# Bug Report: L182 - Frequent Black Screens



## jandras (May 9, 2004)

I installed a 921 on May 8, 2004. It has been a bit idiosynchratic to use, but has worked reasonably well and, until just recently, has been no problem for ordinary “live” viewing.

However, I began having problems with my 921 starting about 2 days ago. In particular, even after a power-cycle reboot, I generally cannot view the satellite channels at all after just a few minutes. In short order, I simply get a black screen. And, the system seems sluggish.

Every time I power-cycle boot the 921, I get the silver circle “Dish Network HDTV" splash screen for about a minute, then I get a blue dialog box that says “Attention 678, Acquiring data from satellite. Please wait…”, then I get a working guide and a picture. 

After a few minutes, however, I lose the picture and am left with a black screen. If I return to the guide, I see the guide itself and it is populated with programming info, but the inset picture is black.

If I go to the menu, and drill down to the "point dish" screen, the system usually freezes upon entry.

At one point, the System Information screen showed “ERROR: not found” or similar for both the Recever CA ID and the Smartcard ID and showed gibberish (looked like superimposed, but slight offset characters) for the Location ID. That only occurred once, however, and it now shows the expected information.

The DVR playback function works fine in the sense that I can view previously recorded programs.

In case it matters, I have two dishes, a Dish 300 with a dual LNBF that looks at 148, and a Dish 500 with a quad LNBF that looks at 110/119. Using a pair of SW21 switches, the two feeds from the 300 are merged with two of the four 110/119 feeds from the 500. The two 110/119/148 outputs generated by the two SW21 switches are delivered to the 921.

My other receiver, a DishPro 301, shows good signal strength on 110 and 119. This receiver gets a 110/119 feed directly from the Dish 500's quad LNBF without any intermediate switching.

I’ve been on the phone with Dish and the techs didn’t seem especially on top of the trouble shooting (try rebooting again). Ultimately, they told me that I will receive a call from the supervisor later this morning, who will first need to speak to somebody in the executive office, and then ship me a replacement 921.

Is this related to the new L182 software. Anybody else having a similar problem of recent?

Is there any way to force a reload of the software?

Thanks!

Joe


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

Not being able to enter the Point Dish menu is disturbing. Assuming you know all the connections are good - no corrosion, looseness, etc. It's time to check whether the LNB & switch hardware is working.

If it were me, I would simplify things by hooking the Quad LNBFs Ports 1 & 2 directly to the 921's ports 1 & 2 and trying again. Maybe even disconnect the 921 from the feeds and power-plug rebooting just to reset the switch matrix.


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

jandras- Yes! Been there with L182 and yes I nearly went bonkers until I resolved myself to just have patients. I did do one more thing you didn't mention. I did the diagnostics and the result was:
No installed tuners, Hard disk failure. Yikes! Unplugged for 5 minutes, pulled the card. Plugged back in and went away for an hour. Came back to a black screen. Did the sys info and saw: No Smart card message. I inserted the smart card and left for another hour. When I came back all was well. I did check in once in awhile and it was cycling through the logo screen and menus etc but was busy doing it's sloooooooow recovery routine. Many times it would spend 4-5 minutes looking like it died again but I resisted the temptation to touch it and just left it to work on it's own. Been working fune since that experience with no GSOD. That was on the day I took the L182 download. 

Oh yes, just to confirm your observation, I tried to do a check dish test and while I could get there I couldn't do anything. Most likely because the diagnostics run above said no tuners were installed. 


So what did I do to get this problem? I know what I did. Here's the sequence of events-
While away my 921 took the download of L182 and since it was in standby it loaded it. I used it for about 5 hours and decided to execute a power button reboot by pressing it for about 10 seconds. From there everything went to hell in a handbasket. In prior, upgrades I did not do the power button reboot but just went to standby and then unplugged it for about 15 seconds. In the future, I will be power plug rebooting and never use the hold power button to reboot. That was just too freaky.


I don't know anything about linux but I do have another computer that runs linux OS on a special application and it take a good 6 minutes to reboot. I'm sure glad windows doesn't take that long.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

jandras - I've run into this several times. A power cord reboot usually fixes the problem, but if you still come up to a black screen after one, press the SD/HD button once or twice and the 921 should enter SD mode. Then the button again, and it'll go back to HD mode, and should work.


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## jandras (May 9, 2004)

Simon, Don, Mark-

Thanks everybody for the tips. Just to follow up, it appears to be a problem with the 921's Tuner Input #1, not my wiring or my switches, and not the L182 software.

I took SimpleSimon's suggestion and, per his handle, simplified things by directly running ports 1 and 2 from the Quad 500 to the vicinity of the new 921 and my old 6000. In other words, I eliminate the Dish300 and associated SW-21 multidish switches from the switch matrix. Now, I was dealing with two direct feeds from the Quad 500.

First, to make sure the feeds were good, I connected each one in turn to the 6000 receiver that is being replaced by the 921. On the 6000, *both* feeds worked fine for viewing, tested fine on the switch check, and had strong, CONTINUOUSLY PRESENT, signal strength.

