# Can't stand 921 anymore



## madbrain (Dec 10, 2004)

Tonight I was recording Law & Order:CI off NBC KNTV (11.1) in HD in San Jose from 9pm to 10pm.

I started watching the show at 9:35pm, time-delayed. The 921 immediately hung as I pressed the forward 30s key. The picture got stuck on the last frame before fast forward. A couple of minutes later, the 921 rebooted itself.

Around 9:40pm, the 921 came back on. This meant I had lost 5mins of the show. I attempted to watch the show again from the beginning. And then the 921 hung again, and rebooted again !!!

After that, I called Dish network . I got transferred from operator to support, to advanced support. There, I was told that there are problems with the DVR functions on local channels, and I shouldn't use them until they get fixed. Uh? I pointed out that DVR on local channels is the main reason I bought the 921. I asked when the problem would get fixed, but there was no estimate. I asked if I could get a receiver that worked, such as the 942, but I was told that wasn't possible and those receivers are only available for retail sale.

So, I asked to get transferred once again to cancel my Dish network account.

At first I was offered one month of free service for the inconvenience., and a replacement 921. But I explained that I paid $500 for the unit and I expected it to work, and the one month free service wasn't going to make up for that. As to the replacement 921, I have already had one which helped nothing, and the problems are clearly software rather than hardware related, so I declined .

I was offered the option of getting a non-DVR HD receiver. I explained I already had a non-DVR OTA HD receiver and didn't need another one (I primarily watch OTA HD, not satellite HD).

Next, I was told I could trade my 921 for a 942 with a local retailer. I don't know of any retailers that do exchanges, but if they did I'm pretty sure I would have to pay extra, which I'm not willing to. I already paid for the 921 and I want it to just work.

I was told I could also just not use the 921 and use my other DVR-508 which works fine. That would be OK if I hadn't already shelled out the $500 for the 921, and they weren't willing to give me a refund on it.

So, Dish network lost a customer of 7 years tonight. I'll be watching the remaining shows in my DVRs, assuming they don't cause hangs. And after that I'll be listing them for sale, assuming nobody at Dish figures out a way to get me a working receiver.


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## jergenf (Mar 31, 2005)

It sounds like you're having a hardware problem with your unit. 

I'm assuming it had worked before.

The only thing I've seen where the unit causes picture freeze is when there's a loss of signal on a particular station for a significant ammount of time. That can be verified if recordings work on other channels except the one you're attempting to record from. Even when not recording the same problem would appear if it station related. If you find the unit unable to record from any whether OTA or sat then it sound like a hardware problem.

PS: If you can upgrade from 921 to 942 the difference between the price of the two units would seem fair. If there is a problem with your existing unit you would need to factor in the repair cost in order not to be guilty of disclosure.


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## invaliduser88 (Apr 23, 2002)

jergenf said:


> PS: If you can upgrade from 921 to 942 the difference between the price of the two units would seem fair. If there is a problem with your existing unit you would need to factor in the repair cost in order not to be guilty of disclosure.


With all the issues with the 921 as well as the features that were promised and then dropped, I don't exactly agree with you on this.

I just hope that Dish would do a good thing to the users that have the more expensive hardware and more than likely are subscribed to more of the upper tier packages and provide free upgrades when the mpeg4 compatible hd-dvr becomes available.

Until then, I am sticking with my 921.


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## rdopso (Jan 26, 2004)

I also am a long-time Dish customer, but am getting pretty frustrated with the apparent lack of ability or initiative to resolve software and hardware issues with the Dish DVRs, especially the 921. I am trying to be patient with this because the basic concept and design of the 921 are good and I like all the features; however, continually rebooting to fix software problems, and having to live with others because they apparently cannot be fixed is getting pretty old. This is not inexpensive electronics we are purchasing from Dish and I suspect most of us with many thousands of dollars in our A/V setups (and everyone else for that matter) are not accustomed to putting up with this kind of buggy equipment. I will hang in there for awhile longer with Dish, but I cannot promise I can maintain my enthusiasm forever. Plese Dish, put some more resources into resolving these very frustrating DVR issues -- that would be in everyone's best interests in the long run.


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## chris03053 (Dec 5, 2005)

New guy here. I'm also having problems with my 921. Most of the times it wont switch to HD from SD. So i have to reboot it. It seems i have to do it at least 3 times a week. Then it tapes for what reason on Sunday CSI-Miami that's on Monday. I can't seem to fix that problem. Anybody else have that problem?


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## jergenf (Mar 31, 2005)

chris03053 said:


> New guy here. I'm also having problems with my 921. Most of the times it wont switch to HD from SD. So i have to reboot it.


Known bug for at least a year, as you said you can only reboot.



chris03053 said:


> Then it tapes for what reason on Sunday CSI-Miami that's on Monday. I can't seem to fix that problem. Anybody else have that problem?


Delete Monday's program and add it back again. It always worked for me. Also if you go to the timer menu #7 the timer in question may appear in the wrong section of the listing. Example your Monday timer is listed within the Sunday events (that a tip for a possible premature timer failure).


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## chris03053 (Dec 5, 2005)

jergenf said:


> Known bug for at least a year, as you said you can only reboot.
> 
> Delete Monday's program and add it back again. It always worked for me. Also if you go to the timer menu #7 the timer in question may appear in the wrong section of the listing. Example your Monday timer is listed within the Sunday events (that a tip for a possible premature timer failure).


 Thanks, i'll check on the timer menu one. I've done the first one, but it seems to do it again.


