# 921 Meltdown



## rkwak (Jan 7, 2005)

I've had my 921 for about a month now and for much of that time it has had sproradic channel problems, timer misfires, etc., but not a single ZSR or complete meltdown until a few days ago. In the past few days, I've had too many ZSR's to count, multiple timers that simply never fired at all, constant signal acquisition problems, inability to watch one program while recording another, and finally and worst of all, last night, a complete erasure of all DVR programs! Regarding the last issue, I was trying to erase a ZSR which I was having trouble doing because an error message kept popping up saying that I was trying to erase a program while still viewing it (which of course was impossible because it was 0 seconds!). All of a sudden, without me pressing any button on the remote (I was busy searching this forum for answers), a gold lock symbol appeared next to all of the recorded programs and then they all just disappeared. I rebooted but they didn't come back, and now every recording I attempt is a ZSR.

I'm at a complete loss. I don't think I can take another call with another tech who knows less about the 921 than most of the people on this forum (and who denies any knowledge of all of the problems that are acknowledged in this forum). The 921 is absolutely useless to me if it cannot reliably record and save programs. I find myself setting back up recordings on my 501 for everything and watching HD through a separate OTA receiver as often as I do through the 921 because it so frequently needs to be rebooted. I was going to give it until the next SW release to decide whether or not to keep it or switch to DirecTV, but I don't think I can wait that long given my recent travails. Any suggestions?


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## bbomar (Oct 18, 2004)

rkwak said:


> I've had my 921 for about a month now and for much of that time it has had sproradic channel problems, timer misfires, etc., but not a single ZSR or complete meltdown until a few days ago. In the past few days, I've had too many ZSR's to count, multiple timers that simply never fired at all, constant signal acquisition problems, inability to watch one program while recording another, and finally and worst of all, last night, a complete erasure of all DVR programs! Regarding the last issue, I was trying to erase a ZSR which I was having trouble doing because an error message kept popping up saying that I was trying to erase a program while still viewing it (which of course was impossible because it was 0 seconds!). All of a sudden, without me pressing any button on the remote (I was busy searching this forum for answers), a gold lock symbol appeared next to all of the recorded programs and then they all just disappeared. I rebooted but they didn't come back, and now every recording I attempt is a ZSR.
> 
> I'm at a complete loss. I don't think I can take another call with another tech who knows less about the 921 than most of the people on this forum (and who denies any knowledge of all of the problems that are acknowledged in this forum). The 921 is absolutely useless to me if it cannot reliably record and save programs. I find myself setting back up recordings on my 501 for everything and watching HD through a separate OTA receiver as often as I do through the 921 because it so frequently needs to be rebooted. I was going to give it until the next SW release to decide whether or not to keep it or switch to DirecTV, but I don't think I can wait that long given my recent travails. Any suggestions?


Just a suggestion - but what I would do. Go into the menus and find where
you can restore factory defaults. This will delete all your favorites, OTA
channels, etc., but it should get you back to the way the 921 was when
you first got it. Make sure all programs are deleted (sounds like they already
are). You might also want to do a disk check at this point. Then do a soft power off and then pull the power plug. Leave the plug out for a while (I would wait at least 30 minutes - I know this is strange but it seems to me the reboot is more complete if the unit has been off for a while. There may not be anything to this but it can't hurt.) Hopefully when you reboot and rescan your OTA channels everything will be fine. If not there may be some
more serius failure with the 921 in which case Dish should swap it out for you.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

rkwak - 

Either email me your post above, or at least a link to it, along with contact information where you can be reached during the day and evening, your receiver CAID, smartcard id #, boot and flash versions, and if your've talked to tech support, what troubleshooting they had you do. I'll take all of this info and send it to the head of the 921 support team (who does know as much as the users on the forum here) for support.


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## PittsburRgh R (Jan 21, 2005)

Mark,

I had the same thing happen to me last night, Thursday at about 10:15 p.m. with a 2 second OTA program that would not erase. All recorded shows were erased and could not be recovered.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Oh boy...once may be a fluke. Twice is a trend...not good.

rkwak, please let us know what the support team comes up with for this.


