# My recordings are a blank screen



## JJEdwards (Jul 4, 2007)

I've had my HR20 for about a week now and it's been great until last night. When I go to play a recording in My Playlist, it comes up as a blank screen and sometimes it just asks if I want to delete the recording. Some of the shows were already partially watched so I know they were recorded. I checked every one and they all come up as a blank screen whether it's HD or not.
Should I reset? Does resettting mean I lose the shows and have to redo all my settings and future recordings?


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

JJEdwards said:


> I've had my HR20 for about a week now and it's been great until last night. When I go to play a recording in My Playlist, it comes up as a blank screen and sometimes it just asks if I want to delete the recording. Some of the shows were already partially watched so I know they were recorded. I checked every one and they all come up as a blank screen whether it's HD or not.
> Should I reset? Does resetting mean I lose the shows and have to redo all my settings and future recordings?


There are two basic resets:
Reset recorder which doesn't change any of your settings and shouldn't lose a recording if it is intact [it will delete recordings that are defective files].
Reset Everything will return the recorder back to the way it came from the factory, except keep the current software. [everything will be cleared out of the unit]


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## NickD (Apr 5, 2007)

I had this problem too. I ,like a fool just deleted the one's that were not playing and then decided to do a reboot. I do not know if this would have solved the video issue or not. Other shows that I checked were ok, but they were ok before rebooting.


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## SD493 (Mar 10, 2003)

JJEdwards said:


> I've had my HR20 for about a week now and it's been great until last night. When I go to play a recording in My Playlist, it comes up as a blank screen and sometimes it just asks if I want to delete the recording. Some of the shows were already partially watched so I know they were recorded. I checked every one and they all come up as a blank screen whether it's HD or not.
> Should I reset? Does resettting mean I lose the shows and have to redo all my settings and future recordings?


I had the same problem. I did a reset from the menu. When the unit came back everything was fine--no programs were lost.


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## litzdog911 (Jun 23, 2004)

Be sure to report this bug in the Issues Thread at the top of this Forum. I just had the same problem. Menu Reset solved it.


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## n3ntj (Dec 18, 2006)

I think we've all had this blank screen recording from time to time. I think it is a documented HR20 bug, but no idea if D* is aware of it or is working on fixing it. It seems to not happen very often in the past few months, at least on my end.


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## kevintoner (Oct 15, 2006)

I had this problem so often in February that I switched back to my old HR-10. I thought sure it was fixed by software updates this summer. No joy.

The last two weeks I have had several NBC shows that show up as completely blank recordings. After attempting to play them a few times, I started getting the "Do You Want To Delete This Recording?" message. After I rebooted by unplugging, the recordings disappeared from my LIST. Arghh!

What good is a DVR if you can't count on it to reliably record?


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## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

kevintoner, if you're still having problems this frequently you could have hardware or wiring issues. You might want to see about getting them looked into.


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## bjc1981 (Aug 24, 2007)

I had this problem in my first week of ownership. Rebooting the unit cleared it up.


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## tgater (Jul 24, 2007)

I had the same problem with a HR20-100 after doing the reboot thing every other day I opted to replace it and received a scuffed up HR20-700 that doesn't need to be rebooted.


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## NickD (Apr 5, 2007)

I had this happen to me again last week. I was listening to XM and that was the last station that was left on. A few days later I went to go and watch the HR20, I was going to watch a recorded show. When I turned everything on it seemed fine, XM was still playing, I hit the playlist and everything was black, I was able to see the guide and the info banner but no show. I had to do a red button reboot and everything was back to normal.


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## BigCTM (Jul 31, 2007)

I had this problem and did the reboot thing every other day. Finally I decided to reset everything and have not had the problem since. DirecTV said they would send a replacement if the reset everything did not work. 

The regular reset did not fix the problem in my case. Only the reset everything worked.


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## Charlutz (Jul 30, 2007)

I've had this problem twice, and both times it was accompanied by the loss of the trickplay functions. E.g., I turn on the tv and it's tuned to espn to record a show. I go to rewind espn and it won't. Can't pause, skip back, etc. I go into my playlist and see the program on the list. Go to play it and get the blank screen. Watch the show live and after it's over, reset (not everything). Trickplay buttons work again, but program is not in the playlist. I have 2 HR20's and the problem has happened twice on the same unit.