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## madbrain (Dec 10, 2004)

Hi,



jergenf said:


> It sounds like you're having a hardware problem with your unit.
> 
> I'm assuming it had worked before.
> 
> ...


I disagree they are hardware problems - they are clearly software problems.
The problems only happen on certain shows, not on certain channels. Most shows from all channels record and playback fine. The bugs are clearly related to the data recorded in some of the show. For a few shows, the unit hangs while playing back or fast forwarding - and only for those shows . But due to Murphy's law, the failure usually happens on my favorite shows. The need for a reboot means that part of the program is always lost since the reboot of the 921 takes 5 minutes. Yesterday it hung and rebooted 3 times in the course of an hour while I was trying to watch Law & order CI , which means a quarter of the program was lost. I was not able to watch it, so I deleted it !

Even if there is a signal loss of any kind, this shouldn't cause the receiver to hang, reboot, and be completely unavailable for 5 minutes - doubly so since it's a dual-tuner model. It should only display an error about signal loss in the recorded program. This is just proper software engineering !

I don't think it would be fair for me to pay anything to "upgrade" to the 942. I just want a working unit - I don't want any of the extra features in the 942. I already paid $500 for the 921, a $5/month DVR fee for a year for a receiver that's full of bugs, a $5/month additional receiver fee for a year, and a $5/month extended warranty fee for a year that doesn't do any good because Dish can't fix the damn 921 bugs !

These costs add up to $680 . If Dish refunds all of these costs, then I will gladly agree to buy a 942. Since the 942 can be had for $620, I will have money left over.


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## RWI (Nov 26, 2004)

I feel your pain, I gave up about 2 month's ago with Dish also over the 921. I changed over to Direct and could not be happier, I got 2 standard Tivo's and 1 HD. All I can say is that they work, not 1 reboot, not 1 missed show, I finally can just sit down and watch tv without troubleshooting first. Yes the guide is very slow but hey if that's the biggest problem compared to 921, there is no comparison. Dish gave me the we can give you an 811 bull to, what a joke!!! It is really a shame how they treat their top tier customers.


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## conner65 (Jan 26, 2004)

RWI said:


> I feel your pain, I gave up about 2 month's ago with Dish also over the 921. I changed over to Direct and could not be happier, I got 2 standard Tivo's and 1 HD. All I can say is that they work, not 1 reboot, not 1 missed show, I finally can just sit down and watch tv without troubleshooting first. Yes the guide is very slow but hey if that's the biggest problem compared to 921, there is no comparison. Dish gave me the we can give you an 811 bull to, what a joke!!! It is really a shame how they treat their top tier customers.


I agree. Dish has taken a cavalier attitude with their 921 customers. We are the early adopters and typically spend more money for cutting edge equipment. I will leave if they don't give me a MPEG4 DVR HD replacement when they become available. The 921 has been an unmitigated disaster


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## jergenf (Mar 31, 2005)

madbrain said:


> The problems only happen on certain shows, not on certain channels.
> 
> Even if there is a signal loss of any kind, this shouldn't cause the receiver to hang, reboot, and be completely unavailable for 5 minutes - doubly so since it's a dual-tuner model. It should only display an error about signal loss in the recorded program. This is just proper software engineering !


Are you saying the box reboots itself during the recording process?

I can tell you what I've experienced but not sure if it's anything like yours.

On one occasion which my previous 921 I was recording SHO-HD and the movie froze. There was still a signal but is was as if live TV stopped. Other channels were working fine and I was able to still rewind but fast forward would always stop at that last frame again. Was able to go into DVR menu and stop the recording. Further attempts to record that channel resulted in a freeze action again. This lasted for 3 - 4 hours even when I attempted to just view the station it would freeze frame after a few seconds of viewing. Since it was only occurring on that one channel and just during those few hours I concluded it was a station problem.

On one other occasion while watching (possibly recording don't remember) my box rebooted for no reason. Never had or heard of unit rebooting while still on and in use. Things seemed fine afterward but (4-6 hours) later that day the unit stopped responding while I was channel surfing. I rebooted (push button) and received a hard drive failure (a weird clicking sound continued most likely the actuator). Don't know if that self reboot had anything to do with the failure but I felt it was an omen because a few hours later my unit died. My unit was still under warranty so there was no charge.



madbrain said:


> I don't think it would be fair for me to pay anything to "upgrade" to the 942. I just want a working unit - I don't want any of the extra features in the 942. I already paid $500 for the 921, a $5/month DVR fee for a year for a receiver that's full of bugs, a $5/month additional receiver fee for a year, and a *$5/month extended warranty fee* for a year that doesn't do any good because Dish can't fix the damn 921 bugs !


When my 921 died I tried to negotiate an upgrade even for a difference in price between the two models. All they would do is send me another 921. Next time you talk with dishnetwork find out the replacement cost for a 921 without a warranty. Based on what I was quoted in September it was $20 plus S&H which comes close to the extended warranty fee (but that's assuming you only have 1 replacement per year).


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## tech_biz (Nov 22, 2005)

Hi,

I suggest contacting one of the law firms that handles class action lawsuits.
I contacted one this morning and will be waiting to hear back. I'm in Ca.

I know the lawyers get plenty of cash for class action suits but this may be the only way to get Dish Network's attention.

CLASS ACTION!!!!


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## chris03053 (Dec 5, 2005)

I would have gone to Direct but with 5 recievers and international i have to stay with Dish for now.


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## madbrain (Dec 10, 2004)

jergenf said:


> Are you saying the box reboots itself during the recording process?
> 
> I can tell you what I've experienced but not sure if it's anything like yours.


