# BUG REPORT: L186 - Losing all sat channels every couple of days



## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

Ever since L186 I have had a collapse of all channels including sat channels.
This happens well after my last power cord reboot which is done each day at 0730. Each time this has happened the timing is about 13 hours after my last reboot. I begin to have trouble switching channels using channel up or down. I go to the guide and observe the current subscribbed channels are red. Within 30 minutes I lose all sat channels, going to red. 

The recovery procedure I have used is to first do a Power plug reboot, then while the power is unplugged, I pull the smart card. Plug in the power and wait for the screen to say Please insert smart card. Then I wait. Last night, I had to follow this with one more power plug reboot where I kept the 921 unplugged for 15 minutes. 

So far the frequency of this loss of all channels is about once every 3 days. 

This never happened before L186.


I believe this is a rare occurrence as nobody else is reporting this type of loss. Is it good enough to report here or should I call it into adv tech support for their official filing?


----------



## pculley (Dec 23, 2003)

You are not the only one; I had something like this several times. I suspect that if you look at the Menu 6,1 info screen when it gets into this mode, you will see that the smart card says "Error: No info".


----------



## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

That is correct! In fact, that was my first clue to do a Smart Card reboot as part of the recovery process.

Have you called this problem into DISH Network or just reported it here? If you have, what was their opinion?


----------



## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

Are you still using your rebooting "appliance" DonLandis?


----------



## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

Yes


----------



## paulcdavis (Jan 22, 2004)

DonLandis said:


> Yes


Don, I suggest that you remove your appliance timer. As strange as it sounds, I think that L186 does not like power cord reboots. The last power cord reboot I did was after L186 to remove all local channels to clean out the OTA database. The unit had smart card errors after the reboot, which meant no channels authorized. It was only a power cord reboot followed by a smart card reboot that got the unit working again. I have avoided power cord reboots since then. L186 is auto rebooting every night, and that seems to be keeping the timers working. I think that a bug got into L186 that affects the smart card reader during power cord reboots.


----------



## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

Paul- The logic in your suggestion is good but based on "what's different" now. I'm looking at a frequency now of every 3 + 1 days the sat channels are lost with the first one happening at the update. Yep!, a number pattern. This would make my failure scheduled to happen on Thursday (7/22) evening. Let's see if the sat channels collapse on schedule. Of course I don't have many data points but if it does fail that would be 4 losses since L186. 
How often have you lost your channels? When does it occur? Right after power cord reboot? Mine doesn't. Mine has happened every 4th power cord (actually3, 4, and 5 reboots sequence) reboot about 13 hours after the last one. While this could be considered a pattern it is what I would consider pretty far fetched relationship. 
I believe you are observing the loss immediately following a powercord reboot. Would you still make that statement if your 921 began to lose sat channels after 12-13 hours of use beyond a powercord reboot? In addition, I've had to recover with a power cord + smart card removal to be back to operational status. Why would using a power cord reboot be the cause of failure and then is used to recover?

On the other hand, I cannot disprove your theory that L186, becomes unstable at smart card reading after 3-4 power outages spread out over several days. If I lose the channels by Saturday, I will remove the timer and keep the power connected for the next 2 weeks to see if there is an improvement. If I don't lose channels and my 921 appears stable now, then I will continue my present practice.

Another thing- The L186 reboot built into software assumes that to be effective the 921 must be in standby mode AND not have a scheduled recording in the early AM hours. That was per Mark. If this is true then my 921, based on my use habits would never execute the software reboot schedule anyway and I'd be back to the other problems we had prior to scheduled reboots. FYI- My timer reboots are done at 0830 every day now.


----------



## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

I thought Paul's logic was based on a comparison of what is different between your machine and everyone else's.

Truth be told, we don't know what the boot code is doing from our limited perspective. There could well be a state machine of some sort that executes different code paths as part of some maintenance schedule depending on a variety of factors, modulo 4 of the reboot count, time of the week, etc..

Sounds like you have some weird viewing/recording hours DonLandis! :lol: The Eldon engineers may or may not have accounted for you. You could try to use the PIP window placement to see if your machine gets rebooted by the L186 software. You never know if it figures out a time to do it or not. Maybe 8:30am is still in its window of rebooting opportunity. If you decide to try that, let us know if it does it or not.


----------



## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

I expected last evening to lose the sat channels again but everything worked fine with that until about 10PM. Then the 921 just froze while channel surfing. I did the power cord reboot and it recovered fine. Channels were not lost and I didn't need to do the smart card reboot. 