Then, I connected both feeds to the 921. Viewing was generally OK after a power-plug boot, but when I checked the signal strength, Tuner Input #1 was suffering intermittent signal strength dropouts on both 110 and 119 (every 30-60 seconds), while Tuner Input #2 was rock solid.

In order to determine if the problem lie in the Dish500/cabling, or in the 921, I swapped the cables (after power-plug booting with the cables off, just in case). After that, I found that Tuner Input 1 was *STILL* suffering intermittent signal strength dropouts on both 110 and 119 (every 30-60 seconds), while Tuner Input 2 was *STILL* rock solid.

In sum, the problem is internal to the 921 and appears to be associated with Tuner Input #1.

Hopefully the replacement 921 will solve things.

Thanks again!

Joe.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

All Right! We nailed another one!


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Way to go nailing down the problem jandras - that was excellent testing procedure.


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## David_Levin (Apr 22, 2002)

Does the 921 support cascaded SW21's? Didn't someone say that switch configuration is a problem?


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## jandras (May 9, 2004)

David_Levin said:


> Does the 921 support cascaded SW21's? Didn't someone say that switch configuration is a problem?


Here is a diagram of the installation I described in writing. Are the SW21's cascaded? Any other issues I should worry about?

Thanks!

Joe.


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## David_Levin (Apr 22, 2002)

Wow, nice picture !!!

OK, I missed the quad LNBF part of your original message. I'll have to go review the dish wiring diagrams and see if it's legal to casade an SW21 after a quad.

I wonder if there could be problems due to the requirement that the two 921 inputs have the exact same switch configuration. Even simply swapping the inputs at the SW21s could make the switch configuration look different.

I'm sure other's will chime in.

Edit:
Well, that looks a lot like the picture with a Twin and a cascaded SW21. It's probably ok.

Perhaps someone can tell us if the 921 needs the same orientation feeding the two SW21s.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

That configuration is perfectly "legal", assumung that the quad is a legacy quad, and not a dishpro quad. If it's a dishpro quad, then you would also have to use dishpro sw21s.


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## jandras (May 9, 2004)

It's been on the roof for at least two years. During that time, the two feeds now leading to the 921 used to feed a Dish 6000 and a Dish 5000 that sat side by side.

Question re David's comments on orientation. 

Assuming orientation is a signal characteristic (like polarity), and assuming that the Quad LNBF's four ports have different orientations (I have no idea if this even makes sense), does the 921 care which outputs I use from the Quad LNBF? 

I show ports 3 and 4 in the diagram, but the diagram is a cartoon. I really have no ideal which ones are hooked up.

Joe.


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## lapplegate (Jan 17, 2003)

Mark Lamutt said:


> jandras - I've run into this several times. A power cord reboot usually fixes the problem, but if you still come up to a black screen after one, press the SD/HD button once or twice and the 921 should enter SD mode. Then the button again, and it'll go back to HD mode, and should work.


Mark,
My 921 has been doing the same thing as jandras (silver circle, or emblem, with "dish network HDTV" on it). It happens WHEN I power cord reboot. The first time I thought this may have been the GSOD, turns out it is the SCOD (Silver Circle of Dish).

I have reported this to the tech @ dish and they knew nothing about it. Is there a special dish number to call with 921 problems, I seem to be getting the old "I'll make a record of it" canned answer.

When the SCOD happens, the 921 will not respond to any remote or front panel commands It is just dead in the water and there is no way to hit the HD/SD button as the unit will not respond to anything but a power cord reboot. This of course starts the whole cycle again. All I can do is let it come back on it's own. Frustrating as it happens at least daily.

BTW I have the Legacy Quad. No switches, straight to the 921, a 508 & 510. Due to upgrade to DP soon, that may help.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

lapplegate said:


> Mark,
> My 921 has been doing the same thing as jandras (silver circle, or emblem, with "dish network HDTV" on it). It happens WHEN I power cord reboot. The first time I thought this may have been the GSOD, turns out it is the SCOD (Silver Circle of Dish).


Larry - the silver logo is absolutely normal. It's the first screen that the 921 displays when it's booting up. It's like the Windows screen when you boot up your computer. After the silver logo screen, you will see one of 2 message boxes - "Acquiring Data...please wait" OR "Receiver is in Stand-By. Booting..." You will have no control of the receiver until it's past this point and is displaying picture normally. This is a normal situation - it's the boot process for the 921.


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## deweybrunner (Feb 8, 2004)

Don Landis, in a previous thread, outlined a great way to re-boot, along with the help of support at dish. It made sense. If you follow this procedure and allow the re-boot to complete, this will solve a lot of your problems. It just takes time, which is well worth it.


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## lapplegate (Jan 17, 2003)

Mark Lamutt said:


> Larry - the silver logo is absolutely normal. It's the first screen that the 921 displays when it's booting up. It's like the Windows screen when you boot up your computer. After the silver logo screen, you will see one of 2 message boxes - "Acquiring Data...please wait" OR "Receiver is in Stand-By. Booting..." You will have no control of the receiver until it's past this point and is displaying picture normally. This is a normal situation - it's the boot process for the 921.


Mark,
Thanks, I must be doing so good, compared to some of the others, that I have to invent problems.


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