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## Old Guy (Aug 9, 2007)

Charlutz said:


> I've had this problem twice, and both times it was accompanied by the loss of the trickplay functions. E.g., I turn on the tv and it's tuned to espn to record a show. I go to rewind espn and it won't. Can't pause, skip back, etc. I go into my playlist and see the program on the list. Go to play it and get the blank screen. Watch the show live and after it's over, reset (not everything). Trickplay buttons work again, but program is not in the playlist. I have 2 HR20's and the problem has happened twice on the same unit.


Same thing here. I tried all of the reset tricks, including 'reset everything'.

The 'reset everything' didn't change anything. Even programs I had recorded were still there.

This was a -100 with the latest update.

Mike


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## VicF (Sep 5, 2006)

I have had to do the Reset (reboot) about 4 times in the 3 weeks I have had the HR20. My wife is getting so pissed off at this DVR, she even said she wanted to throw something at the TV. NO!! not my nice 8 month old Sony 60".

I have had audio and video dropouts repeatedly on local channels when my signal strength is the best in 7 years with this new slimline, all in 80s or 90s. The no pause or rewind symptoms. And without the SWM no OTA on my main TV that I had with the HR10.

AARGH... I am going to try the reset everthing. D* has had a long time to build and refine this DVR, the fact of all these problems should not be tolerated by D*

 If you are reading this D*.................FIX IT !


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## kevintoner (Oct 15, 2006)

Still having the blank recording problem. D* sent my my THIRD HR20 700 replacement. They've sent a repairman out and he was stumped. The latest refurbished model arrived last night. I set it to record multiple local NBC HD broadcasts. Everything worked perfectly until 12 noon today, about 12 hours after I activated the newest access card and downloaded all the software updates. A 30 minute show that I had recorded just 90 minutes earlier on NBC came up blank. Grr . . .

I called D*. They think it might be a problem with how they rebroadcast my local channel. They also urged me to move the box around to different SAT outlets in my house for the next week or two to see if it might be the house wiring. Ugh. My spouse is really tired of me switching the HR20 and my old Tivo HR10-250 back and forth due to different remotes.

At this point, I'm about ready to fight my way out of the 2 year contract. The HR20 does not record reliably.


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## blackfish (Aug 8, 2007)

I'm having similar problems with my HR20 100. Seems worse since the latest software rollout. Everything that I record stutters somewhere in the middle and/or freezes and I have to skip ahead a couple of times to get it to work. I miss several minutes of programs per hour. I also sometimes get blank recordings but it is particularly bad on the HD locals and HBO HD. I've reset the thing several times and this is a month old setup. Signals look strong (90 - 100) on almost all transponders. 

I have had 4 Tivos over the years (including 2 directivos) and never have had issues. Even the comcast DVR which was horrible could record without problems. I'm ready to throw this thing through the window and my wife hates it too. We never know if a show we recorded will work.


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## kevintoner (Oct 15, 2006)

More experimentation reveals that my blank recordings with my 3rd replacement HR20 are so far limited to my DirecTV HiDef NBC local channel here in Indianapolis, 13 WTHR. I bought a rabbit ears OTA antenna. I'm able to record HD from the OTA channel without problems (13-1). I'm also able to record SD on the DirecTV analog broadcast of my local NBC station. (13 IN13).

I'm going to try similar experiments with my ABC local station to see if my DirecTV HD local WRTV 6 works reliably. This experiment is even more important in case a new season of LOST even comes back.

DirecTV has no CBS HD local here yet. And no HD version of PBS.

I hope these NBC problems are not a taste of what's coming re my ability to record the 150 HD channels that D* expects to add later this month.


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## KAK (Aug 14, 2007)

JJEdwards said:


> I've had my HR20 for about a week now and it's been great until last night. When I go to play a recording in My Playlist, it comes up as a blank screen and sometimes it just asks if I want to delete the recording. Some of the shows were already partially watched so I know they were recorded. I checked every one and they all come up as a blank screen whether it's HD or not.
> Should I reset? Does resettting mean I lose the shows and have to redo all my settings and future recordings?