Also, if the 921 was doing the L186 reboot in the early AM, this morning would have been a time for it to work as I turned in early and had nothing to record scheduled at that time.

FWIW- I have reduced the timer recording on the 921 greatly now since the HDTIVO is picking up the load.


----------



## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

Just an update- I haven't lost any sat channels now in 8 days. I still do the daily power cord reboot at 0830 AM via an auto appliance timer but in the past 6 days about 12 hours since the last reboot I experience severe slow down of the receiver. This happens after I switch around 2-3 different SD sat channels for about 15 minutes. It won't switch channels and appears to go black screen and silent. After 15 minutes of just sitting there I try to get the info screen banner up and see 77UnKnown banner and finally I have to resort to a power cord reboot.

OTA channels not a factor. Since I now have the HDTIVO working well and VOOM working well I have decided to pull the OTA cable on the 921. I am using it beginning tomorrow as an exclusive E* sat PVR. I just want to test the theory that L186 really screwed up OTA channels and it is also affecting other parts of my 921.

I can tell you that I am not happy at all with this L186 update. Prior to L186 I had hardly any problems. Since then it has required rebooting nearly 5 times a day to keep anything at all playing or recording.

I just got done doing 3 power coard reboots with a waste of time of over 45 minutes to get to a point that the 921 responded with normal speed channel changes.

I really wish they would put back L185 because that worked fine for me. 
With L185-
I had all my OTA channels and things worked fine with L185, with L186 I lose 2 out of 7 and can't get them back.
I only needed to reboot every 3rd day but did it daily and never had a problem.
With L186, the first week I kept losing Sat channels and required a Power Plug + card swap reboot to get them back. Now every evening the 921 just becomes non-responsive and then I lose picture and sound. It takes 2-3 power cord 3 -5min off cycle reboot to recover where the 921 runs normally.

*
So E* or Eldon- If you are reading this- Please do something about L186. Fix it or get rid of it and put us back on L185. If you can't do either then let us know what we need to do besides switch to another provider! That BTW was what many others have done already. I haven't switched yet but I am positioning myself to do just that if things aren't working at least as good as it was before you downloaded L186 to my 921.

And just so were clear on this, I don't care what success others have had with L186. That has not been my success. It's up to you to make my 921 work like it did with L185. L185 was not perfect but it was the peak best performing software to date for me. Since L186, my 921 has had the most unreliable performance ever!*


----------



## jamullian (May 7, 2004)

FWIW, it just happened to me.

Not after a power cord reboot, but after an unsuccessful switch to an OTA channel (the local NBC affiliate has just "upgraded" their DT antenna and transmitter from 18 to 370 KW ERP; unfortunately I seem now to have dropped into a null zone with the new polar pattern, and am unable to lock on their signal (though strength can show 85-100 and I'm about 10 miles from the transmitter) much of the day <end whine>. By unsuccessful I mean black screen, no station banner, no "Channel 39-1 not found" message and an extreme reluctance to switch to any other channel or guide etc. When I finally got the guide back, all my premium channels had turned red, though I still could get to HSN and NASA .... 

A power button reboot brought everything - except the OTA NBC station of course - back.


----------



## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

It's been stable almost a week now but last night about 11 PM my channels began to drop off again. I left it go to see how far it would go. After about an hour all but CNN turned red in the guide. 
I did a smart card / power cord reboot and was back to normal in 15 minutes.


----------



## Mike123abc (Jul 19, 2002)

jamullian said:


> ...local NBC affiliate has just "upgraded" their DT antenna and transmitter from 18 to 370 KW ERP; unfortunately I seem now to have dropped into a null zone with the new polar pattern, and am unable to lock on their signal (though strength can show 85-100 and I'm about 10 miles from the transmitter) much of the day <end whine>....


It could be that you are now experiencing severe multipathing problems, try an attenuator to see if it clears it up, or adjusting your antenna.


----------



## jamullian (May 7, 2004)

Mike123abc said:


> It could be that you are now experiencing severe multipathing problems, try an attenuator to see if it clears it up, or adjusting your antenna.


Ruled that out with a variety of tests.


----------



## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

DonLandis said:


> It's been stable almost a week now but last night about 11 PM my channels began to drop off again. I left it go to see how far it would go. After about an hour all but CNN turned red in the guide.
> I did a smart card / power cord reboot and was back to normal in 15 minutes.


I've had mine since the first of July, all of the channels that will lock have remained. I have done some reboots but the channels were present at the time of the reboots.