Yes, the box rebooted itself during the recording process. So, it's not similar to your problem in that way. You didn't have a forced reboot on you !
Having to reboot the 921 to fix problems is one thing, having it reboot itself and lose recording is quite another.

The scenario for me was :
1) I had a timer set for 9pm to 10pm
2) around 9:30 pm, I started watching the show that was in the process of being recorded from the beginning, ie. time-delayed
3) there was a commercial at the beginning, so I hit forward. That's when the playback froze, then the 921 rebooted itself and recording stopped
4) after the 921 came back on, I tried to watch the show again from the beginning. The unit froze and rebooted again
5) after the 921 came on again, I tried to watch from the beginning again, and it rebooted again.

Ie. It was a pre-recorded show of death that would kill the 921 when you play it back and force a reboot. In the end the show was in 4 pieces, the first of which would kill the 921 upon playback, and I had missed 15 minutes of the show overall. If that's not a software problem I don't know what is ! So I deleted all the pieces, and I cancelled my dish subscription.


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## Geoff Goodfellow (Sep 9, 2004)

tech_biz said:


> CLASS ACTION!!!!


did you see the xbox 360 class-action lawsuit against Microsoft that was filed today?


> A Chicago resident has filed a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft claiming that his Xbox 360 video-game console is inoperable due to overheating.
> 
> Robert Byers, who made the complaint in a federal court in Illinois, alleges that the next-generation console has a design flaw that could cause the power adapter to overheat. He claims that Microsoft shipped defective units despite being aware of the problem.
> 
> http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20051206/tc_nf/39953


how about

A San Francisco Bay Area resident has filed a class-action lawsuit against Echostar claiming that his 921 DVR is inoperable due to software and hardware bugs.

tech_biz, who made the complaint in a federal court in California, alleges that the next-generation HD Digital Video Recorder has design flaws that cause freezing picture, pixelation and audio dropouts. He claims that Echostar shipped defective units despite being aware of the problems for the last two years.


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## Ken Green (Oct 6, 2005)

Geoff Goodfellow said:


> did you see the xbox 360 class-action lawsuit against Microsoft that was filed today?





> _"....all signs point to this being a minor problem to the extent that a majority of units are not affected. Of the 25 people I know with an Xbox 360, not a single one has problems. While that is not a significant sample size, it is large enough to put claims that "nearly all" units have problems, or that it is extremely commonplace. Furthermore, of those who have had problems, most have found the problems to lie not with the console per se, but with the power brick. It appears to overheat, and as we previously reported, improving airflow seems to do the trick...."_


Ahhh!

full story: here


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## ntexasdude (Jan 23, 2005)

Geoff Goodfellow said:


> ..............how about
> 
> A San Francisco Bay Area resident has filed a class-action lawsuit against Echostar claiming that his 921 DVR is inoperable due to software and hardware bugs.
> 
> tech_biz, who made the complaint in a federal court in California, alleges that the next-generation HD Digital Video Recorder has design flaws that cause freezing picture, pixelation and audio dropouts. He claims that Echostar shipped defective units despite being aware of the problems for the last two years.


Interesting, one of our own. I can't wait to see how this shakes out.

I'm still not giving up my 921. I'd have to rate it 9-1/2 stars out of 10.


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## jergenf (Mar 31, 2005)

madbrain said:


> It was a pre-recorded show of death that would kill the 921 when you play it back and force a reboot. In the end the show was in 4 pieces, the first of which would kill the 921 upon playback, and I had missed 15 minutes of the show overall. If that's not a software problem I don't know what is ! So I deleted all the pieces, and I cancelled my dish subscription.


I believe you may be the first to report this paticular problem. If it's software related I imagine there would be more complaints. You should be able to play, pause, FF during a recording in progress. The self reboots sounds serious enough to want another unit. 
PS: Are you still using your 921 for OTA recordings?


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## sledhead 700 (Apr 27, 2004)

jergenf said:


> I believe you may be the first to report this paticular problem. If it's software related I imagine there would be more complaints. You should be able to play, pause, FF during a recording in progress. The self reboots sounds serious enough to want another unit.
> PS: Are you still using your 921 for OTA recordings?


Reported to dish.
Same issue here reboots in the middle of playback usually when using the skip forward button. Another big annoyance is the stuck aspect ratio this happens at least 5 out of 7 days sometime twice in the same night. Reboot for this... Reboot for that... they should put a reboot button on the remote!!

Dave


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## madbrain (Dec 10, 2004)

jergenf said:


> I believe you may be the first to report this paticular problem. If it's software related I imagine there would be more complaints. You should be able to play, pause, FF during a recording in progress. The self reboots sounds serious enough to want another unit.
> PS: Are you still using your 921 for OTA recordings?


I may be the first one to report this, but it's not the first time I experience the problem. I already had it happen this summer while watching the US Open tennis. I was again watching time delayed, and lost large parts of the match I was trying to watch due to it . But somehow it didn't annoy me as much that time as it did this week-end.

The self reboot is certainly serious to want another unit that doesn't have this problem, but I don't think this would be another 921 since it is a software bug.


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## madbrain (Dec 10, 2004)

sledhead 700 said:


> Reported to dish.
> Same issue here reboots in the middle of playback usually when using the skip forward button. Another big annoyance is the stuck aspect ratio this happens at least 5 out of 7 days sometime twice in the same night. Reboot for this... Reboot for that... they should put a reboot button on the remote!!
> 
> Dave


Did it happen for you on an OTA show on something off satellite ?
When I called Dish they had the nerve to tell me the problems only happen on OTA and if I just watched satellite I would be fine !!! Of course OTA HD DVR function was the main reason I bought the 921 in the first place, not for the limited HD content on Dish network (although TNT HD and HDnet movies were nice).

