# 921 - L212 Software Release Notes and Discussion



## Mark Lamutt

Surprised though I may be about this, L212 is now spooling for our 921s. Straight from Dish, release notes are as follows:


Ensure the position of the SWAPPED PIP window is correct in the guide
Improve the performance of the HD/SD button 
Improve the PIP to prevent "jitter" when repositioning
Improve performance when pressing aspect ratio key 
Improve performance when entering or exiting the guide
Improve performance when picture is in 1/4 screen or in lower screen guide video
Improved performance for guide data acquisition
Place PPV channels into the All Sub list on the EPG

Of course, we will always continue to improve our products through periodic software updates as needed, so there customers can expect more 921 updates in the future, as needed.


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## David K

Anything that needs to be done when it's finished Mark, like power cord reset or front panel reboot?


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## Redster

its not Thursday yet. Wonder if thats a good sign or bad. Guess I will be deleting and readding locals when I get home.


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## Mark Lamutt

Sure...why not?  Honestly, I have no idea. I'd suggest that if it doesn't automatically reboot on its own to do a front panel reboot (push the power button).

I'm waiting for official release notes, but if this is the same version that we have in beta, then it fixes the jittery video issues. Not sure yet about what else yet.


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## leemathre

I was just going to say the same thing about Thursday. This is really an unusual day and especially time for an upgrade.


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## n0qcu

Is this going to everone or just a small group to start?


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## boylehome

Yes it is. I'm hoping that is great!


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## Mark Lamutt

I'm pretty sure it's going to everyone, and am absolutely sure that it doesn't fix everything.


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## dfergie

Mines flashing, hope thats a good sign...or do I need a foil hat....


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## Curmudgeon

It's just 12:10 at my location and its just finishing "30 of 30" groups.


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## jsa_usenet

Both my old and new 921 are all blinky blinky. Best not blow on them or sneeze.


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## mwgiii

Wow, what a suprise from Dish!

I just hope it is a pleasant suprise.


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## boylehome

I just went through the menu setting and didn't see anything different. Still no red dots for the EPG terrestrial digital channels.


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## jsanders

Wow. That was a surprise, however, I was kind of figuring they had given up on us. Maybe there is still another round to go still....  


I've got L212 installed now.

The first thing I noticed is that there have been changes to the OTA guide data. Namely, subchannels now say, "No information available".

Does that mean that it needs down download information? Or does it mean that they aren't going to provide it?

Obviously, the bigger question that needs to be asked is, "Do we still need a subscription to get OTA guide data for L212???????"


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## David K

I noticed pixelization and audio drop outs on HBO HD. I hope it's unrelated.


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## The Guv

Curmudgeon said:


> It's just 12:10 at my location and its just finishing "30 of 30" groups.


How can I find out if I have the download yet?


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## ntexasdude

I can't wait to get home for lunch and watch my lights blink!!!


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## boylehome

Going through SD, HD, Digital OTA, and recorded DVR events, I've used the format button and everything thus far is working like it should. My HEED model has just finished the download. I have no idea why it took so much longer. Both units were in standby but I was not present when the downloads actually started.


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## David_Levin

wow, seems like this was very unexpected. On the tech chat they were talking about mid-march....

Wonder if something hit the fan that triggered this early release. Seems like the least time this happened it was to deal with an upcoming change to the sat stream that had to be delt with ASAP (like Sirus assing channel numbers).

By far, my biggest concern is the black screen PVR event followed by a wipe of the hard drive. To me, this bug alone warrants an Emergency Release.


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## dfergie

The Guv said:


> How can I find out if I have the download yet?


 Check your system info screen, it will tell you...


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## invaliduser88

As Samual L. Jackson said in Jurrasic Park, "HOLD ON TO YOUR BUTTS!"


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## Mark Lamutt

Subchannels will NOT have guide data in this release - that was something that we specifically tested over the weekend. Only main channels will show guide data. I know this is going to be a real problem for a few of you in areas where the primary HD channel is not on the -01 subchannel.


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## GravelChan

I see the closed captions on 720P is NOT fixed.


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## jsanders

I can understand logic I guess. No subchannel guide data vs. wrong subchannel guide data.

If the locals fee was dropped for this release, I imagine it would have been announced. I sure hope I am wrong, but it would appear we still have to pay for it. If this is true, I don't see how Dish can expect 921 users to remain their loyal customers. The 921 will be the last receiver I buy or lease from Dish. When MPEG4 comes around I will switch. I can't imagine that many 921 users will ever want to upgrade to the next box from Dish. Maybe they don't understand the concept, "You reap what you sow". If you plant wheat, you get wheat. If you plant corn, you get corn. If you cheat your customers, you loose your customers and you build a bad reputation.


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## Slordak

As long as this is a "net positive", with more things (or more important things) fixed than broken, I'm all in favor of it, even if it doesn't fix "everything". Besides, getting a new software version (any version at all) should help those of us experiencing guide font / layout corruption.

Oh well; this will at least give everyone a chance to re-test their personal favorite bugs and then re-report them


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## cschlik

When i was on the phone with the 921 team on last friday, I was told that 212 was supposed to be released on Tuesday 2/22 but was pushed back until today. The tech also told me that 213 is slated for early march and will have ZSR prevention. Hopefully 212 is progress.


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## indyras

Mark Lamutt said:


> Subchannels will NOT have guide data in this release - that was something that we specifically tested over the weekend. Only main channels will show guide data. I know this is going to be a real problem for a few of you in areas where the primary HD channel is not on the -01 subchannel.


Mark-

Actually, one of my subchannels is now showing guide data. It is from my local PBS station (WFYI-Indianapolis).

The 921 is now responding more correctly to the quirky way PBS broadcasts their HD and subchannels. In my area, the PBS HD broadcast on the primary channel (20-1) is a different set of programs from the regular PBS SD broadcast on their subchannel (20-2).

Prior to L212, the guide information shown for 20-1 (the HD channel) was actually the programming which was being broadcast on 20-2 (the SD channel). Now, after L212, channel 20-1 shows "no information available", presumably because the PBS WFYI guide data provided to Dish does not include the HD programming. The guide information for 20-2 now correctly displays the SD programming on 20-2.

So, the 921 is now displaying more accurate, albeit incomplete (i.e. "no information available" for 20-1), information for my PBS broadcaster in Indianapolis.

I just wanted you to be aware of this improvement. Thanks.


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## Mark Lamutt

Huh, that interesting, as it's exactly the opposite for me in Denver with our primary PBS station. We no longer have any guide data for it.


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## Jerry 42

Mark

KCET PBS LA does the same - that is broadcasts HD programs on 28-01 while broadcasting its regular SD programs on 28-02.


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## boylehome

GravelChan said:


> I see the closed captions on 720P is NOT fixed.


I've checked CC on my 921's and they seem to work fine in the 720P mode. I've tried 480p and 1080i and I notice now that my Sammy properly scales to the native 720p! What are you seeing with the CC that is a problem?


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## n0qcu

boylehome said:


> What are you seeing with the CC that is a problem?


CC on 720p channels using the 921 results in garbled text.


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## GravelChan

n0qcu said:


> CC on 720p channels using the 921 results in garbled text.


This is what I see, both on ESPN-HD and a local OTA ABC station.


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## boylehome

ESPNHD is garbled for me too. It has been that way quite a while, even before L211. Does it work properly in 480p or 1080i for you?


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## leemathre

I am away from home right now so I cannot test anything. Has anyone had a chance to check the preview window problem described in the thread below?

http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=36035&highlight=preview+window


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## DonLandis

Yep! You're welcome folks. 

I know of two fixes in this release- 
1. Jittery video
2. My attitude!

Hey I had to make some noise to get them off their butts and move on this. Guess I can go back to how I used to use the 921 again.


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## TonyB

Mark Lamutt said:


> Surprised though I may be about this, L212 is now spooling for our 921s. Release notes soon...(hopefully)


Mark,
Were released notes for 211 ever released???? I only remember seeing ones that you coined, nothing from E*. Did they tell you that they would release notes this time?


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## DonLandis

The release notes should read like a pharmacology report-
1. Improved the way the programming is recorded to the hard drive-
The side effect is that this will cause dizziness, stuttering, shortness of breath, fainting spells, rapid eyelid movement and chest pains and fever. Do not take this new update if you suffer from an acute desire to watch HDTV and quality SD.


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## invaliduser88

Anybody know if it addresses any of the caller ID issues?


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## boylehome

DonLandis said:


> Yep! You're welcome folks.
> 
> I know of two fixes in this release-
> 1. Jittery video
> 2. My attitude!
> 
> Hey I had to make some noise to get them off their butts and move on this.


I would not be surprised if this is true


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## BobMurdoch

invaliduser88 said:


> As Samual L. Jackson said in Jurrasic Park, "HOLD ON TO YOUR BUTTS!"


(Dives for foxhole) INCOMING!!!!!!!!!!!


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## DonLandis

caller ID issues?
I never had those problems here, consequently, I suspect that the whole caller ID problem of inconsistency had to do with both a failure on the 921 and the local phone system, ie the failure of the 921 to be nation wide compatible with all phone systems. It seems to work flawlessly with some and, like yours fails.

Here is what I just tested and it has fixed them to my satisfaction-
1. Jittery video, doesn't happen and with a known jittery program I stored on my DVR hard drive, it now plays perfectly!.
2. Tested aspect ratio button. It now cycles fine through the different stages and back to normal where I want it.
3. No local guide info here since I don't pay E* for that service.

Could not find anything obviously broken yet. I only tested for about 20 minutes so time will tell.


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## BobMurdoch

DonLandis said:


> The release notes should read like a pharmacology report-
> 1. Improved the way the programming is recorded to the hard drive-
> The side effect is that this will cause dizziness, stuttering, shortness of breath, fainting spells, rapid eyelid movement and chest pains and fever. Do not take this new update if you suffer from an acute desire to watch HDTV and quality SD.


May cause shortness of breath, intestinal distress, elevated blood pressure, and anal leakage.


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## Ron Barry

DonLandis said:


> Yep! You're welcome folks.
> 
> I know of two fixes in this release-
> 1. Jittery video
> 2. My attitude!
> 
> Hey I had to make some noise to get them off their butts and move on this. Guess I can go back to how I used to use the 921 again.


I hope the Jiitters are gone for all of us. I am sure we will know in a few days for sure. Glad to hear things are looking up for you Don.


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## ntexasdude

BobMurdoch said:


> May cause shortness of breath, intestinal distress, elevated blood pressure, and anal leakage.


Butt Juice


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## Michael P

leemathre said:


> I am away from home right now so I cannot test anything. Has anyone had a chance to check the preview window problem described in the thread below?
> 
> http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=36035&highlight=preview+window


I actually thought this (seeing the top corner) was normal. Since the program being deleted was the last thing being displayed in the preview window, the 921 jumps into "trannsparent mode" displaying the last live channel viewed before going into the DVR menu.


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## Michael P

I hope 2.12 helps the OTA tuner lock onto weaker signals better (there was an improvement with 2.11).


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## leemathre

TonyB said:


> Mark,
> Were released notes for 211 ever released???? I only remember seeing ones that you coined, nothing from E*. Did they tell you that they would release notes this time?


I was wondering the same thing. The only other time I can remember when release notes were this late was for 2.11. I hope the delay in releasing them is not an omen.


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## Mike Russell

I lost all guide info on PBS channels now. I liked it better the way it was,you could atleast set your recordings up in blocks. Now its no info from now on. Still no info available on PLYB channel after 2 hours.I don't know if anyone had ever reported this as I never had but always intended to.


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## Mark Lamutt

Still waiting for the notes, although I did just get word that they are on their way.

We never did release notes for L211. For what it's worth, I haven't seen any jittery video since the first beta after L211, so I'm very much hoping that it's fixed. ZSRs aren't. 720p CC isn't. The red dot problem almost certainly isn't. The locked STRETCH format seems to be - haven't had that one happen to me since L211 either. A few other things as well. We'll see what the notes say when I get them.