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

rkwak said:


> In the past few days, I've had too many ZSR's to count, multiple timers that simply never fired at all, constant signal acquisition problems, inability to watch one program while recording another, and finally and worst of all, last night, a complete erasure of all DVR programs!


My 921 (HEED) had the very same problem. I had one ZSR for an OTA program for 01-17-2005 at 10:00PM. I had the antenna aiming in the wrong direction (antenna rotator  ) It was for local 36 NBC affiliate KNVN. Funny thing, it showed "0" seconds under the DVR Record Event screen, but it listed three programs in sub menu that showed, "0" for the end of one program, "60" minutes for the middle program and "0" seconds for the third or ending program. I selected center, 60 minute program and all I got was black screen. It slowed the 921 down to the point that nothing functioned. I did a power BUTTON reboot. When everything returned, every DVR recorded event ( five ) were gone! I had previewed a couple of these DVR events before making the above described selection and they worked fine. The next night several DVR events fired. I came back the next morning and found that all four events were ZSR.

I figured that something must have gotten corrupted when I tried to tune into the event that gave me the black screen and the power button reboot didn't do the trick. I did a power cord reboot. Events fired for that night. The next morning again ZSR's.

Before this problems it had been about three days since a power cord reboot. I check daily to confirm that a auto reboot occurs. In this case it had.

I finally corrected the problem by doing a factory reboot. I cleared everything before I did it. Once the reboot completed, I reprogrammed everything the way I had it before and entered new DVR events from the guide.

Having done the process and factory reboot, every DVR event has fired and has actually recorded.

This is just speculation, but since L2.11 ZSR's have increased, and the 921 is more unstable.


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## Skerdog (Jan 20, 2005)

Please forgive me as I am new to this, but what is a factory reboot? I had these same problems and lost all the wife's soaps and am still getting ZSR's after a power cord reboot. I would like to try the factory reboot.

Thanks


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

Menu - 6 - 6 "Factory Defaults"


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## devermore (Jan 21, 2005)

Just thought...

coming from this from a computer systems analyst perspective, I would offer two observations: 

1) The internal hard drive is only ATA 250 GB. NOT scsi and I doubt it is serial ATA.
2) These drives, which are the same as those in PCs, can go bad in time. That is simply a fact of life. The 921 came out when 250 GB hard drives were still fairly new. I'd suggest that in some versions of produciton 921s, the reliability of the hard drives may be less than desirable. This could explain ZSRs, lost programming, missing recorded events, and a general worsening of the overall stability of the system.


*IF* my observations above are accurate, I would then ask Mr. Lamutt to consider asking the 921 team if hard drive diagnostics are included in the 921's OS, or if not, if optimization/repair utilities could be offered in a later update. Such utilities may reduce the number of service calls their support center must respond to, and thus save Dish money. 

Lots of "ifs" and "mays" I know. Just thought I'd offer a slightly different perspective.

-DE


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## astrotrf (Apr 5, 2004)

devermore said:


> 2) These drives, which are the same as those in PCs, can go bad in time. That is simply a fact of life. The 921 came out when 250 GB hard drives were still fairly new. I'd suggest that in some versions of produciton 921s, the reliability of the hard drives may be less than desirable. This could explain ZSRs, lost programming, missing recorded events, and a general worsening of the overall stability of the system.


I would tend to think that hard drive failure would be a lot more disastrous than simple isolated incidents; I think they're more easily explained as programming problems. But I'll grant you that it is puzzling that things could work well for a long while and then go suddenly and persistently south with the same software ...



devermore said:


> *IF* my observations above are accurate, I would then ask Mr. Lamutt to consider asking the 921 team if hard drive diagnostics are included in the 921's OS, or if not, if optimization/repair utilities could be offered in a later update.


This would indeed be nice. But you're asking programmers to write disk optimization and repair utilities when they are incapable of writing code to determine if three event timers all mutually collide. :lol:

Terry


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

There IS a Hard Drive diagnostic under Menu-6-5.

I'm too scared to try it.

Terry: You're not alone in the three timer at once bug.