Re: a reboot button on the remote, you aren't kidding. In fact, I have a separate X10 remote that I use to power on/off devices such as my projector, fan and lights. Very soon after I got my 921, I added an x10 module for the 921 so I could do a hard reboot at the push of a button ...


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## jergenf (Mar 31, 2005)

madbrain said:


> The self reboot is certainly serious to want another unit that doesn't have this problem, but I don't think this would be another 921 since it is a software bug.


Personally I'm not convienced it's software if this happened in the summer the software level was arround L215 to now at L272 I'm wondering why nobody was complaining in the last 5 months. Self reboots sounds like a CPU interrupt occured. I'm wondering if it's a bad RAM because disk drives do DMA functions. Or a problem with the 8MB buffer in the hard drive. If the program is saved just before it reboots then the CPU was able to close the file segment before restarting else your program wouldn't be there after the system comes back up.

You mentioned just OTA recordings which made me think as first it might be signal related but that wouldn't explain why crashes occurred before you even approached the Live point of the recording. Signal level problems just causes frame freezes, video/audio dropouts or loss signal messages and not reboots. Has anyone from dishnetwork confirmed this to be a known software issue?

To everyone else have you *ever* experienced his problem or any situation like it?


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

I personally have not. I was thinking along the same lines as jergenf that a number of hardware related issues could cause the recorded stream to become corrupt in a way that could result the box going south when it hit a certain point in the recording. 

I have had my PC self reboot on occassion and by no means was it a software related issue. It might be the effect is a software related issue (Unable to handle the MPEG2 stream correctly) but the cause could have been created by a hardware issue or software. 

Also could be that the external skip button press caused the corruption. If the issues is a corrupted MPEG4 file. At this point, as I see it anything is possible and without some further analysis I think it would be premature to cause the described symptoms "Definitely" a software bug.


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## madbrain (Dec 10, 2004)

jergenf said:


> Personally I'm not convienced it's software if this happened in the summer the software level was arround L215 to now at L272 I'm wondering why nobody was complaining in the last 5 months.


I believe this is simply a bug that never got fixed, like many, many other bugs in the 921 . It's not an easily reproduceable one, but it is a bug nonetheless.



jergenf said:


> Self reboots sounds like a CPU interrupt occured. I'm wondering if it's a bad RAM because disk drives do DMA functions. Or a problem with the 8MB buffer in the hard drive. If the program is saved just before it reboots then the CPU was able to close the file segment before restarting else your program wouldn't be there after the system comes back up.
> 
> You mentioned just OTA recordings which made me think as first it might be signal related but that wouldn't explain why crashes occurred before you even approached the Live point of the recording. Signal level problems just causes frame freezes, video/audio dropouts or loss signal messages and not reboots. Has anyone from dishnetwork confirmed this to be a known software issue?
> 
> To everyone else have you *ever* experienced his problem or any situation like it?


You are certainly welcome to your theories about the cause of the reboot. I personally believe if this was a hardware problem, I would have this serious self-reboot symptom on more than a couple of isolated shows. I have been a software engineer for a couple decades and to me the software bug is the only explanation that fits this case.

For the record, before I erased the problematic show with the symptom of crashing, I tried to watch it without pressing the skip button at the beginning. It played back just fine, without hanging, and there was no trace of any signal dropout. I left it on for 10 minutes or so. Unfortunately, by that time, I had already lost much of the rest of the program due to the previous self-induced reboots that stopped the recording, so I didn't actually watch the rest, and deleted all the other pieces of the program. With this additional data, are you convinced it's a software bug yet ?
Maybe the bug is simply about pressing the skip button at the beginning of a show, and not related to any signal or hardware failure. I will try. My 921 still functions somewhat for OTA even after I canceled the Dish service, although without EPG .


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Actually I am not convinced but that cool nothing wrong with different opinions here. I am a bit confused, but I think I got the jest of the what you were experiencing. If not please correct. I am not ruling either possibility out because being a software engineer for the same length of time as you and having seen things people swore as a software issue become a hardware issues I keep my mind open. Since you were at the scene ofcourse I would give more weight to your observations for sure.

Couple of points

1) From what I know and from what I have seen here we are talking about a maximum of 2 instances over a 6 month period. Correct? If this was purely a software related issue I would expect to see more reports of it just as if it was a hardware issue. If you use the box the same way ever day you should hit this issue more often. Might be some obscure timing related issue that is really hard to duplicate but also could be flaky hardware component that is borderline.

2) The interesting point you make is the fact that it does play fine unless the skip button is pushed. The skip button has to be the most pushed button on the remote. I would be suprised if that was the cause.

2) The skip button may be the ignitor or it may not not. Since the reports have been limited at this point to one household and have a long timeframe and multiple software version numbers between them at this point it is possible. 

3) I doubt the trigger is the skip button at the start of a show. I do that all the time and I am sure a number of other people do too. Could be timing related, but I would expect something this ugly to happen more than twice if software related. 

4) Final point.. Hard to do further playing around to narrow the root cause if the box that causes no longer has all its features and the corpse has been removed. 

Very interesting experience indeed. I just at this point am not as confident as you are as this being software related.