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## Mark Lamutt

Mike Russell said:


> I lost all guide info on PBS channels now. I liked it better the way it was,you could atleast set your recordings up in blocks. Now its no info from now on. Still no info available on PLYB channel after 2 hours.I don't know if anyone had ever reported this as I never had but always intended to.


I have no PBS guide data for the primary PBS station in Denver either.


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## Jon Spackman

mark,

Do you have info for the HD pbs in denver (you said it the -02 pbs digital for you right?)?

IE do you have any guide info for PBS hd OTA? just curious.

Jon


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## PatK25

i still have no OTA guide info after the update and i do pay for my locals over dish. i understand that you can only get the info for the channels that are the same exact stations you get from dish but i dont get my info for even those channels.


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## Curmudgeon

Do reboot/pull the plug...it will load new/revised listings.


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## boylehome

PatK25 said:


> i still have no OTA guide info after the update and i do pay for my locals over dish. i understand that you can only get the info for the channels that are the same exact stations you get from dish but i dont get my info for even those channels.


I have EPG data for the OTA channels, except for PBS. Most likely it is from E*. I did lose my EPG data for all but two hours in the future. I turned each 921 off for 1 hour and the EPG is fully populated.


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## michaelL

This is a horrible update. It really messed up the OTA guide. I am having the following problems.

1.) My Fox (WRAZ 50 in Durham) has the HD on sub channel 1. But the guide has no info for subchannel 1. It has the guide info on sub channel 2 (the SD channel).

2.) My CBS (WRAL 5) and PBS (WUNC 4) do not map at all to the OTA channels.

3.) My WB (WLFL 22) does not map to the proper channel at all (ie, I can't remember what this is called. It is Digital OTA channel 57, but is mapped to 22-1. It is coming in as 57-1 so it does not have any guide data.).

The old guide mapping was not great, but at least it worked (all OTA channels mapped to the corresponding Dish guide channel). But this new implementation only 2 of my OTA channels map (NBC and ABC map).

A question, how does dish choose the sub-channel to map to the guide? Why would one of my OTA map the guide to sub-channel 2? Why do two other OTA channels not map at all? 

Before this release all my OTA channels mapped to the propper dish channels.

Thanks,
Mike

PS. I removed all my OTA channels and rescanned/added them. Also, I rebooted (power cord) a couple of times.


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## lionsrule

I noticed there is no more "red line" in the preview window when looking at the guide. Too soon to notice much else yet. One bug I HAD been able to reappear EVERY time was if I was recording with both tuners, watching a recorded program and I let the program run to the very end, then the whole system froze up BIG TIME!!! Only fix was to pull the plug. I hope this is now fixed since we watch EVERYTHING time shifted and we like to watch stuff at the very end for "scenes" for next weeks shows.....sometimes this was a close call to freezing the 921.


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## tahoerob

Here is my OTA EPG outcome:

1. Major nets are correct. The sub channels (radar/weather) say "No Information"

2. WETA HD (PBS) shows "No Information". 
The LIL analog (26) shows correct analog info. 
WETA HD multicasts 4 channels. 26-1 is WETA HD programming. 26-2 is digital (SD) simulcast of analog channel. 
The problem comes from that WETA HD (26-1) does NOT show the same programming as SD channel. It shows mostly the same PBS HD loop with a few substitutions.
So in one way, the EPG is now correct. 
HOWEVER, I was able to use the wrong guide info to at least do a one button record via guide at correct time. NOW, I am going to have to resort to the OLD way of setting the analog program to record on analog DBS channel & change to OTA channel OR set a full manual timer.

BTW: When setting an OTA timer, the LIL DBS program still shows the red dot instead of the OTA channel.


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## Mark Lamutt

First go round of the release notes have been posted in the first post in this thread. I'll work on getting more specific information.


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## Rotryrkt

The picture still doesn't completely fill the screen on my RCA DLP through the DVI output. It goes completely to the top now, but is still about an inch in on the sides and bottom. Also, the composite and S-Video outputs are washed out (whites really blown out). A hard reset cures this for a short time as it did with 211. Overall PQ seems slightly improved and remote inputs are less sluggish. Jury is still out though.

Regards,
Bill


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## Mark Lamutt

Bill - make sure you're not set at 480p output. You may be after the software installation.


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## Rotryrkt

Mark Lamutt said:


> Bill - make sure you're not set at 480p output. You may be after the software installation.


Mark,
Thanks for the tip. It was indeed set at 480p. When I went to 1080i (the only format my set will accept) the picture is back the way it was, sucked in about 2 inches on all four sides. I just thought it helped.

By the way, Mark, thanks for all you do for the 921 community. Your dedication to this endeavor is much appreciated.

Bill


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## Ron Barry

Hmm the last item on the release notes I find somewhat interesting. Does this mean that all my favorites will have all the PPV channels. I sure hope not!


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## Skates

You know, if it wasn't for this board I'd never know I was getting updates - my 921 never processes them automatically. :nono2:


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## ClaudeR

Wow, an update during the day? The wife just mentioned the box received an update in the middle of her show this afternoon - Please wait while I conveniently interrupt what you were watching...

I thought they usually come in during the night. Oh well, hope it helps. Other than OTA, I'm mostly happy with the box.

"Place PPV channels into the All Sub list on the EPG" I sure hope this is optional. More stuff to wallow through...


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## indyras

Mark Lamutt said:


> Straight from Dish, release notes are as follows:
> 
> 
> Improve the performance of the HD/SD button


I'm not exactly sure what they mean by "improve the performance of the HD/SD button", but I still cannot get my 921 to respond correctly to the "force output" button sequences:

HD/SD Button + Page Up Button within 3 seconds = supposed to force HD output mode >>still doesn't work for me<<

HD/SD Button + Page Down Button within 3 seconds = supposed to force SD output mode >>still doesn't work for me<<


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## DVDDave

Well, sorry to burst our collective bubble, but I've got bad news. Since the update, I found 2 ZSRs which, believe it or not, I had never gotten before. And, to make matters much worse, in trying to erase one of the bad shows, I lost all of my recordings! I can't believe this! After all the hopeful anticipation that the problems I actually was having would be fixed, they made them much worse. Arghhhhh!

--Dave


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## JM Anthony

No joy in this household. No 212 upgrade for me. Even did a power plug reboot. Must be a case of bad karma.


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## tnsprin

I would say the most important item is the new "driver" or whatever you want to call it that corrects certain video output errors. Notably when viewing a smaller image when looking at guide, etc. Hopefully in general improves picture.


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## Mark Lamutt

This version doesn't address the ZSR problems, or the "better not screw with a ZSR or you'll get your hard drive deleted" bug. I don't think that the PPV channels are forced into the favorites. I think that there was a bug that prevented them from being added. The SD/HD item - nothing to do with the discrete macro I don't think. It fixed a bug that prevented the button from functioning. JM - you'll probably get it overnight. Frank, I have no idea what you're seeing there...sounds like you need to reboot. None of my recordings are showing any signs of pixellation when using the FF.

I think that covers everything that was listed tonight. For what it's worth, in case anyone is interested, we didn't see the first beta for L212 until the first week of January, a month after L211 spooled. I tell you this because today, in addition to taking the L212 download this morning, I also took another download this afternoon. And you wouldn't believe the list of fixes on this one if I showed it to you...I'm thinking that L213 isn't nearly as far off as L212 was.


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## kinigit

I'm having problems with my OTA guide now also. I worked fine before the update but now for some reason my ABC station (KOAT Channel 7 in Albuquerque) is not being mapped. All the other stations are being mapped correctly.


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## Mark Lamutt

Leave it in standby overnight, kinigit. That may correct it. If not, do a check switch.


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## Frank Z

I deleted my post because it started working. Very strange screen when I used the FF button. The screen was completely scrambled making the FF feature completely useless. I've got a few other shows recording and I'll see what happens with them.
I gotta learn to relax!


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## SimpleSimon

Mark Lamutt said:


> Surprised though I may be about this, L212 is now spooling for our 921s. Straight from Dish, release notes are as follows:
> 
> 
> Ensure the position of the SWAPPED PIP window is correct in the guide
> Improve the performance of the HD/SD button
> Improve the PIP to prevent "jitter" when repositioning
> Improve performance when pressing aspect ratio key
> Improve performance when entering or exiting the guide
> Improve performance when picture is in 1/4 screen or in lower screen guide video
> Improved performance for guide data acquisition
> Place PPV channels into the All Sub list on the EPG
> 
> Of course, we will always continue to improve our products through periodic software updates as needed, so there customers can expect more 921 updates in the future, as needed.


What frelling crap.

"Improve performance" ya right - how about just making the box work? 

The list doesn't show ANYTHING I need fixed. NOT ONE THING.

NOT ONE FRELLING THING.

They blew it - *AGAIN*.

I've got the worst performance (bugs, bad video, and other horse$#!t) of ANY release since I've had the box. It's been nuts all through primetime.

MAYBE it'll at least return to it's normal level of manure after I reboot it.


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## jsanders

Mark Lamutt said:


> This version doesn't address the ZSR problems, or the "better not screw with a ZSR or you'll get your hard drive deleted" bug.


HA Ha ha ha ha ha! !rolling !rolling !rolling

That is a good bug name Mark. I can laugh now, it wasn't very funny when it happened to me though....


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## klaatu

All of my timers this afternoon and evening did not fire. No recordings.

Anyone else see this?

Klaatu 
____________________________________
921 L212 HECD
510
508
SW64
2 wrongs don't make a right, but 3 lefts do!
|;-\>


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## jsanders

Mark Lamutt said:


> For what it's worth, in case anyone is interested, we didn't see the first beta for L212 until the first week of January, a month after L211 spooled. I tell you this because today, in addition to taking the L212 download this morning, I also took another download this afternoon. And you wouldn't believe the list of fixes on this one if I showed it to you...I'm thinking that L213 isn't nearly as far off as L212 was.


Woo hoo! Sounds good. Let's hope the planets line up soon. We can always hope, right??


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## KKlare

L212
Format failed to change aspect so I rebooted.
Looked at Family Smallville and PBS NBR, Locked stretch on SD.
Watched OTA NYPD and 12 year fine from/as recording.
Looked at a PBS from earlier OK.
Found out that L212 had been loaded.
Went back to NBC LIL recording during NYPD and it was Black Screen PVR (no FF, no INFO, no banner) -- it was not ZSR, 59 min or so.
Checked another non-ZSR and it hung and all recordings were zapped. (16 hours HD equiv lost!)
I didn't think it was possible to make it worse. WRONG.

Yes,
>GravelChan: I see the closed captions on 720P is NOT fixed.
>n0qcu: CC on 720p channels using the 921 results in garbled text.
>Mark Lamutt: This version doesn't address the ZSR problems, or the "better not screw with a ZSR or you'll get your hard drive deleted" bug.
>kinigit: but now for some reason my ABC station (KOAT Channel 7 in Albuquerque) is not being mapped. It filled for me once earlier overnight.


921 DVI #2/2 (#1 7/9/04 lightning nearby) 120B/F051/L212HECD-N
811 Component #1/1 (1/04)
501 RF/S-vid #2/4 machine (#1 few months, #2 flakey, #3 1 day, #2 came back, ran #2 + #4 until kept quieter, running for 2 years)
Versions: current software
Monitor: Hitachi 46H83
Dish: 500/500 119, 110, 148 Legacy SW64. Power inserter and diplexed OTA on 811.
Underdeck old 78" or more antenna. 49-mi line of sight. +10dB 4-way signal 100 to 123.


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## DonLandis

_"we didn't see the first beta for L212 until the first week of January, a month after L211 spooled. I tell you this because today, in addition to taking the L212 download this morning, I also took another download this afternoon."_

Mark-
I was told at CES about the L212beta you guys received and also what was done to correct the jitters issue. They discovered what damage they did back before Christmas and had the fix for it then. Just to compare notes, and I understand if your NDA forbids any discussion of this but can you state what it was that prevented them from releasing an emergency fix for the jitter problem more quickly since this was fixed within a couple of weeks of L211? 
Considering your chronological statements at the least I feel they could have issued a maintenance fix to the jitter bug by 3rd week in January to allow for you guys in beta to verify their one bug fix, saving the other non-destructive bug fixes for later. Just my opinion but I consider any issue that destroys the simple viewing of the picture or hearing of the audio a serious break in the system that warrants a speedy, emergency fix. Holding up that fix for just shy of 3 months because they may be playing with some minor improvement to the guide or other feature to add to a bundle release is a very poor management decision. I consider their delay cost me $330 (3 months service) in lost use of the 921.