----------



## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

Yersterday it happened again, first a few channels turn red in the guide and then a few more. This time I decided to call it in with the complaint that this and several other oddities began with L186. What I learned was surprising. It seems that while E* people may read these posts here, nothing official is recorded about bug reports large or small. YOU MUST CALL IT IN! From now on I plan to call in every time the 921 doesn't operate the way it should. These people have a false count on the bugs list they are working on as official. So, Please call it in! Don't rely on a posted report here for your bug report to get any attention other than from the rest of us posters. Finally when you do call it in be sure you ask if the ADV tech support persoin is filling out an official bug report ticket on your complaint. Understand that maybe they will determine your complaint is not an official 921 issue but if they can't resolve it for you they should fill out a report. 

FWIW- I filed 4 complaints resulting in initial (not on their list of known bugs) reports with the 921. Each one of those had received ample discussion on this forum section.


----------



## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

The problem with wanting to submit a bug report is that Dish generally believes the problem is on *your* end, especially when it's something like losing channels (in which case they blame your antenna, your wiring, your switches, etc.). I suspect that in most cases, they're actually right, which is to say that the problem is often not on their end and it's something the customer is doing or that the customer has an incorrect idea about how the device should be operating.

With that being said, yes, in the case of the 921, it usually is the receiver software which is acting up. But you have to be careful, since they may want to replace the receiver for something which is obviously a software fault, which just leads to more aggravation for everyone.


----------



## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

In every case of dealing with ADV tech support the first they have always done is to run through the signal diagnostics, check switch and verify your signals on various TP's on each bird. There has never been an exception to this. 
I do agree that there may be some risk that a CSR may decide I would need a new hardware because they do not see a bug listed on their chart. So far that has not been the case. But, what if they did decide that. Based on other's experience, that exchange is only costing me the swap time as they have a track record of sending a new receiver and a call ticket for the return of the suspect one. In any event, maybe I would get a new 921. There is no reason why I would not be agreeable to that. That does not mean that if the logic of a hardware exchange for something like the timers not firing or not all channels showing up in the guide is stated, I wouldn't try to convince them that logic is bogus. 

No, what I have experienced so far with these guys is they are pretty much on the ball in ADV tech Support who are also stating they are a 921 specialist. These are different than the ones on the front lines, like the one who screwed up my card around Memorial Day.


----------



## lujan (Feb 10, 2004)

DonLandis said:


> In every case of dealing with ADV tech support the first they have always done is to run through the signal diagnostics, check switch and verify your signals on various TP's on each bird. There has never been an exception to this.
> I do agree that there may be some risk that a CSR may decide I would need a new hardware because they do not see a bug listed on their chart. So far that has not been the case. But, what if they did decide that. Based on other's experience, that exchange is only costing me the swap time as they have a track record of sending a new receiver and a call ticket for the return of the suspect one. In any event, maybe I would get a new 921. There is no reason why I would not be agreeable to that. That does not mean that if the logic of a hardware exchange for something like the timers not firing or not all channels showing up in the guide is stated, I wouldn't try to convince them that logic is bogus.
> 
> No, what I have experienced so far with these guys is they are pretty much on the ball in ADV tech Support who are also stating they are a 921 specialist. These are different than the ones on the front lines, like the one who screwed up my card around Memorial Day.


Based on my last couple of experiences with Dish tesh support, the advanced tech support has been picking up the phone as soon as I call. I don't know if they route the call immediately if you have a 921 based on your phone number or what. I have not had to ask for advanced tech support, I just get them right away?


----------



## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

jsanders said:


> Are you still using your rebooting "appliance" DonLandis?


Please, may I ask, what is the, "appliance" for rebooting?


----------



## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

boylehome said:


> Please, may I ask, what is the, "appliance" for rebooting?


I guess DonLandis should be answering this one. The appliance was a physical timer that would cut power to the 921 for longer than 2 minutes 20 seconds every day. Essentially, he is/was doing a power plug reboot every morning with it.


----------



## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

I removed the appliance timer a week ago to test the L186 in a fashion it was designed to do, reboot the 921 on it's own. I deleted certain early AM timers and put the 921 in standby each day at 2AM to allow L186 to do it's own thing.

During this week the 921 has failed to execute two scheduled timers in the early evening. It lost sat channels (slowly turning red in the guide) twice. The second time I did not do the card swap to fix but called adv tech support and they reactivated my receiver. That was Tuesday. If the 921 continues to fail like this, I plan to reinstall the appliance timer this weekend. Given that the last several manual reboots to recover required me to do two power cord reboots for 5 minutes each, I plan to add trip settings on the timer to execute two reboots with 30 minutes up time between the two. 

