# Anyone having 3-4 Sec. Audio Dropouts?



## TBarclay (Mar 24, 2002)

I don't know if this started after the last software upgrade or before, but it didn't hit me until recently that I've been experiencing situations where the audio disappears for 3 to 4 seconds and then comes back. I never had this problem the first 4 or 5 months I had the 921. It happens on live programs and playing back recordings. Not sure if its only on SD or if it happens on HD as well -- I just know that it's happened about once or twice a day when watching stuff on the 921. Anyone else experience this?
Boot: 140B
Flash: F052
SW: L211HECD-N


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

I occasionally get momentary dropouts (1-2 seconds), but never as long as 4 seconds. And mine are almost all watching previously recorded material. I don't recall getting dropouts watching "live".


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## JM Anthony (Nov 16, 2003)

Mark Lamutt said:


> I occasionally get momentary dropouts (1-2 seconds), but never as long as 4 seconds. And mine are almost all watching previously recorded material. I don't recall getting dropouts watching "live".


I got my 921 back in May and my experience is similar to Mark's.


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## Mike D-CO5 (Mar 12, 2003)

Get them quite often on recorded things . Never now when it is going to happen. It is quite annoying, especially on a recorded hd event. I also get it sometimes on ota digital channels but I don't think this is related to Dish but to a drop in the digital signal from the ota station.


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## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

I've had experiences where the 921 seems to get into some mode where it just dumps the audio for a second or so every 30-60 seconds, even when watching "live" material without additional delay. Not sure what causes this, but unplugging the 921 and plugging it back in to force a cold reboot seems to fix the issue.


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## AVJohnnie (Jul 27, 2004)

For me this occurs with recorded SD content on average every 20 to 30 minutes for maybe a second or two in duration. Sometimes it's accompanied by a miniscule amount of video breakup (pixilation.) It also happens when using the trick-play buffer on SD content (which I assume uses the same rendering mechanism). I’ve never seen it happen with HD or “Live” SD content. Didn’t have this issue prior to L211.

John


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## HailScroob (Aug 3, 2004)

Exactly what John said.


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## Jim Parker (Aug 12, 2003)

I've had this problem since I got my 921 on December 31, 2003. I just thought that it was due to over compression on the Dish signal, but I could be wrong. If it is over compression, we should all see it at the same time (except for transponders that carry the local stations of course). If anybody is interested in finding out, we could post the show and time that it occurs and see if it happens to everybody.


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## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

Over-compression is usually observed on the video, and tends to cause softness, mosaics, or blotchiness in the image. Even if the audio portion of the signal was over-compressed (which it's usually not, since this provides very little savings), this doesn't cause audio drop-outs; the audio might be indistinct or not sound very dynamic, but it won't be gone.


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## Rovingbar (Jan 25, 2005)

I noticed this twice tonight while watching CSI live on local HD OTA. I was recording the program so my wife can watch it later. The sound dropped out about a second each time. Just one or two words were cut off. I skipped back and the audio played fine. So in my case, I don't think it was compression.

Now that I think about it, I was recording 2 channels, one OTA HD, the other SAT SD.

Jeff


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## Rovingbar (Jan 25, 2005)

It seems I spoke too soon. I just went through the program again and found that one of the audio dropouts is in the recording. In case anyone else recorded the show, it happened at 15:08 remaining in my recording when two CSIs are discussing a 'recycled love token' just before a cut to the burbs. (Hopefully that phrase is suitably spoiler free yet specific enough to check another recording.)

Well, I hope this helps.

Jeff


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## Jim Parker (Aug 12, 2003)

Every time I have skipped back to before a sound drop out, the drop out repeated, so it is recorded that way. As I understand how the DRV works, it spools everything to the disk, then plays that back, so we are always watching a "recorded" show but only delayed for a fraction of a second.

Rovingbar: I have not watched CSI yet, so thanks for not spoiling it.  

As Slordak points out, it is probably not over compression, but it still could be a problem in the Dish data stream that is causing problems for the 921. I don't have a clue what it could be, this is just speculation on my part. My 510 doesn't do this, so I am assuming that it is 921 related.

