# R15 - Issues with (1029/106C/10FA)



## Earl Bonovich

After receiving a few PM's and going through the other thread.
I have decided to make a dedicated ISSUE thread for this release.

So please... re-post any issues that you are having with one of these versions. And for the sake of clarrifications, please follow these rules:

You must have had the issue while one of these 4 software versions where installed:

R15-500 - 10FA
R15-300 - 105F/106C
R15-100 - 1029

Please include the following details:
-) The Model/Version of software you are on
-) If you have ever performed a full system format (and if you can remember when... great)
-) Details of the issue... If you where able to recreate (if so how), ect... more details the better

Please... just issues. Leave the discussions on other aspects of the release (including if it is "working" for you)... in the other thread.

http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=72356


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## suzannew

I have a 300 and received the latest software download- 105F - on 12/19/06. Previous to that my unit was working pretty well since the update we got last fall. But since this latest update I'm having lots of problems. Major ones are:

1. Caller ID has stopped working (worked flawlessly before).

2. Some programs don't start recording until halfway through the program.

3. The unit shuts itself off at least once every 2-3 days.

I have re-set (using the red button) twice but no improvement. Any suggestions? I'm thinking of buying a Tivo unit again and forking over the monthly fee - it would be worth it to have a unit I can depend on.


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## psweig

500
10FA

Screensaver not working.

"30 sec slip" varies. the more button pushes, the slower.

search function *Much* improved.


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## Earl Bonovich

psweig said:


> Screensaver not working.


Can you explain a little more about that...
If you pause a program, does the Screensaver not turn on?


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## Spring Rubber

Many reports of the screensaver issue in this thread:

http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=76132


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## jutley

I have 2 R15-100s with the 1029 software on them.

Screensaver does not work during playback of a recorded show. It works when pausing live TV.

One of the receivers randomly does a full reset in the middle of watching a show. It did it last night right at the end of the Chargers/Patriots game and I missed several minutes while it got the sat signal etc. GRRRRRRRRRRR Doesn't seem to be any specific pattern to the reset...just random.

Still have the double button presses 60% of the time with the RF remote. Very annoying.

I have never done a full format as my wife has too many shows recorded she has not watched yet.


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## ngawor

We are seeing looping when doing the FFx2 after the update... this wasn't happening before.

It's been about 6 months probably since we did a reformat.

R15-300 - 106C


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## SEAKevin

R15-300 v 105F forced downloaded in mid-December.

1. When I hit the list button it takes several seconds for the My Playlist screen to appear. The "Please Wait" bar appears at the bottom. This never used to happen in my prior versions.

2. After fast forwarding if I overshoot a bit and then hit the jump back button sometimes it brings up the window asking if I want to delete the program (even when I was nowhere near the end of the recording) and then when I click NO it brings me back to the My Playlist screen and I have to start the program all over again. This has been a problem in prior versions too but it has not been fixed in 105F.


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## spweber

Switched from Comcast Cable and TIVO units for DTV and R15-300 (2 of them) in August .........after working well for a few weeks, then the NIGHTMARES began...........


WE WERE JUST A HAIR AWAY FROM THROWING BOTH UNITS IN THE TRASH CAN....


Got the 105F update normally, on its own 12/19/2006, on both units

Wiped one R15-300 (reset with disk wipe) and it has performed F-L-A-W-L-E-S-S-L-Y since then (about 2 weeks ago).


Listen to me again.......FLAWLESSLY!!!!!!!


Wife has about 30 SL's at this time and we are trying to be mindful of not creating too many.

We took those 2 weeks to watch everything on the OTHER R15-300 and just "wiped" it this weekend....so will see how it goes.


The first one is working.......FLAWLESSLY........did I say that already? 


Sincerely,
Stan

Parker, CO


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## carl6

It is great to hear a success story. Thanks for posting Stan.

Carl


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## ngawor

I checked for a download again last night, after having downloaded 106C two days ago, and the unit downgraded itself to 104B. Is this supposed to have happened?!

Thanks,
Nell


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## Earl Bonovich

ngawor said:


> I checked for a download again last night, after having downloaded 106C two days ago, and the unit downgraded itself to 104B. Is this supposed to have happened?!
> 
> Thanks,
> Nell


It can happen, but there is no reason on why it did that... as 106C is the current release version for the unit


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## psweig

Earl Bonovich said:


> Can you explain a little more about that...
> If you pause a program, does the Screensaver not turn on?


Yes, it doesn't turn on.


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## pyatta

this upgrade has been pretty painful so far, so here's my beef: ( i hope this is what you wanted to discuss , if not move or delete )

-) r15-500 10FA
-) have not formatted, gotta get my James Bond movies off and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse
1. Local HD Channels are showing up in my to do list based on a Title Search of "iowa" & sports category. ( thread is below, i just cancelled the search, not worth it )

2. When watching recordings, almost 100% of the time, if i fast forward too far into the show the machine goes into a continuous loop and i had to red button or unplug. I've got to the point where i watch the commercials in some recordings(both new and old recordings )

3. I have found certain "dead spots" in recordings. No matter what i do, when i hit these spots, the machine locks up. I goto the end, and then rewind using times 2 up to that spot. ( 55 minute mark of 24 caused this 5 times in row last night before doing the rewind ) ( i've had to delete Law & Order CI cause it locked EVERYTIME ) 

Other than those, i'm ok : )


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## qwerty

500 - 10FA

I've had three instances where I delete something and the progress bar at the bottom just keeps scrolling. I've waited as much as 10 minutes. Turn it off, then back on, and the progress bar is still scrolling. Have to RBR to clear.


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## Upstream

10FA -- Model 500

pressing "exit" during trick-play on live TV no longer returns to live. need to hold 30-sec FF to return to live position. (I don't know if this is really a bug, or an intentional change in the user interface.)


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## psweig

psweig said:


> Yes, it doesn't turn on.


Screen saver back on live TV. Haven't checked recordings.


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## carl6

R15-300, just got 106C. Response to remote is VERY poor. This is a problem that was present before the upgrade, and is just as bad, or worse, after.

The unit did have a reformat done when placed in service (about a month or two ago), and gets very little use (a few series links that record, but it is rarely turned on or watched). It was a refurb sent to replace a failed -500.

I have never seen this poor a response from the remote on either of the -500's I have/had (one still in service), and the software update did nothing to resolve the problem. (And no, it's not the specific remote or the batteries.)

Carl


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## Halo

pyatta said:


> 2. When watching recordings, almost 100% of the time, if i fast forward too far into the show the machine goes into a continuous loop and i had to red button or unplug. I've got to the point where i watch the commercials in some recordings(both new and old recordings )
> 
> 3. I have found certain "dead spots" in recordings. No matter what i do, when i hit these spots, the machine locks up. I goto the end, and then rewind using times 2 up to that spot. ( 55 minute mark of 24 caused this 5 times in row last night before doing the rewind ) ( i've had to delete Law & Order CI cause it locked EVERYTIME )


I had those exact problems a few months ago when my drive had bad sectors. I pulled the drive, ran SeaTools utility to repair the bad sectors and never had those problems again. I didn't reformat or re-install the firmware so it was clear that those problems were due to the bad sectors.
The odd thing was that Seatools only found and corrected two bad sectors but those problems happened on several different recordings. It's possible that the bad sectors were in a more vital and more frequently accessed part of the drive instead of just two places in the raw video.

*10FA*

The only new problem introduced in this update was the broken screen saver. It works for live ( or live buffered) shows, but doesn't work for recordings.

(*) The 'jump back' function, while being much improved, still has the annoying jump back, play a second of video, jump forward a second or two, then resume playing video bug. This bug has been around forever and I can't believe it hasn't been fixed yet.

(*) When watching a currently recording program delayed the 'jump back' button will stop working the instant the program stops recording. This used to trigger the "Do you want to delete" bug, but now the 'jump back' button gets disabled. Not a huge deal, but it's still annoying to have to change channels back to re-enable the jump back button.

Other than that my R15-500 has been extremely stable for several months now (since I fixed the bad sectors). NO LOCKUPS and no missed recordings. One partial recording. The 'black screen' problem appears to be fixed with 10FA (at least I haven't seen it in over a month).


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## Bobman

Remember that once you receive the new update, do a pull the plug reset. This was the norm in the past as sometimes problems creeped up after installing a new update.


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## cabanaboy1977

R15-500 - 10FA
-) The Model/Version of software you are on --- *R15-500 - 10FA*
-) If you have ever performed a full system format (and if you can remember when... great) --- *Never only RBR*
-) Details of the issue... If you where able to recreate (if so how), ect... more details the better --- *see below two R15 both set to all didn't record all have about 43-45 SL on each*

New Software messes up Battlestar Galactica Marathon

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ok, first all my 500's are on the current release and two of them are setup for Battlestar Galactica and set to record all episodes. So on Sunday I went to look at the todo list and only one of the two R15's showed any of the BSG's at all. I didn't want it to record all of them anyway (I really didn't want it wiping out shows that I record with the 24hrs or so of BSG).

So I delete the 5 or 6 that showed up on the one R15 and waiting till monday morning to check them again and neither of them was showing any more of them in the the todo list. The good news is that I came back that night and they hadn't record any of the BSG's. The bad news is that it should have since it's set to record all episodes. This is on time where the R15 messed up and I'm happy about but I'm still concerned because I won't if any of my other SL's are messed up and if it will start recording this sunday.


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## monetnj

Just got 10FA last night. Haven't been able to play with it much yet, but it doesn't seem to have fixed my first run issues. It is still recording too many Mythbusters, Simpsons and CSI episodes. Also, as others have mentioned, if the show does not have any upcoming episodes, it is not possible to edit it's series link. That is a very annoying oversight.


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## jpl

monetnj said:


> Just got 10FA last night. Haven't been able to play with it much yet, but it doesn't seem to have fixed my first run issues. It is still recording too many Mythbusters, Simpsons and CSI episodes. Also, as others have mentioned, if the show does not have any upcoming episodes, it is not possible to edit it's series link. That is a very annoying oversight.


I noticed, like others have, that my SLs are set up to now record "both". I went in, and updated those that I could, but noticed that it didn't update my to do list (it didn't remove the shows that were scheduled that were repeats). I've heard others on here saying that they deleted and recreated their SLs, and that seems to do it. Before going down that path, though, I figured I'd give something else a shot. I took one of those series (Numbers - which has a repeat coming up tomorrow night), and set the SL to "first run" only. Then I went to the to do list, and just deleted that one episode. I'm going to see how it handles the first run/repeat issue for upcoming episodes of that program (it kinda stinks to try it with Numbers because shows on CBS have always worked fine in capturing first runs only, so even if it stops recording repeats for that one show, I really won't know if the functionality really has been improved -- but you gotta start somewhere I guess.

As an aside, I agree with you - the fact that you have to have an upcoming recording in order to mess with that SL is annoying - and when I heard that they were creating a SL manager of sorts, I thought for sure that they would fix that item. I was wrong (I misread the release notes). Still, stuff in that regard has improved. For example, I discovered (I'm sure others have captured this, but I'm just too darn lazy to look) that the prioritizer is MUCH more useful. Still slow as molasses in changing the prioritization (I'm guessing that that's because it's rectifying conflicts on the fly - change a priority, and you possibly change your to do list), but when you hit Select on one of the shows, you now get one of two new screens. If there is at least one upcoming episode in that SL, you get the record screen for the next episode. And from there you can mess around with the SL options - which is really nice. I hated having to go through my to do list, find an upcoming recoring for a show I have set up... this makes it much easier to do SL maintenance. If, however, there is no upcoming episodes, you're given a screen which gives you the option to cancel said SL. Personally, I would rather it provide a third optionon that screen (in addition to "Yes, delete" and "No, don't delete" - or whatever the options are really called) - "Update SL", allowing me to mess with the overall parameters of my SL.

Oh well... guess I'll have to hope for that in future releases. Overall, I like the new release - I haven't hit any issues so far. But then again, I've yet to do things like pause a recorded show until the screen saver kicks in.


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## White_Horse

Got the update yesterday on my 500. As others have said, slow remote response, no screensaver on recorded programs, all Series Links set to "Both", Keep or Delete menu is doing the blinking thing again at the end of of recorded program.

This box has only been in use 3 weeks. Saw these same issues with this update on the 300 (before it kicked the bucket). And I did reset the receiver when I got home yesterday and noticed it had the update. Problems were present after the reset.


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## monetnj

jpl said:


> I noticed, like others have, that my SLs are set up to now record "both". I went in, and updated those that I could, but noticed that it didn't update my to do list (it didn't remove the shows that were scheduled that were repeats). I've heard others on here saying that they deleted and recreated their SLs, and that seems to do it. Before going down that path, though, I figured I'd give something else a shot. I took one of those series (Numbers - which has a repeat coming up tomorrow night), and set the SL to "first run" only. Then I went to the to do list, and just deleted that one episode. I'm going to see how it handles the first run/repeat issue for upcoming episodes of that program (it kinda stinks to try it with Numbers because shows on CBS have always worked fine in capturing first runs only, so even if it stops recording repeats for that one show, I really won't know if the functionality really has been improved -- but you gotta start somewhere I guess.
> 
> As an aside, I agree with you - the fact that you have to have an upcoming recording in order to mess with that SL is annoying - and when I heard that they were creating a SL manager of sorts, I thought for sure that they would fix that item. I was wrong (I misread the release notes). Still, stuff in that regard has improved. For example, I discovered (I'm sure others have captured this, but I'm just too darn lazy to look) that the prioritizer is MUCH more useful. Still slow as molasses in changing the prioritization (I'm guessing that that's because it's rectifying conflicts on the fly - change a priority, and you possibly change your to do list), but when you hit Select on one of the shows, you now get one of two new screens. If there is at least one upcoming episode in that SL, you get the record screen for the next episode. And from there you can mess around with the SL options - which is really nice. I hated having to go through my to do list, find an upcoming recoring for a show I have set up... this makes it much easier to do SL maintenance. If, however, there is no upcoming episodes, you're given a screen which gives you the option to cancel said SL. Personally, I would rather it provide a third optionon that screen (in addition to "Yes, delete" and "No, don't delete" - or whatever the options are really called) - "Update SL", allowing me to mess with the overall parameters of my SL.
> 
> Oh well... guess I'll have to hope for that in future releases. Overall, I like the new release - I haven't hit any issues so far. But then again, I've yet to do things like pause a recorded show until the screen saver kicks in.


Yes, I did the same thing you did. Went through each show in my prioritizer and modified the SL to record first-run only and then hit the update button. This is when I noticed I couldn't update shows that had no upcoming episodes. Dumb. The update did also not seem to do much, so I still ended up in my to do list deleting repeats and duplicates. I hope it works better from this point forward.


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## 65hokie

Received update 10FA on 1/17/07. R15-500 worked normal for 1 day. When I tried to power it up this morning, it wouldn't turn on. After multiple unplugs and RBR's, I called D* technical support and they are sending me a replacement unit. Coincidence or not. Lost all recorded programs.

Any suggestions as to recovering existing unit?

Any suggestions as preventitive measures for the new one?

I have had the -500 for about a year and it has worked well (at least as good as anyone else that uses this forum). Other than a few RBR's, missing an occasional recording, screwing up an occasional recording (sound and/or video), and some others I can't remember; I have been satisfied. It is better than no DVR, but I have not been able to compare to other units -- TIVO, MS Universal, TimeWarner cable, etc.

Does anyone have any experience with other DVR's that work better than the R15? How about the H20?


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## outbackpaul

I just got the update yesterday, now when deleting a recorded program using "- -" the DVR is very slow to delete.

And of course now no screen saver.


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## saleen351

I think this update for the GUI was great as for the performance the only two things I've noticed is my trick play is sketchy, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't, usually when it works I'm currently FF but if I'm playing a show and hit the 3 sec jump back she does nothing, though it's intermittent. 

I also notice when I hit the button to get to the playlist she brings up the waiting graphic, not a problem, but was never there before. I've never reset my box since the 1st week, I've owned it.


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## sstv

This is not good!!!
I had a almost trouble free R15 500. That has now changed since I was updated to the 10FA about a week ago.
While viewing a recorded show, I lost Video but had audio. No trick commands would clear it up so I turned the R15 off then back on and everything was OK. I returned to the program I was viewing and all was well. I did a RBR just in case.
Tonight I was viewing a recorded show and did a 2X during a commercial and when I tried to resume viewing, the R15 would not respond to the remote. I could see the blue led blink on the front of the R15 but nothing happened. Did a RBR and the system operated OK and finished viewing my recording.
I hope that this is not a indication of things to come because my system was working to my satisfaction.
Its been about a year since I did a reformat and the only RBR's was after a new software download.
SSTV


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## Larry H

here is what we are hearing. for the r15-300 you need to reset the reciever to factory settings. to do this,go to set up menu choose reset. using the red button will not work for this. in the next screne choose the reset everything. you will need to comfirm that selection by pressing the dash button three times. all previously recorded programs will be lost as this will reformat the h/d. you will need to do the guilded set up once you have reformatted. hope that helps.g/l.


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## carl6

Larry H said:


> here is what we are hearing. for the r15-300 you need to reset the reciever to factory settings. to do this,go to set up menu choose reset. using the red button will not work for this. in the next screne choose the reset everything. you will need to comfirm that selection by pressing the dash button three times. all previously recorded programs will be lost as this will reformat the h/d. you will need to do the guilded set up once you have reformatted. hope that helps.g/l.


And a variation of that which works (possibly even better) is to do a reformat (which also erases everything). To do that you start with a red button reset, then when the first blue screen goes away (turns black) you press and hold the down arrow and the record button on the front of the DVR for about 5 seconds until the record light comes on.

Carl


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## wbmccarty

carl6 said:


> And a variation of that which works (possibly even better) is to do a reformat (which also erases everything).