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## Grandude (Oct 21, 2004)

Ron Barry said:


> Actually I am not convinced but
> 
> 1) From what I know and from what I have seen here we are talking about a maximum of 2 instances over a 6 month period. Correct? If this was purely a software related issue I would expect to see more reports of it just as if it was a hardware issue. If you use the box the same way ever day you should hit this issue more often. Might be some obscure timing related issue that is really hard to duplicate but also could be flaky hardware component that is borderline.
> 
> 2) The interesting point you make is the fact that it does play fine unless the skip button is pushed. The skip button has to be the most pushed button on the remote. I would be suprised if that was the cause.


Sorry Ron, I'm not a cronic complainer so haven't bothered reporting on this. I too have had the same problem while watching an OTA recording and using the skip button. After it happened a couple of times I learned my lesson and only use fast forward when viewing OTA recordings. The unit does not reboot then. I can almost garauntee that it will if I use the skip button.

I could be wrong but I was sure that at least one other person has reported this problem. Maybe it was on another forum.

Since this does not happen on satellite recordings I suspect that it is or has something to do with the quality of the signal received OTA. In my case, due to distance, I do not have a perfect OTA signal all the time.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Does this happen with all your OTA recordings Granddude or just on a select one? I would be very interested to see if this can be reproduced. From an earlier post I got the impression we are talking about one segment of program where this was happening. Does this just happen Granddude when you press the skip button at all during an OTA? I use the skip button on OTA all the time and by all the time I mean all the time. 

My signal strength is usually in the 80s. What is yours at granddude? I would be surprised that signal strength would have anything to do with it since we are talking digitial here. 

Still with the symptoms being described, I would expect a lot more occurances and the fact it cause a reboot with what is a very heavily used operation I would consider this very critical. I have ran into a number of bugs with my 921, but I have not seen this one. 

Thanks for piping in Granddude. Anyone else seeing this and can reproduce it?


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## madbrain (Dec 10, 2004)

Ron,



Ron Barry said:


> 1) From what I know and from what I have seen here we are talking about a maximum of 2 instances over a 6 month period. Correct? If this was purely a software related issue I would expect to see more reports of it just as if it was a hardware issue. If you use the box the same way ever day you should hit this issue more often. Might be some obscure timing related issue that is really hard to duplicate but also could be flaky hardware component that is borderline.


I am talking of a couple of instances of recordings that caused this problem, but the auto-reboot was 100% reproducible with those recordings, and I'm sure it would still be if I kept them.

I used the 921 for playback a lot, at least 2 - 3 hours a day, and I recorded far more with it than I could ever watch, probably 5-6 hours a day or more.

If it was a hardware failure, I'm having a hard time thinking what part. It couldn't be the hard drive - the drive gets written to and read from all the time. Plus, the problem did not exist when playing back the recording without using the skip button, so I think that rules out a hard drive problem 100%.

What other hardware components do you think could be failing only with a particular recording, and how ?



> 2) The interesting point you make is the fact that it does play fine unless the skip button is pushed. The skip button has to be the most pushed button on the remote. I would be suprised if that was the cause.
> 
> 2) The skip button may be the ignitor or it may not not. Since the reports have been limited at this point to one household and have a long timeframe and multiple software version numbers between them at this point it is possible.
> 
> 3) I doubt the trigger is the skip button at the start of a show. I do that all the time and I am sure a number of other people do too. Could be timing related, but I would expect something this ugly to happen more than twice if software related.


Even though it may not be the cause, the skip button was definitely the trigger for me, as evidenced by the fact that the show played back fine without pressing that button, but the receiver crashed when pressing it right at the beginning.

I do use the skip button all the time too. I even need to get a more ergonomic remote because my hands hurt from pressing it. But it could equally be from the 8-9 hours a day at the computer keyboard, 2-3 hours with the remote, or the 1-2 hours at the piano. Regardless, it's a notable relief for me when I watch commercial-free programming not to have to press the damn skip button.



> 4) Final point.. Hard to do further playing around to narrow the root cause if the box that causes no longer has all its features and the corpse has been removed.


Perhaps this will cause the 921 to function bug-free for OTA ?! ) One can dream.
Anyway, in the last two days, I watched a few shows OTA on the 921 without any problem, from the same KNTV 11.1 channel, and I used the skip button plenty, including right at the beginning, with no reboot. The shows were L&O SVU tuesday night and L&O wednesday night. I still have a nearly full hard drive as I recorded a bunch of HD movies from the HBO & Showtime free preview over the weekend. Even on monday after I canceled my Dish account, the timers still ran on those free preview channels.


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## jergenf (Mar 31, 2005)

madbrain said:


> I started watching the show at 9:35pm, time-delayed. The 921 immediately hung as I pressed the forward 30s key. The picture got stuck on the last frame before fast forward. A couple of minutes later, the 921 rebooted itself.


I just experenced something strange yesterday. I had set a daily *auto-tune event for OTA* so that when I get home I can see the program from the beginning because of the pause buffer. By the time I got home I rewinded to the begining and about 15 minutes the program froze. I couldn't advance forward so I did a rewind instead. At first that didn't respond, in fact nothing seemed to, but in about 10 seconds later it finally did carry out the rewind action. But after going forward it would stop again at that very same spot. I rewinded back at this time fast forward past the trouble spot. A few minutes later I hit another trouble spot. I repeated the same steps of rewinding back and fast forward 60X past the trouble spot. Everything seemed fine after passing through nearly the entire program.

My signal strength was 125 which is that channel's usual level. Didn't get any self reboots but once it hit certain trouble spots it was very stubborn and wouldn't respond to anything but rewind (and even had delayed reaction to that). It could be a situation that these pause point were do to momentary signal loses but as I fast forwarded through them it didn't appear to show any scene glicthes. Also I had to fast forward at 60X because 4X and 15X would halt at those points.