I had the exact same problem with the HR20-100 and it progressed to the point that I had to reset it everyday to just watch the recordings. Tech support walked me through a variety of ways of resetting it and nothing fixed the problem until the last tech I spoke to had me reset it the following way:

This was done with the unit on. On the front panel of the HR20, you have to press and hold the down arrow on the wheel AND the record button at the same time until the green light inside the record button lights up. The tech said this sometimes it can take up to 2 minutes for the light to come on. Only after the light comes on, release the buttons and the unit proceeds to re-boot. You have to be careful because if you fat finger the record button, you'll never see the light in the middle of it. In my case nothing was lost eg., recorded shows, scheduled recordings, etc.

The HR20 has performed with no problems ever since. The tech said this problem is caused by the unit not completely loading the updates and this was the only way to reset it to get the updates loaded correctly. Good luck and I hope it works for you as it cured my problem.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

KAK said:


> I had the exact same problem with the HR20-100 and it progressed to the point that I had to reset it everyday to just watch the recordings. Tech support walked me through a variety of ways of resetting it and nothing fixed the problem until the last tech I spoke to had me reset it the following way:
> 
> This was done with the unit on. On the front panel of the HR20, you have to press and hold the down arrow on the wheel AND the record button at the same time until the green light inside the record button lights up. The tech said this sometimes it can take up to 2 minutes for the light to come on. Only after the light comes on, release the buttons and the unit proceeds to re-boot. You have to be careful because if you fat finger the record button, you'll never see the light in the middle of it. In my case nothing was lost eg., recorded shows, scheduled recordings, etc.
> 
> The HR20 has performed with no problems ever since. The tech said this problem is caused by the unit not completely loading the updates and this was the only way to reset it to get the updates loaded correctly. Good luck and I hope it works for you as it cured my problem.


Those are the instructions for FORMATTING the drive. All recording & setting should be gone afterwords with every other HR-20 out there.
I've done the reformat myself to know.


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## KAK (Aug 14, 2007)

veryoldschool said:


> Those are the instructions for FORMATTING the drive. All recording & setting should be gone afterwords with every other HR-20 out there.
> I've done the reformat myself to know.


The tech did say that these could be lost but in my case, it didn't change my settings or erase anything, so I don't know what was different but it worked without losing any of these.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

KAK said:


> It didn't change my settings or erase anything, so I don't know was different but it worked.


I believe what you said happened to you, but needed to make my post so others didn't get burned thinking it would be the same for EVERYONE.
Maybe there has been a software change, I don't know, but..... 

Question: "until the *green* light inside the record button lights up"
Is this different than the yellow/orange light we all get for recording?


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## KAK (Aug 14, 2007)

veryoldschool said:


> I believe what you said happened to you, but needed to make my post so others didn't get burned thinking it would be the same for EVERYONE.
> Maybe there has been a software change, I don't know, but.....
> 
> Question: "until the *green* light inside the record button lights up"
> Is this different than the yellow/orange light we all get for recording?


No problem. The light that comes on when doing this reset is "green." I don't know why it's green, but it is different from the orange that normally shows up on mine when recording. I asked the tech if this reset was the same as the "reset all" that is available in the menu, he said no but did not elaborate.

I've tried different things in different posts in this forum to remedy problems and it seems that almost nothing works the same for everyone. I've had DVR's from Time-Warner and Dish and I've never had as much trouble with them as I have with the HR20. I don't know if there are too many software versions out there being tested or what, but it seems like the complaint of a lot of the people is that nothing works the same for everyone and sometimes not even twice in a row for yourself. I've had this HR20 for 3 weeks now and the software has already been updated on 2 different occasions.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

KAK
Can you go over this again please, since it sounds like something new.
Did you do this during a reset?
Was this "just" walking up to the unit working "normally"?


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## KAK (Aug 14, 2007)

veryoldschool said:


> KAK
> Can you go over this again please, since it sounds like something new.
> Did you do this during a reset?
> Was this "just" walking up to the unit working "normally"?


I'm not really sure what you're asking, but this was done in place of the RBR or any reset available in the menu with the tech on the phone line. None of the other techs I spoke to suggested anything close to this procedure so maybe this tech knew something or maybe it is a new way to reset this receiver. At the time, the play list was inoperable as the blank screen was coming up asking if you want to delete or keep the recording.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

KAK said:


> I'm not really sure what you're asking, but this was done in place of the RBR or any reset available in the menu with the tech on the phone line. None of the other techs I spoke to suggested anything close to this procedure so maybe this tech knew something or maybe it is a new way to reset this receiver. At the time, the play list was inoperable as the blank screen was coming up asking if you want to delete or keep the recording.