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## Flasshe (Aug 17, 2004)

I too have experienced the erasure of all recorded programs this week, as well as various other meltdowns. Here's the sequence of events as best I can recall:

7pm Sunday: Had timers set to record Carnivale from HBO-HD and Simpsons/Arrested Development (one hour long timer) from KDVR-DT (OTA). Both of those worked okay.

8pm Sunday: Had timers set to record Desperate Housewives from KMGH (Satellite 8200) and Huff from SHO-HD. Have been getting a ZSR on the 8pm Sunday Huff for many weeks now. I don't know why I even keep trying - I always end up recording it again some other night. So slightly after 8pm, I checked in on the Huff recording to see if it was working. As usual, it wasn't. It said it was recording, but "Start Over" always brought me back to the live feed. So I unsuccessfully tried to stop it (with both the remote Stop button and Stop on the PVR menu) and then set a timer to record the 9pm showing of Huff, which for some reason was a repeat of the 8pm one. This was my only 9pm timer. I thought I had checked the DW recording, but maybe I didn't.

9pm Sunday: The 921 freaks out and just crashes. Turns itself off. I couldn't turn it on with the remote button or the front panel button. Although holding down the front panel button did make it reboot. When it came back up, it started recording the 9pm Huff (ten minutes into it).

From then until Tuesday night, everything seemed to work okay. Various timers fired off okay and I think I had only one ZSR (from HBO-HD). An OTA timer for KDVR-DT OTA (24 at 7pm Monday) worked okay, but nothing else was recording at the same time. I had two timers at 7pm Tuesday (Amazing Race on CBS-HD and Veronica Mars on WWOR 8105). I noticed VM was a rerun, so I successfully stopped it. I watched AR slightly delayed. At 8pm, I had a timer for Scrubs (KUSA 8202) which seemed to fire okay. Remember that recording of Desperate Housewives from Sunday night? After finishing AR, I decided to watch that. It wasn't a ZSR - it said 60 minutes - yet when I played it, all I got was the Black Screen. I tried various things with the remote (FF, etc.) and stopped it a few times and started playing it again - nothing. Somehow, the fact that I kept trying to play this Black Screen recording really messed up the 921 and it crashed (turned itself off) again. Again, the power buttons didn't work, but holding down the front panel button caused a reboot. When it finally came back up, all my recorded programs were GONE (about 8 hours or so worth), including the Scrubs it was in the middle of recording. But the timers were all still there. That night, a timer for the Daily Show (11pm, CMDY 107) failed to fire, but some other things on Tuesday night and Wednesday day fired okay.
(Lesson learned: If you get a Black Screen Recording (BSR), delete it immediately(?) and definitely don't keep trying to play it!)

Wednesday night was another Hell Night. I had a timer for Lost (KMGH 8200) at 7pm that worked okay. I had timers at 8pm for Alias (KMGH 8200) and Point Pleasant (KDVR-DT OTA). From here my memory gets a little foggy, clouded by anger. PP was definitely not recording correctly (I think it had the Black Screen), so I kept trying to stop it (both methods) and restart it manually. This also somehow messed up Alias, which it said was now stopped, but I think it was still actually recording it, as I did end up with a small recording of it from the time period it said it wasn't recording. I restarted the Alias recording and it got the rest of the show okay. However, I couldn't get it to record PP. It kept saying it was recording it - red dot in the PVR menu - but it really wasn't, as I couldn't trick play on it or start over from the beginning. I tried stopping and restarting it several times. This all caused a number of Unknown Recorded Events in the PVR menu, most of which were ZSRs, but I think some were actually Black Screens. I ended up just watching the rest of PP live. I think I had a 9pm timer on an SD satellite channel that also failed to fire. I eventually ended up unplugging the 921 for 15 minutes. I was ready to fling the thing at the wall. On Wednesday night, it was sure acting like it just could not record two things at once. Saw some of that on Tuesday as well. And it really doesn't seem to like it when you stop a (HD?) recording in progress, especially if something else is recording at the same time.

Miraculously (maybe because of the 15 minute power cord reboot), everything worked fine on Thursday and Friday night. All timers fired off okay, including a bunch of OTA ones on Thursday night (KUSA-DT). Friday night I had multiple same-time timers set, including one on CBS-HD, and they all worked.