And, yet another variation is to do the one and follow by doing the other. Only problem is, I forget which is the one and which is the other. :eek2:

I was an educated, intelligent, articulate, perceptive, gainfully employed and responsible individual before I began to experience the various stresses occasioned by ownership of an R-15. At the current rate of cognitive and emotional decline, I anticipate becoming a derelict scumbag within approximately 176.24 days....


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## rgraham541

R-15 300 ver. 105F

loop back when doing more then 3, 30 second slips.

No screen saver when paused on recorded programs. Screen saver works fine when XM channels are tuned.

Noticed 2 instances of a 3 second black screen during playback of 24 on Fox. Screen went black, audio remained, show came back after about 3 secs with no intervention from me.


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## zortapa

R15 500 10FA 

Three programs were scheduled to record last night via SLs.:

Program 1 (priority 37) 845 - 1045
Program 2 (priority 3) 1000 - 1100
Program 3 (priority 1) 1001 - 1100

Program 1 started recording on time at 8:45.
Program 2 started recording on time at 10:00.
Program 3, which has the "highest" priority, DID NOT RECORD even though it was listed in the TODO menu when I checked at 9:50. Rather, programs 1 and 2 kept on recording. Per the prioritization numbers, either program 1 should have stopped recording at 10:01 when program 3 should have started being recorded, or program 1 should not have recorded at all.

This all occurred while I was watching the beginning of program 1, so my speculation is that I should have gotten a pop up window asking me if it could change the channel to record program 3, but this did not happen.


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## Bobman

Remember to do a pull the plug reset after receiving an update else it can get buggy.


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## Greyshadow2007

Has anyone else run into issues queuing 30 second SLIP presses? At first I thought It might be my remote (I am using an RC32RF in RF mode) but it persisted even after I reset the remote to IR to test, and an RC23 remote for my other R15 showed the same behavior...


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## wbmccarty

I've seen progressive deterioration affecting the Slip function. RBR temporarily resolves the problem. Sorry, I know no other fix.


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## archervox

I'm noticing that the 30-second slip function isn't always 30 seconds anymore. Sometimes it's around 20 or so, sometimes around 40-45.


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## Car1181

Never really had any major problems with either of my R15's. After the updates the 100 is fine but the 500 has frozen twice this week. No response to remote when trying to change channels. The channel # would change in the info bar but the program info would not and the channel would not change. Had to do a restart both times and everything was working again. Never had this problem before 10FA.


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## samo

R15-500 10FA. Pressing "--" on one of the shows in a group locked up receiver. After reboot all recordings in a group and group itself were gone. Don't know if a problem related to update, but I never had this problem before (I got this unit back in November 2005, never formated HD or had any major problems).


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## wohlfie

After months of relative satisfaction, in the last week my 500 has started behaving poorly. The fact that this started about 5 days after the update seems very troubling.

1) Unit was on and hadn't been touched in an hour or so. Nothing was set to record. I was on the phone. Walked into the room and saw it spontaneously reboot. This has never happened before to my knowledge.

2) Tuesday three shows scheduled at 9M. Psych, Boston Legal and Dirt.
I had seen the problem coming so i made sure Psych was a lower priority.
It recorded BL and Dirt just fine, but there was also a recording entry for Psych...length 0 Minutes.
Also, it refused to record TDS at 10M saying "conflicts with Dirt"...which did run till 10:06. However the second tuner should have been available after BL which ended at 10.

3) Friday night I cancelled psych to watch hockey while the thing recorded numbers. I then selected re-airing of Psych on Saturday at 6M
Sometime after 6 I noticed the record light ws not on. Sure enough, when I checked later, there a a Psych recording with a stated length of 10 minutes and it would not play at all.
I resorted to a RBR and made another attempt for this mornings re-airing of Psych. Didn't think to check it before leaving for work this morning so i don't know the outcome...


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## laxcoach

I don't know when it started because I use HR20s mostly now. But, my R15 that I still use is painfully slow when I hit the List button. I would say it started at least 2 months ago. This release is a little better.

It is also better if I delete some shows from the list, but I only have Dora and Diego, and maybe some sitcoms to watch during a run. It is *orders of magnitude* slower than when I stopped using the R15 around September.


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## aber

*R15 - 500 - 10FA*
*Locks up daily*

R15 was working prior to update. Auto updated to 10FA at 2am on 1/10/07 & since the update locks up daily, sometimes several times daily.. no video out, audio continues to work, remote unresponsive, followed by the R15 rebooting itself. Also, the screensaver no longer works, even when the receiver appears to be otherwise OK.

Have tried resetting receiver via card slot reset switch, menu reset and powering down (pulling the plug for a few hours). Tried opening the case and directing a fan at the receiver to see if heat was an issue, but the receiver continues to lock up and reboot on a regular basis. Meanwhile, my ancient UTV hasn't missed a beat. Maybe they should _test_ the damn updates before pushing them on paying customers?

_edit: To add more information - Using a powered 3x8 multiswitch (if the question was for me) & composite video out. It is connected to a phone line. It's not a bad cable problem, I tried swapping a known good set of cables after the first few reboots. I also have tivos & a UTV receiver. The UTV receiver has no issues. Tivos were having some reboot issues in the last 90 days, until I disabled error logging, which appears to have solved the Tivo issues (presumably bad guide data from dtv). The R15 is a 100% stock unit and had no problems (that weren't designed into the interface) prior to the 10FA update. The lockup/rebooting started (or was first noticed) several days after the 10FA update.

I just did a "reset everything". Will report back in a day or two to note if it does anything other than deleting my recordings, to do list & guide data._

_*update: a complete "reset everything" six days ago appears to have resolved most of the inherent problems in this miserable update. Nothing short of the complete wipe resolved the frequent freezing & reboots though. So be prepared to lose all of your recordings & scheduled future recordings (thanks, d**). A few bugs that were not present prior to 10FA remain. E.g. the receiver will sometimes become temporarily unresponsive to the remote when using rewind/stop/pause/ff. But at least the freezing/reboots/lost screensaver resolved. Just amazing that they can promote the R15 as better than tivo. And whoever released 10FA without field testing it should just be shot.*_
_

_


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## jwd45244

Do you use a multi-switch? if so is it powered or unpowered?
What about your cables?


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## zortapa

R15 500 10FA

Wow, my R15 is now trying to record HD channels! I have an autorecord which scheduled a program to record on channel 78 HDNM. 10 minutes into the recording I tried to play it, but all I got was a blue screen. I then stopped the recording because it was tying up one of my tuners.


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## sstv

sstv said:


> This is not good!!!
> I had a almost trouble free R15 500. That has now changed since I was updated to the 10FA about a week ago.
> While viewing a recorded show, I lost Video but had audio. No trick commands would clear it up so I turned the R15 off then back on and everything was OK. I returned to the program I was viewing and all was well. I did a RBR just in case.
> Tonight I was viewing a recorded show and did a 2X during a commercial and when I tried to resume viewing, the R15 would not respond to the remote. I could see the blue led blink on the front of the R15 but nothing happened. Did a RBR and the system operated OK and finished viewing my recording.
> I hope that this is not a indication of things to come because my system was working to my satisfaction.
> Its been about a year since I did a reformat and the only RBR's was after a new software download.
> SSTV


Since I posted the above, a few days have passed and my R15 500 has worked with no additional problems. It looks like the last RBR did some good and things are back on track. Only time will tell, but it looks good.
SSTV


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## Bobman

zortapa said:


> Wow, my R15 is now trying to record HD channels!


I had forgotten about this until I saw your post but mine was trying to record from channel 40 the other day. There is no channel 40 in my area.


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## walters

Still gettting loss of trickplay from time to time (I believe I'm on 105F), can be fixed by standby (or RBR, but standby is obviously faster).

Also, dash-dash deletes don't seem to go back to the place in the playlist where I left off like this update was supposed to do (maybe I should check that I wasn't somehow automatically downgraded, come to think of it).

One more: record button didn't work in guide last night. I went to next week's 24 (just after this week's was over) to setup a SL. Record button had no effect. I had to select it and use the episode details menu (which worked).


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## paulman182

Had an issue with my R15-300 last night. Could not see thelist of recordings in My Playlist. Did an RBR and all is well.

I only have one tuner connected on this R15 and it has a couple of SLs, the only one of mine that does.


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## lschwarcz

On my r15-300 I got 106C on 1/17/07 @ 2:29am via the automatic download process.

That day I did a full reformat (Down arrow-Rec) and had to fully reconfigure it and then add back in all of my series links after the program guide was repopulated.

Everything seemed to be working just fine until Sat. I had it set to record Ask This Old House (one of my SLs). When I went to watch it on Sunday it's just black screen and no audio. I had heard that sometimes doing stuff like a forward or backward slip will "kick start" it playing. I also tried doing an RBR (suggested by the DirecTV CSR) and that also, of course, didn't work .

My call to the DirecTV DVR support (second tier support?) CSR got me the usual reply, "Yea, it's a problem and we hope to get it fixed someday." They did give me $5/month off of my bill for 6 months and 2 months of Showtime for free. But, I'd rather be able to record and watch my shows!

So, any suggestions on possible ways to recover my "lost" show? I haven't deleted it yet in hopes that they'll be some trick so I can maybe even watch it. Should I try the "pull the plug for a few minutes" trick? Any chance it would work (seems unlikely to me).

I fortunately don't have (or haven't seen) some of the other troubles noted here. My screensaver works, trickplay seems to be OK (so far), I don't have Caller ID at my home (my form of Caller ID is to answer the phone, "Hello, who's there?" ) and I guess I've gotten used to the slow response of the remote.

Thanks in advance!
Larry.


----------



## jpl

lschwarcz said:


> On my r15-300 I got 106C on 1/17/07 @ 2:29am via the automatic download process.
> 
> That day I did a full reformat (Down arrow-Rec) and had to fully reconfigure it and then add back in all of my series links after the program guide was repopulated.
> 
> Everything seemed to be working just fine until Sat. I had it set to record Ask This Old House (one of my SLs). When I went to watch it on Sunday it's just black screen and no audio. I had heard that sometimes doing stuff like a forward or backward slip will "kick start" it playing. I also tried doing an RBR (suggested by the DirecTV CSR) and that also, of course, didn't work .
> 
> My call to the DirecTV DVR support (second tier support?) CSR got me the usual reply, "Yea, it's a problem and we hope to get it fixed someday." They did give me $5/month off of my bill for 6 months and 2 months of Showtime for free. But, I'd rather be able to record and watch my shows!
> 
> So, any suggestions on possible ways to recover my "lost" show? I haven't deleted it yet in hopes that they'll be some trick so I can maybe even watch it. Should I try the "pull the plug for a few minutes" trick? Any chance it would work (seems unlikely to me).
> 
> I fortunately don't have (or haven't seen) some of the other troubles noted here. My screensaver works, trickplay seems to be OK (so far), I don't have Caller ID at my home (my form of Caller ID is to answer the phone, "Hello, who's there?" ) and I guess I've gotten used to the slow response of the remote.
> 
> Thanks in advance!
> Larry.


I have NO idea if this will help or not... but someone posted that sometimes they're able to play a program from History. To be honest, I don't remember the specifics of that situation, but I figured - couldn't hurt for you to try. Go into your History, and find the listing for that show (if it's still there), and select on it. See if there's a Playback option. If there is (lots of "ifs", I know), then try playing from there. I'll grant - this is a real long-shot... but better than no shot at all. Good luck.


----------



## lschwarcz

jpl said:


> I have NO idea if this will help or not... but someone posted that sometimes they're able to play a program from History. To be honest, I don't remember the specifics of that situation, but I figured - couldn't hurt for you to try. Go into your History, and find the listing for that show (if it's still there), and select on it. See if there's a Playback option. If there is (lots of "ifs", I know), then try playing from there. I'll grant - this is a real long-shot... but better than no shot at all. Good luck.


I did try that but it also didn't work.

Thanks anyway,
Larry.


----------



## ozonedan

Apparently the first run/repeat item is still not fixed. My 500 downloaded the update last Wednesday. I have all SL set to first run.. This morning I noticed that the TDL has repeats of CSI: Miami and NCIS set to record on Saturday.

I also had a strange problem that I haven't noticed before. My wife and I were watching a recording of Crossing Jordan. It went to commercial so I FF it and while it is FFing the message pops up asking if I want to delete or keep it. We were only about halfway through the show. Very odd.


----------



## carl6

ozonedan,
The updates typically set all SL's back to the "both" setting. Have you checked yours since the update?

Carl


----------



## Blitz68

Before I had 10FA there was like a 5 second delay when accessing the R15 with the remote, and when 10FA came down it seemed to fix that.

Now it seems I am back to the 5 second delay, and I still have 10FA.


----------



## Earl Bonovich

All Systems should be to Versions:

R15 - 100 : 0x1029
R15 - 300 : 0x106C
R15 - 500 : 0x10FA

By the end of the day today... all three versions are now National Releases.


----------



## psweig

psweig said:


> Screen saver back on live TV. Haven't checked recordings.


I spoke too soon. The screensaver works once, right after coming out of standby. It subsequently doesn't work until I put it in standby again. Doesn't work at all for recorded programs.:nono2:


----------



## ozonedan

carl6 said:


> ozonedan,
> The updates typically set all SL's back to the "both" setting. Have you checked yours since the update?
> 
> Carl


Yes, I changed them all back to first run after the new software downloaded.

Now my 300 wants to download the new software, but just sits at 0%. It has never downloaded anything.


----------



## carl6

ozonedan said:


> Yes, I changed them all back to first run after the new software downloaded.
> 
> Now my 300 wants to download the new software, but just sits at 0%. It has never downloaded anything.


I think it's time for a replacement dvr in that case.

Carl


----------



## jpl

Well, that was a new one. I came home from work and found that my 300 was indeed updated with the new s/w. I also discovered that, for some reason, the R15, all on it's own, decided to set up a SL of 'As the World Turns'. I deleted it and so far so good. I wonder if it had anything to do with the power hit we took this afternoon. We lost power about an hour before the show broadcasts in the area... somehow I don't think that has anything to do with it.

It also looks like the first run/repeat issue is better. I found the same with my 500. All of my existing SLs were set up as "Both". I changed those that I could, but my to do list remained unchanged (it still had the repeats that were set to record already in there). I deleted those repeats from the to do list, and so far so good - for any new episodes, it appears to take the "first run" option correctly. And I set up a new SL on my 300 (The Simpsons), and it did only grab the first runs (I initially deleted the SL because all the repeats of the show in this area was driving me nuts). So far, so good.


----------



## lschwarcz

lschwarcz said:


> On my r15-300 I got 106C on 1/17/07 @ 2:29am via the automatic download process.
> 
> That day I did a full reformat (Down arrow-Rec) and had to fully reconfigure it and then add back in all of my series links after the program guide was repopulated.
> 
> Everything seemed to be working just fine until Sat. I had it set to record Ask This Old House (one of my SLs). When I went to watch it on Sunday it's just black screen and no audio. I had heard that sometimes doing stuff like a forward or backward slip will "kick start" it playing. I also tried doing an RBR (suggested by the DirecTV CSR) and that also, of course, didn't work .
> 
> My call to the DirecTV DVR support (second tier support?) CSR got me the usual reply, "Yea, it's a problem and we hope to get it fixed someday." They did give me $5/month off of my bill for 6 months and 2 months of Showtime for free. But, I'd rather be able to record and watch my shows!
> 
> So, any suggestions on possible ways to recover my "lost" show? I haven't deleted it yet in hopes that they'll be some trick so I can maybe even watch it. Should I try the "pull the plug for a few minutes" trick? Any chance it would work (seems unlikely to me).
> 
> I fortunately don't have (or haven't seen) some of the other troubles noted here. My screensaver works, trickplay seems to be OK (so far), I don't have Caller ID at my home (my form of Caller ID is to answer the phone, "Hello, who's there?" ) and I guess I've gotten used to the slow response of the remote.
> 
> Thanks in advance!
> Larry.


Well, I guess I spoke too soon about the trick play working OK on my r15-300 with 106C. This evening we were watching a recorded show and overshot the commercial break using the 30-sec-slip and tried hitting the back-slip button a few times (maybe 4 times.... not rapidly) and it jumped from about 50 minutes into the show back to the beginning .

Oh, well. Yet another example of the skills of the programmers at DirecTV :lol:.

And, I still haven't been able to view my show (the one that only shows a black picture and no sound). So, if anyone has any suggestions, I'm open to try something!

Thanks!
Larry.


----------



## wbmccarty

jpl said:


> I also discovered that, for some reason, the R15, all on it's own, decided to set up a SL of 'As the World Turns'.


Well, this solves the mystery of why the DTV software developers haven't been able to make faster and better progress on closing open bug reports. 

With TV programming preferences of that sort, it's a wonder they've done as well as they have. 

Cheers,


----------



## jpl

Don't know if this really fits this thread, since it's not a new bug with the 106C s/w, but what the heck. I pretty much gave up on getting caller id to work on my 300 - I was getting phantom calls every couple minutes (this issue has been described elsewhere - calls that aren't really there showing up every couple minutes... all with the same date and time). I just shut off the notifications to stop the annoying pop-ups. Repeated resets did nothing. As did plug-pulling resets. I was hoping that the new s/w would fix it. Last night I cleared the log, and let the machine sit. A couple hours later, I had 4 phantom calls in my log.


----------



## brat820

I NEED HELP! My R-15 500 still has all my programs in the to do list, and still set for first run only, but the dvr is NOT recording any of them. I have to actually go to each program and click the record button to get it to record. If i do the double click like you do to record the series , it just goes off and nothing. So here i am single clicking all the shows i want to record....... WHAT DO I DO???????