"I think" I know what you're saying:
The unit was just running [poorly] and instead of an RBR or pulling the power, you went over to the front panel and pressed the two buttons [as once until the light came on].
This then caused a reboot? Or not?

If you know about resetting the BIOS on a computer, this sounds just like it and has been missing from our database for the HR20.
The reset everything has been all we could do and it does much more.


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## KAK (Aug 14, 2007)

veryoldschool said:


> "I think" I know what you're saying:
> The unit was just running [poorly] and instead of an RBR or pulling the power, you went over to the front panel and pressed the two buttons [as once until the light came on].
> This then caused a reboot? Or not?
> 
> ...


Correct, the unit was not playing any recorded video and only displaying the blank screen upon pressing play when the call was made. This was the third call to tech support on consecutive days and they told me try this one last thing before replacing the receiver. I had to lay the phone down to hold both buttons in and it took about 30 seconds for the green light to come on. It then went through a re-boot where the screens for communication with the satellite came up and also the screen about downloading the guide info. There were no satellite or dish set-up screens. Like I said, the receiver has been working flawlessly ever since.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

KAK said:


> Correct, the unit was not playing any recorded video and only displaying the blank screen upon pressing play when the call was made. This was the third call to tech support on consecutive days and they told me try this one last thing before replacing the receiver. I had to lay the phone down to hold both buttons in and it took about 30 seconds for the green light to come on. It then went through a re-boot where the screens for communication with the satellite came up and also the screen about downloading the guide info. There were no satellite or dish set-up screens. Like I said, the receiver has been working flawlessly ever since.


You have added to our troubleshooting data base, my friend.
Of course you have a HR-20-100 right? 
I only have -700s so I need to see if it will work the same way on it.


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## KAK (Aug 14, 2007)

veryoldschool said:


> You have added to our troubleshooting data base, my friend.
> Of course you have a HR-20-100 right?
> I only have -700s so I need to see if it will work the same way on it.


Correct, it is an HR20-100. I bought an additional HR20 that will be installed tomorrow on another new TV and it is a 700. I'm hoping things will be a bit smoother with this one.

The one thing that maybe leads to me to believe that this may be a new trouble shooting procedure is that I specifically asked the tech if this was the same thing as resetting the receiver with the RBR, pulling the plug, or with any of the "reset" options available in the menu. He replied that it was not the same thing and that he was confident that this would cure my problem. He was right because it did take care of the problem as it has not reoccured. I have no clue as to why or how and maybe the results will be different with other people. Like I said before, a search on this problem leads to solutions that worked for other people but not for my particular situation. The tech surmised that possibly the installer may somehow have forced the software problem during installation. I saw the installer do nothing like that and the install looked pretty routine to me.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

KAK said:


> Correct, it is an HR20-100. I bought an additional HR20 that will be installed tomorrow on another new TV and it is a 700. I'm hoping things will be a bit smoother with this one.
> 
> The one thing that maybe leads to me to believe that this may be a new trouble shooting procedure is that I specifically asked the tech if this was the same thing as resetting the receiver with the RBR, pulling the plug, or with any of the "reset" options available in the menu. He replied that it was not the same thing and that he was confident that this would cure my problem. He was right because it did take care of the problem as it has not reoccured. I have no clue as to why or how and maybe the results will be different with other people. Like I said before, a search on this problem leads to solutions that worked for other people but not for my particular situation. The tech surmised that possibly the installer may somehow have forced the software problem during installation. I saw the installer do nothing like that and the install looked pretty routine to me.


It is going into part of the service menu is my guess and [for us] just another tool to use.
I need to clean out a -700 before I try it "just in case", but please post or PM me if you can get to try this on your -700 [just to see if the "green" light will come on].


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## Marvin (Sep 14, 2003)

Im gonna try this because Im ticked off that both my 100s recorded nothing but blank screens over the weekend while I was gone. This happened right after I had them installed and I did the menu reset and everything was fine for a while but now.. There were a few programs Im not happy about missing (reset deletes them cause they were corrupted or something) but I cannot have this going on when new fall shows start..

One note is that I did get to watch one show that was recorded off OTA but nothing off the satellite on either box.

