# DirecTV Tivo's freezing up/rebooting in NC



## rawilson (Oct 9, 2007)

For about a week, my R10 Tivo powered DirecTV DVR has been freezing at least a couple of times a day. In the past few days, it will rarely run for more than an hour before freezing up or spontaneously rebooting itself. I assumed it's a hardware issue until I did a search on DirecTV's support site. I found the following thread where multiple others in North Carolina are seeing the exact same problem. Could the freezing be somehow caused by an issue in the stream/streams from the local networks? Sounds unlikely. Is anybody outside NC been having this problem?

http://forums.directv.com/pe/action/forums/displaysinglethread?rootPostID=10382104


----------



## Lee L (Aug 15, 2002)

I am in NC and my 2 HR10-250s are locked up pretty much every time I try to use them lately. I only use them for backup recordings, Picture in Picture and to watch backlogged shows, but it is pretty frustrating to say the least.


----------



## drill (Jun 28, 2006)

how bizarre.

i have an HR10-250 that has been working fine (i think it has rebooted once since it upgraded to 6.3f).

my mom who lives down east has been complaining to me about her SD series 2 directivo (i think its a philips R7000 or something like that) has been rebooting and locking up in the past few weeks.

i went to her place this weekend to visit, and took my HR10-250 in an attempt to isolate the problem. her's was indeed locking up and rebooting ... happened about 10 times total over the 3 day weekend. 

of note, my HR10-250, which worked fine in raleigh started doing the same thing. it rebooted all throughout the weekend too. 

i noticed on at least 2 occasions they both rebooted at exactly the same time. but other times, one would reboot/lock up and the other wouldn't.

they both were connected to UPS's, so it wasn't a power hit.

i had concluded it must be a problem with the dish, dish grounding, or the wiring to the dish, but now i'm wondering exactly what is going on.

fwiw, she has an old oval dual LNB setup (only sees 101 sat). i have a 5 LNB setup for my HR20. other than wiring, that's the only difference.

very strange.


----------



## drill (Jun 28, 2006)

ooh ... i just thought of the BIG difference. when in raleigh, i don't watch the SD locals on my HR10-250. i ALWAYS only record/watch OTA HD for the locals. while at my mom's, i was watching the SD locals since it was too far away for OTA. now i feel it might be related to the SD locals. i will try watching some SD locals on the HR10-250 here in raleigh to see if the HR10-250 starts acting up.


----------



## jdoug (Aug 16, 2006)

I live in Raleigh and am having this problem with HR10-250. My wife only uses it occasionally and she says lately whenever she goes to use it it is locked up and has to be reset.


----------



## texasbrit (Aug 9, 2006)

There is definitely a problem with the TiVos and the Raleigh SD locals (certainly with channels 5 and 50, which apparently use the same equipment).


----------



## rawilson (Oct 9, 2007)

I booted my R10 (again) last night....turned off all scheduled recordings on local channels and changed off the locals on both tuners. Amazingly, no freezes or reboots for the few hours I watched. Have not been able to watch that long without a lockup for about a week.


----------



## drill (Jun 28, 2006)

hmm ... my experiments aren't going as expected. are people still having problems with RDU locals causing reboots/lockups?

i haven't had any issues using the following methodology on my HR10-250:
1) setup a manual 9 hour recording from 8AM to 5PM on a direcTV SD local
2) setup a 5 minute recording from 8AM to 8:05AM on HBO-HD (70)

i have suggestions recording turned off, and i have no other ecordings setup during the day. so the 1 tuner records a local SD channel all day, and the other tuner stays tuned to HBOHD all day. i would have expected to get reboots/lockups during the days on the problem SD channels. reboots would show up as multiple recordings for the 9hr recording and the 30sec skip would be reset. lockups would be obvious.

i recorded:
monday NBC 17
tuesday WRAZ Fox 50
wednesday WRAL CBS 5

no reboots or hangs so far. WTVD 11 ABC is tomorrow.


----------



## Lee L (Aug 15, 2002)

So, we were watching some PIP basketball yesterday afternoon just fine. I went to do it again that night and the machine was locked up hard. The only difference was that it started trying to record The Simpsons on RD50 at 8:00.


----------



## JACKHAWK (Nov 20, 2007)

I made move two weeks ago & got the new slim line dish plus HR20. Since then, my HR10 started lighting up the record lite, but was not recording. Now for the last 3 days it has been freezing up on a daily basis.

Any ideas?


