# R15-500 0x115C Discussion / Issues



## Earl Bonovich (Nov 15, 2005)

R15-500 : 0x0x115C

Version 0x0x115C is now a national release for the system.
Release notes can be found at: http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=105401


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## NewView (Jan 15, 2007)

I'm not a fan of the white text on the powder-blue background. Contrary to what the welcome message I saw when I first switched to the guide after the update, this is NOT easier to read.


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## specialk (Mar 8, 2006)

+1 on 'Not easier to read'

And I'm not too happy that all my recorded shows were lost. 
And I'm not too happy that it was non-functional (guide was up and populated, but no TV was viewable)
And I'm not too happy that I had to spend 30 minutes with Tech Support to do numerous resets until finally a 'RESET EVERYTHING' fixed it
And I'm not too happy that the best they can do is 3 months of free Showtime -- the other choice was $5 off per month for 3 months 

But mostly I'm extremely PO'd that they did anything to a perfectly functional unit without one word of warning. If GM did that to my car, I'd drive down to the dealer and punch someone in the mouth. This has caused a hell of a lot of grief for me as there are shows that I will NEVER be able to retrieve. Malfeasance is a crime, this is truly asinine!


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## lz7rdg (Dec 5, 2006)

I had no problems getting the new version to work or losing any recordings. The features listed on the software release notes worked as advertised as far as I can tell.

The white GUI is noticably different but I think it will be easier to read when I get used to it.

John


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## DudeInWisc (Oct 27, 2007)

I just had my R15 updated. I ran into the same issues at "specialk". I'm going through the complete setup again...

Not the best situation to encounter. At least I didn't have any shows saved.

Rick


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## zortapa (Nov 16, 2005)

I just lost all video on my R15-500 while the sound and guide remained. I could pull up the guide and select current programming as well as select programs that I had recorded (i.e., the GUI continued to work). But while the audio also worked fine, all I got was a dark blue, nearly black, screen.

Reset did not work.

Finally, had to pull the plug for 5 minutes before the R15 came back to life.

This had never happened before -- is it another artifact of 0x115c? or is my R15 nearing death?


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## zortapa (Nov 16, 2005)

I did not get to see the release notes/welcome message that apparently show up right after 0x115c is downloaded. Is there a way to pull them up through the GUI menus? Or does Earl's link at the top of this thread include all the info that was displayed on the screen?


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## bjflynn04 (Jul 27, 2004)

zortapa said:


> I did not get to see the release notes/welcome message that apparently show up right after 0x115c is downloaded. Is there a way to pull them up through the GUI menus? Or does Earl's link at the top of this thread include all the info that was displayed on the screen?


That message will come up when you go into the guide for the first time after the update.


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## shoeheel (Oct 15, 2006)

No noticable issues so far.

What does "Live Buffer in Standby" mean? (From the release notes)


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## Jhon69 (Mar 28, 2006)

shoeheel said:


> No noticable issues so far.
> 
> What does "Live Buffer in Standby" mean? (From the release notes)


When you turn the R15 off your in standby,so say you want to watch a certain news channel in the morning.You set the R15 to that channel and turn it off.In the
morning you turn it on to your channel and if needed you have a 90 minute"live buffer" waiting for you if you want to back it up for 90 minutes.


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## Jasen (Mar 21, 2006)

when I got it I thought it is alot easier to read and I like it alot


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## zortapa (Nov 16, 2005)

bjflynn04 said:


> That message will come up when you go into the guide for the first time after the update.


It there another way to get the message?


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## zortapa (Nov 16, 2005)

Another broken feature with 0x115c?

Yesterday, I was watching the middle of a college football game when I needed to leave the house. I pressed the record button so I could watch the rest of the game when I returned. I then decided to extend the recording 1 hr 30 min beyond the scheduled program time to make sure I could see the end of the game if it went into overtime.