I see 4 general areas that could be causing the problem:
1. 921 hardware
2. 921 software
3. Dish data stream
4. A combination of 2 and 3.

It happens on both "talking heads" and when the camera is panning, so it is not a problem of the hardware being over worked. Buggy software? Very possible given all of the other problems this software has. Data stream only? Then the other models should see it also. I'm betting on 4, but have no proof if it.

What we need is examples of it happening to channels that we all see. This would mean the national channels, not the locals on Dish or OTA locals. Most of what I record is the locals, so I have not had any good examples yet.

EDIT
Rovingbar
I thought about what you said a bit more. Since it dropped out on a OTA local for you, that signal never went thru the Dish data stream. That means the problem is confined to the 921.

I don't have any OTA locals here so I missed the implications of what you said.

Aren't we supposed to get a new video codec in the next version of the software? Maybe that will help. How?  Beats me, but I can always hope.  

One thing that I've noticed is that the audio drops out first, and the video may or may not get some pixalization, but if it does, it is always at the end of the audio drop out. The longer the audio drop out, the greater the chance of pixalization and the more severe the pixalization. A 1 second drop out usually does not have pixalization, but a 3 second drop out almost always does.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Be careful lumping in OTA broadcasts with this because there are a lot of things that can go wrong at the local station level to cause video glitches and audio dropouts in OTA broadcasts that are completely unrelated to the 921.


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## madbrain (Dec 10, 2004)

I get a lot of 1 - 2s dropouts as well on HD material, from Dish . I have recorded very little from OTA so far due to lack of EPG (I'm not about to pay for Dish locals).


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## Jim Parker (Aug 12, 2003)

Mark Lamutt said:


> Be careful lumping in OTA broadcasts with this because there are a lot of things that can go wrong at the local station level to cause video glitches and audio dropouts in OTA broadcasts that are completely unrelated to the 921.


True, but if we are seeing the same effect on OTA, HD and SD, the odds are that there is one root cause for the majority of the occurances.

"The race is not always to the swiftest, but that's the way to bet." 

Anyway, I am speculating on the hopes that we might stumble onto something worth while.

There is one way to determine if it is the local station or the 921. If anybody has (could hook up) an OTA digital signal directly into their TV, compare how often it happens versus the OTA signal into the 921. My Hitachi TV has a HD tuner, but I don't have any OTA digital signals here.

Yeah, I know, that means that you would have to watch OTA live with all of the commericals. Shudder! :eek2:

I hope this does get fixed, as it is damn annoying!


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## Michael P (Oct 27, 2004)

I watched an older recording of MSNBC (Dish delilvered) last night and there was a 2 second audio dropout. The picture remained stable during the audio dropout.

I have had several live cases of audio dropout with video pixillation, usualy on my RSN during NBA games. I attributed the signal breakup to the "backhaul" signal since I checked my signal levels off 119 and it was steady and strong. This also happened on my DT OTA station when the same team was playing on WUAB.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

I get two types of audio dropout. Note that I am sat-only, no OTA.

On SD recordings, it is ALWAYS followed (in 3-4 seconds) by pixellation. Therefore, it's "just" a dropout. Likely cause is a flaw in the data stream, cause unknown - possibly (very likely?) the 921.

On HD, live or recorded, the audio dropouts are due to 921 DD output flaws. I use optical hookup. My receiver (which is 100% flawless otherwise), goes mute for several seconds to as much as a minute - I think. I don't know for sure because my fingers have learned to pause/play instantly when it happens - which is often. That always returns it to normal.


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## madbrain (Dec 10, 2004)

On SD with the audio dropouts I also get video pixelation.
On HD it's usually just the audio .

The only way to tell if it is the 921 would be to record the same SD program with another receiver, and then watch it on the 921 . If you get a dropout, check it on the other receiver to see if it dropped out too ...