PS- In case anyone is interested, my OTA manual weekly timers for Tuesday evening fired without issue. These were all set prior to L212 and have been recording weekly during the L211 period without issue although they did exhibit jitters and typical stuttering of the horizontal movement. A spot check of my one CBS affil recording showed no jitters at all. I will probably watch the show later tonight but I trust this L212 has fixed the problems of L211, here at least.


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## boylehome

This may just be coincidental but all of the OTA DVR events that recorded last night have the correct information listed in the DVR RECORD EVENT menu. Specifically the event is listed in rows by date, station identification, and, title of program. It used to show the previous program and selecting it would take me to a second menu listing three events. Boy I sure hope that it stays fixed!

Another observation, both my DVI and component inputs are now equal in quality. Both provide a very nice picture. I see that the picture still expands to full screen when in the DVR menu after viewing a recorded event.


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## TonyB

with 211 in HD mode, the stretch and zoom functions did not do anything - made sense since I was in HD mode on a 16x9 screen. With 212 the stretch and zoom do indeed do just that. What is the purpose??? I thought the stretch and zoom were for modifying at 4x3 picture when on a 16x9 screen???

Is this a new "feature" to be corrected later or do I not understand the need for this function?


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## Mark Lamutt

DonLandis said:


> Mark-
> I was told at CES about the L212beta you guys received and also what was done to correct the jitters issue. They discovered what damage they did back before Christmas and had the fix for it then. Just to compare notes, and I understand if your NDA forbids any discussion of this but can you state what it was that prevented them from releasing an emergency fix for the jitter problem more quickly since this was fixed within a couple of weeks of L211?


Don, if I knew an answer to that question, I'd tell you. I have no idea what the holdup was, other than there were a lot of vacations taken around Christmas.


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## Mark Lamutt

TonyB said:


> with 211 in HD mode, the stretch and zoom functions did not do anything - made sense since I was in HD mode on a 16x9 screen. With 212 the stretch and zoom do indeed do just that. What is the purpose??? I thought the stretch and zoom were for modifying at 4x3 picture when on a 16x9 screen???
> 
> Is this a new "feature" to be corrected later or do I not understand the need for this function?


For 4x3 upconverted programming that the HD stations broadcast.


----------



## TonyB

Mark Lamutt said:


> For 4x3 upconverted programming that the HD stations broadcast.


Mark,
But doesn't that result in a 4x3 format picture? What if it is a normal HD picture transmitted in HD? The picture already fills the screen.


----------



## boylehome

TonyB said:


> with 211 in HD mode, the stretch and zoom functions did not do anything - made sense since I was in HD mode on a 16x9 screen. With 212 the stretch and zoom do indeed do just that. What is the purpose??? I thought the stretch and zoom were for modifying at 4x3 picture when on a 16x9 screen???
> 
> Is this a new "feature" to be corrected later or do I not understand the need for this function?


Sometime the HD channel is a 4x3 aspect like the NYPD Blue Tribute. It is nice to stretch and zoom when it is HD 4x3. Even with L211, in the 16x9 aspect, I could stretch and zoom and could note the difference on my monitor. When the HD is in a 4x3 there is no gray bar function which may be important to certain monitors to help prevent burn-in.


----------



## Curmudgeon

boylehome said:


> Sometime the HD channel is a 4x3 aspect like the NYPD Blue Tribute. It is nice to stretch and zoom when it is HD 4x3. Even with L211, in the 16x9 aspect, I could stretch and zoom and could note the difference on my monitor. When the HD is in a 4x3 there is no gray bar function which may be important to certain monitors to help prevent burn-in.


Let me confuse things even more. By definition, there is no such thing as "4:3" HD. Every signal at 720 or 1080 resolution MUST be 16:9. When broadcasters upconvert, they have two choices: Send the 4:3 picture along with side bars to fill a 16:9 screen. Or, zoom into the 4:3 picture to fill that 16:9 screen. Either way, they are sending you a 16:9 "live" frame.
In the first situation, the format button would allow you to do the zoom in and fill your screen with the formerly 4:3 picture.


----------



## dishbacker

Overall, I've seen an improvement in the performance of the box last night. Quicker switching (as listed as 'improved performance') in changing channels, OTA channels came up faster, preview window display is fixed (other than deleting a PVR event and it going back to live with the picture in full display, allowing only the top left corner to display).

Timers recorded last night without issue.

One other fixed I noticed is that while watching a PVR event and doing a FFwd, the Green Progress bar across the bottom of the time remaining graphic actually displayed. This used to only display when you hit pause. Or was it the other way around? either way, it seems to be displaying correctly now.

Not that I was experiencing many issues that others were, it does appear to have made my box better in the long run.


----------



## michaelL

michaelL said:


> This is a horrible update. It really messed up the OTA guide. I am having the following problems.
> 
> 1.) My Fox (WRAZ 50 in Durham) has the HD on sub channel 1. But the guide has no info for subchannel 1. It has the guide info on sub channel 2 (the SD channel).
> 
> 2.) My CBS (WRAL 5) and PBS (WUNC 4) do not map at all to the OTA channels.
> 
> 3.) My WB (WLFL 22) does not map to the proper channel at all (ie, I can't remember what this is called. It is Digital OTA channel 57, but is mapped to 22-1. It is coming in as 57-1 so it does not have any guide data.).
> 
> The old guide mapping was not great, but at least it worked (all OTA channels mapped to the corresponding Dish guide channel). But this new implementation only 2 of my OTA channels map (NBC and ABC map).
> 
> A question, how does dish choose the sub-channel to map to the guide? Why would one of my OTA map the guide to sub-channel 2? Why do two other OTA channels not map at all?
> 
> Before this release all my OTA channels mapped to the propper dish channels.
> 
> Thanks,
> Mike
> 
> PS. I removed all my OTA channels and rescanned/added them. Also, I rebooted (power cord) a couple of times.


Well, I left my 921 in standby last night. Not much has changed. Problem #3 now correctly displays the guide, but it is still not mapped to the non-RF channel (ie, it is comming as channel 57-1 (the true RF channel) not 22-1 (correct station channel).

2 of my OTA channels are not being mapped to the guide. And one of my OTA channels is mapped to the wrong sub-channel (mapped to the 50-2 SD channel instead of the 50-1 HD channel).

Does anyone know how you can force the 921 to map a OTA channel?

Mike

P.S. Who was the idiot who decided to not map all the OTA channels. Yes some of the OTA channels where mapped incorrectly, but most where correct (ie, most stations have a HD, SD and a wacky channel (ie, news, weather, something else, ...). At least the HD and SD where correct. Now hardly anything is correct.


----------



## mwgiii

Well, I took the download, did a front button reboot, then did a power cord reboot and..............

Watched recorded American Idol OTA and still had one JITTER.


----------



## Mark Lamutt

Please define "one jitter" mwgiii...I saw something in the broadcast last night as well on another receiver that was in the Fox Feed. 

Mike - there's no way to force the channel map. Try deleting those channels and then manually adding them back with the Add DTV to see if that helps. If it doesn't, please post an L212 bug report in the other forum.


----------



## ntexasdude

For what's is worth mine updated to L212 sometime yesterday. I didn't notice anything different but then again mine seems to have worked almost perfectly from the day I got it in January. The remote control does seem to be more responsive.


----------



## invaliduser88

Was watching the Tonight Show in HD OTA. I notice more pixelation than before the upgrade. Will see if it continues.


----------



## gboot

I'm in the Philadelphia viewing area. The local PBS OTA channels now indicate "No Information Available" there is another local OTA channel where the guide indicates "Local Programming".
For both of these stations the guide information on the Dish channels (8xxx series) is there and correct.
It appears that 212 is getting the Guide information for OTA channels from a different source than 211. 
I'm wondering if a subscription to the Dish locals is no longer necessary to get OTA guide data ?


----------



## mwgiii

Mark Lamutt said:


> Please define "one jitter" mwgiii...I saw something in the broadcast last night as well on another receiver that was in the Fox Feed.


I was recording American Idol and I was watching it about 15 minutes behind being live. The one jitter I saw lasted about 1 second. It looked like someone was shaking the TV (for lack of better way to describe it). It wasn't pixilation, the entire screen stuttered. I have seen this jitter before on my recorded programs (Stargate SG1 on SCI FI being a regular). It only happens once or twice during a program.

I also don't have guide info for PBS OTA.


----------



## Slordak

dishbacker said:


> One other fixed I noticed is that while watching a PVR event and doing a FFwd, the Green Progress bar across the bottom of the time remaining graphic actually displayed. This used to only display when you hit pause. Or was it the other way around? either way, it seems to be displaying correctly now.


Oh my god, the green progress bar is actually fixed? If I recall correctly, it's been partially broken ever since the unit started shipping. Someone must've finally stumbled across whatever variable wasn't being set correctly and patched it up. Woohoo!

Incidentally, the thing I noticed is that my font / guide corruption has been solved, so I now have the normal guide font once again. Of course, after looking at the previous small font for so long, the "normal" font now looks positively huge, so it's going to take me a week or two to get used to it now!


----------



## Eagles

Mark Lamutt said:


> I tell you this because today, in addition to taking the L212 download this morning, I also took another download this afternoon. And you wouldn't believe the list of fixes on this one if I showed it to you...I'm thinking that L213 isn't nearly as far off as L212 was.


Mark,
Is there any chance that I will be able to view some of my favorite shows on ABC and FOX in HD (Alias, 24 ect.) before the season ends. I'm assuming you are familiar with my situation and the issue/bug most important to me. Trying to get some info without affecting your NDA, Thanks


----------



## Mark Lamutt

Eagles, short answer - yes, absolutely. Long answer, see your PM.


----------



## TonyB

OK, now I have the 212 running and I do not have the LIL downshifted, what I see on the EPG is:
Main channel (analog) shows the Program data as before
-01 digital subchannel shows the same program data as the main channel
Other digital subchannels indicate that there is no program data available.

Question: Where does the 921 get the program data for the main and -01 digital sub channel? I currently still subscribe to LIL for program data but never watch them - they are all still sitting up at 877x etc. Can I now cancel the locals and still get local program data????


----------



## Mark Lamutt

Tony - no, the OTA guide data is coming from the Dish locals. If you cancel the dish locals, you'll lose your OTA guide data.


----------



## TonyB

Mark Lamutt said:


> Tony - no, the OTA guide data is coming from the Dish locals. If you cancel the dish locals, you'll lose your OTA guide data.


Mark, So its coming for the local data stream to E* then down via satellite??? - as opposed to the locals themselves OTA?? Is that because the locals OTA do NOT transmit the data or because E* just wants to use the data that the locals supply to them?


----------



## Mark Lamutt

It's because not all stations broadcast guide data, and even if they do, they don't send anywhere near 9 days worth of data in their stream. Most have between 1-3 days worth of data.


----------



## The Guv

I just checked my system info and found that I still have L211 listed.

Do I have to put my 921 system in "standby" to get the update? Will the update spool to my system if I don't shut it down?

I usually only turn the reciever off once or twice a week and did not turn it off overnight last night.


----------



## Neil Derryberry

Power button reboot will start the process... that's what I had to do.

My CallerID is magically working now...!


----------



## Jim Parker

I have had TWO crashes with 212 on my HECD 921 in 3 hours of viewing time.  

When I got home last night, the box was on, and 212 was not downloaded. I did a power button reset, the software download and I confirmed that it was 212. 

About 30 minutes later, two timers fired for the locals from satellite. I got the message about "Using the Main to record". I clicked on the done, and the red record light came on. 30 seconds later, the TV went to a black screen; the 921 had rebooted itself. After a couple of minutes, the round Dish logo came up, followed by normal boot up. The red light came on and I confirmed that both timers were recording.