I held the two buttons down for a good 5 minutes and got no green light or anything..so..


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## KAK (Aug 14, 2007)

Marvin said:


> Im gonna try this because Im ticked off that both my 100s recorded nothing but blank screens over the weekend while I was gone. This happened right after I had them installed and I did the menu reset and everything was fine for a while but now.. There were a few programs Im not happy about missing (reset deletes them cause they were corrupted or something) but I cannot have this going on when new fall shows start..
> 
> One note is that I did get to watch one show that was recorded off OTA but nothing off the satellite on either box.
> 
> I held the two buttons down for a good 5 minutes and got no green light or anything..so..


Marvin - The first time the tech had me try this, I had no light either. I tried it again and the second time I got the light. The tech said a lot of people have trouble with this because the buttons both have to be pushed at exactly the same time and you have to be careful to not cover up the light on the record button. Once it worked, it cured this problem. Good luck.

Like I said before, I've tried tips listed on here before and forever what reason, they didn't work the same for me. I leased a HR20-700 this weekend from Best Buy and the install and everything went really smooth and there are zero problems with this receiver. I think I would really rather have the -700's instead of the -100.


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## LineofSight (Aug 19, 2007)

I also had the problem with playing my recordings. After selecting a show from the List and selecting Play, I got a black screen with a pop-up menu asking me if I want to keep or delete the recording.
I only recently got my HR20-100 so this was the first time I had tried to play a recording. The new 0x18a software update was just downloaded a couple of days ago.
All I had to do to correct the playback problem on my machine was unplug the HR20 for at least 5 minutes, then plug it back in and let it do its startup routine.
I'll post again if the problem returns. If it does recur I will try the reset procedure mentioned here that involves pressing the down arrow button and the record button at the same time.


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## goodnz (Sep 1, 2007)

Charlutz said:


> I've had this problem twice, and both times it was accompanied by the loss of the trickplay functions. E.g., I turn on the tv and it's tuned to espn to record a show. I go to rewind espn and it won't. Can't pause, skip back, etc. I go into my playlist and see the program on the list. Go to play it and get the blank screen. Watch the show live and after it's over, reset (not everything). Trickplay buttons work again, but program is not in the playlist. I have 2 HR20's and the problem has happened twice on the same unit.


Same problems here. I'm on my second box and it has the same problems but worse. This is too coincidental. Last night I had no control over my recordings so I went to bed frustated knowing it was recording several shows during the night. This morning I couldn't replay any of the recordings, so I reset. All of the recordings were lost and the show Las Vegas only recorded 18 minutes. It must be something with the Dish. I'm trying to find out if there are electronics located at the dish?


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## goodnz (Sep 1, 2007)

Marvin said:


> I held the two buttons down for a good 5 minutes and got no green light or anything..so..


I tried this process several times without luck. I finally called Tech Support and he told me that there was no green light. He also said that I must first "reset everything" and when the screen goes blank after saying "just a few more seconds" then you push the buttons at the same time. The light turns red for about 30 seconds (I don't believe I've ever seen an indicator light that had multiple colored LEDs). I believe all we did was reformat the hard drive but I'm willing to try anything.


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## KAK (Aug 14, 2007)

goodnz said:


> I tried this process several times without luck. I finally called Tech Support and he told me that there was no green light. He also said that I must first "reset everything" and when the screen goes blank after saying "just a few more seconds" then you push the buttons at the same time. The light turns red for about 30 seconds (I don't believe I've ever seen an indicator light that had multiple colored LEDs). I believe all we did was reformat the hard drive but I'm willing to try anything.


I think there are so many different variations available on the HR20 that no one tech is an expert on all of them. I know what the tech told me to watch for and I know what I saw. Like I said before, some things work for some people and not for others and vice versa. It's almost as if the customer is the beta tester for new combinations of firmware and software. I'm looking at an LG phone right now that has an indicator that blinks red when roaming and green when in the network.

As for the fix I described, it lasted until this morning. The blank screen came back when trying to play a recording and this time, none of the DVR buttons brought any kind of response from the receiver. I reset the machine, it worked OK and then I called tech support back. They are shipping me a new HR20 to replace this one. I requested a -700 instead of a -100 but they told me they have no control over what is shipped. My -700 has had no problems at all.