----------



## cabanaboy1977

lschwarcz said:


> Well, I guess I spoke too soon about the trick play working OK on my r15-300 with 106C. This evening we were watching a recorded show and overshot the commercial break using the 30-sec-slip and tried hitting the back-slip button a few times (maybe 4 times.... not rapidly) and it jumped from about 50 minutes into the show back to the beginning .
> 
> Oh, well. Yet another example of the skills of the programmers at DirecTV :lol:.
> 
> And, I still haven't been able to view my show (the one that only shows a black picture and no sound). So, if anyone has any suggestions, I'm open to try something!
> 
> Thanks!
> Larry.


Sounds almost like the button gets "stuck" on the remote and is triggering the jump to begining feature they just turned on (holding down the jumpback for 3 secs is what makes it jumpback).

For you program that is black, have you tried jumping to the end (holding down 30sec slip of 30secs) and then rewind to the start? Sometimes that will get it unstuck.


----------



## sports828

I got update 0X10FA on 1/17 on my R15-500 and it has recorded all programs fine. I did try pausing on 1/18 and the screen saver did not come on. Last night, I paused a recorded program and the screen saver was back. Has anyone else observed this?


----------



## carl6

brat820 said:


> I NEED HELP! My R-15 500 still has all my programs in the to do list, and still set for first run only, but the dvr is NOT recording any of them. I have to actually go to each program and click the record button to get it to record. If i do the double click like you do to record the series , it just goes off and nothing. So here i am single clicking all the shows i want to record....... WHAT DO I DO???????


I would go into the prioritizer, delete all the SL's, then re-create them using the guide (as opposed to searching).

Carl


----------



## jpl

brat820 said:


> I NEED HELP! My R-15 500 still has all my programs in the to do list, and still set for first run only, but the dvr is NOT recording any of them. I have to actually go to each program and click the record button to get it to record. If i do the double click like you do to record the series , it just goes off and nothing. So here i am single clicking all the shows i want to record....... WHAT DO I DO???????


Have you tried resetting your DVR? Either hit the red button, behind the panel on the right/front of the unit (next to the access card). Or you could just pull the plug and then plug back in. It's the first thing I would try.


----------



## Bobman

I had the "frozen black screen" once last night when watching a recording. All I did was stop and restart and it worked fine after that.


----------



## jpl

sports828 said:


> I got update 0X10FA on 1/17 on my R15-500 and it has recorded all programs fine. I did try pausing on 1/18 and the screen saver did not come on. Last night, I paused a recorded program and the screen saver was back. Has anyone else observed this?


I haven't tried this yet. But one question - have you seen a difference between pausing live tv and pausing a recorded show? When you paused on 1/18, was it for a show that was live, or for a show that was recorded and you were playing back? From what I understand folks have been primarily having problems with the screen saver not turning on when live TV was paused, but it worked fine for recorded programs. I'm also interested in seeing what happens when the DVR is on one of the XM stations. I liked the fact that the screen saver kicked on while listening to XM (something about that unchanging picture on the bottom of the screen just screams "burn in" to me).


----------



## Mrpalmer420

lschwarcz said:


> Well, I guess I spoke too soon about the trick play working OK on my r15-300 with 106C. This evening we were watching a recorded show and overshot the commercial break using the 30-sec-slip and tried hitting the back-slip button a few times (maybe 4 times.... not rapidly) and it jumped from about 50 minutes into the show back to the beginning .
> 
> Oh, well. Yet another example of the skills of the programmers at DirecTV :lol:.
> 
> And, I still haven't been able to view my show (the one that only shows a black picture and no sound). So, if anyone has any suggestions, I'm open to try something!
> 
> Thanks!
> Larry.


This happens to me when I start watching a show before it ends. After the actual end time of the program the 6 sec slip will stop orking. What makes it work again is hitting stop after the show has stopped recording and then going right back into the show. Viola the 6 sec slip is back. It is a little inconvenient but much more pleasurable then missing a couple sec's of a show coming out of commercial


----------



## jpl

I've noticed one issue a couple times with the 10FA s/w. Actually, I don't know for sure that it's the DVR, and if it is, if it's the new s/w. But I saw it twice in the same recording last night. Watching Jeopardy, there were two times when the program just jumped forward. One second one contestant was about to answer a question, and the next second she finished the answer. I saw this the other night, again while watching Jeopardy on my 500. The reason I seem to think that this is NOT the DVR is that the jumps last night seemed too smooth. I've had recordings that have pixelated before. It looks like a DVD skipping. It freezes, the color gets funky, the picture pixelates, and then it jumps forward - I get those from time to time, and it doesn't appear to be a s/w issue, since the issue predated 10FA. But the jumps I saw on Jeopardy haven't been like that at all. They were totally smooth. And the fact that they happened on the same series tells me that it was the broadcast, and not the DVR doing it. Just wondering if anyone noticed the same thing.

Actually, I just realized something - I can test this out. I have the same episode recorded on my 300 (I set it up on both), and I can replay that part to see if I have the same skip. Still, just wondering if anyone else noticed this.


----------



## sports828

jpl said:


> I haven't tried this yet. But one question - have you seen a difference between pausing live tv and pausing a recorded show? When you paused on 1/18, was it for a show that was live, or for a show that was recorded and you were playing back? From what I understand folks have been primarily having problems with the screen saver not turning on when live TV was paused, but it worked fine for recorded programs. I'm also interested in seeing what happens when the DVR is on one of the XM stations. I liked the fact that the screen saver kicked on while listening to XM (something about that unchanging picture on the bottom of the screen just screams "burn in" to me).


When I tried pausing on 1/18 it was on a recorded program I was playing back and the screen saver did not come on, that is why I was surprised when it did last night. I did not try it on live tv, but I can tonight. I thought people were reporting screen saver gone on both recorded and live. I also have not tried it on the XM channel, I must admit I never go to those channels.


----------



## lschwarcz

cabanaboy1977 said:


> Sounds almost like the button gets "stuck" on the remote and is triggering the jump to begining feature they just turned on (holding down the jumpback for 3 secs is what makes it jumpback).
> 
> For you program that is black, have you tried jumping to the end (holding down 30sec slip of 30secs) and then rewind to the start? Sometimes that will get it unstuck.


Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! :bowdown: 
Your suggestion to jump to the end by holding down the 30-sec-slip button and then rewinding worked!

And, I also learned that when holding either the forward or backward slip buttons it'll jump to either the beginning or end of the program! I at first thought that I just missed that in my owners manual. But, I just took a look again and they don't mention this feature at all!

So, it looks like trickplay on my R15-300 with 106C is working just like it should (as hard as that is to believe ).

So it seems that the only issue I've had so far is the blank recording which I was finally able to view!

Thanks again!
Larry.


----------



## DVRRRGH

-> R15-500 - 10FA
-> Formatted 1 week ago.
-> Definitely the worst software version I've experienced
- Rewind will sometimes not work during live rec/playback. I cannot reproduce this, but it happens often enough, I know it's a problem that's here to stay.
- I get freezes, loops, and pixellation especially during pause & playback of just a few minutes of live tv. This never happend before.
- System rebooted on me when I was simply rewinding. Hey, that's new! 
- The time cursor appeared to work for a while after the upgrade (woohoo - they got one right), but after a few days it has died again and will often get stuck until I reach the end of playback. (Woo hoo? I think DTV hires monkeys to do their programming).


----------



## Wire Paladin

Model R15 - 300 
software Version: 0x106C

Previously I could record programs from the dvr to a dvd or video player. With the latest update I get a message that recording is copyrighted and can't be recorded. This includes anything recorded on the dvr before and after the firmware update.

Is this a new feature that was planned? Do they plan to do this to their other dvrs like the HR20?

Update:
The system was rebotted and this cleared up problem. Sorry.


----------



## wbmccarty

DVRRRGH said:


> I think DTV hires monkeys to do their programming).


My understanding is that they've recently upgraded to gorillas, who are not yet fully oriented to the project. Given time to adjust, they should significantly outperform the monkeys previously assigned. Please see the FAQ on Primate Programming's web site.

Cheers,


----------



## walters

wbmccarty said:


> My understanding is that they've recently upgraded to gorillas, who are not yet fully oriented to the project. Given time to adjust, they should significantly outperform the monkeys previously assigned. Please see the FAQ on Primate Programming's web site.
> 
> Cheers,


LOL. Thanks, Donna!


----------



## cabanaboy1977

lschwarcz said:


> Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! :bowdown:
> Your suggestion to jump to the end by holding down the 30-sec-slip button and then rewinding worked!
> 
> And, I also learned that when holding either the forward or backward slip buttons it'll jump to either the beginning or end of the program! I at first thought that I just missed that in my owners manual. But, I just took a look again and they don't mention this feature at all!
> 
> So, it looks like trickplay on my R15-300 with 106C is working just like it should (as hard as that is to believe ).
> 
> So it seems that the only issue I've had so far is the blank recording which I was finally able to view!
> 
> Thanks again!
> Larry.


NP, glad you can watch the recording.

Good to hear the remote is working well. I didn't know if you knew about the new feature or not. Sounds like all is well.


----------



## jpl

jpl said:


> I've noticed one issue a couple times with the 10FA s/w. Actually, I don't know for sure that it's the DVR, and if it is, if it's the new s/w. But I saw it twice in the same recording last night. Watching Jeopardy, there were two times when the program just jumped forward. One second one contestant was about to answer a question, and the next second she finished the answer. I saw this the other night, again while watching Jeopardy on my 500. The reason I seem to think that this is NOT the DVR is that the jumps last night seemed too smooth. I've had recordings that have pixelated before. It looks like a DVD skipping. It freezes, the color gets funky, the picture pixelates, and then it jumps forward - I get those from time to time, and it doesn't appear to be a s/w issue, since the issue predated 10FA. But the jumps I saw on Jeopardy haven't been like that at all. They were totally smooth. And the fact that they happened on the same series tells me that it was the broadcast, and not the DVR doing it. Just wondering if anyone noticed the same thing.
> 
> Actually, I just realized something - I can test this out. I have the same episode recorded on my 300 (I set it up on both), and I can replay that part to see if I have the same skip. Still, just wondering if anyone else noticed this.


Ok... nevermind. Just replayed the episode from my 300. Same issue. I was right - it was the broadcast. But, I've also hit the trick-play looping problem. I tried the workaround - skipped to the very end, then skipped back to the beginning. That took care of it... for a bit.


----------



## rgraham541

R15-300 with automatic download on 1/24 of 106C.

When the unit was brought back from standby after the download it was frozen (no responce from front panal buttons or remote.) first RBR went through the setup and froze at 0% when trying to download guide data. 2nd RBR went through setup again, download of guide data was fine. Hit menu and once again unit froze but this time cleared itself after about 45 seconds. RBR the 3rd time and all seems well.

As posted earlier to-do list empty. Waited 24-36 hours for guide to re-populate and still cannot get SL to work. Nothing in to-do list, History shows all cancelled, prioritizer still shows items to be recorded. I guess I will delet all items in the prioritizer and redo the SLs


----------



## ozonedan

I also had a strange problem that I haven't noticed before. My wife and I were watching a recording of Crossing Jordan. It went to commercial so I FF it and while it is FFing the message pops up asking if I want to delete or keep it. We were only about halfway through the show. Very odd.[/QUOTE said:


> This problem has been getting worse on my 500. Three out of the last four programs my wife and I have watched have had the same problem. However when watching CSI last night, it did the same thing about 33 minutes into the show. Held down the 30 slip to the end of program. The end of the program had a still picture of when the problem occurred at the 33 minute mark. During the rewind, there was nothing but a black screen. I never had this problem before 10FA. My 500 was working just fine. I will say I have not reformatted this unit.
> 
> My 300 finally downloaded the new s/w yesterday. Too early to tell what it will effect.


----------



## BattleScott

Car1181 said:


> Never really had any major problems with either of my R15's. After the updates the 100 is fine but the 500 has frozen twice this week. No response to remote when trying to change channels. The channel # would change in the info bar but the program info would not and the channel would not change. Had to do a restart both times and everything was working again. Never had this problem before 10FA.


Had the exact same scenario this morning. So I decided to investigate and see what all it would do or not do as the case may be. Would do everything except change the channel. Could go to the guide and browse, but when attempting to select a new channel it would just stay there. Hitting exit would take it back to the channel that was 'stuck'. The banner would show the channel that I selected to change to, but with the program information of the 'stuck channel'.
'Trick-play' features would not work (just bongs). Channel up/down had the same effect
as the guide, the channel would change in the bar (even to logo) but the stuck channel info and A/V remained. Unit would power off/on (standby) but that did not fix the issue. Only the RBR cleared it out.

R15-500 Since Aug. - 10FA since 1-14-07 I Believe. This is the first time I have had this issue as well...

Other 10FA observation FWIW:

Trick play much better.
First /Run repeat still no good (but I believe that is guide data related and not R15)
Speed seems a little faster, but still gets sluggish at times.


----------



## voltage34

R-15 500 10FA
No Caller ID is everyone having this problem or just me?


----------



## carl6

Caller ID is kind of hit and miss on the R15 (and the HR20).

Carl


----------



## Mrpalmer420

BattleScott said:


> Other 10FA observation FWIW:
> 
> Trick play much better.
> First /Run repeat still no good (but I believe that is guide data related and not R15)
> Speed seems a little faster, but still gets sluggish at times.


I have found that the First Run Repeat issue has been fixed very well. the only problem that I have is that the response to pushing the list button is very slow. sometime as much as 5 secs. I know that doesn't seem like a lot but it wused to be much faster.


----------



## joemmcg

ngawor said:


> We are seeing looping when doing the FFx2 after the update... this wasn't happening before.
> 
> It's been about 6 months probably since we did a reformat.
> 
> R15-300 - 106C


Same problem on both R15-300's since 106C. Haven't checked if other FF's cause same problem, will test. Just stopping and starting seems to correct.

Otherwise, both R15's seem to be performing well, unbelievably.


----------



## qwerty

10FA

Add me to the spontaneous reboot crowd. Yesterday, I heard "Daddy! What happened to Tom & Jerry?" Sure enough, the R15 was booting up when I walked over.


----------



## Groundhog45

Also had a spontaneous reboot this evening. Watching a recorded program while something else was recording. First problem in a long time.  

GH


----------



## JimV

Well Ive been trolling this board for a while because everytime I have a problem, I seem to find a solution to it here.

On 1/17 when I received the new update, the R15 I had *mostly* successfully used for a year started going nuts. Shows would skip, black screens would come on and the receiver would basically freeze preventing me from doing anything at all but hit the red button. ff and rw as well as 6 seconds back, 30 seconds forward would work sporadically also. RW x3 seemed like RW x1. The black screen freezes would happen twice during a 1 hour show.

So while I thought it was the new code, I wasnt sure exactly when it started happening but it was most certainly around 1/17. Then I thought maybe the disk is fragmented and thats why it was doing this. ive had it a year afterall.

I decided there must be a way to reformat the drive and thats when I ventured onto the forum.

In any case, I downloaded the latest software for the R15 500 first '10FA' (it was still on 106C [edit 10e8] which came down on 1/17).

Then I did a down-arrow record after the welcome to directv screen after I hit the red reset button.

The box came up but it still said it was still 106c. So I shut the box (off button) down and it sort of hung on Off. I finally got it back on and its saying its 10FA.

All my shows are gone and it doesnt have the full guide so I cant reprogram my shows just yet, which sucks. It did keep my custom channel programming though so I dont have to remove all the crappy channels I dont want again. Thats about all it kept.

Here's hoping the suggestions on the forum resolve the issues Ive had.


----------



## carl6

JimV,
You are mixing up the R15-500 software (10FA) and the R15-300 software (106C). There should never have been a time you sould see both of those on the same box.

To properly do the reformat, you start with a reset (red button or menu). The unit will reset, and you get a blue screen. A short while later that blue screen will go away (turn black). When that happens, push and hold the down arrow and the record button on the front of the R15. Hold them for at least 5 seconds until the record light comes on. Then wait for the R15 to go back through all of it's startup.

There is also a "reset everything" option in the menu. I don't know if reset everything and reformat do the same thing, but both will erase all recorded shows and reset most/all settings back to factory defaults.

I would suggest you do a reset everything, and start fresh. Good luck on your efforts.

Carl


----------



## JimV

Sorry. I mean tto say I had 10e8 before.
Now i have 10fa

got confused - no coffee yet this morning.

I think I'll be good now that I did the reformat. I have to wait and see until after I can record something and program my shows again.


----------



## Xram

Add me to the spontaneous reboot crowd.


----------



## mocciat

first run repeat not working for me either


----------



## wbmccarty

Spontaneous reboot, promptly at 12:30 a.m., while watching live TV. Has anyone mentioned that guide data is lost as a result? I'm sure glad to have read on another thread that DTV has "fixed" the problems with the R-15. Otherwise, I'd have thought I was suffering inconvenience of some sort. 

Cheers,


----------



## Bobman

Guide date will always be lost as its stored in memory not on the HD. It does download about 1 day of data instantly and the rest over the next day or so.

Only once have I had a reboot like that but it was 1 or 2 software versions back.


----------



## qwerty

wbmccarty said:


> Spontaneous reboot, promptly at 12:30 a.m., while watching live TV. Has anyone mentioned that guide data is lost as a result? I'm sure glad to have read on another thread that DTV has "fixed" the problems with the R-15. Otherwise, I'd have thought I was suffering inconvenience of some sort.
> 
> Cheers,


Yes, the problems have been fixed. What you're referring to is a "feature". It helps to keep the R15 running at top form.


----------



## wbmccarty

qwerty said:


> Yes, the problems have been fixed. What you're referring to is a "feature".


Would that feature be documented or undocumented? If undocumented, are there other important undocumented features that I might find useful? I'm always eager to learn....

Cheers,

P.S. Any word on how the R-15 will handle the early transition to daylight savings time scheduled for March 11?

Cheers,


----------



## qwerty

wbmccarty said:


> P.S. Any word on how the R-15 will handle the early transition to daylight savings time scheduled for March 11?
> 
> Cheers,


It's done pretty well in the past, but they're comparing the time change to Y2K. I guess that means it'll be blown way out of proportion with very few systems negatively affected.


