# L4.44 Software Experiences/Bugs Discussion



## Rob Glasser (Feb 22, 2005)

L4.44 has begun spooling to ViP622 and ViP722 receivers. Please use this thread to discuss the release and note any bugs found.

Release notes can be found here: http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=101307


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## Ambavi (Sep 26, 2007)

As of last night, I already have the new software version L4.44...


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## rustamust (Feb 22, 2006)

Received L4.44 this am and the only problem with my 622 is loss of Fox digital. Sort of like going back to L4.03 (I think thats the one that caused my loss of Fox). I have re-scanned, did not work and entered the assigned freq. still no luck. Will check later to see if its Fox digital thats down as analog still works.


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## erh1117 (Feb 1, 2005)

Well, I've got 44 and still no improved functionality to the groups feature. At least nothing seems broken yet.


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## KingFrog (Oct 19, 2006)

Spooled the new version of the software on my 622 - and two of my timers didn't record properly.

I got 31 minute of one show premiere, and 2 minutes of another (Bionic Woman and Life).


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## rustamust (Feb 22, 2006)

rustamust said:


> Received L4.44 this am and the only problem with my 622 is loss of Fox digital. Sort of like going back to L4.03 (I think thats the one that caused my loss of Fox). I have re-scanned, did not work and entered the assigned freq. still no luck. Will check later to see if its Fox digital thats down as analog still works.


Just found out tonight that my local Fox digital is off air and they do not know when they will be up, so I guess its not due to L444.


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## Paradox-sj (Dec 15, 2004)

KingFrog said:


> Spooled the new version of the software on my 622 - and two of my timers didn't record properly.
> 
> I got 31 minute of one show premiere, and 2 minutes of another (Bionic Woman and Life).


Hum....maybe that is why my females timer for Dacning with the stars only got 30 min....

I didnt check any of mine...now i am concerned


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## mscroggi (Jan 22, 2006)

We had timers set to record some of the new shows debuts. The Unit, and Bones both only recorded for 33 minutes. Both shows were 1 hour shows.. Has anyone else seen this?


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## lujan (Feb 10, 2004)

Yes, I set "Boston Legal" to record on Tuesday night. It was supposed to be 1 1/2 hours and only 1/2 an hour got recorded.


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

I too already have L4.44 but continue to have problems. I sent the following email to Dish Tech support and Dish corporate investor relations. Does anyone has any experience with these problems:

We have two intermittent problems with our new ViP722 which appear to be unrelated:

(1) pixel loss in the ViP722 recording which does not occur in recordings of the same program on the PVR508's and which in the past we saw with the PVR508's only when we actually had satellite signal loss;
(2) the picture shifts to a "jumping freeze frame" while the audio continues normally and which can be corrected by stopping the playback and then resuming the playback, so the problem is not the recording itself.​
We have the system set for a single TV, with output to component video and optical audio. We almost never watch live TV. Our use pattern is that the two recorders are recording HD programs while we are watching a recorded HD program. The pixel loss seems to occur both (a) when the picture involves fast motion on a scene with bright reflective objects or (b) when the computer is attempting to resynchronize video and audio. The jumping freeze frame effect with normal audio seems to be a random occurrence.

Neither of these problems occur when watching a DVD or recordings on the two 508's. And both of these problems are intermittent.

It appears the problems are related to the complexity of watching an HD program while two HD programs are recording. Please trust our observation that there is nothing wrong with the strength of the satellite signal reaching our dish or in the installation configuration of the ViP722. We have been Echostar customers since 1988 initially using a large dish, so we are not new to satellite TV and we still have our two old PVR508's because we chose to have a reliable backup running parallel. We even chose not to have a Dish 1000 system because we would have regular intermittent interference from trees receiving a signal from your satellite at 129°. We've had a plasma HD/surround 5.1 audio home theater since May 2003. And we have been working with computers beginning with mainframes in 1970 and have been building, operating, programming and maintaining PC's since 1980.

We don't expect you to instantly solve the problems we have described. Rather, we are reporting them, and if one or both of the problems is in our ViP722 we expect you to replace it with one that is working. If one or both of the problems is software, we assume solutions will be in place within a month or two. We will follow up with your corporate office as we want your service to continue and believe the 722 is the linchpin of Dish Network's future financial success.