OK, I thought that the 921 just needed to be rebooted. Until this morning. :nono: 

No timers fired, just 10 minutes delayed on a local from satellite. I pressed the 30 second skip several times and the box froze up. The image stayed on the screen, but would not respond to most of the buttons (skip forward, back, FF, view, stop, cancel) but did turn Off. Turning it back on, all I got was a black screen. I did a power cord reboot and it came back up.

I have not had a lock up like this since last summer. I hope that this is not a preview of things to come with 212. :nono2:


----------



## dishbacker

Jim Parker said:


> When I got home last night, the box was on, and 212 was not downloaded. I did a power button reset, the software download and I confirmed that it was 212.


As with all of the previous versions that I've gotten, I did a power cord reboot to force the install, and the followed up the reboot/install with a power cord reboot of the box.

Had no probs last night with recordings or watching PVR events or timeshifting and (as listed above) the performance of the box/remote/software seemed fairly improved and more responsive.


----------



## gboot

Mark Lamutt said:


> Tony - no, the OTA guide data is coming from the Dish locals. If you cancel the dish locals, you'll lose your OTA guide data.


Mark,
If the OTA guide data is coming from the Dish locals how is it that with 212 my PBS channel has guide data for the Dish locals but No Information available on the OTA channel? Also, another channel is displaying Local Programming on the OTA channel but the Dish local has the correct guide data ?


----------



## Flasshe

I got 212 last night. Interesting they say that the remote HD/SD and Format buttons were fixed, because I lost their functionality again last night with 212. It happened when I stopped an in-progress OTA recording which was getting frequent breakups (not a good sign). When I then went to go watch a previously recorded SD program while still in HD mode, the aspect ratio was suddenly wrong (it said Gray Bars but was stretched) and the HD/SD and Format buttons stopped functioning. Luckily I could go into SD mode by changing to 480i in the setup menu, as usual. The buttons did not start functioning again until I did a power button reboot.

On the plus side, it looks like they may have solved the problem with the black lines on the side (between the picture and the gray bars) when watching SD material in HD Gray Bar mode.


----------



## jsanders

Jim Parker said:


> I have not had a lock up like this since last summer.


Since it isn't summer yet, and you're from Anchorage, I would have figured you would have used the words "froze up" instead of "lock up" for some reason. :sunsmile:


----------



## Mark Lamutt

gboot said:


> Mark,
> If the OTA guide data is coming from the Dish locals how is it that with 212 my PBS channel has guide data for the Dish locals but No Information available on the OTA channel? Also, another channel is displaying Local Programming on the OTA channel but the Dish local has the correct guide data ?


Because PBS is the odd case. You'll notice that I said that I also don't have PBS guide information. It's because a lot of PBS stations aren't broadcasting the same programming on their HD channel as they are on their SD channel. This was actually one of the reasons I was surprised to see L212 go yesterday. And I have no idea why some markets are getting guide data for their PBS channel, and some aren't.


----------



## pnb

Mark Lamutt said:


> Sure...why not?  Honestly, I have no idea. I'd suggest that if it doesn't automatically reboot on its own to do a front panel reboot (push the power button).
> 
> I'm waiting for official release notes, but if this is the same version that we have in beta, then it fixes the jittery video issues. Not sure yet about what else yet.


I am so frustrated with Dish. I could'nt take the jittery video any more and called Dish. Advanced 921 support told me they never heard of it. When I asked when the next release would come out, they said it would be a while. Well, after two RA units, tech support being useless I'm going back to cable.

Oh btw, Dish is sending out a "tech" to check the ground in house because it might have something to do with the jittery video. They didn't want to hear I'm a master electrician and have isolated ground circuits with a power conditioner for my home theater. :nono:


----------



## Mark Lamutt

Are you still having the jitter problems with 212 PNB?


----------



## bbomar

Mark Lamutt said:


> And I have no idea why some markets are getting guide data for their PBS channel, and some aren't.


Guide data is fine for the Nashville DMA since all channels broadcast their
main programming on the xx-01 channel, including PBS. Probably in Huntsville,
AL it is a different story since their PBS has different programming on xx-01
and xx-02 with the "main analog" programming on the xx-02 channel, but
I don't have guide data for Huntsville. I could take the guide data either
the way it was in L211 or the way it is in L212. In Nashville L212 is more
accurate since the xx-02 channels now show "no information" and for some
channels the programming is different. Really, I suppose if we have to stay
with LIL guide data it would be nice to have some way to select which way
we want it.


----------



## boylehome

pnb said:


> Oh btw, Dish is sending out a "tech" to check the ground in house because it might have something to do with the jittery video. They didn't want to hear I'm a master electrician and have isolated ground circuits with a power conditioner for my home theater. :nono:


Are they charging you for the service call? When they get there, lets say they do find a ground problem in the electrical outlet. Chances are they can't fix it. So it turns into a escalating expenditure for you. And yes, they don't care if you are certain that it isn't a ground issue. Maybe the ground problem is in the cable from the plug at the outlet to somewhere inside the 921. Do you think that they can fix it on site? So then there is an authorization to get another 921. How much time and effort is wasted by them coming? Reason I post this is I've been there, done that.


----------



## Jon Spackman

with 212 i know have "no information" for 28-01 (LA PBS hd) but 28-02 shows the right info. too bad i dont care about PBS SD and want pbs HD info. I hope dish is somehow able to get the HD info and broadcast that to us. Mark is that possible? Since the Sd (the local they broadcast to most people on sat 28) and the HD feed which the do not have the rights to broadcast???

So far i think 212 is a much needed improvement. I havent had any problems with it at all. The remote responds faster. guide comes up and goes away faster. Seems more stable. Im happy. When is 213 coming next week??

Thanks Jon


----------



## boylehome

Mark Lamutt said:


> Are you still having the jitter problems with 212 PNB?


Mark, I noticed a slight jitter in a recorded DVR event from last night. It was slight but it was a 16:9 aspect HD program that was broadcast on our local ABC channel. The program was, "My Wife and Kids." The jitter was about half the movements from side to side as was normally seen in the SD programs viewed under L211. It occurred in first two minutes of the program. I didn't do anything in attempt to correct it, as it stopped jittering as the program continued. This was with my HEED 921. I did replay that jitter area later and the jitter was gone?


----------



## Mark Lamutt

Sounds like the jitter may not be completely fixed, then.

Jon - the problem is that the national HD PBS feed is just that - a national feed that the local PBS-HD stations can choose to use or not. That makes it real diffuicult to get good guide data for them, especially if they all aren't providing that guide data to Tribune (which a lot of them are not).


----------



## awp

Mark Lamutt said:


> Subchannels will NOT have guide data in this release - that was something that we specifically tested over the weekend. Only main channels will show guide data. I know this is going to be a real problem for a few of you in areas where the primary HD channel is not on the -01 subchannel.


Interesting. My PBS affiliate (WXXI Rochester) broadcasts HD on OTA 16 (mapped to 21.1), PPSkids on 21.2, PBSYOU on 21.3 and the standard def digital PBS feed on 21.4.

After the update, (I had to manually reboot) the guide shows the correct PBS standard guide info on subchannel 21.4 copied from my satellite locals (Dish channel 7640). The .1, .2 and .3 sub channels guide info is "not available"

L212HEED


----------



## lapplegate

gboot said:


> Mark,
> If the OTA guide data is coming from the Dish locals how is it that with 212 my PBS channel has guide data for the Dish locals but No Information available on the OTA channel? Also, another channel is displaying Local Programming on the OTA channel but the Dish local has the correct guide data ?


Mark,
Since 212 I have lost guide data on 2 of my OTA digital channels. They were fine at 211. Louisville, Ky WAVE 3 (NBC) and WKPC 15 (PBS) now have the "no information availible". This is on the xx-01 channels not the "sub channels". The other OTA digitals (ABC, CBS, FOX, KET, UPN) are as they were before. I have locals and the guide data appears in both the the SD channels that are being mapped "from".
I have tried deleting and readding, as well as the cord boots.

I have currently put the "mapped from" channels in the guide so that the guide information "sits" above the OTA. This allows me to see whats coming on, but does not allow a timer from the OTA channel guide.

Is there a way to fix this or are those of us subscribing to locals not going to be able to get all of our guide data until a fix comes down?

Thanks,
Larry


----------



## StevenD

My 921 still hasnt taken the download. Before I b*tch about it, has anyone in the Dallas/Ft Worth are had problems with their channel mapping and guide data with L2.12?


----------



## TVBob

PatK25 said:


> i still have no OTA guide info after the update and i do pay for my locals over dish. i understand that you can only get the info for the channels that are the same exact stations you get from dish but i dont get my info for even those channels.


Make sure local channel map-down is enabled: Menu 4-2-More, *Off-Air Antenna Locals* needs to be *unchecked*. This means "Turn off analog channels. Use Channels 2-69 for local-into-local (LIL) satellite channels."


----------



## TVBob

Mark,

How do you want us to handle all our old L211 bug reports (in the Official DBSTalk 921 Bug Reports Forum )? If a bug seems to be fixed in L212, maybe we should post an append to the original L211 bug report: "Fixed in L212".

If the L211 bug is still present in L212, do you want us to repost it as a "new" L212 bug so that people can "re-vote", or should we just append a comment "Not fixed in L212"?

If L213 is just around the corner, and if it fixes a bunch of problems that are still present in L212, maybe we should just wait a couple of weeks before doing anything?

"You make the call."


----------



## James_Bruce

StevenD said:


> My 921 still hasnt taken the download. Before I b*tch about it, has anyone in the Dallas/Ft Worth are had problems with their channel mapping and guide data with L2.12?


DFW here, Most of my locals are mapped properly, a few oddballs don't that I never watch, may be sherman channels..

J


----------



## JM Anthony

Mark Lamutt said:


> . . . JM - you'll probably get it overnight. . . .


Are you that good at predicting the stock market? 212 arrived and looks fine on my end so far. John


----------



## BobaBird

After reading here yesterday afternoon that L212 had spooled, I did a power button reset. The unit was in standby and I didn't check it again until I was ready to watch in the evening.

1. Turn it on while it is recording. No picture, no blue or amber light, just power and record. Have to wait til late night for another reboot.

2. When I'm able to watch I find a 23 min recording from roughly 1:50pm-2:13pm. Not something I set up, deleted the event. NYPD Blue from 246 had recorded in 2 segments of 23 and 37 minutes. Watched recorded shows until dawn w/o incident though I confirmed that using skip on a 720p source still moves 15 rather than 30 seconds. Placed unit in standby.

3. Early this afternoon select a DVR event to watch, the start button is highlighted, and the unit freezes. Do another power button reset.

4. Turn unit back on, get no response from the DVR button or the menu button. It's not the old remote freezing problem though because I can change channels (direct and up/dn), press cancel for the program banner, and browse. While I was finding which buttons were still active, the picture shrunk to about the size of the small PIP except it was in the extreme upper left corner of the screen and had no frame. Viewing program info brought it back to full screen. My last attempt to get to the DVR list was the front panel menu button -- still no joy  . Since I'm already there I do another reset.

Boot: 140B, Flash: F052, Software: L212HECD-N
TV: Sony KV-34XBR910, DVI from the 921


----------



## Mike123abc

Another change I have noticed in the software that was not reported in the release notes is that it is now possible to delete a DVR event when both timers are busy. Before it would want to stop a timer so that it could retune the picture to what you were last watching. Now it simply puts out a blank picture!!! YES! nice undocumented fix.


----------



## bytre

j5races said:


> with 212 i know have "no information" for 28-01 (LA PBS hd) but 28-02 shows the right info. too bad i dont care about PBS SD and want pbs HD info.


That's what I want too.


----------



## bbriggs

Mine got stuck in stretch mode again on HGTV, needed a reboot. Lost info for local ABC main channel - the only one they broadcast. I liked having info for PBS and/or subchannels even if it was wrong. 'No Info. Available' is an embarassment and cannot be construed by any stretch of my imagination as a step forward. My gray bars don't reach the picture on any channels I've tried, just like before. WAF is only moderate with 2-3 manual reboots / week and still holding under L212. But it still mostly sortof works.