----------



## drill (Jun 28, 2006)

fwiw, i had been running my experiment for about 2 weeks choosing different local channels each day to record, and had 1 reboot while recording on WRAL channel 5. on 4/2 i started running the experiment M-F recording WRAL every day. no reboots/lockups for 6 days of recording. then yesterday (thursday 4/10), at 8:30 am it rebooted. at 9:30 it locked up. i restarted it and went to work. when i got home, i could tell it had rebooted twice after i restarted it (based on the number of partial recordings), and the tivo was locked up. no telling how many more reboots/lockups i would have gotten had i been there to restart it. this morning i checked before leaving for work. it rebooted sometime between 8 and 8:30 AM. it was locked up when i checked it at 9:30. i restarted it, and i will check it when i get home. but whatever the problem is/was with the SD locals in the raleigh area, its back.


----------



## jrwinter (Sep 2, 2004)

texasbrit said:


> There is definitely a problem with the TiVos and the Raleigh SD locals (certainly with channels 5 and 50, which apparently use the same equipment).


I live in central california and i am having the same problem everyday!


----------



## texasbrit (Aug 9, 2006)

jrwinter said:


> I live in central california and i am having the same problem everyday!


Yours is probably a disk problem; an impending hard disk failure has exactly the same symptoms which is why analyzing the problem is so difficult. The difference for the people in Raleigh is that you can link the failures directly to the local SD channels. If you never watch or record local SD, the failure does not occur.


----------



## rawilson (Oct 9, 2007)

Well, after things got better for a couple of weeks, our R10 is back to unusable. Can't get through an hour or so before it either hangs or reboots. Others in the Raleigh-Durham area are reporting the same thing again on the thread about this on the DirecTV technical forums. What do we have to do to get DirecTV to look into this problem?


----------



## Lee L (Aug 15, 2002)

I am having the issues again now also. Makes the HR10s next to useless. Luckily I am only using them for backup, but it sucks to need to use one and have to wait 10 minutes for a reboot.


----------



## jdoug (Aug 16, 2006)

Back for me as well.


----------



## texasbrit (Aug 9, 2006)

It's pretty clear it is some sort of datastream issue with RDU SD locals particularly WRAL. I know that DirecTV knows the issue exists and I assume they have passed it on to TiVo who write the software, and hopefully to WRAL.
WRAL had a data stream issue last year, just on one commercial.
Has anyone in RDU contacted WRAL to ask them if they do actually know about the problem?


----------



## ffnerd_44 (Apr 18, 2008)

I live in Apex (Raleigh area) and have had the freeze problem occurring numerous times over the last couple of weeks. I was thinking it was the hard drive on my HD sat. receiver, until tonight. My wife and I watch Survivor, CSI and Lost on Thurs. nights. We only had to record Survivor tonight (others were repeats), so to make sure I didn't miss it, I set up my HD receiver to record it as well as my SD receiver in our bonus room. Sure enough, the HD receiver crapped out at 27 minutes into the recording (8:27pm local time). So, we headed up to the bonus room to watch the balance of the show. And sure enough, the SD receiver froze up at the EXACT same point. I seriously don't think this was a coincidental hard drive failure on two separate units at EXACTLY THE SAME MOMENT. I'm really beginning to wonder if D* is sending some kind of updates to corrupt the old Tivo boxes as part of their planned obsolescence to get users to convert to NDS boxes. I've been holding off as long as possible from converting to the new DVRs from D* but I may have no choice now. Thoughts?


----------



## jmh139 (Aug 11, 2007)

Just my 2 cents...

I have two DirecTV Tivo units running an older version (6.2a) of the OS that has been zippered. I am in Cary and have had no lock ups at all for the year or so I have been here.

I also have two HR20's and they are fine if you are thinking of upgrading. It is not a Tivo, but it is pretty good at this point.


----------



## Anita in NC (Apr 18, 2008)

I went to watch Survivor and the entire thing was froze up at 27 minutes into the show. Also, had multiple freeze ups as I tried to watch and record ER.