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## klaatu (Dec 7, 2004)

lujan said:


> Yes, I set "Boston Legal" to record on Tuesday night. It was supposed to be 1 1/2 hours and only 1/2 an hour got recorded.


Same here, lost the first 15 minutes of 2 shows recording last night @11:35PM

Added - 1 OTA, 1 SAT


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## BobaBird (Mar 31, 2002)

Are these partial event recording failures from the OTA channel or the Dish HD local?


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## krazy k (Apr 27, 2003)

does this allow recording straight to external drive.


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## Grandude (Oct 21, 2004)

I guess I lucked out. All my timers recorded properly including Boston Legal at 1 hour 30 minutes. All were from Dish, not OTA.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

krazy k said:


> does this allow recording straight to external drive.


Nope. I doubt we will see this future for a while if ever. I would expect. It is one thing to move files around and playback the content it is a whole other world to be part of the Tuner stream and the scheduling subsystem. Nice feature request for sure and in the event this cannot be done an auto archive feature would be nice so you can mark programs a show to be archived right after it gets recorded. I would suspect this would be easier to implement with less risk and would accomplish the same thing but would take twice as long to get to the end result.


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## moman19 (Oct 22, 2004)

My 622 is in Dual Mode. I would be happy if the USB drive wasn't grayed out on TV2. It would be nice to be able to view saved shows on TV2 (in SD of course) without having to first restore them to the Hard Drive. This should not be too difficult to achieve.

While on this topic, I also find it strange that if you want to view different programs on the USB Drive, you have to first jump into LIVE mode and then back to the drive. The receiver seems unable to do anything if it's playing a show stored on the USB drive.

Am I doing something wrong????


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

Oh #$%!#&. They want to send me a new Vip722 and I finally got all the settings.


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## tomcrown1 (Jan 16, 2006)

I feel lucky I still have L4.43 It seems that I do not want the L4.44


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## brettbolt (Feb 22, 2006)

phrelin said:


> ...
> (2) the picture shifts to a "jumping freeze frame" while the audio continues normally and which can be corrected by stopping the playback and then resuming the playback, so the problem is not the recording itself. ...


I have seen this too -- normal audio with the jumping freeze frame. It would estimate that the video frame rate was about 2 or 3 frames per second. This happened while watching a standard definition satellite channel (not OTA).

When this happened, the receiver was in dual mode. I switched to single mode and the video frame rate went back to normal.


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

brettbolt said:


> When this happened, the receiver was in dual mode. I switched to single mode and the video frame rate went back to normal.


Unfortunately mine is in single mode. I can't imagine that this is a hardware problem, but they are supposedly going to send me a new 722.


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## lujan (Feb 10, 2004)

BobaBird said:


> Are these partial event recording failures from the OTA channel or the Dish HD local?


Dish Digital Local.


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## mscroggi (Jan 22, 2006)

The timers that failed for me were Dish locals.. no OTA.. The problem seems to be intermittent as we had a couple of other timers set to record last night for one hour shows (survivor) and they seemed to record correctly...



BobaBird said:


> Are these partial event recording failures from the OTA channel or the Dish HD local?


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## Ambavi (Sep 26, 2007)

With new L4.44 software, I lost all my OTA local channels. It was working fine with older version (L4.41). Does any one experiencing same problem? I tried hard reset, and all other suggestion posted on this forum, no lucks…


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

Ambavi said:


> With new L4.44 software, I lost all my OTA local channels. It was working fine with older version (L4.41). Does any one experiencing same problem? I tried hard reset, and all other suggestion posted on this forum, no lucks&#8230;


Take a look in MENU > 6 > 8 (HDTV Setup) and be sure that "Analog Type" is set to "Offair" if you are using a terrestrial antenna for your HD OTA channels.