----------



## savecal

We are really enjoying the receiver, but my wife complains about the fan/hard drive noise at night. I power it down each night at the surge protector power strip. I think I read in another thread that this CANNOT be fixed in software updates. Is this true?


----------



## mfrodsha

Fewer Stations and No OTA Data - Prior software version please? 

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

MISSING: Salt Lake: KSTU; KBYU

WTF????

So, now I don't get any of the local kbyu stations in Salt Lake (there were 4 that came in perfectly).

I also don't get any of the Fox channels (there was one SD and one HD)

Now, no guide data for any sub channels? Much of it was the same as the main channel. Now, I can't get the timers to work for sub-channel recordings that were working perfectly before - you know "Local Programming " nonsense for guide data.

So far, this is a big down grade. All I want is freaking OTA guide data. We had it - now it's all but gone. 

Is it possible to go back to the prior software version?


----------



## xsailor

Mike123abc said:


> Another change I have noticed in the software that was not reported in the release notes is that it is now possible to delete a DVR event when both timers are busy. Before it would want to stop a timer so that it could retune the picture to what you were last watching. Now it simply puts out a blank picture!!! YES! nice undocumented fix.


My 921 with the new software does the same as before where it comes to deleting a DVR event when timers are busy ... it won't delete it unless I stop one of the timers. NO CHANGE


----------



## TVBob

savecal said:


> We are really enjoying the receiver, but my wife complains about the fan/hard drive noise at night. I power it down each night at the surge protector power strip. I think I read in another thread that this CANNOT be fixed in software updates. Is this true?


According to what was said in the last tech Forum, since the DVR-921 runs Linux off the hard disk, rather than running an operating system off of ROM, it is not possible to make the disk stop. This doesn't sound quite right to me, but that's what they claimed. Maybe someone who runs Linux on a laptop can teach them how to make suspend/resume work with Linux.


----------



## TVBob

I've only had time to play with L212 a little, but so far it seems just fine here. No more jitters! None.

It installed itself silently, and I didn't have to do a manual reboot at all. Guide data for most OTA digital stations seems correct when available. The "main" (-01) channel for most stations has accurate Guide Data, and all the sub-channels say "No Information Available". My ReplayTV, which downloads guide data via telephone line, does no better. Neither does my Sony RD-HX900 DVD recorder, which downloads TV Guide(tm) data over the air via an antenna, believe it or not. So they all work the same.

Whenever the locals finally get their act together, and start feeding accurate subchannel guide data to Tribune Media Services or whoever it is, this will get better. Until then, I think displaying "No information available" is better than displaying completely misleading guide data for subchannels, like it used to do.

You can always use this old trick: program a recording using LIL satellite channels, then just edit the new timer and change the channel number to the OTA subchannel that you really want to record. After the recording completes, the title in the DVR list may be wrong, but it gets the job done.


----------



## SimpleSimon

Yes, TVBob - even Microsoft has figured out how to do this


----------



## jsanders

That sounds really, really stupid. They are saying that the OS runs directly from the hard drive, eh? It doesn't load it into ram first? Even if your ram is limited, you use virtual memory with page swapping to run relevant parts of the code. When it is in standby mode, there is no reason why they can't keep timers running, some code to handle interrupts from the remote and front panel, along with code that can start the hard drive. There is always some rom in the system. How can it get the program off of the disk in the first place if there wasn't some code in the rom that spins up the hard drive, and tells it what sector to look at, and some knowledge of the file system format and how to get the bits off of the disk? If it didn't have this, the 921 couldn't even load the OS in the first place.


----------



## Ron Barry

TVBob said:


> According to what was said in the last tech Forum, since the DVR-921 runs Linux off the hard disk, rather than running an operating system off of ROM, it is not possible to make the disk stop. This doesn't sound quite right to me, but that's what they claimed. Maybe someone who runs Linux on a laptop can teach them how to make suspend/resume work with Linux.


I heard that too. This is obviously not correct and the person either did not understand the question or replied to what they thought was a the question. the 921 is not running from the hard disk.


----------



## StevenD

My 921 STILL wont take the download. Ugh!


----------



## Mark Lamutt

lapplegate said:


> Mark,
> Since 212 I have lost guide data on 2 of my OTA digital channels. They were fine at 211. Louisville, Ky WAVE 3 (NBC) and WKPC 15 (PBS) now have the "no information availible". This is on the xx-01 channels not the "sub channels". The other OTA digitals (ABC, CBS, FOX, KET, UPN) are as they were before. I have locals and the guide data appears in both the the SD channels that are being mapped "from".
> I have tried deleting and readding, as well as the cord boots.
> 
> I have currently put the "mapped from" channels in the guide so that the guide information "sits" above the OTA. This allows me to see whats coming on, but does not allow a timer from the OTA channel guide.
> 
> Is there a way to fix this or are those of us subscribing to locals not going to be able to get all of our guide data until a fix comes down?
> 
> Thanks,
> Larry


Unfortunately, I think this is going to require a fix on Eldon's end, Larry.


----------



## Mark Lamutt

TVBob said:


> Mark,
> 
> How do you want us to handle all our old L211 bug reports (in the Official DBSTalk 921 Bug Reports Forum )? If a bug seems to be fixed in L212, maybe we should post an append to the original L211 bug report: "Fixed in L212".
> 
> If the L211 bug is still present in L212, do you want us to repost it as a "new" L212 bug so that people can "re-vote", or should we just append a comment "Not fixed in L212"?
> 
> If L213 is just around the corner, and if it fixes a bunch of problems that are still present in L212, maybe we should just wait a couple of weeks before doing anything?
> 
> "You make the call."


Let's hold off for a couple of weeks here, unless there's something new that hasn't yet been reported. There are a lot of things that'll be fixed in L213 that I already know about (a lot of which are fixed in the first beta).


----------



## Mark Lamutt

And a couple of notes from me this morning... 

My 921 got stuck in stretch mode last night on an SD channel...had to reboot. While it was stuck, the sd/hd button was non-functional. This one's not fixed yet. But, red dots are back.

Subchannel data will get better. I've seen it working on another receiver (well at least good PBS info). They should be able to get that at least to work on the 921. But the rest of the subchannels - if the stations don't provide the guide data to Tribune, then it won't show up on your Dish guide. That's the bottom line. Most of the subchannel guide data that you saw under L211 was directly copied over from the main channel. For some stations, that was correct because their subchannel(s) broadcast exactly the same programming as their main channel. But, for others it was totally inaccurate.


----------



## duihlein

Mark,
Any changes in the DVI driver? I still do not have DVI working with my Panasonic AE700. I know you mentioned in the past a DVI incompatibility with certain displays, but I don't know if mine is one of them. I have been holding off calling tech support in the hopes that is was not a hardware issue (my 921 has been stable other than DVI) DVI did work witht he 811.

Is there a special number to call for 921 support/replacement or should I just call the main number?

Thanks
Dave Uihlein


----------



## bbomar

Mark Lamutt said:


> And a couple of notes from me this morning...
> 
> My 921 got stuck in stretch mode last night on an SD channel...had to reboot. While it was stuck, the sd/hd button was non-functional. This one's not fixed yet.


I guess that's why the release notes say "improved performance" instead
of fixed. Maybe now it gets stuck less often.


----------



## ntexasdude

The 212 upgrade seems to be a non-event for me. My 921 continues to work as flawlessly as it it did before.

I'm still a newbie so go easy - does the update come over the phone line or satellite?


----------



## Bradtothebone

For some reason, my 921 didn't take the download automatically (even being in standby for two nights). Last night, I went into the menu and picked "Software Download," and within a second or two a screen came up that said "Download Successful - Turn unit off to update," or something to that effect. I turned it off and did a power button reboot, and after 10 minutes or so I turned it back on, and 212 was up and running.

Interestingly enough, BEFORE I took the download, my guide was acting up, showing channels I sub to in red, and not allowing access to them (HDNet, DiscHD, TNTHD). Those same channels were fine on my 6000, BTW. AFTER the download, everything was back to normal.

Brad


----------



## BobMurdoch

I've had to manually power off the unit as well (I unplug it and let it reboot to be safe).

Then again, I hear about the releases here so a download has never made the overnight download before my knowing about it and manually rebooting it beforehand......


----------



## DonLandis

Mark and others who may still see occasional jitter in a program or commercial.

Video jitter can have several causes. We all experienced the 921 L211 software bug the generated jitter and while the cause was explained to me by an E* engineer, I don't want to rehash that here since it was apparently fixed in this latest release.
However, there are two other root causes for video "jitter" as the term is often applied that people need to realize may still happen and it has nothing to do with the 921.
1. Comon vertical jitter caused by some 32 pull down translations to convert film's 24 fps to Video rate. These are often observed in scrolling credits, especially white text on black
2. Field order rendering error in the editing software. Most often you will see this sort of error show up on low budget commercials and is more easily observed on right to left image movement. The fix is easy but is often overlooked. The cause is a video field rendering that is opposite from the way the video is recorded. The faster the movement the wider the spread in space the two fields are observed. Still images are one on top of the other. Reverse the image field rendering in the editor and the problem disappears. Some programs use multiple renderings and this is often where experienced editors make errors or lose track of the required field order. 

So, if you see a "jitter" once in a great while, I would suspect it to be a jitter in the source program. If it happens all the time, then suspect your 921.


----------



## slimoli

I experience jitter once in a while and I am sure it's the 921 fault. When I switch the aspect ratio (921) the jitter disappears. I also have the AR locked sometimes but I think it's a different problem. One thing that I noticed is that the jitter happens when I "mess" a bit with the 921 like recording 2 programs,watching a pre-recorded one and trying to stop one of the recordings, for example.


----------



## Mark Lamutt

duihlein said:


> Mark,
> Any changes in the DVI driver? I still do not have DVI working with my Panasonic AE700. I know you mentioned in the past a DVI incompatibility with certain displays, but I don't know if mine is one of them. I have been holding off calling tech support in the hopes that is was not a hardware issue (my 921 has been stable other than DVI) DVI did work witht he 811.
> 
> Is there a special number to call for 921 support/replacement or should I just call the main number?
> 
> Thanks
> Dave Uihlein


Dave - you need to email me all of your info - contact phone #, television model, receiver caid, smartcard ID, describe what the DVI is doing or not doing, etc.

I have no way to test anything DVI related, as my Sony only has component inputs. If someone wants to send me enough funds to pick up a DVI display device, I'd be happy to do the testing for you...


----------



## boylehome

Mark Lamutt said:


> But, red dots are back.


This is really great new Mark. THANKS!!!


----------



## chuckbernard

TVBob said:


> Until then, I think displaying "No information available" is better than displaying completely misleading guide data for subchannels, like it used to do.
> 
> You can always use this old trick: program a recording using LIL satellite channels, then just edit the new timer and change the channel number to the OTA subchannel that you really want to record. After the recording completes, the title in the DVR list may be wrong, but it gets the job done.


That would be incorrect for some of us. If you pick up a local station from another near by market which doesn't map to anything Dish sends as part of its package then you cannot select that channel using the old trick! It is simply not available to you.

If they can't add OTA data then all they need to do is break each station into 1 hour chunks and let me pick the time and how many hours I would like to record. That can't be hard to do? Right?????? :uglyhamme


----------



## TVBob

chuckbernard said:


> If they can't add OTA data then all they need to do is break each station into 1 hour chunks and let me pick the time and how many hours I would like to record. That can't be hard to do? Right??????


Agreed, and that would be a little bit easier than creating a timer manually. Entering both start and stop times is rather cumbersome, but that's all you can do today if you want to record OTA when there is no Guide Data that matches.

If you could use a pop-up keyboard to name or rename a timer or a recording, that would solve the other problem we have with manual recordings.:sure:


----------



## jsanders

chuckbernard said:


> If they can't add OTA data then all they need to do is break each station into 1 hour chunks and let me pick the time and how many hours I would like to record. That can't be hard to do? Right?????? :uglyhamme


No, it is not that hard to do at all! You don't even have to program anything. Simply make up "fake" guide data with a programming name like, "unknown program", with one hour slots. After that, just use the code that already exists to program the timers.