I have a 508 so I suppose I could do that. But I use my 921 almost only for HD, and the 508 for SD . The 921 hard drive is too small even for HD alone. They need a terabyte hard drive in that thing :-(


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## Bradtothebone (Aug 11, 2003)

With the 921, I get dropouts (audio only), on both live and recorded HD, both Dish and OTA. The duration is never more than a couple of words - probably never more than a second. I have never seen any pixelization during or after. In contrast, with my 6000, if there is a dropout it almost always affects both video and audio.

Brad


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## Jim Parker (Aug 12, 2003)

madbrain said:


> The only way to tell if it is the 921 would be to record the same SD program with another receiver, and then watch it on the 921 . If you get a dropout, check it on the other receiver to see if it dropped out too ...


About a year ago, I recorded a couple of hours with my 921 and 510 just to check that, and the 510 did not have the dropouts.


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## homer1 (Dec 27, 2004)

I got a movie the other day in HD. When I played it back, the audio dropouts were so bad I deleted the show. If this has been going on for a year, as posted earlier, I would think the problem would be corrected by now? Either way, I experience it myself and it is not good.


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## garyhesq (Nov 5, 2004)

This is a new problem for me. It just started last week and I get many drop outs during a recorded half hour show. I hit the back button and it's still there so it's recording it that way. It never use to do this this bad.


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## William_K_F (Apr 20, 2002)

I get 1-2 second dropouts on playback of recorded shows.


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## Mike123abc (Jul 19, 2002)

I have had these dropouts for quite a while. They are recorded this way. I have been watching for quite a while to try to see if it is a pattern. As to when they happen. It just seems that the 921 for some reason every now and then gets busy and drops some of the data.


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## David K (Nov 27, 2004)

I noticed the same thing on CSI OTA. I'm also getting the audio drops on Dish channels as well, USA etc.


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## tecman (Dec 18, 2004)

Also got 1-2 second audio drop outs for the first time on my 921 last night watching CBS HD live. No drop outs on CBS SD local. Also started getting frequent audio drop outs on my 501 after installer replaced the Legacy setup and added the DP34 switch, DP dual and twin. Don't know if there is a connection but the timing is interesting.

I do not have OTA.


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## Jim Parker (Aug 12, 2003)

OK, I had two dropouts during the first showing of Battlestar Galactica, SCIFI channel Friday night. The first was about 30 seconds into the show during the exterior shot showing the fleet. It lasted about 2 seconds with minor video pixalization. The second was at the end of when the chief was being questioned by the investigating Sargent and she says "I will ask you one more time..." .

If anybody watched the show, please post whether you did or did not have the dropout.


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## Bradtothebone (Aug 11, 2003)

We had a lot of dropouts during the first 15 minutes of "Numb3rs" on CBS (KCTV-5 OTA in Kansas City) on Friday, 2/11. We were watching the show as it was being recorded. The difference, this time, was that we DID get pixelization (a short burst) after each audio dropout. As the show continued, we got fewer and fewer dropouts, until they disappeared completely.

Brad


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## Jim Parker (Aug 12, 2003)

It sounds, so to speak, like the 522 has a similar problem. The 522 gets out of synch after the sound drop out, which the 921 does not. Perhaps there is one root problem.

http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=38720


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## Mike D-CO5 (Mar 12, 2003)

Dish software writers:sure:


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## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

So do we know if Dish has this down as an official bug (i.e. is it in their list of items which eventually need to be fixed), or is this currently being treated as a "You must've just lost your signal for a second. Continuously. Every x many minutes. Regardless of weather conditions or signal strength"?

I personally believe there's something wrong with the 921 which causes it to start doing this. I never see this on my 508, even though it's hooked up to the same dish and I often watch the same channels.


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## Jim Parker (Aug 12, 2003)

Another thread raised the possibility that it was due to an almost full HDD. This has not been my experience, as my HDD is usually 1/3 to 1/2 full.


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## Jon Spackman (Feb 7, 2005)

Same here, i get the audio dropouts and have never had more than a 1/2 full hard drive. I feel weird and delete stuff just to keep it pretty empty.


Jon


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## Mike123abc (Jul 19, 2002)

I have about 100 hours of free space on the disk and get the dropouts.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

Well, that blows my theory - which means there's hope for a fix, because if I'd been right, they never would've fixed it.


