# TWO newly dead R15-500's the same day?



## Skypalace (Nov 12, 2006)

I went to watch an R15-500 that I hadn't watched in a few days. No video signal, just a chirping about once a second from both the left and right speakers, with the Record light flashing dimly at the same cadence. No change if I reset, unplug and plug back in, etc. The chirping happens immediately when it's plugged in, I don't get the blue setup screen, etc.

So I pulled down an R15-500 from another room I haven't been using lately since I upgraded that location to SWM and an HR22, but had some old programs to watch, so I haven't yanked the card yet (so it's still a live account etc.). Plugged it in (using the same analog stereo audio & svideo out). Exact same problems, except that the record light isn't flashing on this one. All other symptoms are identical (chirping, no video output, no startup screen on reset or unplug and replug, etc.)

I swapped power cords, tried two different outlets (TV plugged into same outlet is fine), but both seem DOA. Power light never turns blue on either of them.

This is very very very strange. Anyone else seen this? Haven't called D* yet, I came here as I thought maybe there was some April 1st bug or something that had hit a large # of users, but didn't see anything obvious from scanning recent titles.

[Edit] Note these are of course not SWM, I'm running dual tuners, dual coax, two of my three HR's are running SWM but that's off the back of a cascaded 6x8 multiswitch (was set to do 6x16 but they didn't have any off the track) so the other 6x8 multiswitch is fully non-SWM and has been working totally fine, it's also fine for the third HR that's using two coax and not SWM.


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## litzdog911 (Jun 23, 2004)

Are you sure it's not a TV problem? Do you have other video sources on that TV, like a DVD Player or VCR that you can test?


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## ThomasM (Jul 20, 2007)

Sounds like a power supply problem (or the power you are feeding it).

Or, it could be a short in the coax cable shorting out the DC voltage from the DVR. Unplug it, disconnect both satellite cables from it and then plug it back in. If it boots up normally (but of course says "searching for satellite") you have cable and/or multiswitch problems.

Suggestion two is to take it into a completely different room (on a different circuit breaker) and plug it in with or without the satellite cables hooked to it. If it boots OK you have problems with your house wiring.

The chances of two pieces of equipment failing in the exact same way are very remote but, of course, you could actually have two bad DVR's.


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## RobertE (Jun 10, 2006)

Thought your issue sounded familar...



> R15-500 - Record light constantly flashing and TV is displaying a black screen (possibly not turning on). Important Update: One of the symptoms aside from the blinking lights is that when you boot up the receiver, you're not able to see the "boot up" screen. Before you replace, you must verify that the TV is turned on and the boot up screen does not appear when the IRD is booted up. Try to turn on the IRD by pressing the power button on the front panel (not using the remote). When booting up you should see a blue screen - 1st OSD will be "Hello..." 2nd OSD will be "Almost there..."


If you follow the above, and they don't come back to life, time to get them replaced.


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## bertbear (Apr 8, 2010)

I have an R15-500 that is doing the exact same thing. A few days ago a few of the higher numbered channels started getting glitchy and pixelated. Today while watching a recording the signal started glitching and popping up a message about inserting the access card then immediately going back to the playback. I checked the sat strength page for the glitching and about half of the numbers were 0's. When I went to go back to the menu it started the described popping. I used the red button to reset and it gave me the first Hello message then went blank and resumed popping. It no longer responds to anything other than having it's power cord pulled. I tried disconnecting the cable inputs and tried a different power circuit, with no change. We have another R15-500 in another room, and it's strength numbers look good, and it is working fine. DTV is going to send out another receiver, but it is going to be a bummer losing the contents of the drive and recording information.:nono:

I will still have this box for another few days if anybody has any ideas that you think might work, I am open to suggestions (short of TNT!):lol:


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## TigersFanJJ (Feb 17, 2006)

Wow, I've got two that just started doing this in the last week or so (an owned R15-500 today and a leased R15-100 that started doing it about a week or two ago). Thought it was strange that two would have this exact problem around the same time. Now I'm really scratching my head seeing others with the same problems.


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## CCarncross (Jul 19, 2005)

They are all probably about the same age as well...we have large fleets of PC's at work and you start seeing a lot of the similar failures in the same age devices around the same time...just the nature of electronics.


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## ThomasM (Jul 20, 2007)

CCarncross said:


> They are all probably about the same age as well...we have large fleets of PC's at work and you start seeing a lot of the similar failures in the same age devices around the same time...just the nature of electronics.


Multiple users of the same model DVR experiencing the same problems at the same time while other models are OK? I wouldn't bet those odds in Vegas if I were you....


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## RobertE (Jun 10, 2006)

ThomasM said:


> Multiple users of the same model DVR experiencing the same problems at the same time while other models are OK? I wouldn't bet those odds in Vegas if I were you....


Keep in mind some of the first R15s are now a tad over 5 years old. Thats forever in electronics years.


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## ThomasM (Jul 20, 2007)

RobertE said:


> Keep in mind some of the first R15s are now a tad over 5 years old. Thats forever in electronics years.


One of my R15-300's was built in November 2005 (including the HDD) and I beat the you-know-what out of it every day. Who knows what happened to it between 2005 and when I got it in 2007 as a reconditioned unit...?

I recently reactivated my ORIGINAL DirecTV receiver to listen to Sonic Tap on my stereo, a Hughes HIRD-E2 built in 2000. It works great.

Five years "forever" in electronics years? Maybe this current crop of Chinese junk (and I don't mean a type of boat), but the old stuff was good for years and years. I recently had to replace my Magnavox 31" tube-type TV when it finally gave up last summer. But I bought it in 1991....it gave 18 YEARS of reliable service and I watched it for several hours every day!


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## UKkid89 (Jul 13, 2010)

I realize it's been 3 months but my 3 year old R-15 just started the blinking recording LED. As was originally stated by skypalace the box is dead. 
My original issue started 5 days ago and was that while watching a program it would flash the searching for satellite window but the video would stay steady. This continued for 1 day then I started getting macro-blocking when this message would appear. I checked the signal according to the in-box diagnostics and it showed the lowest signal levels were on four transponders and they were between 59 and 65. All others (32 of them) reported at least 93. I swapped this box with the old non-DVR boxes location and the results were same as for the signal levels as well as for the macro-blocking. Since I work in CATV I brought home a spectrum analyzer and verified signal level from the LNB and verified the dish is peaked. The old non-DVR box works in either location without any issues.
Is there any ideas out there that I missed?
Skypalace did you ever get satisfaction? From what I read from most responders here they didn't read your entire post so there was no suggestions or ideas presented. Did I miss something?
Am I just sucked into having to buy another box?

Been a DirecTV customer since 97 and have worked in cable for 23 years. About 4 years into that I figured out just how big a scam cable really is.


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