FYI- I don't consider these reboots a valid procedure to using a 921 just as I feel the L186 daily reboot is a valid bug fix. It is a work around for me to have a 921 usable for 5-6 hours a day. For Eldon it was a way for them to say they are doing something. I could have saved E* tons of money compared to what they paid Eldon with my low tech work around and I wouldn't have tried to fool anyone that it was a fix. The appliance timer is what it is, a way to execute a CPR procedure to a malfunctioning 921 prophalactically.


----------



## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

DonLandis said:


> I removed the appliance timer a week ago to test the L186 in a fashion it was designed to do, reboot the 921 on it's own. I deleted certain early AM timers and put the 921 in standby each day at 2AM to allow L186 to do it's own thing.
> 
> During this week the 921 has failed to execute two scheduled timers in the early evening. It lost sat channels (slowly turning red in the guide) twice. The second time I did not do the card swap to fix but called adv tech support and they reactivated my receiver. That was Tuesday. If the 921 continues to fail like this, I plan to reinstall the appliance timer this weekend. Given that the last several manual reboots to recover required me to do two power cord reboots for 5 minutes each, I plan to add trip settings on the timer to execute two reboots with 30 minutes up time between the two.
> 
> FYI- I don't consider these reboots a valid procedure to using a 921 just as I feel the L186 daily reboot is a valid bug fix. It is a work around for me to have a 921 usable for 5-6 hours a day. For Eldon it was a way for them to say they are doing something. I could have saved E* tons of money compared to what they paid Eldon with my low tech work around and I wouldn't have tried to fool anyone that it was a fix. The appliance timer is what it is, a way to execute a CPR procedure to a malfunctioning 921 prophalactically.


I suffer from some of the problems as you have stated. I don't lose the channels though. I infrequently reboot now. I do have to reboot when I try the ADD DTV, trying to see if our local OTA channels are now locking (their not.) Having read your thread and quite a few other threads that you and others have posted, I am getting the opinion that your 921 is a lemon and perhaps should be replaced.


----------



## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

_"I am getting the opinion that your 921 is a lemon and perhaps should be replaced.
"_

The lemon theory is actually well defined and has become law in Florida for automobiles. If I apply the same criteria to the 921 as in the lemon law it would not result in a Lemon determination. The reason is very simple and if you had read back far enough in the threads you would have seen this. My problems began with L186. I was very happy before L186 and although I also had most of the same issues many had with the 921, it did for the most part work flawlessly with a once a day reboot with the power cord. This track record extended from the day I began to use the 921 until July 12th. Then we had the download of L186 and all my problems began. I don't see how L186 download caused the hardware to become a Lemon. Prior to L186, the only serious period I had was when the account CSR screwed up my account and deleted my subscribbed channels, that affected both my 6000 and my 921 in different ways because the CSR really screwed up both receivers' cards in the process. So, no lemons here. Just a buggy software that I am forced to use. I think logic would dictate that.


----------



## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Don, I'm really starting to think that it was the CSR screwing up your card that started your problems, not L186 with your loss of channels. The OTA channels problem is certainly caused by L186, but your loss of satellite channels is due to a smartcard error.


----------



## keitheva (Aug 23, 2002)

Mark Lamutt said:


> Don, I'm really starting to think that it was the CSR screwing up your card that started your problems, not L186 with your loss of channels. The OTA channels problem is certainly caused by L186, but your loss of satellite channels is due to a smartcard error.


Remember that there were several of us that after the L186 download were getting smartcard and OTA errors, when L185 was fine.

Cheers,
-Keith


----------



## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Yes, I know. But I believe Don's smartcard CSR problems started before L186 downloaded. It's 2 different issues.


----------



## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

Then can you explain why from 6/4 to 7/12 my 921 worked flawlessly with respect to the issues that all started on 7/14? Actually that loss happened about 6 hours after the L186 downloaded and I rebooted the 921 to get the L185 to be replaced with L186 as displayed in the system info screen, and then, the red channels began to surface. 

Coincidences are often convenient excuses but I go by valid data and so far the only evidence to support the claim that it was not related to L186 is a "belief that it wasn't" I need more than that to be convincing.