----------



## carl6

Tivo products will require a software download, which is still in development.

I have not heard an answer yet for the R15 or HR20.

Carl


----------



## wbmccarty

qwerty said:


> It's done pretty well in the past, but they're comparing the time change to Y2K. I guess that means it'll be blown way out of proportion with very few systems negatively affected.


On the contrary, most microprocessor-based systems having time-of-day timers _will_ be affected. It's just that being off by one hour isn't likely to cause as much havoc as the doomsday prophets could wish.

I don't know how the R-15 clock works with respect to DST. But, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if recordings on March 11 and a few weeks thereafter miss their target.

Cheers,


----------



## gclifft

I have a fairly new R15-100 with the 0x1029 update. The update was installed while the installers were here, so I have no experience with any prior versions of the software. I have never done a system format. I only have a single SAT feed connected at this time.

Here are just a couple of things I have noticed:

The time was wrong, it was running something like 6 hours ahead. I changed the timezone to Central and that fixed it. If I place the timezone in Auto, it always sets the unit to Eastern time. I would have assumed it would set it based on the zip code I entered during setup which should place me in the Central TZ.

If I do a partial recording, e.g. turn the unit on, change channels, and then press record, then two things happen. The first is that the start time for the recording is listed incorrectly as the time the show started, not the time I started the recording (the duration appears to be correct). The other is that I cannot create a series recording from that one. If I go to list, select that show, and then click series link it will not allow me to do create the recording, all I can do is cancel. (I don't recall the exact syntax of the menus, I will try and edit this to clarify).

When I am fast forwarding quickly, say 3 or 4 presses, then its obvious that the time bar on the bottom isn't keeping up. When I return to play, the current position display jumps quite a bit forward. A similar thing happens in rewind.

When the guide is displayed the red and green buttons move forward/backward 12 hours in time. According to the manual that came with my RF remote, these should be 1.5 hours. I don't know what is correct, but I feel that 12 hours is too far to move, and that 1.5 or 3 would be better  

I haven't has the unit that long, but so far it seems to be working well.


----------



## Groundhog45

R15-600 on 10fa. Two spontaneous reboots this week. Once when a remote button was pushed, the other while viewing a recording. Suspect maybe a hard drive problem.  Of course, it may just be the software. 

GH


----------



## qwerty

Groundhog45 said:


> R15-600 on 10fa. Two spontaneous reboots this week. Once when a remote button was pushed, the other while viewing a recording. Suspect maybe a hard drive problem.  Of course, it may just be the software.
> 
> GH


That would be a R15 -500, right?


----------



## Groundhog45

qwerty said:


> That would be a R15 -500, right?


Yes, sorry for the typo. I've reported it as an ongoing problem to D* just in case it gets worse and I have to lobby for a replacement or an upgrade.

GH


----------



## ajseagles3

Since the update, no less than 3 hour-long shows have "blacked" out at the 28-29 minutes mark. It was working fine for months before.

It makes me very, very angry.


P.S. As an aside, I have around 25 series in my prioritizer and a ton of shows to watch. I am NOT going to do a reformat that fuXors my stuff. D* better fix this stuff with a new release ASAP.

P.P.S. And I swear... if a simple fix like the DST change isn't pushed out before March 11...


Have I mentioned I'm quite angry?


----------



## jwd45244

ajseagles3 said:


> Since the update, no less than 3 hour-long shows have "blacked" out at the 28-29 minutes mark. It was working fine for months before.


Have you read the work arounds on this in here. One of them is to rewind back a bit and then fast forward part the spot. It works


----------



## ajseagles3

jwd45244 said:


> Have you read the work arounds on this in here. One of them is to rewind back a bit and then fast forward part the spot. It works


Yep. Tried that. Tried the "pull plug" reboot.

Doesn't work.


----------



## wolfonthehill

R15-300 with 106C. Overall, I'm OK with the performance. Three things that, if fixed, would make me a satisfied customer:

1 - The looping fast-forward is just ridiculous. It makes the unit very inconvenient to use, and it's a very basic function. No excuse.
2 - The response time in general to any command from the remote is similarly ridiculous. I've gotten used to it, but the three to seven second delay to pull up a menu makes no sense. What the hell kind of processor is in there? A TI-99? A Commodore 64? Jeebus!
3 - From one season to the next of a given show, the Series Link stops working, even if the title doesn't change. Part of the power of DVR is that you can leave a season pass for something like "Real Time with Bill Maher", and when it starts back up for a new season, you don't miss the first one. That doesn't work on this unit at all.

Fix those, and I'm happy. It's getting better, little by little. Keep going - just go faster.


----------



## JimV

Last week I posted that my R15-500 was getting stuck during replay, lots of jittery reply and the ff and rw features were sticking.

I reformatted using the suggestions on the forum and also did a forced upgrade to 10FA.

All my recordings went away as did my setup for recording. I was able to reconfigure everything so now I am recording again but it mist BSG last Sunday which Im unhappy about.

In any case, the problems persist, less so now, but still having to reboot occassionally in the middle of watching a recorded show. Additionally, I get a lot of pixelation through the shows, skipping and stuttering. More so than before.

Am not happy as the unit worked great for just about 1 year. I bought the device, not leased, so D* is probably not going to help me. ALthough given the track record of other units being shipped to people, Im not sure a new one will fix the problem.


----------



## TheTooleMan

R15-300 - 106C

*On-going problem:* still stops playback and asks if I want to delete a program that was recording while I was watching it, after the record light goes out and the program stops recording. This issue was reported _way back when!_ I was hoping it would be fixed with the new release, but now I see they only renamed "MyVOD" and introduced new bugs instead of fixing old ones...

*New bug:* 30-second FF repeats about one minute of video content while running forward. Seems to happen almost every time I use the 30-second FF.

*Typical scenario:*
- I hit the 30-second FF button 8 times to jump forward about 4 minutes, skipping commercials 
- see the commercials fly by on the screen, some of them _twice_
- FF stops before passing by 4 minutes of normal-speed video
- upon going back and reviewing the commercials, I see that none of them were repeated.

It's pretty tiresome to have people over and having to apologize for this piece of crap. :barf:


----------



## JimV

Just to see if they had this on their radar and had other suggestions and they do at least know about the issue. They apologized profusely, mostly because there isn't anything else they can do about it until the engineers get around to fixing it. Romulo, if you are reading this, get to it!

Even after the format, the resets, the pull the plug, etc, the freezing persists and it seems to be even worse. I cant get through a single program without a reset. I wish if nothing else one of the buttons would at least allow me to exit without a reset.

In any case, they said 'They plan on having an update before the month is out' and gave me free showtime for 3 months. Wont be able to watch it much since i cant record most of it but its something at least.

Its hard going back to the old ways, without being able to record anything. So here's hoping that by 2/28, there's a solution.


----------



## GoBobbyGo

Bobman said:


> Remember to do a pull the plug reset after receiving an update else it can get buggy.


R-15 500, software 0X10FA, 1/10/07 (this is my third R15, have had two warranty replacements previous model - received first one in February, was replaced in May, replaced again in, I think, July. This one works well enough that I only occasionally notice my frustration with it.)

Have not reformatted. _The fact that the thread asks about this is the first and most obvious issue. My understanding is that there's no way to back it up prior to reformatting and that this is intentional on the part of the manufacturer. It'd be one thing if the thing were built to last, but if reformatting the thing is a ROUTINE measure, it's unconscionable that there's no way to back it up. Of course if I'm wrong, please let me know and I'll be quick with the apologies..._

The above quote seems to also be a sign of an unacceptable flaw. Anything that routinely seems to need unplugging from the wall seems to me to be a problem. Sure, we can find ways to work with it and live with it, but we shouldn't have to.

I have the same thing everyone else seems to where the screen saver works in pausing live TV and doesn't work in pausing recorded programs.

Biggest thing that pops out to me is that menu navigation is still not up to snuff. Some of the "go back to the beginning of the menu" seems to be gone, but too much remains. Often want to go through the list of recorded programs and delete some - I delete one, the rest of the episodes of the same show are minimized and cursor is now on the next program. That's better than GBTTB, but still not what it should do. More GBTTB below.

Next thing is that it still can't figure out which shows are new and which shows are reruns. As a result, for example, I go away for a week and instead of 4 new recordings of The Daily Show, I've got four different broadcasts of the same show. Go to edit out the superfluous recordings in the queue, and of course double-dash doesn't work here. So I've got to hit five different buttons, each with a significant wait, to cancel each one. Hm, maybe the "episodes" option will make it easier to pinpoint all the episodes it's scheduled to be recording, and shouldn't. Locate the first erroneously-scheduled recording, cancel it, and I'm all the way out of the DVR menu! GBTTB and then some.

Accidentally jump out of a list menu? Go back, and you're back at the beginning. There needs to be "home" and "end" buttons to take you to the beginning and end of a list, otherwise it should always remember where in a list you are and take you back there.

A week and a half ago, something happened to one of my cables, and I lost a tuner. I had two shows both scheduled to record at 7pm, and it only recorded one, which is obviously understandable. But I also had shows scheduled to record at 8, 8:30 and 9 (only one at each time), and it didn't record ANY of them, even though there was one working tuner.

The "You have an upcoming recording scheduled in 5 minutes" menu seems seems to have a "record as scheduled" option, which is nice (who am I kidding? It's not nice. It should have been standard right from the beginning, but I'll take it). I don't feel like going through the effort of reproducing this now, but I think sometimes selecting the non-cancel option causes it to not record the scheduled show anyway.

The back-8-seconds button never works. Sometimes it goes back a couple seconds, sometimes it doesn't. Hitting a second time pretty much never has an effect, except sometimes hitting it a few times causes the program to freeze. Sometimes stopping and re-navigating to the recording seems to work, sometimes an RBR is required. This is not new; I've had the same problem with all three R15s.

Anytime there's a software update, there should be an active notification. I'm okay with it updating without asking me first, but it should always tell me it's been updated. And if there's an update that changes things I've set (like this business of switching SL's to "both"), there should be a further warning ("Warning: we're not competent enough to update your system seamlessly. We've just updated your system and you should check the following settings we may have screwed around with").

Inability to make changes to SL's without a upcoming recording scheduled is a pretty big oversight. My first R15 failed in spectacular fashion and I missed the last episode of the last season of The Sopranos. I'd really like to be able to tell it "record all first-run episodes of The Sopranos on HBO only - NOT THAT OTHER STATION" in advance.

Filling in info in the search box still makes y


Code:




ou wait significant times in between letters. Really, you should be able to enter a few letters and then hit enter. Also the letter menu should wrap.

There still doesn't seem to be a "back one menu" option everywhere.

HBO series are still listed as the episode name rather than the series name.

And, of course, I can't seem to set up SLs on two different channels for the same series.

Finally, I can't go from pause to FF or RW, have to stop at play first. Same with 30-sec advance, can't go from there to FF or RW


----------



## pyatta

GoBobbyGo said:


> _My understanding is that there's no way to back it up prior to reformatting and that this is intentional on the part of the manufacturer. It'd be one thing if the thing were built to last, but if reformatting the thing is a ROUTINE measure, it's unconscionable that there's no way to back it up. Of course if I'm wrong, please let me know and I'll be quick with the apologies..._
> 
> BOOOYEAH! I am not going to do a reformat EVER. I bought this thing with the understanding i could save shows and watch them at anytime.
> 
> I figured they'd give us a hard drive that would actually last a year. I pulled my hard drive and ran seatools on it. It had so many errors & bad sectors that the scan never completed.
> 
> Last night my machine rebooted w/out notice about 10 times. We only watched tv from 5 - 9. The reboot deleted recordings i setup and pretty much made me grab a beer.
> 
> I'm glad i was able to install GBPVR on my old xp machine. GBPVR in combination with my regular receiver is the best PVR in my house.


----------



## 04Tang

R15 100 - 2 months old
On three recorded programs over the past week the unit has asked to Delete or Don't delete while watching. From 1 minute in to half way through. This has happend before on other shows. We turn the unit off over night and a few days later we may get through the program if we don't fast forward or skip back, just let it play straight through. This is a pain . 

While watching a live show and I used rewind to back up. When I hit play it skipped to present on several tries. I had to press replay several times to back up to where I wanted to be.

A few weeks ago I paused TV for several minutes. When I hit FF to go forward it jumped back to where I froze it initially. Even after watching for 5 minutes. It took me 1 hour to watch 30 minutes of news because every time I tried to FF it jumped back to the same old spot.

This thing is demon possessed. There have been several other strange things to happen with this unit. 

2 HDVR2 Tivos
1 R15 - 100


----------



## monetnj

R15-500
10FA

Like many here, my SLs were changed to both after the update. Had to wait a few weeks until some of them had episodes appear (it has been said before, but not being able to edit SLs without episodes in the to do list is dumb, dumb, dumb) and then tried to change them from "both" to "first run." As soon as I clicked on "first run" the pop-up window shifts to the right to a blank blue area. At that point, I can't exit the pop-up and have to hit the "exit" button. Tried it again with another show, same thing. Couldn't think of anything else to do, so did a RBR. Of course, now I have to wait 24 hours before I can give it another try because the R-15 doesn't store guide date after a reboot. Another dumb aspect of the R-15 in cases where an RBR was caused by a to do list, prioritizer or SL bug. On the upside, first-run itself seems to be working much better for me.

Has anyone else seen similar behavior?


----------



## mackaz

Greetings!

ver 10FA loaded soon after format.

COMMENT: My first 500 lasted about 6mos. D* sends me a refurbed 100 with so much dust on the fan blades it looked like a science experiment!! Within a few days the unit won't respond to the remote. Went through the BS with D* reboot, format bla, bla, bla. No go. The CS person tells me, that whenever I receive a replacement unit to ALWAYS reformat first thing, then set-up. They send a tech (Ironwood). Sure enough the remote don't work. Three remotes don't work. OK, so he replaces the 100 with a NEW 500. 

QUESTION: During the set-up he places zip code "12221" as my zip. When I reformatted either it didn't ask me or I passed by it, but it's still has "12221". Does anyone know the reason for the "special" zip? Can I change it w/o reformatting? Do I need to? 

Thanks....


----------



## carl6

See reply in the other thread.

Carl


----------



## TheMoose

I had a weird thing happen this morning on my R15-100.
Just before 1AM central time I was watching a show I'd recorded & the receiver did a reset all on it's own.
After it finished I continued watching the show but it started about 5 min earlier than it had stopped.


----------



## qwerty

Had my first instance of the "Keep or Delete" dialogue pop up in the midle of a recording. It would consistantly pop-up at the same spot. After restarting, I was able to hold the slip button to advance to 30 seconds before the end and RW and watch the rest.

I guess this is associated with the new version?


----------



## bshortie

R15-300 ver.106c

In addition to what others have written, I receive phantom "incoming call" messages at the top and bottom of every hour. It is very consistant. When CID stops working, deleting the call log as others have mentioned works. But every 30 minutes I get the phantom message.


----------



## jpl

bshortie said:


> R15-300 ver.106c
> 
> In addition to what others have written, I receive phantom "incoming call" messages at the top and bottom of every hour. It is very consistant. When CID stops working, deleting the call log as others have mentioned works. But every 30 minutes I get the phantom message.


Actually, you just reminded me of something. I have the same issue with my 300, but yesterday I updated my surge protection (I know, I know, but it's taken care of now). Before I just had the power outlets hooked up to a surge protector. Then yesterday I bought a unit that takes care of the power outlets, coax connections, and phone line. I wonder if there may be spikes in the phone line and that the 300 is just particularly sensitive to that. When I get home I'm going to turn on the notifications on my 300 again and see what happens - maybe, if the problem IS due to power fluxuations, this may be enough to fix it.


----------



## techNoodle

jpl said:


> Actually, you just reminded me of something. I have the same issue with my 300, but yesterday I updated my surge protection (I know, I know, but it's taken care of now). Before I just had the power outlets hooked up to a surge protector. Then yesterday I bought a unit that takes care of the power outlets, coax connections, and phone line. I wonder if there may be spikes in the phone line and that the 300 is just particularly sensitive to that. When I get home I'm going to turn on the notifications on my 300 again and see what happens - maybe, if the problem IS due to power fluxuations, this may be enough to fix it.


I believe this was covered in another thread some time ago, but you probably have a message center service with your phone company. There is a light on your phone that lets you know if there is a message waiting, and a signal is send every 30 minutes to keep it on or off. The R15 is reacting to this.

Tech


----------



## jpl

techNoodle said:


> I believe this was covered in another thread some time ago, but you probably have a message center service with your phone company. There is a light on your phone that lets you know if there is a message waiting, and a signal is send every 30 minutes to keep it on or off. The R15 is reacting to this.
> 
> Tech


I seem to remember that, and we do have a message center for our phone service. What gets me is that this problem only happens on my 300 - caller id works fine on my 500. Of course it could be that the 300 s/w just doesn't know to ignore this signal. But then again, the phantom calls are sporadic - at least they used to be when I kept my notifications on. They didn't come every half hour - they didn't come on any set schedule that I could tell.


----------



## singe606

qwerty said:


> Had my first instance of the "Keep or Delete" dialogue pop up in the midle of a recording. It would consistantly pop-up at the same spot. After restarting, I was able to hold the slip button to advance to 30 seconds before the end and RW and watch the rest.
> 
> I guess this is associated with the new version?


This happens for me very frequently. It could be coincidence, but I believe it happens more often when something is recording on the other tuner. Just keeps prompting, asking if I want to delete over and over. After about the 4th time, it goes back to the list of recorded shows. Seems like I'm usually about 3/4 of the way through the program at the time (but still several minutes from the end).