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## Skates (Apr 15, 2004)

The simple answer is, YES, I'm getting them all over the place.


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## ntexasdude (Jan 23, 2005)

I just noticed the audio dropouts last night for the first time - after L212. They seem to last 1-2 seconds and not ever 3-4. They do seem to be accompanied by some slight pixellation. It seems to me like a momentary loss of data stream like Simon mentioned.


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## bbomar (Oct 18, 2004)

Guess I'm not very observant since I had not noticed audio dropouts but
I mentioned it to my wife and she had seen them. She showed me a
dropout on a recorded program. It was only a second or two and right
afterward there was very brief pixelization along one row of the picture.
This was a SD program.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

Well, one thing I'd forgotten about until now is that the dropouts are repeatable.

IOW, the flaw in the data stream is on the HDD.


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## Mike123abc (Jul 19, 2002)

It should also be noted that the dropout is new to the 921. 4+ months or so ago this problem did not exist. It always is audio dropout followed by a bit of pixelization for me, I have old recordings from last summer/fall that are flawless.


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## 4HiMarks (Jan 21, 2004)

I've been seeing the dropouts pretty much since the beginning. They seem to get more frequent the fuller the HDD is. I try not to let it get too full, but I'm usually below 10 hours of HD. I've seen it on OTA, sat HD, and sat SD. It is definitely repeatable. 

I have a second ATSC tuner hooked up so I can watch one program in HD while recording another. I have a Samsung HLN507W DLP set. That model year has a shared audio input on the DVI and VGA inputs, so when I switch, there's always a short period when I have audio from the 921 and video from the other box (LG LST-3510A). I've noticed there is a delay of several seconds for the signal from the 921. With my older boxes (e.g. 501) I attributed the delay to the time needed to capture the signal, encode it, bounce it off the satellite, and decode it. But I'm seeing the same delay with OTA programs that don't go through the satellite, so it must be reading off the HDD. Anyone can test this too - call up a friend with another signal source and both of you tune in the same game. (March Madness will provide lots of opportunity). He will see plays before you do. 

-Chris


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

4HiMarks said:


> I've been seeing the dropouts pretty much since the beginning. They seem to get more frequent the fuller the HDD is. I try not to let it get too full, but I'm usually below 10 hours of HD. I've seen it on OTA, sat HD, and sat SD. It is definitely repeatable.


Me too. Full HDD was what my theory was kindof based on - but we're getting too many reports from people with plenty of space. ......

UNLESS, the stupid Linux (based on 30-year old technology) file system simply reuses fragmented space and doesn't do proper read-aheads.

Note that your test is only valid when the other tester is an E* NON-DVR user. Any other source (cable, D*, OTA) is going to have a different amount of delay.


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## passing_ships (Aug 1, 2004)

SimpleSimon said:


> Me too. Full HDD was what my theory was kindof based on - but we're getting too many reports from people with plenty of space. ......
> 
> UNLESS, the stupid Linux (based on 30-year old technology) file system simply reuses fragmented space and doesn't do proper read-aheads.
> 
> Note that your test is only valid when the other tester is an E* NON-DVR user. Any other source (cable, D*, OTA) is going to have a different amount of delay.


Nope - plenty of space on my disk.


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## 4HiMarks (Jan 21, 2004)

SimpleSimon said:


> Note that your test is only valid when the other tester is an E* NON-DVR user. Any other source (cable, D*, OTA) is going to have a different amount of delay.


No. I think you misunderstand the test. Live OTA doesn't need to bounce off the satellite. Therefore if I am watching an OTA program and my friend is watching the same program, there should be no delay. But if there is, the 921 must be doing a write and immediate read it off the hard disk. So even if we see the dropouts/pixelations on live material, it could still be the disk.

SInce you don't have OTA, you wouldn't see it though.
-Chris


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## Seb (Jan 11, 2005)

I've seen the drop outs as well. I have ONLY ever seen them on CSI:Miami or CSI:NY using the OTA when the broadcast is in 5.1 mode. If I skip back, or the show was recorded the dropouts also appear. They're for a fraction to a full second ( IE: 1 word ) every 30 or so seconds. 