Wonder if this is related to your problem. In your case you hit the skip where I used FF and REW. If it's loosing timecode information the play and FF may halt at first error. If using the skip it told to go to specific time point but runs into an illegal or perposterous time value. Just throwing out my theory. I probably should have tried skip to see what would have happened.


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## Grandude (Oct 21, 2004)

Ron Barry said:


> Does this happen with all your OTA recordings Granddude or just on a select one? I would be very interested to see if this can be reproduced. From an earlier post I got the impression we are talking about one segment of program where this was happening. Does this just happen Granddude when you press the skip button at all during an OTA? I use the skip button on OTA all the time and by all the time I mean all the time.
> 
> My signal strength is usually in the 80s. What is yours at granddude? I would be surprised that signal strength would have anything to do with it since we are talking digitial here.


I sure could not say whether this happens with all OTA recordings as I am careful not to do it anymore. Two reasons:
1. The second time I did a skip on an OTA recording, I lost the remainder of the show.
2. If I have other recordings going on at the same time, it will kill them or at least put a hole in them during the reboot.

I do use the skip button all the time on all recordings other than the OTA ones without any problems.

I will try to see if I can get you some more information on this, but bear in mind, the failure is annoying enough to make me hesitant do pursue it.

Right now the signal is running between 88 and 95.

On a side note, I was the first to report the total wipe of the hard drive while trying to record an OTA program and went for a year or so before trying again.
I only have two channels that provide a strong enough signal for OTA recording and the other channel is the one which wiped my hard drive so I cannot even try to record something from that channel again. Wish I had the nerve to do so as this might give some clues to the present problem.


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## KKlare (Sep 24, 2004)

Some of these, both OTA and sat, may a problem dating at least to early last year. If the time remaining starts or jumps to say 1500 minutes then you hit FF or skip, you get unusual happenings like jumping to the start of program or rebooting. Beware, it may erase all recordings.

If it returns to a reasonable value, subsequent forwarding works fine.

With this kind of bad recording you can sometimes FF the whole thing and watch the time left jump up and back down. It may not show on the cancel banner.

Usually you can just play right thru it. The 921 must have lost or not have correctly received the time reference.
-Ken


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## jergenf (Mar 31, 2005)

Had another occurance of the strange problem I quoted just two posts up. This time it was one of my daily recording of Hogan's Heros on HDNet. During playback it would freeze at various points and performing FF sometimes advannced further but repeated actions nearly caused a drive failure. 

I was hearing a repeating clucking noise, one that I'm familar with because two months ago my drive failed on my original unit. I called tech support but by the time I started to talk with them I statred getting responces back from the unit. 
Was unable to view that program without hangups occurring so I deleted it. I'm hoping the cause was station related because folllowing recordings seem to be ok.

I haven't rebooted yet and concerned if it will come up next time. The unit seems to be working right now but realize that the OS is still loaded in RAM. 

This situation occured hours after installing L273. This seems simular to madbrain's problem of freezing during playback except his would self reboot. However in my situation the disk actuator clucking indicates it was having a problems seeking certain segments of that program (I hope).


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## rdopso (Jan 26, 2004)

Here's my desciption of a skip button freeze and reboot with a nonOTA recorded program. This is the first time I have seen this and it's post 273.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Quote:
Originally Posted by rdopso


I have not had a stuck aspect ratio for some weeks (perhaps not for more than a month), but have had three since spooling of the 273 software update.

More disturbing, within the last 20 min I went through two spontaneous reboots while trying to watch a previously recorded DiscHD program. This has never happened to me before this evening. Since this happened twice it may have some importance to the software engineers. I started the previously recorded program above and when I attempted to "jump forward" (skip forward?) through the commmercials at the beginning of the recorded program, the program froze for a minute and then the 921 spontaneously rebooted. I repeated this a second time with the same attempt to jump forward through the commercials at the beginning of the recorded program and it again froze and rebooted. I repeated this a third time, but without the jump forward through the commercials, and the program ran fine. No other Dish or OTA recording was occuring at the time the above took place. Incidentally, I use a Harmony 659 IR remote control if that has any pertinance. Perhaps this repeatable problem has some info of importance for the software engineers.

Sorry to sound like I am ranting, but I except for the infrequent zero second recording, and an occasional stuck aspect ratio, I had a pretty stable 921 experience until 272 when the timers went crazy; and now I seem to be getting even more stuck aspect ratios and additionally have developed the issue above. I am trying to be patient and supportive, but this is getting damned frustrating. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As a further experiment of repeatability of the picture freeze and spontaneous reboot noted above I ran the program ("Million Dollar Motors") again after watching all the way through with no problems (when I did not attempt to skip forward during the introductory commercial), and the freeze/reboot repeated for a third time when I attemped to skip forward through the introductory commercial. I had the 921 set in "normal" picture mode on my widescreen Pany LCD TV but the commercial running at the beginning of the recorded program was in 4:3 format and not the usual 16:9 for DiscHD Theater (it was an add for vacationing in N.C.) - could this have something to do with the freeze/reboot and the stuck aspect ratio issue which I suspect occurs at least sometimes following the skip forward procedure? 

Also, this is probably not related, but my Dish remote quit working a couple days before the 273 spool, and a new replacement from Dish I received yesterday afternoon also is inoperable, although my trusty Harmony 659 IR universal remote works fine. This is all very strange and frustrating.