This and the sluggish response to remote commands frustrate the heck out of us. I even moved the unit up higher and outside of the area enclosed by glass doors to ensure a direct, completely unobstructed view. Didn't seem to make much of a difference. I think half of the problem probably a weak IR sensor - with the same remote I can point it in the opposite direction of the TV and still control the volume (and other TV functions of course). The other half is probably software related. I notice the blue light blink of the unit when I get the list button, but its a good 5 seconds until it comes up.

I have an R15-300, 106C.


----------



## mikhu

I guess I've been spending too much time in the HR-20 threads, because the stuff others are complaining about there that my HR-20 has been avoiding are starting to show up on my R15. Watched Cold Case last night from the playlist but started it while it was still recording, at about a 30 minutes delay behind the 30 minute late start time. 

We had a few pixel problems and a bunch of audio dropouts. I rewound back over some of the audio dropouts and they happened every time in the same spot (of course it happened a couple times when they mentioned the name of a suspect!  ). 

Both of my R15's (1 - 100, 1- 500) have been working fairly well lately, at least until last night. I searched this thread and I didn't find any talk about audio dropouts, that somewhat surprised me. Is everyone still getting them and just giving up reporting them, or are mine a new thing?


----------



## JimV

R15-500 10fA
Several attempts to reinstall 10FA in the hopes it would improve my viewing because basically now the DVR part of the receiver is unusable. I cant get more then a few seconds into a recorded program before it stops working. 

A new symptom that reared its ugly head the other day was that I was watching something, changed the channel and got no video, just audio. Then I switched back to the other channel and it had no video, just audio. Then the EPG stopped working and only audio was heard. Had to do a red-button reset and then it was working again fine. This was during normal 'live' viewing, not on recorded content.

Im still hoping for a new release before the end of the month because thats what the D* rep said when I called. who knows.


----------



## JimV

Today, turned on the TV. No Audio coming from DVR (R15-500 10FA).
Red button reset remedied the situation.

This thing is getting worse and worse.


----------



## Tgrim1

JimV said:


> Today, turned on the TV. No Audio coming from DVR (R15-500 10FA).


LOL, 2 days ago I had the exact opposite....audio with no video. Red button did nothing, had to unplug and plug back in.

Man, mine was working really good until this last update


----------



## TheTooleMan

JimV said:


> Today, turned on the TV. No Audio coming from DVR (R15-500 10FA).
> Red button reset remedied the situation.
> 
> This thing is getting worse and worse.


It's a piece of dung.

What would happen if we sent them all back at once? Think it would get their attention? Probably not.

DirecTV was just bought by another firm, a large cable operator, Liberty Media. I guess its previous owners, News Corp, were just trying to keep the lights on until they sold it. Maybe if we complain to the new management, and threaten to switch to Dish, we'll get results.

Here's a link to a story about the ownership change: http://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/stories/2007/02/05/daily4.html

Funny thing: there's a story called "The DVR DirecTV Customers Hate to Love." Where did I find it? on FoxNews.com! Fox New is owned by News Corp, DirecTV's previous owner. Now that News Corp has unloaded DirecTV, they can bad-rap it all they want!!!

Maybe Liberty Media will reneg on the deal after learning what a TURD the HR20 is!

Here's that story: 
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,253881,00.html


----------



## JimV

Newscorp had to sell D* to Liberty Media because John Malone from Liberty was the second largest shareholder of Newscorp and was threatening the Murdoch family controlled ownership of the company. The board tried to add a poison pill to prevent a takeover but it didnt go over too well and it likely wasnt going to work anyway.

The majority of the executive staff at D* are still ex-Newscorp people and Liberty Media and Newscorp have a long standing relationship. I belive it was Liberty that sold the Fox stations (before they were called Fox) to Newscorp way back when.

If you look at all the media companies they all own pieces of each other and pieces of their subsidiaries.

Newscorp didnt want to let go of D* but they were forced, I have a feeling they will be back somehow in the future.


----------



## JimV

Whats more important to the story is that Newscorp owns the company NDS that makes the set top boxes R15 and HR20. They also make the smartcards that are in the receivers.

The engineers that run D*'s tech are all ex-Newscorp people too.


----------



## qwerty

500 w 10AF

This morning I was watching a basketball game on ESPN. Scheduled from 10am - 12pm + 1 hour padding. I had This Old House scheduled for 12pm - 12:30pm. I finished watching the game at ~ 12:15, hit stop, and "stop recording & delete". Right after that, I saw the switch channel dialouge flash for a split second. Upon investigation, I found This Old House was not recording. I hit Rec in the guide and tried to flip over to an XM channel and got the "keep or delete" dialouge box. I couldn't change the channel unless i stoped the recording. I did the system test (twice), and it said both tuners were OK. Turned it off, and back on with the same issue. A RBR finally cleared it. It's as if it thought it only had one tuner working.


----------



## TheTooleMan

JimV said:


> Newscorp had to sell D* to Liberty Media because John Malone from Liberty was the second largest shareholder of Newscorp and was threatening the Murdoch family controlled ownership of the company. The board tried to add a poison pill to prevent a takeover but it didnt go over too well and it likely wasnt going to work anyway.
> 
> The majority of the executive staff at D* are still ex-Newscorp people and Liberty Media and Newscorp have a long standing relationship. I belive it was Liberty that sold the Fox stations (before they were called Fox) to Newscorp way back when.
> 
> If you look at all the media companies they all own pieces of each other and pieces of their subsidiaries.
> 
> Newscorp didnt want to let go of D* but they were forced, I have a feeling they will be back somehow in the future.


Considering the right-wing conservative slant of most news organizations these days (News Corp's Fox News is the ultimate example), it's not surprising that these companies are all in bed with each other, too. Murdoch is an ultra-conservative Bush supporter. A few weeks ago he admitted to trying to influence the public to favor the war in Iraq.

Ultimately, these corporate conglomerates are only concerned with their bottom lines. Still, maybe a change in management will get some of the long-running problems resolved with these DVR's. I would guess the end of DirecTV's relationship with TiVo had something to do with rushing these products to market when they weren't really ready for prime-time.

The biggest disappointment is that DirecTV still hasn't remedied many of the problems, and have introduced new ones with software releases. I don't think most consumers are as tech-savvy and persistent as the members of this group, and would more likely call the support phone number when the audio or video disappear, rather than hunting for a group like this to find solutions to their problems.

Strangely enough, when we first had D* installed, about a year ago, the tech told me to search the web about the function of the USB port on the R15. That's how I found my way here... :nono2:


----------



## jpl

TheTooleMan said:


> Considering the right-wing conservative slant of most news organizations these days (News Corp's Fox News is the ultimate example), it's not surprising that these companies are all in bed with each other, too. Murdoch is an ultra-conservative Bush supporter. A few weeks ago he admitted to trying to influence the public to favor the war in Iraq.
> 
> Ultimately, these corporate conglomerates are only concerned with their bottom lines. Still, maybe a change in management will get some of the long-running problems resolved with these DVR's. I would guess the end of DirecTV's relationship with TiVo had something to do with rushing these products to market when they weren't really ready for prime-time.
> 
> The biggest disappointment is that DirecTV still hasn't remedied many of the problems, and have introduced new ones with software releases. I don't think most consumers are as tech-savvy and persistent as the members of this group, and would more likely call the support phone number when the audio or video disappear, rather than hunting for a group like this to find solutions to their problems.
> 
> Strangely enough, when we first had D* installed, about a year ago, the tech told me to search the web about the function of the USB port on the R15. That's how I found my way here... :nono2:


I'll be honest, I don't understand your posting. First, not all news organizations are in bed with one another - otherwise CNN, MSNBC, and FNC would all be owned by the same company... and they're not (and sorry, but you really want to claim that CNN is right wing?). Second (and I don't want to get too off-topic here), if Murdoch is such a right-winger, why is he supporting Hillary for president... and even if he WERE the conservative that everyone thinks he is... well, so what? What it the world does that have to do with DirecTV's business model? DirecTV is a corporation. Murdoch's interest in the company didn't disappear with this deal with Liberty - he still has a great deal of DirecTV stock. The only difference is that News Corp is no longer the controlling interest in the company. That's all. He still wants the company to be profitable... or he loses money.

As for the notion that conglomerates are after the bottom line... um, so is EVERY company in the world. If there was no money to be made, there would be no company operating in the business. Period. Profitability gives entrepreneurs, and investors, the incentive to take risk and start a business... If there were no incentive for profit in the DBS market, then you wouldn't see companies like DirecTV, Dish, XM or Sirius. Sometimes it works out (e.g. DirecTV) and sometimes it doesn't (Primestar and Voom). Not sure what all this has to do with the inability of DirecTV to address all of their problems.


----------



## tank5545

1. R15-300 with software x106C
2. Full system format 2/21/07. (The manual way (record/down arrow not w/remote)
3. Location: Green Bay

These are my latest issues.
When will these items be fixed, and when will the next software upgrade be downloaded to my R15-300?

Sometimes I think Setting up a hand held video camera and pointing it at my TV and hitting record would perform better than this R15-300...sheesh.

My Samsung TIVO died recently, and this R15 is what DirecTV is trying to pass off as a DVR. Crazy stuff. It's nice of them to have us long time customers beta testing it for them. I can't believe how many features are worse than the TIVO. The patent has expired, so you think they could at least TRY to have some of the same functionality. You think they might have tested it before pawning it off on us. 
1. When FF through commercials and you get to your show you could hit play and it would jump back a few seconds so you don't miss any action. This DVR-R15 seems to have a 2-3 second delay upon pushing play so you actually miss 5-10 seconds of the show if you don't manually rewind after hitting play. 

Here are my other complaints:
DirecTV (R15-300) DVR Issues: 

2. Play list does not stay in alphabetical order (A-Z) after exit and re-entry. Please fix ASAP. 

3. Favorites filter "channels I receive" does not actually list the "Total Choice w/locals" (The channels I actually pay for). It lists all channels. Please fix ASAP. 

4. When pressing "Guide/sports channels" it does not actually show all channels that have sports on at that moment. It only lists the channels that are dedicated sports channels like ESPN and ESPN2. If there is a basketball game on CBS at that moment, that channel should appear in the "sports guide". Please fix ASAP. 

5. When recording a show that says keep 5 at most, after 5 have been recorded, it should keep recording new shows and record over the oldest ones, keeping 5 at most, at all times. The DVR currently records 5 and then doesn't record anymore until at least one is deleted. Please fix ASAP. 

6. Range of remote sensor is terrible. If you are at more than a 25 degree angle from the DVR, the remote doesn't work. You need to improve the angular distance that the remote and DVR sensors work. TIVO's remote sensor had a much more generous tolerance. Please fix ASAP. 

7. Reaction time for remote buttons is poor. There is at least a 2 second delay from the time play button is hit to when the screen goes back to "play". When fast forwarding through commercials at speed #2 and then hitting "play" when you see your program come on, the DVR should jump back 3-5 seconds like TIVO does, so you don't miss any of the program. Please fix ASAP. 

Please let me know when these issues will be resolved. I am contemplating cancelling my DirecTV service due to these problems.


----------



## Bobman

I agree with you except for #5, I like the way it is. 

Not to be the bearer of bad news but once you activated the R-15, your locked in for a two year commitment with prorated early cancellation fee even if you return it the next day. Know a few that have tried just that.


----------



## tank5545

Nice. I didn't even realize it. I will never give one more penny to Time Warner though, so I'll struggle through the growing pains of DirecTV's DVR's.

Hopefully they start taking our concerns seriously, and soon!


----------



## tank5545

Is there some sort of "to do list" the DirecTV has for each of their DVR's?

Id like to see something in writing/posted by DirecTV stating the issues they are aware of regarding the R15-300 and which items are being worked on for the next software release, as well as an honest opinion about items that will never be fixed for whatever reason.

As customers we just want to know that our concerns are being addressed. I understand no one is perfect and hardware/software like this will always have bugs, but lets here from DirecTV that they want to keep us as customers.

Anyone know of any listing like this?


----------



## carl6

tank5545 said:


> 1. When FF through commercials and you get to your show you could hit play and it would jump back a few seconds so you don't miss any action. This DVR-R15 seems to have a 2-3 second delay upon pushing play so you actually miss 5-10 seconds of the show if you don't manually rewind after hitting play.


Try pressing the skip back button instead of the play button. That will usually get you where you want to be.



tank5545 said:


> 2. Play list does not stay in alphabetical order (A-Z) after exit and re-entry. Please fix ASAP.


Can't help you with this one, it's just the way it works.



tank5545 said:


> 3. Favorites filter "channels I receive" does not actually list the "Total Choice w/locals" (The channels I actually pay for). It lists all channels. Please fix ASAP.


This has been turned off globally. It is expected to be re-enabled, but don't know when.


tank5545 said:


> 4. When pressing "Guide/sports channels" it does not actually show all channels that have sports on at that moment. It only lists the channels that are dedicated sports channels like ESPN and ESPN2. If there is a basketball game on CBS at that moment, that channel should appear in the "sports guide". Please fix ASAP.


I wouldn't expect this to happen. Too dependent on dynamic guide data.


tank5545 said:


> 5. When recording a show that says keep 5 at most, after 5 have been recorded, it should keep recording new shows and record over the oldest ones, keeping 5 at most, at all times. The DVR currently records 5 and then doesn't record anymore until at least one is deleted. Please fix ASAP.


Actually, my R15 works exactly as you want it to. Check your various settings.


tank5545 said:


> 6. Range of remote sensor is terrible. If you are at more than a 25 degree angle from the DVR, the remote doesn't work. You need to improve the angular distance that the remote and DVR sensors work. TIVO's remote sensor had a much more generous tolerance. Please fix ASAP.


A common complaint. This also seems a bit worse on the R15-300 than on the R15-500 (different manufacturers) in my personal experience.



tank5545 said:


> 7. Reaction time for remote buttons is poor. There is at least a 2 second delay from the time play button is hit to when the screen goes back to "play". When fast forwarding through commercials at speed #2 and then hitting "play" when you see your program come on, the DVR should jump back 3-5 seconds like TIVO does, so you don't miss any of the program. Please fix ASAP.


Same as item 1 above.

Carl


----------



## cobaltblue

I tried to open a group of program episodes and the R-15 would not let me. I did a reset by pressing the red button as opposed to unplugging the unit. Lo and behold, it did an entire setup reset. I wound up with zero items in my To Do List. I had 41 at the time. I don't know if this is a new problem or not. Is it better to unplug to do a reset rather then use the red button?


----------



## wbmccarty

tank5545 said:


> Please let me know when these issues will be resolved.


From time to time, DTV releases a revised version of R-15 software. We presume that they will continue to do so but many of us believe that the rate at which new releases are made available will (has) decrease(d).

Most long-time users agree that the performance and reliability of the R-15 have increased since first release. Among those who acquired an R-15 more recently, opinion varies. Certainly, new releases tend to introduce new defects, some of which have been serious. A majority of members of this forum now appear pretty much satisfied with the R-15. However, a minority continues to experience serious problems.

Since DTV has continued to issue new software releases, it follows that someone at DTV acknowledges the existence of problems. However, DTV executives and most CSRs take the position that the R-15 is now in good shape. So, there is generally no public acknowledgment of existing defects. Neither is there a public to-do list.

I hope that you find yourself among the group that enjoys satisfactory performance and reliability. If not, you may find that, by keeping your R-15 in first gear and performing an engine overhaul every 10,000 miles, you may be able to live with it. But, as a long-time, dissatisfied R-15 user, I find no reason for hope that the R-15 will ever function properly.

Cheers,


----------



## jpl

cobaltblue said:


> I tried to open a group of program episodes and the R-15 would not let me. I did a reset by pressing the red button as opposed to unplugging the unit. Lo and behold, it did an entire setup reset. I wound up with zero items in my To Do List. I had 41 at the time. I don't know if this is a new problem or not. Is it better to unplug to do a reset rather then use the red button?


Depends on how far out in the future the items in your to do list were scheduled to record. When you do a reset (plug pull or red button) you lose guide data. It'll give data for the next couple of hours right off the bat, but anything beyond that is gone for a while. It takes some time for the unit to rebuild your guide (usually fully repopulated with 2 weeks worht of data within about 24 hours). This will also affect your to do list. Anything that's scheduled to record, say, tomorrow will either not show up, or will show up with erroneous information (garbage). Over time, as the guide data rebuilds, so will the to do list. It really shouldn't matter which way you do the reset. I would wait to see if your to do list rebuilds over the next several hours. If it does, then what you're seeing isn't a problem - but a reflection of the unit trying to rebuild it's schedule.

BTW, that entire set-up type reset has happened to me as well. It happened once, on a red button reset, but, aside from wiping out the name of my favorites lists, I didn't lose anything. THAT is a known issue. But, apart from having to go through all those screens again, I don't believe it hurts anything. Oh, yeah, and I lost some information regarding how my remote was programmed. The remote still worked fine, but when I looked at the system setup information on the r15, it'll tell me that the tv/av1/av2 are not programmed. But like I said, it shouldn't hurt anything - and it fact, it seemed to fix something on my unit -- the caller id wasn't working correctly before that reset, and started working fine afterwards.


----------



## tank5545

wbmccarty said:


> From time to time, DTV releases a revised version of R-15 software. We presume that they will continue to do so but many of us believe that the rate at which new releases are made available will (has) decrease(d).
> 
> Most long-time users agree that the performance and reliability of the R-15 have increased since first release. Among those who acquired an R-15 more recently, opinion varies. Certainly, new releases tend to introduce new defects, some of which have been serious. A majority of members of this forum now appear pretty much satisfied with the R-15. However, a minority continues to experience serious problems.
> 
> Since DTV has continued to issue new software releases, it follows that someone at DTV acknowledges the existence of problems. However, DTV executives and most CSRs take the position that the R-15 is now in good shape. So, there is generally no public acknowledgment of existing defects. Neither is there a public to-do list.
> 
> I hope that you find yourself among the group that enjoys satisfactory performance and reliability. If not, you may find that, by keeping your R-15 in first gear and performing an engine overhaul every 10,000 miles, you may be able to live with it. But, as a long-time, dissatisfied R-15 user, I find no reason for hope that the R-15 will ever function properly.
> 
> Cheers,


Thanks for the post. I'm a new (couple months) and very unhappy customer with the R-15. I'm actually debating buying a new hard drive for my Samsung TIVO which I've moved to the basement because of a flaky hard drive that is near death (had it for 3 years).