Side note off topic-
This is another issue but something you may want to check into just for posterity-

Last winter I reported a strange bug in the video vs. display of the guide wherein a teal colored border would surround the live video frame in DVI mode. I could find no one who could replicate that effect. I had first reported it here and I'm sure I could locate some old threads for you if needed but as an FYI- I also reported it through one of my personal contacts at ETC in Atlanta who was working with the 921 team at the time. He promised to put it on the to do list. I'm pretty sure it was fixed with L180 in April. The work around I discovered was that it would respond to toggling the guide. In other words every other guide display would produce the teal colored border on video when exiting the guide to the live channel. And yes, it affected all channels HD, SD OTA and sat.
It would be interesting if you had any documentation to see how that bug was handled back then. I was happy to see it corrected.


----------



## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

My apoligies, Don. I thought that I remembered that your channel loss problems happened first when you went through that CSR fiasco. 

I remember the teal colored guide issue that you reported back then, but I have no documentation of the fix. I don't know if the way bugs were logged back then is the same as it is now, but I know how it's being done now. And you all will know as well as soon as I get a free few minutes to write it up.


----------



## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

I get your reasoning. It may be coincidental, but your receiver just might have gone bad around that very same time. I don't know if you ever had the 501. I did and do. At one time early on they downloaded a software fix that actually ruined some folks receivers. Not all but some receivers actually had to be replaced because of the software update. They actually had to re-install the previous software version! If you got another receiver and the problems that you describe persists, then it is just the software, but I think you have faulty hardware, maybe a funky CPU and hard drive. Things inside your 921 may be funky!


----------



## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

Yes, the CSR screwup was not related to the 921 problems at all. It was related to an overcharge on my account I reported and when they did the correction had first removed the 921, shut it down. Second day they tried to correct and I lost the 6000 but got the 921 back, finally the 3rd day they got it right. Something to do with removing the old 5000 and changing to the 600 and then 921 as "primary" receiver.


----------



## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

boylehome- So I get this straight- Are you suggesting that L186 is also possibly responsible for ruining some hardware in 921's? I'm not the only one who has reported these same issues so it may be that, like the phone caller ID, the bugs exhibited in many of these software versions is not consistent in all 921's. What I might be willing to accept is my smart card is buggy. But I doubt the 921 requiring a reboot to prevent loss of timer functions and channel losses is related to the 921 hardware. 

You believe "my" hardware inside the 921 is "funky" as a coincidence of L186. With that logic, soon some will be saying these bugs are not the 921 hardware or software at all but should be blamed on Bush. 

Based on your suggestion, we should swap out all 921's with each software upgrade to be sure the software didn't "burn" the cpu, hard drive etc. if bugs are observed. 


I do have evidence that a failed software download can ruin a receiver. It happened to me several years ago on a DTC-100 when sat signal was lost momentarily during a receiver update. Left the receiver brain dead. But that lobotomy was caused by the fact that any DTC-100 would totally fry if the sat signal got lost during an update. In fact, the same would happen to earlier Dish equipment as well. The 921 and several later receivers fixed this problem by establishing enough of the OS in separate bios that resided permanently in the 921 to prevent this. I got this info directly from E* engineer. I believe he said the 921 goes one step further in that it can download a complete upgrade while still running on the old version. Then to make the switch to the new it must be rebooted. Older receivers could end up with partial code mix which would result in an incurable OS requiring complete replacement. Didn't mean that a software update caused capacitors and chips to fry, just that a trashed upgrade could render a repair impossible from the bird on these older receivers. Supposedly this was made "impossible" in the 921 design.


----------



## David_Levin (Apr 22, 2002)

Don,

It's hard for me to keep track of all the threads. Are there other people reporting dropping sat channels?

There are a couple of other reports here, but they don't seem quite the same as yours.

pculley: You still out the?


----------



## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Don - if your software version ever reads LXXXHECD-F rather than LXXXHECD-N, that's exactly what has happened. At that point, you'll be running the 921 from the OS stored in "the separate bios".


----------



## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

Actually, I'm under the impression from some people that have "looked" that modern (3-digit model) E* PVRs have multiple copies of the operating system stored on the hard drive.

On at least some models, there's 3 separate areas: Running, Backup, and Downloading. I believe the process is that once a download completes and is validated it becomes eligible to boot. If the boot is successful, it becomes Running. Sometime later (don't know details), the new version also becomes the Backup.

Assuming the rules of new-version-success are good, this is a pretty robust methodology.

