sudden drops might have adversely effected the hard drives life but their failure rate with or without UPS seems consistent.

My complaints are software related, inconsistent flakey operation espically when a NEW problem like the one I posted here about occurs just after a software change.

I must admit my 508s are much more stable than my 721.

I will add for the sake of completness I had my original 5000 taken out by a lightening strike on the power line. It vaporized the diode rectifier in the box. this was before we had the system warranty so I replaced it with a dishplayer. Just the other day I turned this old box up when sorting stuff. 

Oh yeah NEVER REBOOT BOXES BY PULLING THE CARD untill you have tried every other way or the card reader will wear.


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## Randy_B (Apr 23, 2002)

Bob Haller said:


> To review as best I remember


I have to agree with other posts, Bob. That is an inordinate # of swaps.

I have been with Dish for about 8 yrs. In that time I have had 1 2000, 1 7100, 1 7200, 1 501, 1 510 and 1 721. Of those, the 501 developed a really whiny HD and was swapped and the 721 had a HD that crashed twice and was swapped. Both failures were HD issues, I don't consider those a receiver issue.

Something other than E* receivers has to be part of your extreme difficulties.

You aren't feeding them after midnight are you .


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## Bill R (Dec 20, 2002)

Bob Haller said:


> Now Bill could you please corelate these troubles with power line issues?


I'm not saying it is a power LINE problem but I believe that there is _something_ in your installation that has caused at least some of your problems. As far as I know, NO ONE is having anywhere near the problems that you have had (and still are having). That SHOULD tell you SOMETHING and if it was MY installation I would really, really look at things closely.

I have to agree with Nick, SOME of it MUST be just you. The fact that you wore out card readers says a LOT about YOU (your 721 "experiments" are well known too). You just have TOO many problems to blame it all on faulty DISH software (and hardware) . DISH software (and hardware) just isn't THAT poor.

MANY of us are looking forward to the day you switch to DirecTV. It will be interesting to see if you have the same sort of problems you are having with DISH.


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## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

Bill worn out card readers, how soon we forget the 4000 blinkouts and freezes. I admit were heavy users. time will tell if this bug is reported by others.

but bill since your sure its me go find some bugs I reported, and reported FIRST that eventually others didnt find.

Experiments? Oh yeah I once intentionally shorted a receiver sat input cable. something any user might do accidently thru clumbiness, crushed cable, water in connection, sloppy install etc.

Any decent design should be tolerant of stuff like this, another good example is tolerating power failures. Things happen, sat wires short, power fails its part of life.


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## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

We plan on keeping E for the supers and sky angel. So we wouldnt leave altogether


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## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

Let's have Rev. Bogy come in and say prayers over Bob's stuff, kinda like the blessing of the fleet. 

Sounds like he could use a blessing today. :sure:


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## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

Whatever it takes

I got the grey screen again today but powering it on and off several times got it to recover. How wierd


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Bob Haller said:


> I will add for the sake of completness I had my original 5000 taken out by a lightening strike on the power line. It vaporized the diode rectifier in the box. this was before we had the system warranty so I replaced it with a dishplayer. Just the other day I turned this old box up when sorting stuff.
> 
> Oh yeah NEVER REBOOT BOXES BY PULLING THE CARD untill you have tried every other way or the card reader will wear.


Hmmm Lightning strike.. Did your problems start to occur after the lightning strike? Maybe there is some damage in the cables that are causing your issues. You have something unusually about your situation to warrant that many replacements.

Do you hear voices in the night... Maybe your place is haunted.


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## Bogy (Mar 23, 2002)

Bob Haller said:


> Whatever it takes


Ok Bob, put your hand on the receiver and repeat after me, "Dear Lord of electricity and electromagetic pulses, remove the demons from this dang contraption. I promise to send Rev. Bogy a generous donation to make sure this works. Amen"

That should do it. Just put that generous donation in an envelope and send it off and you should be good to go.  :engel02: :engel08:


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## Jacob S (Apr 14, 2002)

If there is any chance that it could be a connection or wire or lnbf or switch or any other part that anyone can think of, then you have to try to take that under consideration if all of these receivers are and have been installed at the same location. I do know that some of those bugs are true as I have seen others post about them and have experienced them myself. I know that some people just seem to have the worst luck with their system, if its not one thing its another.


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## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

That must of been over 4 to 5 years ago. Since then I relocated my dish because of a tree problem, replaced every cable, and added UPS. Theres literally nothing left of that system. The lightening took out diodes in the tv, sat receiver 5000 and wiped out a couple cheap clocks.

I added UPS after that too. Lightening wasnt bad enough to fry anything important. I did have a electrician look at things then. nothing unusual found.

I guess my reluctane to hire a electrician to look at things is this. Most know less than me. I have had a electrical engineer who designed power transformers look at things here, he thought everything looked great. 

If you look at my long list of replaced receivers they fall into several distinct groups.

508s with noisey bad hard drives. nothing unusual there. Originally jen had them RMAed when the drives got noisey. With them relocated to the basenment I only swap them out when the drives completely fail.