My list of issues was just the tip of the iceberg. If DirecTV wants all of us long time customers (8 years for me) to continue with them and to someday upgrade to the HD package and hardware, they better show us some commitment for the product we currently have. My loyalty can be bought by continually supporting and improving existing products even if they aren't the "wave of the future".

I just bought a 52" Mitsubishi microdisplay LCD TV and get my local channels in HD for free with an antenna. I might look to upgrade to DirecTV's HD package if the ever get the Green Bay Fox channel in HD and add more than 5 other HD channels to the package. Is the HD package still $10/month or will that be going thru the roof when they add more HD channels?


----------



## TiVoFreak

R15-300 v106c
no format (I just received this DVR around 6 weeks ago)

Series link will recognize first run on local channels OK but not on other channels. I have to manually record things on SciFi, USA, FX.. etc. and go into the To Do List everyday and delete all repeat episodes.

Sometimes there will be nothing in the To Do List other than what I actually want to record, I will come home from work and it will have recorded many repeat showings that were not even in the To Do List. It does this most often for shows on the SciFi channel.

If a program runs over 1 hour (for example, Dirt on FX is 65 minutes long), it will record only the last 5 minutes of the show.

If I go to a series in my list and do a search for episodes, it will tell me there are no upcoming episodes and then ask me if I want to delete the series link. However, I can go to Menu>Search and search for that same program and it will show many upcoming episodes.

Software locks up on me at least once every 10 days and I have to reset the machine. It does this most often when it is multi-tasking. Recording a program while I watch another and am searching for something simultaneously. But it locks up other times when I am doing nothing except trying to fast forward. The fast forward with "stick" and it will FF all the way to the end of the program then lock up so that I can not delete, exit or anything.

Kelli


----------



## tank5545

Quote:
Originally Posted by tank5545 

2. Play list does not stay in alphabetical order (A-Z) after exit and re-entry. Please fix ASAP. 


Can't help you with this one, it's just the way it works.

Why? That' stupid. Why should I have to re-sort the list every time I visit the list? If I want my list sorted alphabetically A-Z it should stay that way until I change my mind. If it doesn't remember my preference what's the point of being able to sort at all?


----------



## Wolffpack

tank5545 said:


> Quote:
> Originally Posted by tank5545
> 
> 2. Play list does not stay in alphabetical order (A-Z) after exit and re-entry. Please fix ASAP.
> 
> Can't help you with this one, it's just the way it works.
> 
> Why? That' stupid. Why should I have to re-sort the list every time I visit the list? If I want my list sorted alphabetically A-Z it should stay that way until I change my mind. If it doesn't remember my preference what's the point of being able to sort at all?


Yea, it's one thing to forget a setting between resets, but another to forget a setting when you exit MyPlaylist.


----------



## Fast Freddie

I thought I'd share my recent experience.....

I'm probably considered a power user...my unit is mostly on, and mostly full. In the past I've gone so far as to remove the drive from the unit and repair it with my PC, but I found that it only solved the issues for a few weeks. Before long it was back to the same old pain in the butt.

Yesterday it was turned off (about 6 hours) for the first time in a while. When it was powered on again, it became locked in the "startup loop" I've found mentioned here by others. It would reach 50% while "searching for satellite" and then restart.

I tried the RB and power cord several times, and eventually conceded to a reformat attempt. However, that didn't work either. It got stuck in a loop only displaying the welcome message. 

It would show the "starting receiver"...then "a few more seconds"....go dark, then back to the "starting receiver" message.

After about 8 hours from the first power on (give or take) it loaded up as if nothing bad had ever happened. No reformat. All programs intact.

I'm pleased it turned out well for me and I was patient enough to wait, but this equipment is by far the most disappointing pile of parts I've ever had the displeasure of owning. 

For several hours it looked as if the simple use of the power button had killed it. 

R15-500 10FA / aprox 14 months old


----------



## carl6

Fast Freddie said:


> ... and eventually conceded to a reformat attempt. However, that didn't work either. It got stuck in a loop only displaying the welcome message.
> 
> It would show the "starting receiver"...then "a few more seconds"....go dark, then back to the "starting receiver" message.
> 
> After about 8 hours from the first power on (give or take) it loaded up as if nothing bad had ever happened. No reformat. All programs intact.


With all programs intact, it is apparent that the reformat attempt did not work. If you attempt it again, make sure you follow the procedure carefully, timing is kind of important. Start with a red button reset. Wait for the initial blue screen to go away (turn black). Then push and hold the down arrow and the record button on the front of the DVR. Hold them for about 5 seconds, the record light should turn on. Then release.

However, if you are working okay at the moment, then I agree with not trying a reformat again at see how things go.

Carl


----------



## jscorky924

1. R15-500 with software x10FA
2.Never have done a full system format (don't want to lose all saved programs)
3. Location: Missouri

This used to happen rarely,but has recently gotten worse. I cannot predict when it will so far it has been random:
On a recorded program about a half-hour in the video will go blank, but the audio will still work unless I use one of the trick play buttons (FF, RW, jump back, etc.) then I lose everything. This is getting anoying. What I would like to know is that is my box about to go dead or will a reformat help? Has anyone else seen something like this? 
I have about 25 programs on my to do list and have about 75-80% of free space. A little aside is that about 3 months ago I had about 50% free space and since I caught up the problem had gotten worse. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks


----------



## TheTooleMan

I guess tank5545 thinks we have some kind of pull with DirecTV. From my year of experience with this forum, I would say this is primarily a place for commiseration.

Hopefully tank5545 sent this letter to their Customer Retention department so they could tell you something that would keep you from carrying out the threat to pull the plug on the service.



tank5545 said:


> 1. R15-300 with software x106C
> 2. Full system format 2/21/07. (The manual way (record/down arrow not w/remote)
> 3. Location: Green Bay
> 
> These are my latest issues.
> When will these items be fixed, and when will the next software upgrade be downloaded to my R15-300?
> 
> Sometimes I think Setting up a hand held video camera and pointing it at my TV and hitting record would perform better than this R15-300...sheesh.
> 
> My Samsung TIVO died recently, and this R15 is what DirecTV is trying to pass off as a DVR. Crazy stuff. It's nice of them to have us long time customers beta testing it for them. I can't believe how many features are worse than the TIVO. The patent has expired, so you think they could at least TRY to have some of the same functionality. You think they might have tested it before pawning it off on us.
> 1. When FF through commercials and you get to your show you could hit play and it would jump back a few seconds so you don't miss any action. This DVR-R15 seems to have a 2-3 second delay upon pushing play so you actually miss 5-10 seconds of the show if you don't manually rewind after hitting play.
> 
> Here are my other complaints:
> DirecTV (R15-300) DVR Issues:
> 
> 2. Play list does not stay in alphabetical order (A-Z) after exit and re-entry. Please fix ASAP.
> 
> 3. Favorites filter "channels I receive" does not actually list the "Total Choice w/locals" (The channels I actually pay for). It lists all channels. Please fix ASAP.
> 
> 4. When pressing "Guide/sports channels" it does not actually show all channels that have sports on at that moment. It only lists the channels that are dedicated sports channels like ESPN and ESPN2. If there is a basketball game on CBS at that moment, that channel should appear in the "sports guide". Please fix ASAP.
> 
> 5. When recording a show that says keep 5 at most, after 5 have been recorded, it should keep recording new shows and record over the oldest ones, keeping 5 at most, at all times. The DVR currently records 5 and then doesn't record anymore until at least one is deleted. Please fix ASAP.
> 
> 6. Range of remote sensor is terrible. If you are at more than a 25 degree angle from the DVR, the remote doesn't work. You need to improve the angular distance that the remote and DVR sensors work. TIVO's remote sensor had a much more generous tolerance. Please fix ASAP.
> 
> 7. Reaction time for remote buttons is poor. There is at least a 2 second delay from the time play button is hit to when the screen goes back to "play". When fast forwarding through commercials at speed #2 and then hitting "play" when you see your program come on, the DVR should jump back 3-5 seconds like TIVO does, so you don't miss any of the program. Please fix ASAP.
> 
> Please let me know when these issues will be resolved. I am contemplating cancelling my DirecTV service due to these problems.


----------



## tank5545

TheTooleMan said:


> I guess tank5545 thinks we have some kind of pull with DirecTV. From my year of experience with this forum, I would say this is primarily a place for commiseration.
> 
> Hopefully tank5545 sent this letter to their Customer Retention department so they could tell you something that would keep you from carrying out the threat to pull the plug on the service.


Yep, already did that, just copied it here in the forum to share with others...


----------



## LameLefty

You know, if you take a look at the Cutting Edge forum, especially in regards to the HR20, it appears as if some part of D* is actually following along here quite closely and responding to customer issues. The same may not be true of those responsible for R15 development, however.


----------



## blade

I have skimmed through this thread but did not read every message so sorry if this was already answered... anyway I have a "new" (refurbished) r-15-500 that replaced my possessed 300, anyway I received the update and then did a format and everything seems to be working well, except the screen saver. I don't know about paused recordings, but the main thing I am worried about is the screen saver on the XM channels. This is not working for me and I don't want burn in on my plasma screen. It does work fine on my new r-15 100 though.


----------



## dslchiphead

Using: R15-500 10FA release.

Caller ID never worked well. I tied the removing the power from the unit as a possible solution to try by Earl Bonovich, but changed nothing. The Called ID will work for the first two calls. On the third, it says I need to subscribe to the Caller ID service from my local phone company. After that nothing (no on-screen nor log). My other Hughes receivers work fine with Caller ID as does all my land-line phones.

Other issues that are rare but occurs, is audio and video drop outs. A couple of going to a black screen after I fast rewind then into play. I have not seen that happen for a while now though.

I have never tried a reformat of the drive as I have a couple of saved series I want to keep for now.


----------



## TheTooleMan

dslchiphead said:


> Using: R15-500 10FA release.
> 
> Caller ID never worked well. I tied the removing the power from the unit as a possible solution to try by Earl Bonovich, but changed nothing. The Called ID will work for the first two calls. On the third, it says I need to subscribe to the Caller ID service from my local phone company. After that nothing (no on-screen nor log). My other Hughes receivers work fine with Caller ID as does all my land-line phones.


Good to know Caller ID lives up to the quality of the rest of the product. :eek2:


----------



## Pink Fairy

My 300 has had a weird problem lately, and resetting isn't fixing it. It is not a big deal atm, but I use the bookmark feature alot with mine...and about 1/2 the time...nothing happens when you try to add a bookmark. It will pause, but then nothing happens when the green button is pressed. With 5 adults in the house watching the same programs half the time, I want my bookmarks!!


----------



## JimV

OK, my R15-500 was so busted I broke down and went with the special code DVR4U or whatever it was to get another one knowing that they wont fix the 500 and it's just out of warranty.

I received an R15-100 about 1 week ago and it has the latest code. Much more reliable however Ive already discovered the following issues with it.

1. Series Link is recording programs that aren't first runs even though that is what I specify
2. Double-Dash deletes only work sometimes and it doesnt always return to the same line after you do it.
3. After watching a recorded program, I press stop and the program showing on whatever channel it is comes up with No Audio.
4. After watching a recorded program, I press stop and NOTHING HAPPENS. I press stop 20 times and still nothing. I can't exit the program. I hit list, find the program, do a dash-dash and the program still wont go away. So I change the channel (no audio now) and its finally gone.
5. Recorded program only comes in with 2 channel audio instead of 5.1. Not sure if its all programs, or some but definitely this one and it was a movie. 99% of the shows make my receiver show 5.1 but this didnt.
6. Ive noticed some ff and rw problems but I havent been able to repeat them. Basically hitting rw so that its at the 3 speed doesnt actually make it go 3 times faster, just 1 time.

So as expected the R15-100 isnt all that much better than my busted R15-500 but at least it is recording and replaying programs. But one week in, its obvious its not the device but the software.


----------



## Wolffpack

JimV said:


> OK, my R15-500 was so busted I broke down and went with the special code DVR4U or whatever it was to get another one knowing that they wont fix the 500 and it's just out of warranty.
> 
> I received an R15-100 about 1 week ago and it has the latest code. Much more reliable however Ive already discovered the following issues with it.
> 
> 1. Series Link is recording programs that aren't first runs even though that is what I specify
> 2. Double-Dash deletes only work sometimes and it doesnt always return to the same line after you do it.
> 3. After watching a recorded program, I press stop and the program showing on whatever channel it is comes up with No Audio.
> 4. After watching a recorded program, I press stop and NOTHING HAPPENS. I press stop 20 times and still nothing. I can't exit the program. I hit list, find the program, do a dash-dash and the program still wont go away. So I change the channel (no audio now) and its finally gone.
> 5. Recorded program only comes in with 2 channel audio instead of 5.1. Not sure if its all programs, or some but definitely this one and it was a movie. 99% of the shows make my receiver show 5.1 but this didnt.
> 6. Ive noticed some ff and rw problems but I havent been able to repeat them. Basically hitting rw so that its at the 3 speed doesnt actually make it go 3 times faster, just 1 time.
> 
> So as expected the R15-100 isnt all that much better than my busted R15-500 but at least it is recording and replaying programs. But one week in, its obvious its not the device but the software.


Why would you expect anything different between a -500 and -100 or even -300? The problems you've mentioned are with all R15s. They have been problems for 17 months now. It's the software. It's not the hardware. You can keep throwing R15's away and trading them in, you'll see them work better for a while, and some may be good units, but in the end, the model number doesn't make any difference.

Every item you mentioned is a known bug yet to be fixed by DTV.


----------



## wbmccarty

Wolffpack said:


> Every item you mentioned is a known bug yet to be fixed by DTV.


Known to those who read this board, but not necessarily acknowledged by DTV and therefore not necessarily planned to be fixed, right?

I'm not trying to quibble. It's just that lately, I haven't been able to read every post. And, I don't bother to read the CE forum. So, I may not be up to date with respect to information, if any, from DTV.

Cheers,


----------



## TheTooleMan

Wolffpack said:


> Why would you expect anything different between a -500 and -100 or even -300? The problems you've mentioned are with all R15s. They have been problems for 17 months now. It's the software. It's not the hardware. You can keep throwing R15's away and trading them in, you'll see them work better for a while, and some may be good units, but in the end, the model number doesn't make any difference.
> 
> Every item you mentioned is a known bug yet to be fixed by DTV.


Wolfpack, why are you picking on JimV for reporting these problems? Your response is not helpful. The problem is not that JimV doesn't know the difference in the models, or whether there are any, but that all the machines are crap and D* doesn't do anything about fixing them!

JimV, keep demanding D* send you another unit until you get one that works. Keep documenting the problems you experience until you have a list longer than a roll of toilet paper, then send it and the R15 to D* along with a cancellation of your subscription.

As for whether there are differences in the bugs found in different models of the R15 (100, 300, 500): these machines are made by different hardware manufacturers. The software version numbers are different and are distributed at different times. It has been noted in the past that different machines have different software defects. JimV has described some of the different problems in his posting. So it should NOT be assumed under any circumstances that the machines behave in the same way.


----------



## Wolffpack

TheTooleMan said:


> Wolfpack, why are you picking on JimV for reporting these problems? Your response is not helpful. The problem is not that JimV doesn't know the difference in the models, or whether there are any, but that all the machines are crap and D* doesn't do anything about fixing them!
> 
> JimV, keep demanding D* send you another unit until you get one that works. Keep documenting the problems you experience until you have a list longer than a roll of toilet paper, then send it and the R15 to D* along with a cancellation of your subscription.
> 
> As for whether there are differences in the bugs found in different models of the R15 (100, 300, 500): these machines are made by different hardware manufacturers. The software version numbers are different and are distributed at different times. It has been noted in the past that different machines have different software defects. JimV has described some of the different problems in his posting. So it should NOT be assumed under any circumstances that the machines behave in the same way.


I wasn't picking on him at all. I was highlighting the fact that due to the lack of any activity on the R15 comments here are down to almost nothing and new members could get the impression that one R15 is better than another.

The problems JimV listed are all known bugs....as wbmccarty notes, at least here. My comment was exactly that all R15s have these same problems. Getting a new one from DTV will not fix the problem in the long run. A reformat will typically do the same as getting a new unit. It will run better for a while and then go in the dumper again. Add to that the fact that you have no control over which model you'll get it makes replacing the unit pretty much useless. That is unless there are factors such as a bad HD or a heat issue.

All my post did was ask why he thought a new, different model would make any difference and hopefully is seen by others to stop this idea that, given these problems any one model runs better than any other.


----------



## wbmccarty

TheTooleMan said:


> It has been noted in the past that different machines have different software defects. JimV has described some of the different problems in his posting.


From the standpoint of good engineering, one would hope that the differences among the various releases are small. But, we do see problems specific to particular releases. So, the differences are clearly large enough to accommodate multiple, perhaps many, software defects. Even presuming a high density of software defects, that suggests that the releases are really quite distinct.

Does anyone know why the releases are so different? Presumably, the differences in hardware are more than merely cosmetic. Has anyone done an analysis of the hardware across models? Trouble reports are consistent with the possibility that the various models are built using different processors or otherwise differ in some very substantial ways.

Cheers,


----------



## Wolffpack

Here's what I found regarding the R15-500 last year. I don't have a -300 or -100 so couldn't compare the actual chips. If anyone would like to do the same with a -300 or -100 it could prove interesting.

http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=57911


----------



## wbmccarty

Wolffpack said:


> All my post did was ask why he thought a new, different model would make any difference and hopefully is seen by others to stop this idea that, given these problems any one model runs better than any other.