Either Tuesday night or Wednesday night, I did the Hard Disk Test a few times. Each time, it only took a couple of minutes to run and said everything was okay. I've also had a few of the other usual problems this week, like some buttons on the remote not working (usually SD/HD and Power), which is always fixed by a reboot. Also, two instances of jittery video on recorded events, one of which was fixed by a reboot. I think the other one was an actual problem with the satellite feed, as only the second half of the recorded program was messed up (after the screen went dark for several seconds). It actually looked more like a compression problem than the usual jumpy video. Also been getting more of the brief audio/video dropouts this week, when I actually hadn't seen hardly any of those since L211. Caller ID is extremely sporadic.

I hope this helps the developers. That's as much detail as I can remember. Man, this week had me _seriously_ looking at DirecTv.

DVR921, purchased 8/16/04.
Dish 500 Twin (110/119), Dish 300 Dual (61.5), Two SW-21 switches
Boot: 140B
Flash: F052
SW: L211HECD-N


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

Flasshe said:


> I hope this helps the developers. That's as much detail as I can remember. Man, this week had me _seriously_ looking at DirecTv.


Flasshe, I hope that the developers know how to power on the 921. This has got to be software vs.driver(s) clash.


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## Tom in Ohio (Sep 25, 2004)

Lost it all - me too, including BLUE 

I lost all recorded programs and timers about three weeks ago. Back in early December I lost the blue color component of my output and when the lost data I just assumed my receiver was dying a slow death. I have since, after many hours on the phone (mostly waiting on hold) with service techs, received a new receiver. I have not yet installed it because I'm considering putting it on eBay before it becomes a "used" receiver. 

This whole Dish Network experience has been an unmitigated rip-off. I'm amazed Dish is willing to take the PR hit without offering 921 owners some compensation. My retailer won't rerturn my calls asking out of my contract. That's despite the fact he told me the 921 has USB functionality and an HD off-air programming. He was uninformed about the 921 at the time. I apparently have two alternatives, one being the abovementioned eBay sale of the "new" 921 and either paying the cancellation fee of $200 or paying the monthly fee for another 9 months. Or I can hook up the 921 again and suffer through. 

Any advice... anybody? Please help me with this decision. 

Tom in Ohio


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

Tom in Ohio said:


> Lost it all - me too, including BLUE
> 
> Any advice... anybody? Please help me with this decision.
> 
> Tom in Ohio


Tom, 
I have two 921's, and as you can see from my posts, I have problems with them. I've had a 921 since July 2004. Suffering loss of DVR events is the most upsetting to me. It has only happened once and only to one receiver. The bugs like ZSR's, Jitters, and some of the others are annoying and do cause frustration levels to increase. I had considered scrapping E*. I'm going to stick it out as I still feel they will make 921 progress, however SLOW. D* has it's problems too, but I monitor the HR 10-250 thread and see there are considerably less problems reported. Our local cable company, in my opinion, sucks. I am going to try and get the most out of my 921's and I will upgrade to better products if and when necessary. It is hard to believe that the people who work on the 921 software improvements are not making better progress. At least we have Mark L. and others who do contribute to this site. For what it is worth, I hope this helps you.

John


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## MrJ (Mar 13, 2004)

Tonight my luck ran out. I've never had a ZSR. The only problem I've had recently is when selecting Start Over and nothing happens (lock up, put in standby, turn back on, everything's ok). I tried to play an episode of Inuyasha from a couple days ago (Weekly timer at 12:30am on TOON 176). All I got was a black screen. I couldn't do anything. STOP showed STOP on the screen, but then didn't do anything. Pressing the power button put it in standby, and pressing it again went back to live TV. The show still had an arrow next to it in the DVR menu. Odd. So I tried to play the recording again. Black screen. Then I tried rebooting the 921, thinking it might be something that's fixed by a reboot, and tried to play again. Black screen. I waited. The buttons didn't work at all anymore. Rebooted... OVER 100 HOURS LOST. I couldn't even recording anything new (they were "unknown recorded event" ZSR's). And I couldn't delete the new timer I created to test... said it was in use. So I edited the end time to one minute later, waited, deleted the ZSR's, and pulled the plug. After letting the 921 rest for several minutes I plugged it in. It immediately began recording the timer that was supposed to fire at that time, but sadly the new recording was the only thing in the list.