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## AVJohnnie (Jul 27, 2004)

After receiving the L4.44 update, the newer (Rev-E) of my two 622s suddenly started recording “All Episodes” of “Star Trek: Enterprise” on HDNet. The timer for that show was originally set for “New Episodes” only and still showed that way when I checked it. But according to the Daily Schedule and the quickly filling HD, it started recording all episodes of the show immediately after receiving the L4.44 update. :scratch: 

My older (Rev-D) 622 which also received L4.44 and has the same timers / settings continues to function correctly, only recording the "New Episodes" of the show. :up: 

I deleted the timer on the “problem child” 622 and re-created it. Now, according to the Daily Schedule, it’s back to normal again – I should know shortly if it really is…


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## Grampa67 (Mar 14, 2005)

I was recording 2 sd channels and one hd ota and watching a recording. I had closed captioning on and the captioning was sporadic and late and the picture was almost not watchable due to dropped frames. I turned off cc and the picture became watchable but had some dropped frames.


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## lujan (Feb 10, 2004)

AVJohnnie said:


> ...
> 
> My older (Rev-D) 622 which also received L4.44 and has the same timers / settings continues to function correctly, only recording the "New Episodes" of the show. :up:
> 
> ...


 There are no new episodes of Star Trek Enterprise...


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## HotRod19579 (Jul 31, 2004)

I just noticed two different problems with my 622 L4.44. 
1) When I go in and look at my daily timers I am seeing that there are 2 programs scheduled to record OTA at the same time. Last night I waited for the start time to roll around and one of the timers started recording, the other didn’t and at that point it stated skipped due to priority. 
2) I have many timers set with the preferences set to “HD”. The only HD I have for my local channels is OTA channels. When I look at the daily timers I see that the timer for the local channel off of the satellite is reflecting skipped due to duplicate event and it states that it will record on my OTA channel. But then the timer for the OTA channel states skipped due to priority (something already scheduled to record OTA). The program won’t record unless I go in and select the local off of the satellite and tell it to restore. Shouldn't the DVR see that my HD channel is unavailable and record the program automatically in SD?

I don't know how long this problem has been occurring but since the new season is just starting, I wouldn't have noticed it previously.


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## kevin d (Sep 21, 2005)

lujan said:


> There are no new episodes of Star Trek Enterprise...


They're *NEW* to HDnet. Thankfully they set them up this way.

Kevin D.


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## bill-e (Apr 14, 2006)

After reading this thread from my hotel room, when I got home today I pressed the DVR button with trepidation, expecting to find all my premier episodes cut short. I was thrilled to find everything recorded at the expected length. All content was from Dish. A check of System Info showed that I indeed did update to 4.44 as well.


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## MNipper (Jan 20, 2004)

4.44 Still has the annoying problem where if you are watching a recorded program, and try to enter a channel (by number) to go back to live TV, AND, it happens to be the last channel that you were viewing, before viewing the recorded material, THEN it simply ignores you.

I.E. it takes the channel number, displays it as you are entering it, but then it simply clears the channel entry (when you are done), and leaves you in the recorded program. You have to drop into the Guide, or do channel up/down, OR go to a completely different channel (and then change back to the desired channel).

A nit, but still annoying.


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## DBS Commando (Apr 7, 2006)

MNipper said:


> 4.44 Still has the annoying problem where if you are watching a recorded program, and try to enter a channel (by number) to go back to live TV, AND, it happens to be the last channel that you were viewing, before viewing the recorded material, THEN it simply ignores you.
> 
> I.E. it takes the channel number, displays it as you are entering it, but then it simply clears the channel entry (when you are done), and leaves you in the recorded program. You have to drop into the Guide, or do channel up/down, OR go to a completely different channel (and then change back to the desired channel).
> 
> A nit, but still annoying.


Wouldn't pressing View TV be a workaround?


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## AVJohnnie (Jul 27, 2004)

lujan said:


> There are no new episodes of Star Trek Enterprise...


Ha! :lol: Good Point!


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## AVJohnnie (Jul 27, 2004)

kevin d said:


> They're *NEW* to HDnet. Thankfully they set them up this way.
> 
> Kevin D.


:biggthump Exactly!

And BTW, Seems that deleting and recreating the timer did fix the problem...


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## garywiley (Jun 16, 2007)

I have 2 622's, one with 4.43 and one that just got 4.44.

Last night, on the 4.44, while watching a recorded program and archiving a show to my WD external drive, my 622 froze up for about a minute. When it cleared, I got a message that the archiving was complete. This has never happened before. The unit worked fine after that.