When I reported my first problem to DTV, almost one year ago, they insisted on sending me a replacement unit. It was clear to me that the problem was software, not hardware. But, the 2nd level CSR couldn't, or at least didn't, perceive the obvious signs of a software defect. Naturally, the replacement unit changed nothing, other than the availability of programs I'd recorded on the original unit.

My second major encounter with DTV went the same way, except the CSR insisted on sending out a different model R-15. Clearly, even the 2nd-level CSRs are infected by this superstition, which reminds me of Lord of the Rings: "One model to rule them all, one model to find them, one model to bring them all and in the darkness bind them."

The bottom line is that the 2nd-level CSRs are one-trick ponies as far as my experience with them is concerned. They don't seem to have, or use, a list of problems as complete as that available by spending 20 minutes reading this forum. They're well trained and courteous as to demeanor. But, they don't have a clue. Functionally, what they provide is more like customer abuse than customer service.

As soon as I draw down my inventory of recorded programs, I'll once again reformat the unit and subsequently report the next major problem to DTV. What do you suppose they'll do? This time, I'm going to ask if they come in decorator colors. 

Cheers,


----------



## JimV

Thanks for all the replies. The comments are good. 

My reason for posting about the R15-100 is to prove that it is more than just my 500, that the new ones are also flawed, and to record the flaws Im finding to add fuel to the fire. I wasnt expecting the 100 to operate too much better than the 500 but not having a functional DVR for a couple weeks was painful so thats why I wanted another one in the hopes it would work at least long enough until they fix the bugs and then Id have two working DVRs.

Thats the idea at least.


----------



## TheTooleMan

My reaction may have been more kneejerk than necessary, but as long as D* provides the R15 in three different models, built by three different manufacturers, it is safe to assume that differences exist between the models. Therefore, it is worth asking if problems found on one model exist on another, and it is safe to assume that one model may perform better than another. 

D* may not realize it, but by having three different models of this unit, they have created a quality control nightmare for themselves.


----------



## Wolffpack

I think there's alot of things they did not realize. Like why drop one third party DVR vendor that produced a pretty good DVR (Tivo) for another third party DVR vendor that produces probably the worst DVR on the market (Sky+ = NDS)?


----------



## TheTooleMan

Wolffpack said:


> I think there's alot of things they did not realize. Like why drop one third party DVR vendor that produced a pretty good DVR (Tivo) for another third party DVR vendor that produces probably the worst DVR on the market (Sky+ = NDS)?


It was a business decision that had more to do with money and copyrights than with quality of the product and subscriber satisfaction. In the long run it may cost them some subscribers.


----------



## Wolffpack

TheTooleMan said:


> It was a business decision that had more to do with money and copyrights than with quality of the product and subscriber satisfaction. In the long run it may cost them some subscribers.


It was a poor business decision. In the end, what did it get DTV?

I'm not sure where copyrights come in, but if DTV had continued with the Tivo contract, copyright and patent infringement issues would be moot. If DTV had kept the Tivo subcontract agreement going, right now we could be enjoying a Tivo based unit that handled MPEG4 HD signals. Would it work as bad/good as the HR20? We'll never know. But at least the core DVR functionality, and filesystems (MFS) and the OS would be a proven format. We wouldn't be looking at a R15 that will be abandoned and a HR20 that......what can I say. Customers would still be able to order R10s, a most dependable DVR.

The arguments I heard, from Earl and others, was that DTV didn't want to be tied to a third party vendor. Yet with their first in house DVR, the R15, we are reminded by Earl that DTV is yet again tied to a third party vendor, NDS. Only difference was that Tivo was doing the DTivos and NDS was doing crap Sky boxes.

Argument #2, again from Earl (I guess who I would have to consider the official spokesperson for DTV since they don't have one) was that DTV wanted a common UI and look and feel. So how did that work out? Seems to be pretty badly. The HR20 has been receiving updates and added features while the R15 sits in the closet, yet as Earl propounds, is still an active product. We all know what "active product" means don't we. Windows 98 was an "active product" for years, but was anything added to it? No.

Prior to August of 2006 the R15 received updates every month or couple of weeks. Those updates were obviously coded by NDS, right Earl? So if the R15 was receiving updates with that frequency the first half of 2006, why did they drop off since then? Why are updates not continuing at that rate? NDS still does the coding and submits it to DTV. So what changed? My guess, DTV cut their contract with NDS and cut back the $$$ being paid to NDS. DTV did what they did to Tivo and told them....."we're doing it ourselves......screw you". Bottom line here is that DTV doesn't value R15 users as much as they value HR20 users. If they did, R15 users would still be getting updates as they did the first half of 2006. R15 users would be seeing the one button guide, the increased TDL, the updated history screen, networking, search logic that ignores "the" and "a", and many other features.

Let's go Earl, why have updates for the R15 dropped off so much? Has DTV made the decision that the R15 is "fixed". Has DTV cut back on the contracts they were paying NDS? Has DTV made the decision that new features that have been added to the HR20, to make those customers happy, will not be added to the R15? If so why.

Earl, you like being the spokesperson when you can announce silly little new features for the HR20 in the CE forum. They worship you because of your inside knowledge of DTV and what's coming "soon". Then on the R15 to claim you don't know anything. You can't tell us anything. If that's because DTV is filling you in on the HR20 and keeps you in the dark on the R15, why would that be?

SD DVR users should not be second hand citizens. They should not be second hand citizens with DTV, with DBSTalk or with you Earl. So let us know. Even though you repeatthe fact that the R15 is an active product, is that all you can give us?


----------



## TheTooleMan

Wolffpack said:


> Earl, you like being the spokesperson when you can announce silly little new features for the HR20 in the CE forum. They worship you because of your inside knowledge of DTV and what's coming "soon". Then on the R15 to claim you don't know anything. You can't tell us anything. If that's because DTV is filling you in on the HR20 and keeps you in the dark on the R15, why would that be?
> 
> SD DVR users should not be second hand citizens. They should not be second hand citizens with DTV, with DBSTalk or with you Earl. So let us know. Even though you repeat the fact that the R15 is an active product, is that all you can give us?


Wow. So Earl is the Tony Snow of DirecTV? I'll go further: the dysfunctional D* administration can be compared with the dysfunctional White House! Interesting analogies, especially considering the right-wing conservative screwballs at the top of both organizations: Rupert Murdoch (until the Liberty trade, anyway) and Dubya! (They're friends, by the way)

:soapbox: 
The only way to make D* improve the R15 and the rest of its products is for lots of subscribers to drop the service because they are dissatisfied with the product. Customers need to get really angry with D* and tell them in no uncertain terms that they deserve more respect and more service for their dollars. D* is a business, and a small part of a bigger business, and the only pain they feel is in their bottom line.

I quit posting on this board a while ago because my R15 became more or less stable, and it's mediocre performance and idiosyncrasies were more-or-less tolerable. I wasn't getting much information or help from posting here. Ranting and raving about the sorry state of the R15 may have made me feel better for a little while, and so did the hope that my documented bugs are going to reach the ears and eyes of someone who cares. But when even the most obvious faults of the machines were not fixed after several software updates, I basically figured out that D* just doesn't care.

(Unlike Wolfpack, I've been a subscriber since April 2006 and have only received two or three updates the entire time. And some of them made the R15 worse.)

I keep putting up with the R15 because D* offers one or two channels I enjoy which are not offered by Dish and Time Warner cable. I'm also an "Idiot Optimist," and I keep hoping the R15 will improve.


----------



## wbmccarty

DTV's decision was not that unreasonable. Most software developers don't understand how difficult it is to build good software. How can business managers be held to a higher standard?

I suspect that DTV merely wanted control of a technology that's critical to their success. Being in thrall to a technology vendor is not a good place to be. 

Where DTV has goofed is in insisting on obtaining a position as the monopoly provider of DVR services. If they'd have let the R-15 compete on its own merits, everything would be hunky dory. They should have cut a deal that gave NDS a strong incentive to create a top-notch DVR. But, then again, they couldn't have realized how difficult it would be to create a good DVR.

I generally fire both barrels whenever I point my analytical shotgun at DTV. So, you can be sure I'm sincere in this argument even if I may be wrong.

Cheers,


----------



## Clint Lamor

You know I actually agree here. I think they should have licensed the rights to Tivo and made Tivo pay them for every DVR used with their system. This should have also been opened up to companies like Moxi (though I think they would have a harder time as I think their system is dependant on their backend equipment). I'm a HUGE supporter of competition as I think it makes for better products all around. I think by doing this we would see better products from DTV, Tivo and whomever else gets into the game.

I like my SA Tivos, I like my R15 and I like my HR20 but there are things that ALL of them lack that another may have and I would like to see that competition push each and every one of them to work harder.



wbmccarty said:


> DTV's decision was not that unreasonable. Most software developers don't understand how difficult it is to build good software. How can business managers be held to a higher standard?
> 
> I suspect that DTV merely wanted control of a technology that's critical to their success. Being in thrall to a technology vendor is not a good place to be.
> 
> Where DTV has goofed is in insisting on obtaining a position as the monopoly provider of DVR services. If they'd have let the R-15 compete on its own merits, everything would be hunky dory. They should have cut a deal that gave NDS a strong incentive to create a top-notch DVR. But, then again, they couldn't have realized how difficult it would be to create a good DVR.
> 
> I generally fire both barrels whenever I point my analytical shotgun at DTV. So, you can be sure I'm sincere in this argument even if I may be wrong.
> 
> Cheers,


----------



## TheTooleMan

wbmccarty said:


> Most software developers don't understand how difficult it is to build good software. How can business managers be held to a higher standard?


As a software developer myself, I can attest that it's the _business managers _who don't understand how difficult it is to develop and test software. I'm sure a business decision was made concerning the DVR's which has affected their quality. If you gave the quality control to the software developers, the product would still be in development! 



Clint Lamor said:


> I think they should have licensed the rights to Tivo and made Tivo pay them for every DVR used with their system.


More than likely, DirecTV paying TiVo for every DVR put into service, which is why DirecTV wanted their own line of cheap DVR's.


----------



## Clint Lamor

TheTooleMan said:


> More than likely, DirecTV paying TiVo for every DVR put into service, which is why DirecTV wanted their own line of cheap DVR's.


What I was stating instead of dropping Tivo they could have let Tivo make DVRs for their system and charged them for the rights to do it.


----------



## wbmccarty

TheTooleMan said:


> As a software developer myself, I can attest that it's the _business managers _who don't understand how difficult it is to develop and test software. .... If you gave the quality control to the software developers, the product would still be in development!


My own perception of the software development industry is relatively negative. The studies I've seen, and my personal experience with students representing a wide variety of organizations and organization types, all point in that direction. But, I don't see the claim as all that important in this context since we agree that the decision was most likely made by management rather than by technical staff. So, I'll choose not to beat this particular dead horse. Instead, I'll compliment any group of software developers having enough understanding of software to realize that no amount of post-implementation testing is sufficient to establish reasonable levels of quality. Bravo!

Cheers,


----------



## DJPellegrino

Today, I got home and the wife tells me that when she changes the channel either by channel up/down or by the channel number directly, the OSD shows the channel you select, but the channel never changes!

Not believing her, I try it myself. sure enough the channel banner shows the channel you select, but the program title does not change nor does the channel change. I had a program recording so I was not able to do a RBR so as to not lose the recording in progress. 

I went into the list of recorded programs and selected one, then while it was playing, I typed in a channel number. The tuner went to the program and channel as it should. Then I tried another channel, but noe effect. The program I was recording was actually recording, but I just could not change the channel using the remote or on the unit itself.

I have the R-15 500 at 10FA,

A RBR did in fact clear the problem.


----------



## pentium101

Wow, Wolffpack has been banned. I would have never thought that this site would have banned such a long time member for expressing their opinions.

It is amazing that even after a year that the discussion of this unit is still controversial. Maybe the next software upgrade will change things.


----------



## wbmccarty

I'm sorry to learn that the moderators found it necessary to ban him, especially in the context of his recent postings. I hope that the ban is temporary and that he will return. His analysis of the R-15 hardware was among the greatest contributions by any member.

Cheers,


----------



## jpl

wbmccarty said:


> My own perception of the software development industry is relatively negative. The studies I've seen, and my personal experience with students representing a wide variety of organizations and organization types, all point in that direction. But, I don't see the claim as all that important in this context since we agree that the decision was most likely made by management rather than by technical staff. So, I'll choose not to beat this particular dead horse. Instead, I'll compliment any group of software developers having enough understanding of software to realize that no amount of post-implementation testing is sufficient to establish reasonable levels of quality. Bravo!
> 
> Cheers,


Being a member of the s/w industry... I have to agree with you. There are some companies that do it right, but not many. And even the ones that get a reputation for doing it right (I've mentioned that I work for one of the handful of SEI level 5/ISO 9001 certified companies in the country - or that at least applies to the subsidiary I work for) can get collective amnesia when it comes time to do new development. All those "lessons learned" sessions go out the window, and you start doing stupid stuff. Not to excuse it, but much of the stupid stuff, I believe, happens because of either a) bad management, b) unrealistic deadlines (many times due to s/w engineers not wanting to live in the real world "you want that entire system redesigned with new user interface by Friday? No problem!"), or c) scope creep. I believe a) has various flavors - the incompetent manager, the manager who just doesn't understand the system, the manager who's thrown into managing a group because staffing changes drove managerial shortages and he's now overbooked and bad management due to just bad business practices (watch the movie "Office Space" - note the scene where management gets all worked up over those TPS reports -- focusing on the minutia is a clear-cut sign of this. And I think c) tends to happen when you get people in charge who know JUST enough to be dangerous. You get a manager who's a technical idiot, and things can get really ugly.


----------



## qwerty

pentium101 said:


> Wow, Wolffpack has been banned. I would have never thought that this site would have banned such a long time member for expressing their opinions.
> 
> It is amazing that even after a year that the discussion of this unit is still controversial. Maybe the next software upgrade will change things.


Man! That's a shame. Wolf was one the biggest contributors to this forum.

His last post didn't look that bad. He has valid complaints. Did he post something else that was deleted?


----------



## Bobman

wbmccarty said:


> I'm sorry to learn that the moderators found it necessary to ban him, especially in the context of his recent postings. I hope that the ban is temporary and that he will return. His analysis of the R-15 hardware was among the greatest contributions by any member.


Knowing WP from seeing him here, he is probably already back here with another ID.

He might be a nice person in real life but many times I added him to my blocked user list due to his comments.


----------



## kb9vrg

Halo said:


> I had those exact problems a few months ago when my drive had bad sectors. I pulled the drive, ran SeaTools utility to repair the bad sectors and never had those problems again. I didn't reformat or re-install the firmware so it was clear that those problems were due to the bad sectors.
> The odd thing was that Seatools only found and corrected two bad sectors but those problems happened on several different recordings. It's possible that the bad sectors were in a more vital and more frequently accessed part of the drive instead of just two places in the raw video.


Thanks for this tip. I had originally suspected when I started getting stuttering that it wasn't related to the upgrade since I had the upgrade for a few weeks before noting serious problems with freezes and stuttering of video.

After making a total mess of my living room to pull out the R15 and my bedroom to disassemble the PC and install the drive as a 2nd drive in my PC, I was able to get Seatools to recognize the drive...

The drive is a Seagate 160GB Model - ST3160022ACE.

Sure enough, about 40% through the long scan, seven bad sectors were found. This correlates to my r15 working well up until it filled to a certain point after a total format.

Just as a correlation here, the S.M.A.R.T. data shows as follows:
POH (Power On Hours): 10180 - this is about 422 days, which makes sense given the age of my R15... I got it in January of 2006. So I suppose that whenever the R15 is plugged in that the hard disk is running? This doesn't seem the most efficient or healthy way to do it...

Current temp: 31
Worst temp: 54

The process took about two hours or so to complete from installing the drive into the PC to completing the scan. I doubt your PC Hardware will have much impact into the time this scan takes.

If you are at all having odd stuttering or hanging problems that come back, I think it'd be prudent to pull the drive and do a Seatools long scan, but do this only if you're relatively PC proficient and willing to disassemble the R15 and know how to install a hard drive into your PC.

So, more on this in a couple of weeks once I get enough programming to see where the issues were (I did a precautionary reformat to make sure that the spots weren't allocated) and we'll go from there.


----------



## qwerty

kb9vrg said:


> If you are at all having odd stuttering or hanging problems that come back, I think it'd be prudent to pull the drive and do a Seatools long scan, but do this only if you're relatively PC proficient and willing to disassemble the R15 and know how to install a hard drive into your PC.
> 
> So, more on this in a couple of weeks once I get enough programming to see where the issues were (I did a precautionary reformat to make sure that the spots weren't allocated) and we'll go from there.


Are the Seatools DOS based?

Also, I'm wondering if a DOS based disk image to a new drive would work without losing data. Anyone tried it?


----------



## irmolars

They don't like to here the truth on here sometimes.


----------



## kb9vrg

qwerty said:


> Are the Seatools DOS based?
> 
> Also, I'm wondering if a DOS based disk image to a new drive would work without losing data. Anyone tried it?


There are two versions of SeaTools. One is for Windows, and one is a bootable image for DOS.

The Windows version will only do simple tests, in my case I mounted the drive onto the PC as a 2nd hard drive and did the windows scan first. It can't mark and reallocate the bad sectors.

The DOS version is downloadable as either a bootable floppy version or an ISO image that can be burnt onto a CD or DVD. Your computer needs to be set up to boot from the CD to run this. The DOS version can mark and reallocate the bad sectors.

Basically, once I had the DOS Version of SeaTools, I did the long scan and let it run.

I know that the R15 uses an extended version of FAT32 to handle the larger sizes, and I think if you do some searching that there is a lot of conflicting data as to whether or not you can truly swap the drive out. In my case, I could get the box swapped out since I still have the service plan, but considering that there were a few bad sectors, I think that I'd rather stick with something I know than inherit a whole new set of problems.