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## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

If the 921 pisses you off now, man... You should have used it during the first few months it was on the market. It would regularly crash and reboot itself, causing you to miss 10 minutes of whatever program you were watching. My 921 almost got tossed due to this during Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital (in high definition, mind you!), which was only aired the once and never re-run. I got yelled at and screamed at and then we were forced to go watch it in standard definition on my other TV upstairs, but we had already missed a minute or so of the show.


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## madbrain (Dec 10, 2004)

Hi,



rdopso said:


> Here's my desciption of a skip button freeze and reboot with a nonOTA recorded program. This is the first time I have seen this and it's post 273.
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Quote:
> ...


That sounds like exactly the same problem that I experienced. If the Dish support engineers really cared about fixing this bug, they would be all over this and ask us to ship the unit with that recording so they could look at it, reproduce the problem, and fix it in the next software version. When I called about the problem, they just said if I used satellite and not OTA all would be fine. This is why I canceled my Dish service. Did you call about this problem ? Did they care ? Thanks to your post, we now know the problem isn't limited to OTA.


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## rdopso (Jan 26, 2004)

madbrain said:


> Hi,
> 
> That sounds like exactly the same problem that I experienced. If the Dish support engineers really cared about fixing this bug, they would be all over this and ask us to ship the unit with that recording so they could look at it, reproduce the problem, and fix it in the next software version. When I called about the problem, they just said if I used satellite and not OTA all would be fine. This is why I canceled my Dish service. Did you call about this problem ? Did they care ? Thanks to your post, we now know the problem isn't limited to OTA.


Yes, the problems sound the same. Well, Dish will have my 921 with the recorded problem program because my unit is being replaced due to inoperable uhf remote control capability (remote sends uhf signals but receiver does not pick them up, so after a second remote did not work it was declared a receiver problem). I was a bit reluctant to have my 921 replaced because it has worked rather well for me and has been pretty reliable, and I can operate the unit fine with my Harmony IR universal remote. But I decided to go along with the replacement -- we shall see how this works out.


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## garyhesq (Nov 5, 2004)

I am having the skip forward lock up-reboot problem also. It started with 272. So far it's OTA only. It's so bad I'm afraid to use that feature at all.


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## Grandude (Oct 21, 2004)

I did a little experimenting the other day and failed to get my 921 to reboot while skipping on an OTA recording but one recording which showed 63 minutes when I began came to a place in the recording where it was searching for a signal and then it burped when I tried to skip and went back to the PVR menu and showed that the recording was now only 9 minutes long.


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## madbrain (Dec 10, 2004)

rdopso said:


> Yes, the problems sound the same. Well, Dish will have my 921 with the recorded problem program because my unit is being replaced due to inoperable uhf remote control capability (remote sends uhf signals but receiver does not pick them up, so after a second remote did not work it was declared a receiver problem). I was a bit reluctant to have my 921 replaced because it has worked rather well for me and has been pretty reliable, and I can operate the unit fine with my Harmony IR universal remote. But I decided to go along with the replacement -- we shall see how this works out.


It's great that they are getting your 921 with the reproducible test case recording in it - however, that doesn't mean they are going to look at it. I don't know how you could make sure that they do.


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## Rodney (Aug 22, 2003)

Chalk up another victim with this problem. While viewing a recorded HD version of CSI and using the skip ahead button my 921 would freeze for about one minute then reboot. After rebooting the option to resume the program was grayed out. The only option I had was to start from the beginning. I reproduced the problem three times. It would hang/freeze at exactly the same spot each time. If I did not attempt to skip ahead it played normally through the spot where it previously froze. This is the first time I have experienced a problem of this type.


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

Add me to the group! I had a HDNET Cage Fighting recording that had 850 or so minutes listed for a 70 minute recording (this recording was made when E* was having problems with the video/audio on this channel and on the VOOM channels).

I could skip forward fine until about the last 10 minutes then the 921 froze. After some time, it automatically rebooted and after restarting, it was sluggish. I did a power cord reboot and after restart it worked fine. The good thing, I didn't lose any of my recorded DVR events!

This problem was on my HECD model 921.

*In the past when I've had this problem, the freeze usually occurred at a point where the remaining time goes from the extremely incorrect time to the more correct time. (I discovered this when FF and noticed the point where the remaining time corrected for the three to two digits).*


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## madbrain (Dec 10, 2004)

Well, it looks like this problem wasn't so isolated after all !
Glad to see you guys didn't suffer any lost DVR events - I obviously lost what was being recorded at the time of the spontaneous reboot . I hope you are all calling Dish to complain. Not that it does much good mind you .


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Do find it interesting that we are seeing more people coming forward with seeing this type of tying. As you described madbrain, when it happend to you once it happend it was reproducable with that particular content. Is this the case with other folks are does it seem to be random events tied to the skip button? Has people only seen this occur with the skip button or as other events caused a spontaneous reboot? We might be talking about the same issue here or perhaps we are talking about two types issues. Based on what I have read above I am not sure.


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## KKlare (Sep 24, 2004)

I know that when the skip/fast-forward anomaly I was watching a Stargate SG-1 recording many months ago. It would "reliably" jump back to the start of the program. It also had a bad number of minutes left -- greater than 1000. The program could be viewed if you just sat through the commercials until the the pause showed a normal time left.

I hope this does not bode for a way to keep the ad people happy. 
-Ken


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

Ron Barry said:


> Is this the case with other folks are does it seem to be random events tied to the skip button? Has people only seen this occur with the skip button or as other events caused a spontaneous reboot? ........
> 
> Based on what I have read above I am not sure.