----------



## invaliduser88

Seeing more channel not authorized errors when a timers fires. 

Couldn't stop a rec that I started manually. Rebooted and lost the entire recording.


----------



## tnsprin

They may have "Improve performance when pressing aspect ratio key" but I have already have had one lockup of first the aspect ratio key (gray bar but actually stretch mode), and eventually lost other keys slow or not responding until I performed a reboot. I've posted a bug report.


----------



## tnsprin

TVBob said:


> According to what was said in the last tech Forum, since the DVR-921 runs Linux off the hard disk, rather than running an operating system off of ROM, it is not possible to make the disk stop. This doesn't sound quite right to me, but that's what they claimed. Maybe someone who runs Linux on a laptop can teach them how to make suspend/resume work with Linux.


Actually that info is misleading. Like many machines it may not keep everything in memory all the time (perhaps doing paging/swapping) but most of the program is running is in memory. It is true that the program is not running from ROM.


----------



## boylehome

tnsprin said:


> Actually that info is misleading. Like many machines it may not keep everything in memory all the time (perhaps doing paging/swapping) but most of the program is running is in memory. It is true that the program is not running from ROM.


So how much RAM does the 921 have?


----------



## Jon Spackman

something weird tonight with 212. I went into the dvr screen to watch a previously recorded show from a SD sat chan. The show info was correct and said it was 64 minutes.ok so the show starts but only the sound played, there was no picture. I tried pause/play, ffwd, skip forward, skip back, rew. etc. no picture but sound was fine. so i stopped the show (stop button). start over and it plays thru fine. Weird huh? anyone seen this before?

I think it was recorded after 212 downloaded, pretty sure


Jon


----------



## hmatos

Same thing here! I thought it was just a coincidence, but I know I had about 8 recordings, the unit rebooted and there were no longer any shows in the DVR list. I did however suffer from the ZSR issue in the past, it just never erased all my recordings before.

hm



DVDDave said:


> Well, sorry to burst our collective bubble, but I've got bad news. Since the update, I found 2 ZSRs which, believe it or not, I had never gotten before. And, to make matters much worse, in trying to erase one of the bad shows, I lost all of my recordings! I can't believe this! After all the hopeful anticipation that the problems I actually was having would be fixed, they made them much worse. Arghhhhh!
> 
> --Dave


----------



## boylehome

j5races said:


> something weird tonight with 212. I went into the dvr screen to watch a previously recorded show from a SD sat chan. The show info was correct and said it was 64 minutes.ok so the show starts but only the sound played, there was no picture. I tried pause/play, ffwd, skip forward, skip back, rew. etc. no picture but sound was fine. so i stopped the show (stop button). start over and it plays thru fine. Weird huh? anyone seen this before?
> 
> I think it was recorded after 212 downloaded, pretty sure
> 
> Jon


I had the same thing happen for Joey on NBC OTA KNVN. The stop and start brought the video back.


----------



## David_Levin

These hard drive wipeouts are inexcusable. This should have been the first thing addressed in 212. It's WAY more critical then improving the performance of the '*' button.


----------



## AVJohnnie

boylehome said:


> I had the same thing happen for Joey on NBC OTA KNVN. The stop and start brought the video back.


Haven't had it completely fail to show video, but since 212 I notice up to a 2 second delay before the video "shows up" after the sound has started on play-back.


----------



## Brusteraider

Last night I noticed a faint horizontal blue streak about a 3rd of the way up the screen in the middle, and about a foot long on my 65 inch RPTV and it wasn't there before the upgrade. It's not there when using the DVD player only when using 921. Anybody else experiencing this, you really have to look for it but on white scenes it's obvious.I keep it in HD at all times any help would be appreciated.

Thanks Bruce


----------



## xsailor

What happened to me was weird. I was watching the 921 in my bedroom so I was watching via SD. When I tried to go back to HD, it wouldn't let me. So I finally decided to reboot via the front power button. It wouldn't shut down. I then tried pulling the smart card. The unit rebooted and then went to SD mode. There was no video on the SD tv and I still could not change it to HD. So I tried doing a hard reboot by pulling the plug. When it rebooted, it still went to SD (still no SD video) and I still could not move it to HD. I then pulled the plug again and waiting over half an hour before plugging it back it in. Same results after rebooting. I tried (one more time) in unplugging the unit and waiting another half hour before replugging it in. This time everything came back up correctly and it works fine.


----------



## sgt940

Mark Lamutt said:


> Subchannels will NOT have guide data in this release - that was something that we specifically tested over the weekend. Only main channels will show guide data. I know this is going to be a real problem for a few of you in areas where the primary HD channel is not on the -01 subchannel.


Mark, I read a note on here last week blasting the current testers and reccomending "professional testers". I just want to say Thank God we have you doing this for us, what a great job you do and I can not imagine the thousands of hours you have dedicated to this unit. As always everyone wants to shoot the messenger. The 921 like the 721 (I bought both early)was a fiasco that only Dish is responsible for and testers like you made them work. I intend to continue my 7 year relationship with Dish until later in the year and I see who has the best HD programing (dish, direct, cable) by then all the new receviers will probably be close to equal. I purchased a 4,500 dollar T.V. for H.D. programing.


----------



## passing_ships

So far L212 has no perceptible improvements or degradations on my setup. I am not displeased by that, as I would prefer frequent updates from dish that are not regressive and have the potential to improve things if ever so slightly.

Patiently awaiting L213.....


----------



## BobMurdoch

For some reason, scrolling through the guide seems to be quicker.


----------



## shred

Recently my dish 921 receiver has lost the guide data for channel 6.1 and 13.1 .The guide states no info available.,it has the correct guide info on 6.2 and 13.2 . Any way to get the info back on the correct stations?The other dtv channels guides are correct.
I called dish and ran thru the whole removing and rescanning but the guide for those two channels are still wrong.
Anyone else have this problem and hopefully a solution?


----------



## DonLandis

passing ships-

Doing without the 921 for a couple of months due to all the issues with L211, I got used to not needing it for my normal TV time. But now that L212 is here and for me, fixed all those issues they broke in L211, it seems that L212 puts us back to where we were with L188. So, what was added since L188 that puts us ahead of the game? I'll start the list with what I recognize as an addition that may be important to others or not.

1. Added little OTA signal meters in the info banner for OTA channels.
2. Added somewhat buggy program guide data for OTA channels if you pay a monthly fee for this.

I really don't see any other additions or improvements since L188. 


j5races et al--

This observation of what you all witnessed has happened sporadically since day one with the 921. It is not a repeatable issue using certain procedures, therefore it is not on any bug list(that I know of) to be fixed. It is just one of those funky issues that most of the older 921 users have observed from time to time but can't seem to pin down to a root cause we can repeat so we just live with it. It doesn't happen here very often but has happened once in a great while. Another bug that the 921 had that was never defined was simply use it until it slows down or all controls lock up. We don't know what sequence causes it but suspect system memory leaks. Work around- was to reboot once per day, so E* development team built an early morning reboot process into the normal operation rather than define and fix what caused the sporadic GSOD and system slow down. 

GSOD-For those too new to the 921 to know what this is- IT's a time when the Linux OS gives up and the 921 just switched to a gray screen with a tiny x in the center just prior to rebooting itself while you were watching a program or recording.


sgt940-
I see you read through the intent of my post and decided to fix your comments to the negative parts. You know what the definition of insanity is- It's repeating the same procedures over and over again but expecting different results. L188 put us at the peak of trouble free performance with the 921 in September. After 3 months of testing, an L212 was released in December with horrible global issues that *appear* to have completely escaped the beta test team. vis a vis jitters and aspect ratio freezes. These were not bugs before but were things that the new release broke from L188. Being dedicated and working hard as a volunteer, is not what this is about. It is about getting results. We all appreciate the results that Mark gets here on this forum which is to moderate a place where we all can come to compare notes and help each other get better use from our 921 investment. However, nothing what I posted was to say that Mark is responsible for the poor results the Eldon team has had with these slow 921 fixes and the ubiquitous "fix one thing break 4 more" track record they have had. Nothing in my post even remotely suggested that Mark has not done a fantastic job moderating this forum. My suggestion to stop this insanity was to dump the current process and change the way the 921 bug fixes are being discovered, defined, repaired, and implemented. I never suggested we get rid of Mark and this forum. I never suggested he does not do proper testing. I did suggest that the efforts of the current program are not generating satisfactory, nor timely, positive results and therefore needs reorganization. Over a year of this nonsense is too much! You also need to realize that this forum does nothing to test the beta software before release. All we do is discover and define what the beta team and developers did not fix after they said it was ready for release. By the postings from Mark, it does appear that the manner in which the beta team is treated by the developers is what needs to be changed because Mark readily admits that he is often surprised at what is released, when it is released, and what part of what he tested will end up being released. But that is only a small part of the problem. In the bigger picture, I am suggesting that this procedure is just not getting results and the entire program needs to be evaluated and changed.


----------



## SimpleSimon

Don: I fully agree. The 921 development team either does not know the first thing about the development process, or their management is not letting them execute it.

Or both.


----------



## lapplegate

shred said:


> Recently my dish 921 receiver has lost the guide data for channel 6.1 and 13.1 .The guide states no info available.,it has the correct guide info on 6.2 and 13.2 . Any way to get the info back on the correct stations?The other dtv channels guides are correct.
> I called dish and ran thru the whole removing and rescanning but the guide for those two channels are still wrong.
> Anyone else have this problem and hopefully a solution?


Shred,
I had the same thing to happen. I lost guide data for 3 of my OTAs. It is my understanding that we will have to wait for another "upgrade" to fix the OTA guide data that 212 took away.

I am using a tempoary "fix" to get the guide data. I went to the view preference and unchecked the Off-Air Locals enable box. I then added the needed channels to my favorites. This put the guide data for those OTAs just above the OTA data. This will allow you to see what is on but will not allow you to set a direct OTA timer from the guide. You will have to set the OTA timers the old fashion way by clicking the local program (SD version) and editing the channel to the OTA channel.


----------



## passing_ships

Looks like the periodic 5-second audio dropouts followed by brief pixellation in recordings is still there in L212....


----------



## passing_ships

DonLandis said:


> passing ships-
> 
> Doing without the 921 for a couple of months due to all the issues with L211, I got used to not needing it for my normal TV time. But now that L212 is here and for me, fixed all those issues they broke in L211, it seems that L212 puts us back to where we were with L188. So, what was added since L188 that puts us ahead of the game? I'll start the list with what I recognize as an addition that may be important to others or not.
> 
> 1. Added little OTA signal meters in the info banner for OTA channels.
> 2. Added somewhat buggy program guide data for OTA channels if you pay a monthly fee for this.
> 
> I really don't see any other additions or improvements since L188.


Don,
Since I am not set up for OTA, I didn't see that improvement.


----------



## DonLandis

Just a comment about the brief audio dropouts-
FWIW- I have seen this on all three services E*, D* and V* lately. Particularly from HBO HD that I recall specifically. This may be a network issue, not a 921 or even E* problem if it si the same dropouts I have been seeing here.


----------



## slimoli

When my 921 was recording ABC digital tonight some new problem came up. Any command through the RC was taking 1 to 2 minutes to work. Things like channel up or down, start of any existing recorded program and aspect ratio change. After a while the receiver got stuck on a channel and stop responding to any command. Just hope that the program being recorded is OK and after it finishes I will probably have to reboot the receiver.

I hate cable companies but now I am seriously considering a change.

Sergio


----------



## SimpleSimon

Sergio:

Have you been putting the receiver in StandBy (Off) at night?

When was the last time YOU rebooted the box?

Do you use the PiP position trick to tell if the box has rebooted?


----------



## passing_ships

DonLandis said:


> Just a comment about the brief audio dropouts-
> FWIW- I have seen this on all three services E*, D* and V* lately. Particularly from HBO HD that I recall specifically. This may be a network issue, not a 921 or even E* problem if it si the same dropouts I have been seeing here.