This evening has been most frustrating.



ffnerd_44 said:


> I live in Apex (Raleigh area) and have had the freeze problem occurring numerous times over the last couple of weeks. I was thinking it was the hard drive on my HD sat. receiver, until tonight. My wife and I watch Survivor, CSI and Lost on Thurs. nights. We only had to record Survivor tonight (others were repeats), so to make sure I didn't miss it, I set up my HD receiver to record it as well as my SD receiver in our bonus room. Sure enough, the HD receiver crapped out at 27 minutes into the recording (8:27pm local time). So, we headed up to the bonus room to watch the balance of the show. And sure enough, the SD receiver froze up at the EXACT same point. I seriously don't think this was a coincidental hard drive failure on two separate units at EXACTLY THE SAME MOMENT. I'm really beginning to wonder if D* is sending some kind of updates to corrupt the old Tivo boxes as part of their planned obsolescence to get users to convert to NDS boxes. I've been holding off as long as possible from converting to the new DVRs from D* but I may have no choice now. Thoughts?


----------



## dbkelly (Sep 20, 2002)

ffnerd_44 and Anita, my HR10-250 froze at exactly 8:27pm tonight as well. There's no way this can be a HDD problem.

I'm running 6.3f


----------



## bernieport (Oct 4, 2007)

I am getting it on my HR10-250 several times a day in Apex. I thought the box was simply dying. I will contact DTV to add my complain to the list, but not sure what our next steps should be.....


----------



## skipw (Mar 20, 2008)

Same thing happened to mine. Came home and found it frozen at 8:27pm
And it just rebooted at 11:24pm. Instead of throwing the remote thru the TV, I called tech support. Of course she didn't show any problems in this area, and had me check signal strength and if it was plugged in firmly... I proceeded to tell her that the picture freezing on both receivers at the same exact time along with other confirmed people in the general area, pretty much points to something they are sending down to our receivers.
She was very nice and put an escalation on the trouble and said someone would call back within 72 hours. I don't expect a fix, but I would like to know if they are working on this or just hoping it goes away. We'll see.
I'll post back when I get an answer.

If your having problems, please call DTV and complain. If there is only a hand full of people calling in this problem, it's not going to get fixed. Call and call often.


----------



## rawilson (Oct 9, 2007)

The discussion is heating up over on the DirecTV technical support forum as well:

http://forums.directv.com/pe/action/forums/displaypost?postID=10382104


----------



## texasbrit (Aug 9, 2006)

I have posted this over at the DirecTV forum also. DirecTV is working with some of the affected users in the Raleigh-Durham area to try to track this problem down. I will post more info if/when I receive it.


----------



## ffnerd_44 (Apr 18, 2008)

Texasbrit, thanks for your part in bringing this to D* attention. I just got off the phone with D* (my first call about this) after bending the rep's ear for about 10 min. I've been with D* for 12 years and this is by far the worst issue I've had to deal with. Funny thing, the rep asked me at the end of the call if he "met my needs." I chuckled and said that I'd reserve my answer for when it gets resolved. I also told him that I would continue calling in daily, if I have to, until this gets resolved.


----------



## walters (Nov 18, 2005)

texasbrit said:


> I have posted this over at the DirecTV forum also. DirecTV is working with some of the affected users in the Raleigh-Durham area to try to track this problem down. I will post more info if/when I receive it.


Are they working with affected users outside Raleigh? I'm having this on a SD unit (R10) in South Florida. I've posted over there in hopes of being contacted, but is there a way for a user to initiate this?


----------



## mmash (Apr 23, 2008)

Has this finally been cleared up? It looks like my HR10 has not rebooted since Friday or Saturday - can't remember which - but it seems to have stopped on the locals...will keep you updated


----------



## jake14mw (Oct 5, 2007)

Did any of you people in NC have this problem in Sept/Oct? We here in CT had this same issue back then. The problem went away, and now it's back again. I don't think there is any question that it is something in the local channel data stream causing the issue. I called the two people that I know up here that have DTivos, and sure enough, they are experiencing the problems again. DirecTV/Tivo should know what causes the problem based on what they did for us up here in October.


----------



## rawilson (Oct 9, 2007)

jake14mw said:


> Did any of you people in NC have this problem in Sept/Oct? We here in CT had this same issue back then. The problem went away, and now it's back again. I don't think there is any question that it is something in the local channel data stream causing the issue. I called the two people that I know up here that have DTivos, and sure enough, they are experiencing the problems again. DirecTV/Tivo should know what causes the problem based on what they did for us up here in October.


I for one did not have the problem when it was happening in CT. I saw many posts to message boards about it. I assume it got resolved?

FWIW, DirecTV and/or Tivo have been monitoring my R10 for a few days now. I have not had my unit lock up or reboot (that I know of ) since the infamous Survivor hang last Thursday night. Not sure if they've fixed anything of not, but I'm pleased that they at least appear to be attempting to debug the problem.


----------