----------



## TheTooleMan

kb9vrg said:


> There are two versions of SeaTools. One is for Windows, and one is a bootable image for DOS.
> 
> The Windows version will only do simple tests, in my case I mounted the drive onto the PC as a 2nd hard drive and did the windows scan first. It can't mark and reallocate the bad sectors.
> 
> The DOS version is downloadable as either a bootable floppy version or an ISO image that can be burnt onto a CD or DVD. Your computer needs to be set up to boot from the CD to run this. The DOS version can mark and reallocate the bad sectors.
> 
> Basically, once I had the DOS Version of SeaTools, I did the long scan and let it run.
> 
> I know that the R15 uses an extended version of FAT32 to handle the larger sizes, and I think if you do some searching that there is a lot of conflicting data as to whether or not you can truly swap the drive out. In my case, I could get the box swapped out since I still have the service plan, but considering that there were a few bad sectors, I think that I'd rather stick with something I know than inherit a whole new set of problems.


I'm impressed with your knowledge of the R15's components and file architecture, but this is taking it WAY beyond the normal user's capabilities. Is that what's necessary to get this unit to work???


----------



## kb9vrg

TheTooleMan said:


> I'm impressed with your knowledge of the R15's components and file architecture, but this is taking it WAY beyond the normal user's capabilities. Is that what's necessary to get this unit to work???


I'm an IT professional by trade, so to me it's pretty easy, but you're right, this isn't something I'd recommend or attempt unless you were familiar with how to handle electronics and willing to take a few risks...

I went down this path since the darned unit seemed to start stuttering and hanging on playback well after the 10FA patch came through. Initially I thought it was that after use for over a year that the drive had become overly fragmented, but when it returned after the disk was 40-50% full and seemed to affect only certain programs... Lo and behold, the bad sectors were in the same relative location as I'd assume the files would be placed if you started filling up the system and didn't delete anything until it got about 40-50% full...

I was pretty close to giving up and calling DTV, but I have very little patience for dealing with 1st or even 2nd level technical support folks and didn't want to inherit another boxes problems without understanding the ones that this one had.

I'm still on the fence as to whether or not this will take care of my specific issues, but given the location of the bad sectors on the disk and when the problem started reoccurring on the R15, it certainly wasn't helping since a bad sector's going to cause read issues no matter what file system's on the unit or how good the software is. Certainly trying to read a stream of data such as the video that the R15 stores and encountering an unexpected read error could cause a freeze or a reboot on a lot of systems.

There are a lot of software problems with the R15 that have been well-documented on this site that I don't need to speak to further. With knowing now that the format is not a full format that could find bad sectors, I have to wonder how many units have hard disks with bad sectors on them.... Given that the drive is on even when the unit's not recording and in standby, I have to wonder how many of these "format and let it go for a couple of weeks" issues are a result of poor file system management on the hard drive!

I'll see if this works and if it does I'm going to take some pictures and do a tutorial, though checking for the bad sectors isn't for someone who doesn't want to open up their PC and their R15 and take a few risks.


----------



## wbmccarty

TheTooleMan said:


> I'm impressed with your knowledge of the R15's components and file architecture, but this is taking it WAY beyond the normal user's capabilities. Is that what's necessary to get this unit to work???


I wouldn't expect even this hands-on approach to resolve _all_ the problems. Some of them seem quite clearly to arise as a consequence of software defects. Developing a related set of binary patches, without access to the source code, would be an impressive feat!

Cheers,


----------



## pyatta

kb9vrg said:


> Thanks for this tip. I had originally suspected when I started getting stuttering that it wasn't related to the upgrade since I had the upgrade for a few weeks before noting serious problems with freezes and stuttering of video.
> 
> After making a total mess of my living room to pull out the R15 and my bedroom to disassemble the PC and install the drive as a 2nd drive in my PC, I was able to get Seatools to recognize the drive...
> 
> The drive is a Seagate 160GB Model - ST3160022ACE.
> 
> Sure enough, about 40% through the long scan, seven bad sectors were found. This correlates to my r15 working well up until it filled to a certain point after a total format.


I was on this forum complaining a few months ago and someone suggested i do this.

I had so many bad sectors on my hard drive i couldn't complete the scan. What i did was delete a ton of Bond movies and then slowly filled up the hard drive until i found my "oh crap, this again" point. I can only fill my hard drive up to about 40-45% before the R15 features occur ( reboots, skipping, lock-ups). I cannot go past this point, luckily, i have a htpc downstairs.

Since then, i have had only two reboots ( both times when i had the machine paused, and a recording was starting on a different channel ) and all seems well ( minus some disney channel recordings saying they're expiring)


----------



## wbmccarty

I can't see why some bad sectors aren't used even when utilization is low. Granted, when the drive is full, _all_ the bad sectors would be in use. But, it seems to me that trouble should randomly occur even before the drive is full, as Kb9vrg reports.

Thoughts?

Cheers,


----------



## pyatta

wbmccarty said:


> I can't see why some bad sectors aren't used even when utilization is low. Granted, when the drive is full, _all_ the bad sectors would be in use. But, it seems to me that trouble should randomly occur even before the drive is full, as Kb9vrg reports.


i agree, but my hd had way too many bad sectors.

i tried again today.. i had my wife tape some movies and then i recorded some games ( SIU got screwed last night, mid-majors deserve more respect) i got to about 60% full and i started to watch various recording and the machine started to lock up when i tried to FFx3, no reboots though. I deleted the junk to get back to "normal".

i'm pretty happy with my first dvr, when it works :lol: and i guess i have found its comfort zone.

Go USC daddy wants some cash!


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## wbmccarty

Thanks for sharing your experience. I used to have some hot SLs that fired many times per day. Since my unit's reliability improved quite a bit after deleting them, I had concluded that hot SLs were a usage-pattern factor explaining why some users experience good (adequate? satisfactory?) reliability whereas others (including me) experience the opposite. Since hot SLs tend to consume disk space, it may be that their influence occurs indirectly, through disk defects, rather than directly. 

My new model of R-15 reliability includes four main factors:

1. Disk space utilization
2. Hot SLs
3. Software defects
4. Dirty A/C power

Cheers,


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## pjo1966

It seems like it's been a very long time since we've seen an update. Here's my list of issues:

1. When starting to watch a program that's still recording. I'll select the program from the list of recordings, but it starts playing from where it is live, as opposed to the beginning of the program.

2. The looping while using FFx2.

3. Message stating that R15 only has 10% available space, when the only thing on it is a one hour program.

4. Deleting a program I was saving, despite the fact that there was no urgent need for additional space.

5. Despite the series recording being set to start two minutes early, the recording usually starts on time. Once in a while it will start two minutes early. There are no conflicts.

Luckily this isn't my primary DVR and only needs to record 1 hour of televion 5 days a week.


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## RAD

DJPellegrino said:


> Today, I got home and the wife tells me that when she changes the channel either by channel up/down or by the channel number directly, the OSD shows the channel you select, but the channel never changes!
> 
> Not believing her, I try it myself. sure enough the channel banner shows the channel you select, but the program title does not change nor does the channel change. I had a program recording so I was not able to do a RBR so as to not lose the recording in progress.
> 
> I went into the list of recorded programs and selected one, then while it was playing, I typed in a channel number. The tuner went to the program and channel as it should. Then I tried another channel, but noe effect. The program I was recording was actually recording, but I just could not change the channel using the remote or on the unit itself.
> 
> I have the R-15 500 at 10FA,
> 
> A RBR did in fact clear the problem.


Ditto for my R15-300 last night, did a RBR to get it functioning again.


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## kb9vrg

kb9vrg said:


> I went down this path since the darned unit seemed to start stuttering and hanging on playback well after the 10FA patch came through. Initially I thought it was that after use for over a year that the drive had become overly fragmented, but when it returned after the disk was 40-50% full and seemed to affect only certain programs... Lo and behold, the bad sectors were in the same relative location as I'd assume the files would be placed if you started filling up the system and didn't delete anything until it got about 40-50% full...


Well, I have to say that once again when the drive hit 40-60% full the errors started happening. I didn't delete anything this time around, and locked the shows that were trouble-free. The rest of the disk seems to be working fine, and when I tried to view the problem programs they locked _in the same places _as they previously did. It was about 10 hours of programming that appeared to be impacted. Programs recorded prior to this block or subsequent to this block worked fine, even when the drive hit 100% and the R15 had to delete old unlocked programming.

Still believing that I have largely a hardware issue since the software upgrade worked for several weeks before the video failures with no issues and typical use I pulled the drive and put in a newly purchased Seagate 160GB Internal Hard Drive (ST3160023A-RK) that I bought at Circuit City to expand my pc's storage. All I did to this drive was partition it before installing it to the R15. Once I put it in the R15 I did the standard down arrow/record button to format it and the new drive seems to work just fine. We'll see if it has any issues on the same lines once I fill that puppy up about 50%... Guess I have to start recording some C-SPAN to get it full!

As far as the OEM Seagate drive pulled from the R15, this time it failed the short test right off the bat in SeaTools.

Initial S.M.A.R.T shows the following:

POH (Power on Hours) 10371
Current Temp: 36
Worst Temp: 54

This time around, it found 9 errors... Not a good sign after a scan last week. I'm going to do a zero-fill erase and see what comes up after that. FYI, the specs on the ST3160022ACE can be found here: http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_ce.pdf -- I'll note that the drive I replaced is a 7200RPM drive vs. a 5400RPM drive, but otherwise looks pretty similar in the specs.

Otherwise, the new drive has a 5-year warranty, unlike the "component" warranty that Seagate claims on this unit.


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## karaokekenny

I have a 300. previous version 105f, now on 106c. forced a download this week but i am still showing 1/24/07 as the latest software. problems i have had:

* losing EPG data
* FFW & 30sec skip "repeats commercials"
* freezing on a channel and the only way to fix it is a cold start
* TURTLE SLOW EPG scrolling, GRANDMA SLOW menu functions
* stopping 10 mins before recorded show results in the program being started over again, not continuing where i stopped it
* stopping during an auto-record (no, no other recordings scheduled)
* playback of recorded shows pixelizing (real time broadcast is fine) and slight intermittent pauses during playback 

this is my 3rd R15 (started with a 500, then two 300)

here is what makes this completely unacceptable - i am an AUTHORIZED DIRECTV DEALER!!!! dtv is hard pressed to admit any problems with their units. either calling as a subscriber or a dealer i get the same result - nothing. my ASM tells me that it is known that the r15 series is slow. as a dealer/installer i get no information regarding software updates or acknowledgment of hardware or software issues. i left dish network in october (who i am also an authorized dealer for) when they took away my distant networks. i never had a single problem with their pvr in 5 years. i am hoping if i find a d10 that directv will let me sub that for the POS r15 (i would be more than happy to continue paying the lease payment) 

we took directv on as a service to provide because of their known customer service and quality. now i am in the dark with a POS dvr as both a dealer AND a subscriber.


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## kb9vrg

pyatta said:


> I was on this forum complaining a few months ago and someone suggested i do this.
> 
> I had so many bad sectors on my hard drive i couldn't complete the scan. What i did was delete a ton of Bond movies and then slowly filled up the hard drive until i found my "oh crap, this again" point. I can only fill my hard drive up to about 40-45% before the R15 features occur ( reboots, skipping, lock-ups). I cannot go past this point, luckily, i have a htpc downstairs.
> 
> Since then, i have had only two reboots ( both times when i had the machine paused, and a recording was starting on a different channel ) and all seems well ( minus some disney channel recordings saying they're expiring)


Well, after replacing my hard drive, I've pounded the heck out of the R15 over the last 10 days with no freezes in programming or any of the other symptoms I've experienced. No restarts either.


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## carl6

kb9vrg said:


> Well, after replacing my hard drive, I've pounded the heck out of the R15 over the last 10 days with no freezes in programming or any of the other symptoms I've experienced. No restarts either.


You said that you partitioned the drive, then put it in the R15 and used the down arrow/record reformat. How did you partition the drive (windows/dos/other)? I'm assuming you partitioned it to a single 160 gig partition.

I replaced an R15 drive by first copying it using unix dd, resulting in an exact sector by sector clone. That worked fine, but took a very long time to perform.

Carl


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## TheTooleMan

karaokekenny said:


> here is what makes this completely unacceptable - i am an AUTHORIZED DIRECTV DEALER!!!!


I'd hate to be in your shoes! You must have people calling you with problems. Or do they just go call D* directly and go through their useless rigmarole.


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## kb9vrg

carl6 said:


> You said that you partitioned the drive, then put it in the R15 and used the down arrow/record reformat. How did you partition the drive (windows/dos/other)? I'm assuming you partitioned it to a single 160 gig partition.
> 
> I replaced an R15 drive by first copying it using unix dd, resulting in an exact sector by sector clone. That worked fine, but took a very long time to perform.
> 
> Carl


I partitioned it with Windows XP Professional. I did not apply any type of formatting, just allocated the entire 160GB of space as the primary partition. I found conflicting information as to whether or not I had to partition it before putting it into the R15, but figured that a partitioned drive wouldn't hurt. Any partitioning tool would do the same thing since all I did was allocate the space.

After I partitioned it, I did the down-arrow/record format and it's been working swimmingly.

I had thought about doing a sector-to-sector copy, but didn't have too much worth resurrecting on the old drive which I wanted to zero-fill anyhow.


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## R15STINKS

Are they ever going to replace this worthless 106c software it is ridiculous you cannot fast forward or even comercial advance at all without it putting you in a continous loop. They refuse to do anything about this, it has been this way for nearly 6 months now. What is the purpose of having a fast forward and a comercial advance if you cannot use them ???? These R15's are proving to be useful as a boat anchor. I have never such an electronic device that was released 2 year too early after 2 years still not working properly. And customer service if you can call them that as they have no clue what customer service actually is, they have no clue as to what is going on. You can go through 4 techs and 4 supervisors having to call back each time to actually get a hold of someone that even knows that they have a CE release, they all act like your crazy or something like you are making it up. They all tell you sir the 106c is our newest software we do not have anything newer, we know nothing of any CE software. I finally found a supervisor who actually admitted the CE release existed, it took me that long to find out, sorry sir we have no way of letting you have it, it was only available for a limited time. Real nice to spend 2 hours on the phone to get that response. It has been 6 months what do I have to do wait another 6 months for them to get a fix out for this ????


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## TheTooleMan

R15STINKS said:


> Are they ever going to replace this worthless 106c software it is ridiculous you cannot fast forward or even comercial advance at all without it putting you in a continous loop. They refuse to do anything about this, it has been this way for nearly 6 months now. What is the purpose of having a fast forward and a comercial advance if you cannot use them ???? These R15's are proving to be useful as a boat anchor. I have never such an electronic device that was released 2 year too early after 2 years still not working properly. And customer service if you can call them that as they have no clue what customer service actually is, they have no clue as to what is going on. You can go through 4 techs and 4 supervisors having to call back each time to actually get a hold of someone that even knows that they have a CE release, they all act like your crazy or something like you are making it up. They all tell you sir the 106c is our newest software we do not have anything newer, we know nothing of any CE software. I finally found a supervisor who actually admitted the CE release existed, it took me that long to find out, sorry sir we have no way of letting you have it, it was only available for a limited time. Real nice to spend 2 hours on the phone to get that response. It has been 6 months what do I have to do wait another 6 months for them to get a fix out for this ????


Ah, new blood in the forum. How refreshing. The rest of us have given up long ago.

I'm not sure why I have put up with the thing for over a year. I guess I'm getting accustomed to it. :shrug:

What's a "CE" release?


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## pjo1966

TheTooleMan said:


> Ah, new blood in the forum. How refreshing. The rest of us have given up long ago.
> 
> I'm not sure why I have put up with the thing for over a year. I guess I'm getting accustomed to it. :shrug:
> 
> What's a "CE" release?


CE is Cutting Edge. Basically Beta versions.


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## qwerty

pjo1966 said:


> CE is Cutting Edge. Basically Beta versions.


Yeah. After many of us complained of being unwitting beta testers for the R15, they actually started a (sort of) beta test program for new software releases.


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## Earl Bonovich

0x1095 is now rolling out as the national release for the R15-300


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## joeunc

any idea when this coming out for R15-500?
thanks
Joe


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## gordon1fan

joeunc said:


> any idea when this coming out for R15-500?
> thanks
> Joe


Or the R-15 100.


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## BirdDawg

Earl Bonovich said:


> 0x1095 is now rolling out as the national release for the R15-300


How do I go about updating my R15-300 to the 0x1095 software version?

Thanks in advance for any help!

BirdDawg


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## TheTooleMan

BirdDawg said:


> How do I go about updating my R15-300 to the 0x1095 software version?
> 
> Thanks in advance for any help!
> 
> BirdDawg


The good news: it's automatic.

The bad news: it's automatic.

You never know whether the firmware updates will screw up what used to work, or will fix what didn't. I have been waiting for over a year for some problems to be addressed.


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## ronio

I'm having problems with lock-ups, then the receiver rebooting itself. I'm able to reproduce the problem at the same spots on recorded shows. So.... Im thinking I've got bad sectors on the hard drive. 
Question: Does the "down arrow, record" reformat do a physical check of the drive and mark out the bad sectors? Or will this same problem crop back up once I get to the same utilzation on the disk.


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## JerryGuitar

ronio said:


> I'm having problems with lock-ups, then the receiver rebooting itself. I'm able to reproduce the problem at the same spots on recorded shows. So.... Im thinking I've got bad sectors on the hard drive.
> Question: Does the "down arrow, record" reformat do a physical check of the drive and mark out the bad sectors? Or will this same problem crop back up once I get to the same utilzation on the disk.


good question. i've done the full reformat and the lock-ups started happening again at about the same spot - 75% or so usage.


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