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## Manta (Apr 10, 2007)

I've got the same problem with my HR20-100s. I've had the 100s for about 4 months now. Everything was fine with the 100s and all the recordings were fine until 0x18a came out. Once I installed 0x18a, now I get the blank recordings, only half of the HD channels work half the time, and now something even more strange is happening, I'm getting the searching for satellite signal message when the picture and audio are showing just fine.


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## goodnz (Sep 1, 2007)

Sorry KAK I didn't mean to insult you but I realize that I probably did after reading my own post.  Reformatting the hard drive didn't work for me. So I swapped the cables to the other two outputs on the multiswitch. I guess I'll know if that works in the morning but I don't have much faith.


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## redram38 (Dec 7, 2005)

kevintoner said:


> Still having the blank recording problem. D* sent my my THIRD HR20 700 replacement. They've sent a repairman out and he was stumped. The latest refurbished model arrived last night. I set it to record multiple local NBC HD broadcasts. Everything worked perfectly until 12 noon today, about 12 hours after I activated the newest access card and downloaded all the software updates. A 30 minute show that I had recorded just 90 minutes earlier on NBC came up blank. Grr . . .
> 
> I called D*. They think it might be a problem with how they rebroadcast my local channel. They also urged me to move the box around to different SAT outlets in my house for the next week or two to see if it might be the house wiring. Ugh. My spouse is really tired of me switching the HR20 and my old Tivo HR10-250 back and forth due to different remotes.
> 
> At this point, I'm about ready to fight my way out of the 2 year contract. The HR20 does not record reliably.


This is the exact trouble I have when recording any of my local SD channels on my HR20's and Locals on my R15-100. It is a rebroadcast problem so it will only get fixed when you local networks fix it. It happened us me in Memphis about 2 mths ago and lasted about 2 days. it reoccured friday and is still messed up today. The other thing is my R15-500 does not have the problem. DTV is sending a tech out Tuesday to check it out, and I do not expect him to be able to fix it other than replacing with the R15-500. The HR20's, I never use SD locals so I don't care about those boxes. I do not have the problem on any channel other than SD locals. If you have the problem on all channels then your problem is far worse than mine and all I can do is wish you good luck and pray for you, because all the techs in the world won't be able to fix this.


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## KAK (Aug 14, 2007)

goodnz said:


> Sorry KAK I didn't mean to insult you but I realize that I probably did after reading my own post.  Reformatting the hard drive didn't work for me. So I swapped the cables to the other two outputs on the multiswitch. I guess I'll know if that works in the morning but I don't have much faith.


Don't worry, you didn't. I think everybody that is having this problem is frustrated by this. I've had DVR's from Time Warner and Dish and have never had the problems with them like I am having with this -100.

I wonder how many people are experiencing this and if this is limited to the -100?


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## NorfolkBruh (Jun 9, 2007)

VOS and others with -700's... nope! Doesn't work at all. I have two of them that I almost never use for anything (excepts the games and one for the dogs rooms) so I'm willing to use the beasts (HR20s) as guinea pigs. I've tried several times over the last several days and neither of the units did the reset that worked so well for KAK on his -100.

Peace


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## BigCTM (Jul 31, 2007)

I had a HR20-100 and had this exact same problem along with the unwatchable bug. A technician came out and installed a HR20-700 instead and all my problems went away. Just from reading the posts on this website, it seems like more of the problems are with the 100s. The technician said all the problems he has seen have been with the 100s. I would go for the 700 over the 100!


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## goodnz (Sep 1, 2007)

After swapping the cables at the multiswitch, this is the first morning that my box wasn't locked up. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

NorfolkBruh said:


> VOS and others with -700's... nope! Doesn't work at all. I have two of them that I almost never use for anything (excepts the games and one for the dogs rooms) so I'm willing to use the beasts (HR20s) as guinea pigs. I've tried several times over the last several days and neither of the units did the reset that worked so well for KAK on his -100.
> 
> Peace


Thank you. Well we're still left with the reset everything, as drastic as it is.
I was hoping to find something like the jumper on a motherboard for resetting the BIOS, but alas, this wasn't it.


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## KAK (Aug 14, 2007)

veryoldschool said:


> Thank you. Well we're still left with the reset everything, as drastic as it is.
> I was hoping to find something like the jumper on a motherboard for resetting the BIOS, but alas, this wasn't it.