Note that it has nothing to do with the BIOS or Flash. I don't think any of us have seen a box change it's BIOS or Flash IDs out in the field. I'd be very interested in knowing if that's ever happened. In any event, many PC motherboards keep 2 copies of their BIOS on-board so that a BIOS update failure is no longer a critical failure. It's entirely possible that the 921 has this feature.

As for the "Flash", well I've got no clue why they're using NVRAM for some stuff. It just makes no sense to me.


----------



## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

Mark Lamutt said:


> Don, I'm really starting to think that it was the CSR screwing up your card that started your problems, not L186 with your loss of channels. The OTA channels problem is certainly caused by L186, but your loss of satellite channels is due to a smartcard error.


I echo your smart card error problem.


----------



## FaxMan (Oct 14, 2003)

I've been doing some searching and found this thread to be the closest to what I am finding.

Over the past week or two, my 921 has began acting up. Initially it was every couple of days, but it seems to be increasing in freqency.

The initial problem noticed was that while watching a program, the screen would just go blank. Could see the guide and menu and channels seemed to be there, but could not tune to anything. The first couple of times, I just did an 8 second power button re-boot.

As frequency increased, I resorted to greater measures including power cord re-boots.

During these times, I also noted that menus were acting extremely sluggishly and it took 5 or 10 seconds for system info to come up. When sys info is slow to respond, the 'location ID' seems to be overwritten with a different number that just displays on top of the first number. Point Dish at times shows wrong satellite or no lock. Check switch also came up with errors. And a couple of times, system info showed a smart card error.

Most times the re-boot fixed the problem for a day or two. When everything is working, I get 100+ strength signals.

One time, I noted that it was working fine when it was turned off for dinner, then dead again a couple hours later.

Finally, last Wednesday, I had done power cord and power button re-boots with no success. I called E* and we basically did everything I had already done, but this time it came back.

Last night I had the same problem, called E*, got to an advanced tech, went through the same processes again and finally it came back.

The tech suggested that it was most likely cabling and said that if it happened again, I might have to move the 921 to another room to test. The problem is, I don't have anywhere else in the house that has two cable runs.

He didn't even seem to hear that I was seeing smart card errors.

He also said that if it happened many more times, they might escalate to 'engineering' for a few more tests and possible replacement.

Later last night after watching some DVR programming, the system was acting a little buggy, but I had an OTA recording going so I just turned it off hoping for the best. After turning it off, I noted that the record light remained on.

This morning, all we got was blank screens again and I saw that the OTA recording had died at 37 minutes (should have been 64 minutes).

It took three re-boots to get things working again, but it only lasted about an hour until it went blank again.

The 921 has worked relatively well since I got it in March. The cabling is only about 9 months old.

I've probably seen a slight increase in problems since I got an OTA antenna in August.

About a month ago, I moved everything into a new entertainment center http://gallery.avsforum.com/showgallery.php?cat=500&ppuser=7428023, but I'm pretty sure that all of the connections are good.

Sorry for the lengthy post, but I wanted to make sure to give as much detail as possible in case something may be relevant.

Any input would be appreciated.

John


----------



## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

John - two possibilities. Could be it's dying from a smartcard error. Either you've pulled the smartcard to do a reboot a couple of times too many, or the smartcard reader is going bad. '

Or, more likely, you're getting hit by a bug that I personally have seen in the past, where the software "loses" lock on the smartcard, and the only way to get it back is to do a power plug reboot. I think it's a bug because of the sysinfo screen symptoms that you describe.

The good news is I haven't seen this in any of the post-L188 betas, so it may be fixed in the next version. And this is one of the things that I've been specifically looking for in testing.


----------



## FaxMan (Oct 14, 2003)

Thanks for your reply Mark,

Today I did a power plug + smartcard re-boot after noticing that channels subscribed to were showing 'red'. 

It is the first time I've ever even touched the smartcard so based on your input it is looking like a bad reader or the 'bug'.

Fingers crossed waiting for 189+, but dreading putting up with the problem until then or until I can convince them into a replacement

John


----------



## FaxMan (Oct 14, 2003)

After another couple of rounds with the techs who basically said I either needed to re-wire and re-ground everything and/or take the 921 somewhere to be 'tested', I re-checked and re-tightened all of my connections a few days ago and haven't had any more problems (yet).

IF it was just a loose connection it still seems strange that it would cause some of the behaviors I experienced - particularly the smart card errors on the system info page.

Added note. The last tech I worked with not only had me do a power plug re-boot, but also had me disconnect the sat connections. She said that somehow made for an even more thorough re-boot.

=John


----------