May not be the same. It happens on different channels. Most recently during The 70's Show on Channel 36 here in the Bay Area. Seems unrelated to timers firing as it happens in the middle of a show, rather than near a half-hour boundary.


----------



## Slordak

tnsprin said:


> Actually that info is misleading. Like many machines it may not keep everything in memory all the time (perhaps doing paging/swapping) but most of the program is running is in memory. It is true that the program is not running from ROM.


The issue here is that if it's using the standard Linux memory manager with virtual memory support enabled, the OS is free to swap pages out from RAM to disk at any time. To the application, it looks like all of the data it needs is still in RAM, but in actuality, the OS has silently swapped some portion of that data back to disk. If the HD spins down and the application then goes to access that portion of memory, the OS has to pause the entire task until the data can be swapped back in. For real-time devices like the 921, this could cause serious issues.

Note that page swaps actually occur even before one runs out of physical RAM, i.e. they're not simply caused by running out of memory. In some cases they are done speculatively, or otherwise "in advance".


----------



## Jon Spackman

any chance we could upgrade trhe ram of the 921? what kind of ram does it use? would it help? would the 921 use extra ram?


Jon


----------



## slimoli

Hi Simon

The recording didn't stop and I had to reboot the receiver. After the reboot everything was normal and the recording was also OK. Interesting that the record light was on far after the scheduled timer but after the reboot the lenght was correct. 

I had done my last reboot when the L212 came up. What is this PIP trick you mentioned?

Thanks

Sergio


----------



## Jim Parker

I got a new bug yesterday on my HECD 921 that I had never seen before.

I was watching Showtime HD delayed by 20 minutes, hit the record button, FF about 10 minutes, watched for several minutes then tried to switch to a different channel. I got an error message 613 (if I recall the number right) that said words to the effect of: "Request can only be carried out in live mode. Stop recording and switch channel?" I had to stop the recording to change channels. No other recording was going on.

I will try to recreate the bug and report in greater detail if I can make it happen again.


----------



## ntexasdude

Slordak said:


> If the HD spins down and the application then goes to access that portion of memory, the OS has to pause the entire task until the data can be swapped back in. For real-time devices like the 921, this could cause serious issues.


The least they could do is give us the little hourglass busy signal like M$ does. Or, maybe a "not so fast, paging to disk" message. :nono2:


----------



## jsanders

You can spin down the hard drive in unix. Apple's powerbooks (laptop) have no trouble spinning down the hard drive when they run on the battery, they are running BSD Unix under the hood. In fact, the new powerbooks have accelerometers built in, if they detect negative G-Forces they park the hard drive. This means you can drop the powerbook and it will park the head and stop the drive before it hits the ground (hopefully).

If Linux, for some reason, won't let you do it, then they need to modify it so you can. And, under the GPL license, they would probably have to release the code that does it for general consumption. That is what open source is all about.


----------



## Slordak

It's not that you can't spin down the drive in Linux. You can; that's not the point I was making. The point is that, when you find that you *do* need to do something and go to spin up the drive again, there is some non-zero delay before the drive is operational and the data is available. This is fine for a normal desktop, because if it grinds the hard drive and gives you an hourglass for 2 seconds or tells you that it's "Coming out of power saving mode...", you just wait. But for a real-time device, you have potential issues, since you really need to be able to get up and running instantly to handle an event.

Since the 921 is never truly asleep, but is always checking things (e.g. constantly scanning the satellite signal to watch for commands), you can't just say "It's in power saving mode, so it won't do any disk access". If it were, it also wouldn't fire any tuners, download any guide data, or get any programming / entitled management messages. This would obviously not be acceptable.

Back to the issue at hand... I do see L212 as a minor improvement with several bug fixes that are appreciated, so I think we're headed in the right direction once more, after a bit of a delay.


----------



## Jon Spackman

Then how does the 510 "spin up the hard drive" and record timers fine. It still manages to record after the hard drive is idle. What makes it able to do it, but not the 921?

Jon


----------



## n0qcu

The 510 runs from ROM not the HD thats why the 510 can shutdown the drive.


----------



## mwgiii

n0qcu said:


> The 510 runs from ROM not the HD thats why the 510 can shutdown the drive.


So the 921 doesn't or can't run from ROM?


----------



## AVJohnnie

j5races said:


> Then how does the 510 "spin up the hard drive" and record timers fine. It still manages to record after the hard drive is idle. What makes it able to do it, but not the 921?
> 
> Jon


Well, one reason that comes to mind is the matter of bandwidth requirements. I have no idea to what degree the 921's CPU and OS get involved with pumping data around internally, but the HighDef data it must handle is approximately 6 to 8 times greater in size compared to each displayed video frame of StandardDef. In other words, you have to shovel a lot more data in real-time to achieve HD compatibility.

John


----------



## Slordak

The key difference is that the 921 is using an off-the-shelf OS (Linux), while the 510 is based on Dish's own proprietary software. When you write your own software, you have a lot more control over these types of things. Neither the 510 nor the 921 hibernate; both are constantly running without ever going into a power-saving or sleep mode. The difference here is only in whether the disk is spun down or not.

On the 510, developers have more control over what portions of software are kept in ROM, what portions are in RAM, whether or not a virtual memory manager is required, and how that memory manager functions. By having more control over this, one can guarantee that all the software one needs to perform background handling is in RAM and not paged to disk at any given time.

Ultimately, one can only speculate on this, so it's possible that these speculations are incorrect. Could the 921 developers be much more careful with their memory management and lock certain pages in RAM, thereby guaranteeing they wouldn't have to go out to the disk? It's possible, but their initial design may not have taken any of this into account, which would entail a major re-work.


----------



## jsanders

Slordak said:


> This is fine for a normal desktop, because if it grinds the hard drive and gives you an hourglass for 2 seconds or tells you that it's "Coming out of power saving mode...", you just wait. But for a real-time device, you have potential issues, since you really need to be able to get up and running instantly to handle an event.
> 
> Since the 921 is never truly asleep, but is always checking things (e.g. constantly scanning the satellite signal to watch for commands), you can't just say "It's in power saving mode, so it won't do any disk access". If it were, it also wouldn't fire any tuners, download any guide data, or get any programming / entitled management messages. This would obviously not be acceptable.


Ha ha ha ha ha. You sound like you work for Eldon or something Slordak! :lol:

Anyway, let's take your argument one point at a time and see how it stacks up. We are talking about having the 921 spin down the hard drive while it is in standby mode. Who in the world cares if there is a few second latency for it to start up the hard drive???? It is in standby mode! So, let's say you're right, that it is constantly checking things like "scanning the satellite signal to watch for commands", whatever that means. Let's say it even "needs" to spin up the hard drive to do that. Why can't it just decide to spin up the hard drive ten seconds in advance of when it is supposed to do it? After all, no user is impatiently waiting for this event to happen because the 921 is in *standby* mode!

Let's say it is in standby mode and it is scheduled to record a show from 8pm to 9pm, on Tuesdays, on CBS. Why can't it just spin up the hard drive at 7:59pm so it will be spinning happily at 8pm to record the show????

These are not realtime operations Slordak. A realtime operation occurs when you are doing playback and there is a realtime requirement to show a video frame every 1/60th of a second. You can't be late, it has to happen exactly on schedule. Recording the MPEG2 bits is also a realtime operation. You can't declare a "timeout" because if you do, the bits will be gone. Those are realtime operations because things have to happen on a specific, time dependent, schedule. But guess what?? LINUX IS NOT A REAL TIME OPERATING SYSTEM! So how do they do it??? The tuners write to the hard drive, and the MPEG2 decoder decodes the bits.



Slordak said:


> On the 510, developers have more control over what portions of software are kept in ROM, what portions are in RAM, whether or not a virtual memory manager is required, and how that memory manager functions. By having more control over this, one can guarantee that all the software one needs to perform background handling is in RAM and not paged to disk at any given time.


The 510 people don't have more control than the 921 people. The linker script decides precisely what code goes in ROM, and what goes on the hard drive. The 921 developers also HAVE the source code for the linux kernel. They can do whatever they want with it, they have COMPLETE control over it! The only restriction is that if they change this kernel, they have to publish those changes to adhere to the GPL license. That isn't a big deal because there is nothing proprietary about spinning up a hard drive in standby mode. That is if this code even needs to be in the kernel, it is probably just a change to a driver somewhere.

In other words, there ain't no excuse. Eldon can make the 921 spin down the hard drive in standby mode if they really wanted to!

Let me ask you a question Slordak. How does the 921 spin up the hard drive when it is plugged in? Think about it for a moment, it needs to spin up the hard drive in order to read the operating system off of the hard drive into RAM. According to you, it needs to have the OS loaded in first before it controls the hard drive. But the OS isn't loaded when the 921 is first powered up, because the hard drive isn't even spinning yet. Wouldn't that imply that there is at least some small bit of ROM code in there that spins up the drive and then starts reading and executing the boot sectors??


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## Slordak

This discussion is heading completely off subject; I'm sorry I jumped in to attempt to provide an explanation as to why this is more dififcult on the 921, since it's obviously de-railing the discussion of the new L212 software.

At initial power-up, the 921 spins up the hard disk and starts reading at a known sector the same way every other computer does; by using information stored in non-volatile memory, either in Flash or ROM. In the case of the 921, one would expect the silver "Dish Network" logo and basic code for getting the video output drivers up and running to be placed here, since this is needed to placate the user while the kernel is loading and the system is booting from disk.

I will again re-iterate my claim that the 921 is not going into a deep sleep or true low-power mode. In a true low-power mode, the processor is either suspended (and can only be awakened by certain interrupts) or running at a reduced clock-rate. Although I do not know this for certain, I strongly suspect that the 921 processor and most integrated peripherals are running at full blast, so that at any moment it can spring to life. Imagine if you were performing a download on your laptop, and then put it into deep sleep or hibernation mode; the download fails to complete, right? Because the 921 needs to be paying attention to the satellite stream at all times, it can't go into a true deep sleep mode.

So with that being said, the issue, as I see it, is still one of virtual memory. On modern operating systems, when you launch an executable or read a big chunk of data in from disk, the OS doesn't necessarily load the entire contents into physical memory. Further more, even if it does, it reserves the right to swap portions of that data that it considers less important or less likely to be used out to disk. This happens transparently to the application; the application treats all of the data as if its in memory. Only the OS knows which memory pages are on disk and which pages are in RAM; that's the whole idea of virtual memory. The application doesn't know this swapping has occurred, but when it tries to access data in memory which has been swapped out, suddenly the OS has to go out and grab the page. When this happens, performance suffers slightly. Imagine if the disk is spun down, though... The application thinks it's just going to execute a normal routine in memory, but the OS has swapped that routine out to disk... So what happens? The routine executes, but not until, say, 10 seconds later. The application code had no idea in advance that there was going to be such a delay, since it was just trying to call a routine which it expected to complete in a few milliseconds.

If the 921 is not designed around these kinds of considerations, it's hard to retrofit it after the fact. Again, can it be done, yes, probably. But is it a lot of work, if one hasn't optimized the memory usage in advance to minimize page swapping? Sure, it certainly can be.


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## jsanders

Slordak said:


> I will again re-iterate my claim that the 921 is not going into a deep sleep or true low-power mode.


So what. Who cares? We just want the hard drive to spin down. You can do that in full power mode, or when the plug is pulled, or in what the 921 calls "standby" mode.



Slordak said:


> Although I do not know this for certain, I strongly suspect that the 921 processor and most integrated peripherals are running at full blast, so that at any moment it can spring to life.


Okay, what is going full blast? Is it secretly doing an MPEG2 decode to show you a channel in an instant when you turn the power on? In reality, why doesn't it take only an instant then? Of course, it must have a mind reading subroutine to try to guess what channel you are going to watch when you turn it on so it can do it faster.

Why isn't there a 30 minute buffer on the channels that the 921 was last tuned to then?? Eh? Please explain it to me. If the 921 worked with stuff going full blast when in standby mode, then it would work like the HDTivo does and buffer the last channel tuned before it was shut off. That way, when you turn it on, you can rewind a bit to see what stuff you just missed. Why doesn't it do that? Because those things are shut down and certainly not going full blast!