I think there is something in the broadcast signal which makes the 921 react and create the wrong time issue, then the SKIP action at the particular point of corruption is the trigger for the freeze/reset.


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## madbrain (Dec 10, 2004)

boylehome said:


> I think there is something in the broadcast signal which makes the 921 react and create the wrong time issue, then the SKIP action at the particular point of corruption is the trigger for the freeze/reset.


I think that may be true in some cases - I have seen several events in the past with weird durations (some with 24 hours, some with negative numbers, even), but in the case of the L&O CI event that I originally open this thread about, there was no visible corruption or loss of signal, either audio or video, when I watched the event after the many reboots, without pressing the skip button at the beginning.


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## rdopso (Jan 26, 2004)

madbrain said:


> I think that may be true in some cases - I have seen several events in the past with weird durations (some with 24 hours, some with negative numbers, even), but in the case of the L&O CI event that I originally open this thread about, there was no visible corruption or loss of signal, either audio or video, when I watched the event after the many reboots, without pressing the skip button at the beginning.


My version of this issue was 100% repeatable but the freeze/reboot could only be induced with the skip button during the commercial which preceded the recorded DiscHD program. My probem would seem to be consistent with the other reports.


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## mastruck (Feb 12, 2006)

I just found this forum, and at 1st I was glad to find out I am not alone with my 921 issues. Now having thought about how DishNetwork is handling the widespread problems with the 921 and the endless amount of time I have wasted with their tech support people I am furious. 

I have ~$2,000 in DishNetork equipment and a $130 monthly bill. I will time my switch to DirectTV to line up with the newer MPEG4 equipment I think, but maybe I will just do it now.

I can't believe I have put up with this as long as I have...


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

boylehome said:


> I think there is something in the broadcast signal which makes the 921 react and create the wrong time issue, then the SKIP action at the particular point of corruption is the trigger for the freeze/reset.


boylehome- The 921 does use PSIP data for that purpose. It is part of the channel remap, call sign and time stamp. It is my belief without disecting those data entries, that if something were not valid in the PSIP data that you would not get the signal at all. However, if the time clock were just incorrect and they were sending the wrong time but configured properly in the PSIP, you could have a point of error. When our local CBS affiliate here first started their digital broadcast they had some problems with the computer clock running off and this was detectable at the receiver end. They finally found a way to auto correct the computer to a web site for accurate time clock and this resolved the problem. During that period My 921 was not yet using PSIP at all as back then the 921 software would not auto remap the channels, in other words, you were to tune the RF channel number to get OTA and there was no call letters in the guide. AS soon as the Eldon group released one of the software upgrades that required PSIP remap data, we lost 2 stations here until the station engineers got their table entries properly formated. What is interesting is if your 921 is using both the PSIP clock from the station and the clock is off by say 20 minutes, and the program guide data from Tribune (Dish LIL) this confict may, indeed cause something to run amuck, don't you think?


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

DonLandis said:


> boylehome- The 921 does use PSIP data for that purpose. It is part of the channel remap, call sign and time stamp. It is my belief without disecting those data entries, that if something were not valid in the PSIP data that you would not get the signal at all. However, if the time clock were just incorrect and they were sending the wrong time but configured properly in the PSIP, you could have a point of error. When our local CBS affiliate here first started their digital broadcast they had some problems with the computer clock running off and this was detectable at the receiver end. They finally found a way to auto correct the computer to a web site for accurate time clock and this resolved the problem. During that period My 921 was not yet using PSIP at all as back then the 921 software would not auto remap the channels, in other words, you were to tune the RF channel number to get OTA and there was no call letters in the guide. AS soon as the Eldon group released one of the software upgrades that required PSIP remap data, we lost 2 stations here until the station engineers got their table entries properly formated. What is interesting is if your 921 is using both the PSIP clock from the station and the clock is off by say 20 minutes, and the program guide data from Tribune (Dish LIL) this confict may, indeed cause something to run amuck, don't you think?


I tend to agree with your theory. For information, recently, our NBC affiliate changed to HD. They put in new equipment. They are having problems with the PSIP data stream (plus lots of other things). At first the 921 would acquire and lock on the signal, but all I could get was a black screen and no audio. I contacted the NBC affiliate and E*. The affiliate made some PSIP changes at the broadcast center. The changes made allowed me to record and view the programs after recording! Strange. I still couldn't view/hear the programs, "live." (I'm still working with them). Now I can view live but respective to DVR events, I have not seen a weird timer/clock problem. I guess the point is, if things aren't right with the PSIP then things don't work right with the 921's.

If the time/clock issue isn't a result of the PSIP "glitches" then is it something specific to the 921? The problem occurs mostly with OTA DVR events but I have experienced it with satellite programing. Not having a 942, VIP622 or the HR10-250, I can't say it is wide spread to all DVR's. I've seen it on my 721 but I have not seen it on my 501 or my 510.

Personally, I think that there is a glitch in the data stream for the timer/clock. So do you think that I'm close or way off track?


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

I would not be surprised. When E* changed the way it's 921 maps the local OTA channels forcing everything to appear as the remapped channel that made it depend on the PSIP table entries for display. There are conditions whwere you may be able to see the channel on the RF number but that all depends on the station's signal. The clock issue, I believe would be related to you having one clock for all your sat channels including LIL locals and then a diffetent time coming from the PSIP. I can envision this causing a real conflict if the 921 is programmed to see both times for that channel. Both the HR10-250 and the 921 use PSIP channel callsign and clock for OTA tuning. Neither use PSIP guide data. They use TMS guide service.


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