I extended the recording time by pressing info > more info > recording > stop = 1 1/2 hr later > update.

When I returned home last night and went to watch the end of the football game, I found that the additional 90 minutes was NOT included in the recording of the football game. However, there were two additional programs included in my playlist that I had NOT recorded.

It turns out that my R15-500 with 0x115c decided to save the extended recording of the football game into these two separate files. The names on the two files were the names of the two programs that followed the football game.

This is *not* acceptable!


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## Upstream (Jul 4, 2006)

zortapa said:


> This is *not* acceptable!


Zortapa -- it is better than what happened to me (twice) before the latest software update. I extended the recording end time, and the R15 didn't record the extra time. I'd rather watch the end of the game even if it is listed as a different show, rather than missing the end altogether.

(Of course, I would really prefer that the R15 worked as it is supposed to.)


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## F4vrefly (Oct 28, 2007)

Wednesday morning, I awoke to see the Record light lit and the blue light ring rotating slowly to the right. I let a shower wake me up a little before processing that. Both were still lit when I glanced at it as I walked out the door on my way to work. I returned home Wednesday evening to see there had been no change. I flipped on the telly. Nothing. I tried powering my R15 on with the remote. Nothing. I tried the power button on the front of the unit. Nothing.

I poured myself a scotch, fearing I'd have a long night ahead of me.

I took a swig and pressed the Reset button. The unit restarted and I was presented with blue welcome screen #1, followed by welcome screen #2 ("just a few more seconds," I believe it promised)... followed by a hard drive spin down and re-spin, and GOTO 10. After a few cycles like that it went back to no picture, Record light lit, and blue light ring rotating slowly to the right.

A call to D* led to an exasperated-sounding CSM telling me, "It's receiving an update." After I convinced her that it really shouldn't take 12 hours for that process to complete itself, she told me that I could simply reformat to get my receiver back.
:ramblinon​ I know this is my own fault, but as of Tuesday night, I had ~90 hours of programming on the box, roughly 30 of which I really wanted to keep. In fact, I had just received a DVD recorder (woot!)** and had begun the offloading process _that day_. To me, it is completely unacceptable that the company's response to my plea for help was to "simply reformat." Am I that off-base in expecting that my service and equipment behave as advertised and that a recommendation to pitch all of my recorded programs and settings should be one of the _last_ 'solutions' suggested to me? Would it be that presumtuous of me -- as a l_o_n_g-time customer -- to expect that the company should first offer to dispatch a team of techs to my home immediately to get as much of my data as possible safely loaded onto another unit and see that it was all in working order before they left?
:backtotop​ I thanked her, but declined her offer to walk me through that process and said I'd see what I could do on my own before I took that desperate a step. And that's how I came upon DBSTalk and wound up having a pretty enjoyable weekend (yeah, I'm a geek) troubleshooting this on my own.

I'm currently just a few minutes away from completing a dd copy of my drive** onto another 160GB HDD I had available. (Thanks, Knoppix!)** Actually, dd spat back an I/O error, so I used dd_rescue** instead. I have my fingers (and everything else) crossed now. In a perfect world, I'll be able to plug in the dupe and everything will still be there, save one or two shows that lived on the bad sectors which were hopefully the cause of all of this enjoyment. I promise to report back with further successes/failures.

In the meantime, *thanks* to the DBSTalk community. This site and its helpful users led me down the road to even attempting a rescue. Among the myriad changes this site has inspired in me over the past four days, I've converted from a linux ignoramus to typing commands in Root... and even sort of understanding what the heck they mean!

Cheers, all, and thanks for spending a few commercial breaks reading this!
--> Andy _[four-day lurker, first-time poster]_

**URLs to which I would have linked in this post had I been allowed:
woot: woot[DOT]com
dd copy: nilbus[DOT]com[SLASH]linux[SLASH]disk-copy[DOT]php
knoppix: knopper[DOT]net[SLASH]knoppix[SLASH]index-en[DOT]html
dd_rescue: garloff[DOT]de[SLASH]kurt[SLASH]linux[SLASH]ddrescue


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## carl6 (Nov 16, 2005)

Good luck, I sure hope that works for you.

