# Directv RVU really slow and doesn't connect everytime



## ajonline (Jun 4, 2007)

I have a samsung rvu tv and when I power on the TV it takes quite of bit of time to connect to the RVU system and also sometimes the connection fails so I have to try again. Also when I browse channels and guides it is very slow as well. I hope that this gets better with a update of some sort but I can't justify paying $6 a month the same as if I would have a receiver here which would work better and not have issues. Is anyone else having connectivity issues and slow response time. I am getting a little frustrated to the point where I want to replace it with a receiver.


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## Beerstalker (Feb 9, 2009)

I have read complaints from a few people about the Samsung RVU TVs. You might want to check out this thread.

http://www.dbstalk.com/topic/197851-samsung-smart-tvs-issuesdiscussion/

Probably wouldn't be a bad idea to post your TV model number and firmware version, as well as what Genie version (HR34 I'm guessing) and what firmware is on the Genie.


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## ajonline (Jun 4, 2007)

I have the Samsung 32 inch led F series 2013 tv. Yes I have the genie hr34 model. A lot of times now I get location not authorized.


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## peds48 (Jan 11, 2008)

being discussed here as well

http://forums.directv.com/pe/action/forums/displaypost?postID=11225622&channelID=1&portalPageId=10472402


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## litzdog911 (Jun 23, 2004)

Does your Samsung HDTV have the latest firmware?


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## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

When it comes to the RVU TVs, the biggest problem is the way they are wired. I have one of these and have done a lot of play testing to see how I can improve things. 

First of all, if you are connecting via wireless or powerline, that is never going to work consistently. Even with the fastest connections, it's latency that will get you. There is this constant two-way stream of communication that needs to happen. It's frustrating because if you have a TV with built in wireless you would think it would work... it works for Netflix for example. But the simple fact is that wireless and powerline will disappoint you over the long run.

A lot of the DIYers out there will run cat5 or cat6 cable and this should, in theory, work very well. After all it's a gigabit connection in some cases, yadda yadda yadda. The issue is that the ethernet path isn't really designed for smooth transport, it's designed for accurate transport. You wouldn't care if you dropped one bit in a TV screen, it might be a momentary blip on the screen and your live moves on. But ethernet will try again to get a bit that it dropped. 

I'm not saying ethernet is the devil or that it can't work. I'm saying that if you are using inexpensive equipment for example, or the quality of the cable has degraded, there could be enough errors in the stream that it becomes an issue. Most of us don't have enterprise-level wiring in our homes. I sure don't. 

The only way that RVU is designed to work is to go coax to the TV location then use a DECA and power supply to translate that to ethernet to go into the TV. It's a little kludgy, that's true. You would like to be able to make it without that last translating piece, especially if it's a chunky white piece of plastic. But that's how it's designed. The MoCA stream that travels over coax is smoother than ethernet and that's important over long runs. 

Now, coax also has its problems. If you have too many splitters, if your single run length is over 150', if any port on a splitter isn't terminated or the terminator is broken, you could have issues. 

The final hurdle with coax is that it's hard to test; you either need a very expensive meter or knowledge of hidden menus that are hard to understand. However, there are some tutorials out there I can point you to if you would like that may help. 

It took me some time to understand what was really going on but my 2011 Samsung RVU TV is running well now. It never drops off the network and yes it is a little slow but that's CPU speed and not likely to change unless I buy a new TV.


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## RAD (Aug 5, 2002)

Stuart Sweet said:


> It took me some time to understand what was really going on but my 2011 Samsung RVU TV is running well now. It never drops off the network and yes it is a little slow but that's CPU speed and not likely to change unless I buy a new TV.


I have a 2012 RVU set and it's also slow to the point of being frustrating to use. I've tried both a 100Mbps wired ethernet connection and the DECA/coax connection and both perform the same, slow. Frankly, unless DIRECTV decides to lower the monthly set fee so it's not the same as a hardware client box I'd rather just spend the up front money and get the client. Performance is much better and you get a DIRECTV remote control to use which has the skip buttons on it, which the Samsung doesn't.

Stuart, I thought you said the 2013 model sets had much better RVU performance then prior year models?


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## djrobx (Jan 27, 2009)

Stuart Sweet said:


> The issue is that the ethernet path isn't really designed for smooth transport, it's designed for accurate transport. You wouldn't care if you dropped one bit in a TV screen, it might be a momentary blip on the screen and your live moves on. But ethernet will try again to get a bit that it dropped.


"Ethernet" does not have retry logic. You're describing TCP, a protocol that runs over the ethernet. If you want unreliable but timely data transmission over ethernet, you can use UDP. Ethernet is perfectly capable of "smooth" data delivery. In fact, this _must_ be true in this case, since you are converting from DECA to Ethernet before plugging into the RVU TV.

I think a better way of putting it is that DECA is the supported, tested, _known-good _configuration. Ethernet isn't the demon, it's the consumer routers of questionable quality. AT&T's techs recommend using ethernet instead of HPNA (their version of DECA) wherever possible for their IPTV service, but their configuration includes a router, so there aren't pieces of unknown gear in that setup.


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## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

Rad, in theory the 2013 TVs should be much faster, of course all I saw we're the prototypes. And djrobx, thanks for going the extra mile and explaining the difference between tcp and Ethernet more completely; I will admit that I oversimplified that because i didnt really feel it was central to the point that a MoCA cloud is streaming-optimized. 

As to the idea that Ethernet must be ok because the DECA goes Ethernet in the final leg... It's been discussed here before and if you want to be completely accurate, it's the topology of the Ethernet network that should take a lot of the blame for the smoothness of the transport; it's possible to do a smooth transport with Ethernet if you plan well, but are home networks planned well? When you convert from coax to Ethernet you are creating an isolated network between the DECA and the tv with only two nodes. Of course it's smooth. 

Of course none of that is the point, which is that these RVU TVs could be better designed, with more processor power, a better job coding the client software (that's on Samsung) and they could even build the coax connector to accept either an antenna or a directv coax line. 

That said, with an hr44 and 2011 tv, my performance is similar to normal performance with an hr34 and c31.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

There's no way wired ethernet is the source of RVU problems unless someone has damaged cables or connectors, or somehow has a device so old it doesn't support 100Mb ethernet. It should be simple to identify the source of the issues:

1) try the two devices with a single piece of coax running between them. If it still has problems, it is one device or the other (or your piece of coax, so try more than one)
2) if possible, try the two devices using only coax in your home between rooms, no DECA/CCK devices. If it didn't have problems with test #1, but does now, it is the coax/connectors or passive devices (splitters etc.) in the path
3) try streaming data between two PCs connected to the same switch the ethernet your TV and/or DECA/CCK is connected to. If they're relatively modern PCs they should sustain over 90Mb/sec. If so, your network is fine, any dropped packets due to error are close enough to zero to not matter

If all three tests pass, then I'd point the finger at the DECA/CCK devices. These are bridges between two very different types of network, and there are a lot of ways to poorly implement such a device. TCP/IP will cover up for some packet loss, perhaps RVU doesn't do as good of a job of that if uses its own underlying protocol (i.e., if its designers incorrectly thought they were smarter than the inventors of TCP/IP and all the accumulated wisdom of those who have improved it for the past 30 years) Latencies on an ethernet network are measured in microseconds. It is not responsible for RVU delays. It would be interesting to test the latency on an ethernet network that uses two DECA/CCK devices to run on a meter of coax. I would not be surprised to see this add 3 or 4 orders of magnitude to the observed latency.


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