4000s that had the blinkout freeze issue, card reader wore out. the freezing blinkouts bad audio sync were well known reproducable by many here. I remember talking high up in E teh at the time trying to figure out what tended to cause it. Later a well placed source said that certain chip sets tended to do this and thoose were pulled over time.

721 mostly bad lnb troubles. I once had THREE 721s here at the same time, thats when the lnb trouble became evident.

its not like tons of differet troubles on all boxes. over 7 or 8 years I have had 4000s 5000, 4700s upgraded to 4900s, dishplayers none of which were returned, and my 721 and 508s. I always upgrade to the latest model once it appears they are stable.

unfortunately the 721 team fixes one problem and creates two new different ones. they desperately need better hardware specs and QC


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## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

To the best of my knowledge ALL problems I have had in the past have occured for others eventually. we tend to find them first. I post them as soon as I see them in the hopes of helping others that might experience it too.

heavy user with bad luck


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## Unthinkable (Sep 13, 2002)

Bob Haller said:


> Experiments? Oh yeah I once intentionally shorted a receiver sat input cable. something any user might do accidently thru clumbiness, crushed cable, water in connection, sloppy install etc.
> 
> Any decent design should be tolerant of stuff like this, another good example is tolerating power failures. Things happen, sat wires short, power fails its part of life.


 Clumsiness is stubbing your toe on some furniture in the dark. Clumsiness is bumping your head on a door sill getting out of a vehicle with too much on your mind. Clumsiness is standing up when your leg or foot has gone to sleep and trying to walk it off as though everythings normal after a 3 hour movie. Purposely shorting out a tuner to satisfy morbid curiosity isn't clumsiness. Tell Jen not to record all those cooking shows 24-7. Give those poor hard drives a rest!!!! Whats the air and humidity like in your basement?


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## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

Remember these boxes are still sold as self install. I had a perspective customer call me once he had the dish pointed straight up to the sky and wonderd why no signal

The same fellow tried saving money by just sticking the cable end in the connection no connector needed. he was certain it would work.

had the guy who a week after my spiffy install cut the coax with a metal blade string trimmer. definite short there.

stuff in the real world has to be operator fault tolerant. its easy to short the coax connector if the inner wire gets bent or the shield frays on assembly or for convenience your working on it live. thats a definite NO NO with a sw64 power inserter lead though.


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## ziggy (May 15, 2004)

Take out your geiger counter and scan around your house. You may have radioactive dump buried underneath your house and that could explain the culprits with all of your receivers. If you see anything that glows in the dark then that's not a good sign. :grin: :grin:


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## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

*E must be haunting me*


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## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

Happened again this morning. Powering off and on not rebooting got it back. Did notice another oddity. The video in the guide windows edge was cut of by a black bar, and going to PVR menu it tended to default back to regular guide.

Having NEVER seen any of these before these changes occured since the lastr software download.

I am documenting all this here for the benefit of whoever shows up with the same set of wierd troubles.

I told jen its getting near RMA time again, with 70+ hours in the hard drive even dubbing to videotape is a huge job


Jen, a knowledgable DISH owner said hopefully the next software download will fix this, but no doubt cause some new hassles

Jen knows exactly how it works.....


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## Big Bob (May 13, 2002)

How about this for an idea. 
Start your own bug thread. Call it *Haller's Bugs*.
Keep it going for as long as you want. Years even. 
Every time you have a new problem, just post it in the same thread. 
That way, it will be documented for all to see, if they want. 
You can even start the thread with all of the problems that you have had in the past just to get the tread up to date.

Others can post replies if they have questions, have similar problems or solutions.

In other posts, if someone has a problem that you have already covered, you can just post a link to your thread.

Anyone else think this is a good/bad idea?


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## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

Big Bob I love that idea! WISH you would of thought of it years ago. If I get the time I will start complining one. I guess I could search all my posts by ones I started or something, But I have little time presently.

It would read as the what gave E programmers headaches..


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## garypen (Feb 1, 2004)

Bob Haller said:


> If I get the time I will start *complining* one. ches..


Will you be compiling or complaining? I wonder?


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## Tusk (Nov 14, 2002)

Bob Haller said:


> Had several 4000 series die from worn out card readers readers from rebooting that way...
> 
> Oh yeah NEVER REBOOT BOXES BY PULLING THE CARD untill you have tried every other way or the card reader will wear...


You would think that Dish would have designed a sturdier card slot (after Bob's 15th return).


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## garypen (Feb 1, 2004)

Worn out card readers? 4000 is the model number, not how many times you should pull the card out.


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## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

In the 4000s heyday with freezes blinkouts and audio sync troubles card pull was the favorite fix. After the caere reader failure I put the receiver on a power strip with a easy to access switch for rebooting. 

E later added the power switch hold to reboot bacause of these issues 

Gee I had forgotten how bad it was then.


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## TomCat (Aug 31, 2002)

Bob Haller said:


> ...I had my original 5000 taken out by a lightening strike on the power line. It vaporized the diode rectifier in the box...


Bob, were you standing next to the 5000 when this happened? Or maybe its just from living over that Sherwin-Williams store (fumes can get a little murky in the summertime).


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