Interesting enough when the commercials come on the OTA transmision is not in 5.1, and I do NOT get the drop outs. Only if the audio is 5.1. Also in some cases after a few minutes the dropouts dissapear. 

I have a sony receiver that displays the current audio mode and when the drop out occurs the receiver indicates no input. It's actually fun to watch as it has a nice bright BLUE LED lit up when it's decoding a 5.1 stream, and when the hiccup occurs the light blinks off for a split second.


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## Bradtothebone (Aug 11, 2003)

I think you're right on the 5.1 dropouts only. For me, it's almost always on OTA, DD5.1 programs. We watched an episode of Numb3ers from 2/25/05 last night that started out so bad it was unwatchable. We almost gave up on it, but after skipping the first set of commercials, it never dropped out again. This program was absolutely the worst we've seen - the dropouts were every few seconds, for anything from a couple of words to several seconds in length each, with bursts of pixelization after every one.

Brad


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## AVJohnnie (Jul 27, 2004)

I think there is a possible cause/effect relationship between the “periodic audio dropouts /w pixilations” we’re getting and Eldon deciding (commencing with the L211 release) to modify the 921's disk write / read-behind algorithms (data piping methodology, if you will.) There was mention of this change shortly after L211 hit (I think by DonL, but don’t recall for sure) – I don’t think anything has been said about that change since.

That's my theory --- If you don't like it, I have others... :lol:

John


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

4HiMarks: I see what you mean - I didn't quite state my condition correctly.


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## madbrain (Dec 10, 2004)

I am seeing longer audio dropouts with L212 . Got several 4 s in length, on both OTA and satellite HD . It's becoming really hard to watch recordings.
My HD is almost constantly full, but it always was with L211 as well .


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## lujan (Feb 10, 2004)

Last night I got audio dropouts every few seconds (every 15 to 20 seconds) on the George Lopez show on the local ABC HD OTA station. I was using the pause function for a few minutes to do something else and then came back and played it back and that's when the audio dropouts started. I couldn't stand it any longer so I switched over to the OTA that's connected directly to the TV using the Antenna input and the audio dropouts did not occur. This tells me that the audio dropouts are definitely a 921 problem and not a station issue.


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## cclement (Mar 22, 2004)

I just started to notice this last night, while watching CSI:Miami and The Amazing Race, both were off the hard drive and from the CBS-NY feed. The video would slow down to about half speed while the audio dropped, if I skipped back, the video would play regular speed and the audio would appear, most of the time, but not always. Very annoying! I never had this problem before, and I really don't like the video slowing down. My hard drive is only half full and I leave the 921 in stand by all night and day, only on at night.


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## tm22721 (Nov 8, 2002)

I have had my 921 for over a year and only for the past few months have been getting short audio dropouts sometimes with video pixelization, about every 1/2 hour on the average with both live and recorded SD.

I thought it was because of my Superdish installation last November but I have checked my signal level and it's always fine. This thread now convinces me that there is something more to this problem...


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## BobMurdoch (Apr 24, 2002)

Hey, when you are frustrated by ZSRs, 2 seconds of lost audio is only a minor annoyance. I barely even notice it anymore.


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

I guess I'll repeat it here too as there have been many threads about audio dropouts. What I've said in other threads is that I have observed these audio dropouts on V*, D* as well as E* lately. Somehow I don't think the 921 software is causing this global issue.  Recently, I had the same dvr recording going on with the 921 and the HDTIVO but was watching Voom on the same channel. When I began to get audio dropouts on VOOM, I decided to check the recordings on the tivo and the 921. At the same place in the program the dropouts appeard. This was proof to me that the source of this occurance of dropouts came from the network uplink.


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## skassan (Jan 10, 2004)

Last night I was having audio drop-outs and occassional stuttering video while watching an OTA recording of Numbers. Just for kicks, I pressed skip back a couple of times after it occurred. The second or third time through the trouble spot, it played flawlessly. So it seems everything is recorded properly; it's just not being played back correctly.


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

Thanks Scott- There may be more than one audio dropout issue confronting us.


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