So is this problem pretty much inherent to the -100? Has anyone had this happen to them with a -700?


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## mikek (May 18, 2007)

I had this problem yesterday. It happened while it was recording 2 shows. Other weird things were happening like delete show message would immediately pop up and buttons were unresponsive.

I ended up being able to do a menu reset and that fixed the problem, but the two shows that were recording got deleted (I was able to watch one of the shows before the reset).

I have a -100.

-mk


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

KAK said:


> So is this problem pretty much inherent to the -100? Has anyone had this happen to them with a -700?


Last fall through February, my -700s were doing this. One of the things I found was my installer had left coax cables looser than he should have. [I needed to go over every connection with a 7/16 wrench] Also the software update back then seem to resolve the problem.
I'm a bit surprised to see it with the -100 since you have software that [for th most part] has been used on the -700.
So if it was happening to me I'd: carefully remove the LNB on the dish and check the cables [you shouldn't need to realign the dish] and go over every other connection to make sure it was "snug" [please don't over tighten them, but tighten them until you feel the connector mate with the other and stop turning]. Then if you can do a "reset everything" which of course will wipe out the recordings on the drive. There is some question whether the drive was formated or just erased, so I do a front panel reformat after a reset everything [since there was nothing on the disk anyway].
After all of this, if I have a problem again, I'd call D* and have them send out a replacement. Tell then what you've done since it is what they want you to do before they send out a replacement.
In the beginning I was always missing recordings, which isn't my idea of a DVR, & D* sent out several [that did the same thing] so that's why I went after the cables.


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## goodnz (Sep 1, 2007)

veryoldschool said:


> Last fall through February, my -700s were doing this. One of the things I found was my installer had left coax cables looser than he should have. [I needed to go over every connection with a 7/16 wrench]


I'm curious - did you still have good signal strength even though you might have had some loose connections? When I swapped my connections at the multiswitch, the connections were only finger tight and my signal strength was in the 90's on average.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

goodnz said:


> I'm curious - did you still have good signal strength even though you might have had some loose connections? When I swapped my connections at the multiswitch, the connections were only finger tight and my signal strength was in the 90's on average.


Yes the signal levels were good.
What "I think" was happening is sometimes the tuner signal through the multi-switch to the LNB, would fail to tune the LNB, but the receiver "thinks" it has. This causes the blank recording while the next channel change can show a good image. Recordings don't record the "771 error" message.


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## KAK (Aug 14, 2007)

veryoldschool said:


> Last fall through February, my -700s were doing this. One of the things I found was my installer had left coax cables looser than he should have. [I needed to go over every connection with a 7/16 wrench] .


VOS - I've already went over every connection within the house. I have not checked at the LNB's. I would hope that these connections are tight as my -700 is not having the same problem as the -100. It seems that you can pretty much "predict" when the blank screen upon playback is going to happen. Every function with the receiver becomes very slow, e.g. checking the guide, calling up the list, the performance of the function buttons within the DVR itself. My receiver never actually records a blank scene, it just acts like it does upon playback but when the unit is reset, the recording is there in its entirety.


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## Tbettini (Aug 1, 2007)

Been having the same problem, just talked to a CSR and he told me its a known issue and there's a short term hot fix for it. He said to tune in the channel with the blank screen pause it for two seconds and then press play, he said it should work, i haven't tried cuz i had already RBR. Let me know if this works for someone else, it should work for blank recordings as well


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## Hankdoll (May 8, 2007)

Tbettini said:


> Been having the same problem, just talked to a CSR and he told me its a known issue and there's a short term hot fix for it. He said to tune in the channel with the blank screen pause it for two seconds and then press play, he said it should work, i haven't tried cuz i had already RBR. Let me know if this works for someone else, it should work for blank recordings as well


Mine give the "delete recording" prompt instantly...no chance to hit pause and play.


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## Marvin (Sep 14, 2003)

I cant take anymore of this nonsense, as all my recordings for the last two nights are blank screens. Whats even dumber is I Was watching one show that was being recorded, and when I go into the list menu to catch the first few minutes of it, its a blank screen and yet I watched it. This is the most unreliable piece of crap, I never once missed a recording on my HR10 and I think the count is now like 15 in a little over a month...rediculous!


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