It really is going to depend on what sector is bad, and what information is on that sector, and if it got copied or not, etc.

I've only dd'd an R15 drive once, took about 26 hours.

Carl


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## F4vrefly (Oct 28, 2007)

It worked!!! About 24 hours ago, after I posted my story, I plugged the dd_rescue-copied WD 160GB drive into my R15, plugged it in, and hit the Power button (gently). I kept my hopes in check as I watched blue screen #1 come up, followed by blue screen #2, and then my heart sank as I heard the drive spin down and reset, just as it had done before.

However, I then practically broke into song as I saw the DirecTV logo and the satellite signal progress bar... and less than a minute later, I was looking at live TV! I swallowed hard and hit the List button. (Right away, I was presented with the release notes from the upgrade, which means it must have succeeded before kludging up the original drive.) Imagine my shock and surprise as I saw that all of my recorded shows appeared as they had on Tuesday night. It was as though I had simply turned the receiver off and unplugged the coax cables for five days! My series and my prioritizer was intact, and I still haven't discovered any shows that aren't there that I thought should be -- at least the ones I know I want to keep are all there. I started right in* on sending the most important shows to my DVD recorder and hit the sack with a perma-grin. I set some more up before leaving for work this morning, and then one more after returning home before settling in for the Packers game tonight (speaking of success!).

I promise I'll do a full write-up of my process on the board in the near future. For now, if there's anyone out there who also experienced a crash, either coinciding with or completely independent from the upgrade, and you want to attempt a rebuild, send me a PM and I'll try to get you started down the 'path to recovery.'

Stay tuned!
--> Andy

*This is not entirely true. First, I literally spent about 10-15 minutes with my chin on my chest, repeating "I can't believe it worked!" aloud every 30 seconds or so. Seriously. Ask my wife.


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## dawgfan63 (Feb 24, 2006)

I have several beefs concerning the latest update:

1) I happened to be out of town for 4 days and apparently, the update was forced down. When I returned, and turned on the unit I had to go through the guided setup. Needless to say, I missed three days of recordings which really pissed me off.

*Enhancement Request:* When a new software release is made available, have it downloaded automatically, but give us users the option on when to install it rather than doing it automatically.

2) After I completed the guided setup and realized that I missed recordings (fortunately, I did not lose items that had already been recored or I would have been really upset) I decided to check out the To Do list. I noticed that programs for this week were NO longer listed in the list although episodes for the following week of the same show were in the list. I have waited a day and they still have not appeared so I decided to bring up the guide and set the programs. One is a daily program, so I brought up the guide and clicked the Record button twice. It however would not stick it would only leave just the one R indicating just that episode would record. So basically, I would have to do this for all programs I wanted to record this week.

*I think this is a BUG. *

I looked at my Series Links and they were intact. If I delete the Series Link, then bring up the guide and set the series to record it picked up all recordings even those for this week.

So basically, I lost my links except I still had a list of them but had to re-program. This is a serious *FLAW*.

*Enhancement Request:*

The ability to use USB to backup settings, previously recorded programs and series links. Every update seems to have some issues similar to these described.


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## RobertE (Jun 10, 2006)

Notice this today on a couple of -500 that I installed>

This is releated to the white gui & channels I get.

I noticed that the channel tags in the guide for channels that the customer did NOT get were a very light shade. Amost to the point where you couldn't read the channel number.


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## wohlfie (Dec 28, 2005)

Last night, for no reason I can determine, the R15 decided it didn't need to record Boston Legal. There were no recording conflicts. It did not appear in the todo list, did not have a record symbol in the guide. Luckily I noticed and set a manual record.