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## sledhead 700 (Apr 27, 2004)

I have the same problem with my 921. I set a timer and when it is time to fire I do not see the red light come on. When I go to the DVR list I see a "unknown recorded event" 0 sec recording and the channel name after the number is PTV. I set timers for OTA, HD And SD stations both dish and OTA. All have the same issue. If I hit record when a program comes on I can record it fine. This only happens when I set a timer. This started last weekend. I went to view a show that was recorded and got a black screen could not do anything so "hold down on power button to reset" . After the reset I go back to the DVR screen and ALL of my recording are gone! Talked to CSR tried manual timer (2min) same result not timer. With her on the phone I went to the 0 sec record of the timer she had me set it is displayed as "unknown recorded event" when I select it I get a second screen and I see 3 programs listed the one she asked me to record and two programs I lost listed like this.

Some Like It Hot (-33749 min)
News ( 120 min)
Joey ( 33925 min)

If I select any of these programs it is a black screen (Menu gets me out of the Black screen) When I went back into the "unknown recorded event" again I do not see the 3 programs listed.

Tried all the reset...Power button, plug, smart card. None fix the problem. 
Some one was supposed to call me back. One week latter no call.

I can get some timers to fire now but it is sporadic at best.


Dave


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## PittsbuRgh R (Jan 22, 2005)

Nothing I tried ever seemed to fix the contining problems with my 921 receiver after the black screen and loss of all programs. Dish sent me a replacement receiver late last week (after several calls to technical support) and now I can finally record programs again (and be pretty certain that they will record for now).


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## farmingboy (Feb 9, 2005)

I have had a 501 for nearly 3 years. It had some problems in the past including losing all dvr events, but getting an uninterruptible power supply solved most problems. It is very easy to use and I have never had to look in the manual or call for technical support. I really like it and it has worked flawlessly for the last 2 1/2 years.

But after 1 day of "owning" this 921, I knew it was total junk. The software is completely different, though there is nothing necessarily wrong with that, it is vastly inferior to the 501. The text is jagged and the menus are ugly. Impromptu recording is not nearly as easy as the 501. After you record things, it is listed as "unknown" and is hard to delete and mixed up with DVR timers. Changing channels can be painfully slow. It locks up easily. The software is generally the most unintuitive garbage I've ever seen and very buggy. 2 tuners? Can't figure it out.... Don't want to figure it out. This thing is a total embarrassment. Thankfully Dish is sending a prepaid shipping box to send it back. For those Dish customers who have used a quaility DVR, please speak out on how bad the 921 is. If this is the flagship of Dish receivers, the fleet will soon run aground.

P.S. I'm keeping the 811 (doesn't record but has good 501-like software) . And AEI (Dish's default installer in the upper midwest), are total buffoons, and have very stinky feet.


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## JPC (Feb 8, 2005)

I'm a new 921 owner and I must admit that threads like these make me afraid to fire it up. I realize that this forum's purpose is to share knowledge and offer solutions to 921 users and that it's also a means to vent frustration. Based upon that, it's no surprise that there aren't many posts praising the 921. 

In a effort to keep the 921's failure rate in prospective, I would like to know how many are actually out there, and how many have been replaced as a last resort. 

Many companies will refuse to offer this information, especially if it's unfavorable, but there's no harm in asking. 

This question would probably best be answered by a DISH representative, but if anyone else feels that they have some Fairly accurate numbers, please share.

Thanks
JP


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

JP - there's no way that Dish would or will ever release that information. I do know that the number of 921s in the public's hands now number in the tens of thousands, though (can't divulge my source for that one).


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## JPC (Feb 8, 2005)

That's about what I figured; perspective kept in check. (Until it's me with the problem, of course.)

Thanks Mark
JP


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## bnam (Nov 25, 2004)

Since Dish charges DVR fees -- and if that capability is impaired when malfunctions on the 921 delete out recordings, it only seems fair that in addition to replacing hte unit, Dish refund the DVR fee. Charging customers for a feature that does not work reliably is not right.
B


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