Unless there was a timer set, the 921 isn't recording anything, it isn't running the decoder either.

Linux isn't a real time OS either. All it does is wait for timers, and that doesn't require a lot of CPU.

You need to support your assertions with some credible evidence, instead of baseless statements.



Slordak said:


> So with that being said, the issue, as I see it, is still one of virtual memory.


That being said, to this point, you haven't made any valid arguments. However, we can tackle the virtual memory thing too.



Slordak said:


> On modern operating systems, when you launch an executable or read a big chunk of data in from disk, the OS doesn't necessarily load the entire contents into physical memory. [.....] This happens transparently to the application; the application treats all of the data as if it[']s in memory. Only the OS knows which memory pages are on disk and which pages are in RAM; that's the whole idea of virtual memory.


You say it is a modern operating system, you say that virtual memory handles everything transparently, and you say that only the OS knows which memory pages need to be swapped. Some of that is debatable, however, why do you think this "modern" operating system can do all of the above, yet it isn't smart enough to know that it needs to spin up the hard drive before it can swap out a page?????



Slordak said:


> If the 921 is not designed around these kinds of considerations, it's hard to retrofit it after the fact. Again, can it be done, yes, probably. But is it a lot of work, if one hasn't optimized the memory usage in advance to minimize page swapping? Sure, it certainly can be.


At least we agree that it can be done now. It may require some effort, but I think the guy who said it can't be done that people were quoted doesn't know anything about computers.


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## Ron Barry

jsanders said:


> Unless there was a timer set, the 921 isn't recording anything, it isn't running the decoder either.


Are you saying in standby or in general? If the unit is buffering it must be writing to the disk wouldn't you say (I would call that recording). If this is the case, then while the unit is on it really can't spin down the disk since it is constently writing to it. Can it? Also, my understanding of how Dish's DVRs operate is that they are constently recording to the buffer and the buffer is then being read read and displayed. I assume the MPEG decoding is occuring on the read of the buffer.

Question is does the 921 buffer while in Standbye. Never checked, guess is it does not. If it does, that might be why it does not spin down.

In any case, I do enjoy these conversations. might be better down in another thread as not to hijack the L212 release thread. Question is can it be done in civil manner.


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## jsanders

Ron Barry said:


> Are you saying in standby or in general?
> 
> In any case, I do enjoy these conversations. might be better down in another thread as not to hijack the L212 release thread. Question is can it be done in civil manner.


Yea, I'm referring to being in standby mode. Sorry if the context wasn't clear. With the DirecTivo, you can turn it on, and go back in the buffer on the last channel that it was tuned to before it was put in standby. However, with the 921, you cannot do this. It isn't buffering the tuners while in standby mode. It only records/buffers to the disk when a timer indicates it should do so (while in standby).

Sorry for the confusion.

I'm thinking that everything has, for the most part, been hashed through on this subject.


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## SimpleSimon

One last point on *spin-down*: When the 501 comes up out of screensaver mode, it displays a message along the lines of: Please wait for the hard disk to spin-up. That's ot a quote, but very close. It DOES acually tel the user the hard drive is coming up to speed. There's NO reason (other than the typical E* garbage) for the 921 to not be able to do this.

Someone asked about *921 RAM* - IIRC, it's 128MB. Should be plenty to avoid swapping.

*The PiP trick:* Move (position) the PiP window away from the bottom-right corner. When the box reboots, it'll return to bttom-right. Therefore, you can tell if the box bounced since the last time you checked.


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## Slordak

Jsanders, Dish Network requires its DVR/PVR receivers to continue to process information from the satellite feed even if the unit is "turned off" (in standby). This allows the receiver to receive program guide updates, software updates, channel / transponder updates, and entitlement management messages (e.g. your receiver is no longer authorized to view channel x, or you just subscribed to channel y by calling a Dish CSR, so you're now authorized). Hence, yes, the receiver is always operating the LNB / switches and is processing satellite stream commands.

Is it actually doing MPEG2 decodes when in standby? No, probably not, but it's certainly actively executing software. It's not spooling data from the last channel to allow for instant-on rewinds, since this would require writing to the hard disk drive 24/7. In some cases, it is writing to the disk on purpose, to update the program guide (which is stored on disk). In other cases, it's talking to its smartcard reader integrated peripheral, to read or write subscription information.

As far as virtual memory goes, I can see that I'm not going to be able to explain how a memory manager works to your satisfaction. However, you can see the effect in Windows by opening Internet Explorer, visiting a web page, minimizing it, and then going about your daily business. Even if, during the course of the day, you never concurrenly run a set of applications which exceed your total physical memory, the memory manager will still tend to swap out data which hasn't been used in a while. At the end of the day, if you maximize that Internet Explorer window again, there will be a slight delay while the OS pulls that data into RAM from the virtual page store on disk. This can apply to any systems that use virtual memory; if you haven't used a piece of data in a while, it's possible that it's not in physical RAM anymore.

None of this prevents the HD from spinning down, but it means that the 921 may inadvertently be causing the HD to spin back up again quite frequently because of how its designed. E.g. Keeping more things in RAM than one might on a typical embedded system, which leads to more unexpected page faults, or constantly trying to update the program guide on disk rather than doing it in one pass, which causes more (intended) disk writes. Again, could this behavior be changed, yes, it's quite likely that it could. But this would add risk with the potential for more defects to be introduced during this re-design.


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## jsanders

Slordak said:


> Jsanders, Dish Network requires its DVR/PVR receivers to continue to process information from the satellite feed even if the unit is "turned off" (in standby). This allows the receiver to receive program guide updates, software updates, channel / transponder updates, and entitlement management messages (e.g. your receiver is no longer authorized to view channel x, or you just subscribed to channel y by calling a Dish CSR, so you're now authorized). Hence, yes, the receiver is always operating the LNB / switches and is processing satellite stream commands.


The 501 spins down the hard drive, and it still does it, so what is the big deal about that? Why can't it spin down the drive, then spin it back up when it downloads program guides and software updates?? None of these things are going to be happening all of the time, and even when they do, they are not very intensive. It isn't doing MPEG2 decodes, and it isn't buffering data from the last channel the user was watching. Most of the time, when in standby, the 921 isn't doing that much.

Consider this, if you unplug the 921 instead of turn it off, when you turn it on, will it fall apart because it didn't download the latest program data, or "channel / transponder updates, and entitlement management messages"? The 921 will simply download these things when it is plugged in. That means that these things are not absolutely time dependent, critical issues. What about when you plug in the receiver for the first time? It downloads new softare! This data isn't sent just one time. Even if for some catastrophic reason the 921 couldn't spin up the hard drive fast enough to do these things, it would get another chance. The 501 seems to be able to spin down the hard drive, and it doesn't fall to pieces. The 921 won't either.



Slordak said:


> Is it actually doing MPEG2 decodes when in standby? No, probably not, but it's certainly actively executing software.


In thread #186, you were saying that the 510 was in more control of software than the 921 (which isn't true), now you are implying that "actively executing software" to download stuff or check transponders prevents the 921 from spining down the hard drive (not true either because the 501 does it).

What software is it actively executing besides the occasional guide data download, "channel / transponder updates, and entitlement management message". Why do you think these tasks require continually writing to the disk?



Slordak said:


> As far as virtual memory goes, I can see that I'm not going to be able to explain how a memory manager works to your satisfaction.


You don't need to explain virtual memory because it isn't the issue that you are thinking it is. Take a laptop without any networking connections, and launch the soliare game, then spin down the hard drive. Play that solitare game for as long as you want, that game isn't going to spin up the hard drive. All of the routines it calls are going to be in physical RAM. Page swapping only occurs when necessary. The 921 has 128MB of physical RAM. If timers aren't fired, if it isn't downloading the EPG, no realtime operations are occuring. All it is doing is waiting for timers to fire, waiting for updates, waiting for a new EPG. Do you think that a small piece of code and all of the subroutines that won't fit into 128MB?? Remember, virtual memory automatically swaps into physical ram the code you are calling. In the event that something happens, the virtual memory manager should be smart enough to know that it has to spin the hard drive in order to swap a page. It isn't a big deal at all. There is no reason that the 921 can't spin down the hard drive.


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## Slordak

It's always easier to critique and indicate how easy it should be to address a perceived issue when you're not the one writing the software. Basically, everything's always a "trivial issue to fix" when you're the end user. When you're the developer, though, you realize nothing is ever as easy as it seems. This is true regardless of whether you're writing PC software or embedded device software.

In any case, so back to L212... I'm pretty pleased with it, I have to say. There are still a few minor glitches or things I'd like to see improved, but honestly, most of the big issues for me are addressed.


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## BobMurdoch

The only problem is that EVERYONE else in the industry doesn't seem to have the level of problems that they do.

If all of your major competitors can get it right (or have substantially less issues than you do), then it is time to re-evaulate how you create new software.


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## invaliduser88

Here here...

Quality control and testing just don't seem to be up to snuff.

And who suffers? us.


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## tnsprin

SimpleSimon said:


> One last point on *spin-down*: When the 501 comes up out of screensaver mode, it displays a message along the lines of: Please wait for the hard disk to spin-up. That's ot a quote, but very close. It DOES acually tel the user the hard drive is coming up to speed. There's NO reason (other than the typical E* garbage) for the 921 to not be able to do this.
> 
> Someone asked about *921 RAM* - IIRC, it's 128MB. Should be plenty to avoid swapping.
> 
> *The PiP trick:* Move (position) the PiP window away from the bottom-right corner. When the box reboots, it'll return to bttom-right. Therefore, you can tell if the box bounced since the last time you checked.


I don't have a 721. But I though I heard that a software update was released to have it spin down the hard drive. It uses pretty much the same chip set and much of the same code that 921 uses.


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## jsanders

tnsprin said:


> I don't have a 721. But I though I heard that a software update was released to have it spin down the hard drive. It uses pretty much the same chip set and much of the same code that 921 uses.


Cool! If that is true, then we can always hope they can put that same code in the 921! After all, they use the same OS, DishLinux.


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## StevenD

Can someone confirm that L212 is in "wide-release" or whatever its called? I was on the phone with ATS for over an hour because my 921 still wont take the software download. The guy I was talking to is convinced that it "just hasnt been rolled out to my receiver yet."


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## Mark Lamutt

L212 was released to everyone (or at least it was supposed to be).


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## StevenD

Well, someone called me back from the product development team (I believe), and after going through several reboots, switch checks, etc., she asked if I had a regular coax splitter. I told her I did, so she told me to replace the DPP Seperator with the splitter, turn the 921 off, and then wait to see what happens. She said she would call back in a couple of hours. She also confirmed that L212 was released to all 921s.

An hour or so went by, and nothing happened. I decided to run another check switch (with just the SPLITTER connected). It came up with 119 and a Red X for the transponders on the switch matrix screen. I verified that it could see 119 transponder 19. I powered it off and within 5 minutes it started downloading the software. After the blinking stopped, I waited for it to reboot. Then I put the DPP Seperator back in, ran a check switch and rebooted. All is good and I have L212 now.

So, does that mean there is something wrong with the DPP44/Seperator software in the 921? Could something be wrong with my setup? The Switch Matrix has eight Green "OK"s.

Now Im waiting on her to call back so I can explain what I did.


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## BobMurdoch

God, I'm having flashbacks to the Dishplayer which could only do the initial software download off of the 119 feed (it couldn't be run through the SW64 or it wouldn't work).


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## StevenD

Well, they just called back and they think I probably have a bad seperator. They are sending me a new one and they said they would call me back when they release the new software "sometime in April" to see if it works.


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## Jon Spackman

rbarlett2 Welcome to DBSalk!

sounds like you should start a new thread or better yet do a search. This kind of question has been asked a thousand times. 

I love my 921 and chose the dish interface (guide, dvr screens, etc.) over any other.

I install Directv, Cox Hd and HD-DVRs, Adelphia HD and Moxi HD Dvrs and I like the dish guide and user interface the best. I have never, i mean NEVER had my favorites erased (directv does all the time, Cox and Adelphia dont even have favorites really).

But were getting off topic, Mark.can you move us...


Jon


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