The SL appears intact - prioritizer #4. I seem to remember having to 'redo' SLs after some previous updates.....please tell me we are not back in that situation...what a hassle.

(also noticed that the trick play 'bug' after a recording shows broadcast ends has not yet been fixed...still the band-aid of just disabling trickplay forcing us to stop the playback and start it again from the playlist....is this really that big a bug to fix that it hasn't been addressed yet?)

UPDATE: Just read the post 2 previous. Seems like maybe I have the same issue. I will make a note to remind myself to check the rest of my SLs this week. If I miss Dirty, Sexy, Money or Scrubs because of the 'glitch' i will be seriously PO'd.
And just for the record, this is the FIRST issue I have had with my R15 in a LONG time. Not good if an 'update' takes a step backwards....


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## dawgfan63 (Feb 24, 2006)

This is exactly the problem I had. I ended up having to go into the priority list, delete the link and re-create it to have all the episodes placed back into the to do list. May be easier to set manual for weekly program but for daily it is a pain in the you know what.



wohlfie said:


> Last night, for no reason I can determine, the R15 decided it didn't need to record Boston Legal. There were no recording conflicts. It did not appear in the todo list, did not have a record symbol in the guide. Luckily I noticed and set a manual record.
> 
> The SL appears intact - prioritizer #4. I seem to remember having to 'redo' SLs after some previous updates.....please tell me we are not back in that situation...what a hassle.
> 
> ...


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## BattleScott (Aug 29, 2006)

It would be nice to get ahold of the list of 'under-the-hood' improvements.

After one week, have had the following situations occur: 
Missed recording. (actually noticed that the record light was not on about 20 mins into a show, flipped over to that channel and then the (R) icon and the record light came on. So I did get the last 40 minutes)

Several instances where the jump back button quit working when watching a recorded program.

Had the receiver just jump out to live TV when watching a recorded program.

And last night, it decided to stop responding to all remote control commands. Would flash its little light and make it's little bong sound but nothing would happen. RBR took care of that.

On a positive note, I will say that the brighter GUI is nicer, especially when the room is bright.

Check back in another 6 months or so...


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## drudavies (Oct 18, 2007)

Question: I have an R15-500 that received the new software 0X115C the middle of October. This morning, it is now saying there is a new software download and currently is in the middle of trying to download it for the 2nd time with no success. Does anyone know about ANOTHER software update starting today?

I just called DTV and there is an upgrade 0X1165 that started last night. I am still stuck in the trying to download software mode...1 hour now. When asked how often is this going to happen...answer is more frequently as more HD channels are released. Some of us, who traditionally have problems getting the updates, are going to be in for all kinds of fun!:


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## qwerty (Feb 19, 2006)

drudavies said:


> Question: I have an R15-500 that received the new software 0X115C the middle of October. This morning, it is now saying there is a new software download and currently is in the middle of trying to download it for the 2nd time with no success. Does anyone know about ANOTHER software update starting today?
> 
> I just called DTV and there is an upgrade 0X1165 that started last night. I am still stuck in the trying to download software mode...1 hour now. When asked how often is this going to happen...answer is more frequently as more HD channels are released. Some of us, who traditionally have problems getting the updates, are going to be in for all kinds of fun!:


The D* CSR's frequently pass bad information. I believe 0X1165 is the last CE version, and shouldn't have been available for download since Saturday night. Unless it's already gone National, but I doubt that since we haven't seen anything posted around here.


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## drudavies (Oct 18, 2007)

qwerty said:


> The D* CSR's frequently pass bad information. I believe 0X1165 is the last CE version, and shouldn't have been available for download since Saturday night. Unless it's already gone National, but I doubt that since we haven't seen anything posted around here.


I am on the phone right now with the Office of the President of DTV and the are, in fact, verifing that there is a new software upgrade out for the R15-500 and the version is 0X1165. My problem is being escalated as my receiver refuses to download the update.


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