I have had chronic problems with Dolby Digital sound drop outs. They only last for several seconds. Last night on the 4.44 unit, I watched several programs without a drop out. I hope the new firmware has solved my problem.

Gary


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## mdewitt (Sep 21, 2006)

Anyone else having a problem with the 622 ignoring the setting for the maximum number of episodes for a specific timer? I have 2 timers set to record no more than 3 episodes, but since the new release they are recording more.


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## Jay Mission (Sep 30, 2007)

Is anyone else having problems with their telephones since L4.44?

I had to disconnect my 622 phone line in order to get a dial tone back on all of my house phones. Reboot didn't fix it. 

Does the broadband connection perform all the same functions as the phone connection? (so I don"t get charged extra for not having the phoneline connected)


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## clarkbaker (Sep 23, 2006)

4.44 seems solid, but i noticed that I had signal losses reported for sat 129. That has never happened before. Makes me wonder what they tweeked. Everthing still works.. but the sudden drops at 2am and 4am seem a little wierd for a bulletproof system.


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## MNipper (Jan 20, 2004)

DBS Commando said:


> Wouldn't pressing View TV be a workaround?


Sure... IF you magically remember what channel you were watching before you started. If I've just zipped thru a couple of hours of DVR'd programs, and suddenly decide to check out the local news (live) on channel 9, no one wants to sit there trying to remember whether they started out on channel 9, and might now need to hit View, instead of simply entering a 9.

And obviously, if I "just hit View", I'm going to land on the channel I started out on (which based on my viewing habits might have about a "one in thirty-something" chance of being the right one).

Bottom line... this is a mindlessly stupid bug. You are allowed to use a numeric selection to "leave" a DVR'd event, in order to go to ALL the channels you see in your guide, EXCEPT one. In the larger picture of problems (OTA's not working right, etc.), it is (as I already said) a nit, but if nobody ever bothers to report it, then there's no reason to believe that the programmers will become aware of it (and, hence, ever actually fix it). (And having written code for more years than I'd care to remember, I'd also bet that it's an extremely simple thing to fix, as compared to those nastier issues.)

All, FWLIW.


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## dhclaypool (Oct 29, 2005)

Have L4.44 on my 622 and had 3 lockup/reboots (UI stops responding although the live video in the window continues for about 15 seconds; presumably a watchdog timer notes the lockup). Twice it was while editing timers in the Daily Schedule and once it was while watching a program on Food HD while it was recording--show was over and in the 3 minute runout and I pressed [stop] and answered yes and then it locked...


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

dhclaypool.. IF you have not done this. Try a power cord reboot. Pull the cord, wait a few minutes and plug it back in. See if the issue returns. If it does try and report back as much details as possible.


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## mspace (Mar 19, 2007)

Experiencing broadband failure every day. I have to reset the connection in the menu. This started with 4.44


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## Zaphod (Aug 31, 2006)

lujan said:


> Yes, I set "Boston Legal" to record on Tuesday night. It was supposed to be 1 1/2 hours and only 1/2 an hour got recorded.


It recorded all of it for me. It was a good one.


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## octavian (Jul 7, 2006)

brettbolt said:


> I have seen this too -- normal audio with the jumping freeze frame. It would estimate that the video frame rate was about 2 or 3 frames per second. This happened while watching a standard definition satellite channel (not OTA).
> 
> When this happened, the receiver was in dual mode. I switched to single mode and the video frame rate went back to normal.


I am also having this problem with both of my 622's. I am using single mode on both and it only happens while watching SD shows. Jumping around the show with the skip and replay buttons seem to fix it. I had not seen this before last week.


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## smackman (Sep 19, 2006)

L4.44 seemingly has caused 4 weird lockups. All have happened when changing to a OTA Channel. When the OTA is diplayed at the top I get no picture and I am locked up in dual mode. TV2 output is not locked up. TVI freezes up and locks up the remote. After a minute or so it reboots itself and a few minutes later all is "back to normal". Its seems to lock up on the OTA channels that I cannot always "pull in" except at night time. I have 4 channels out of Shreveport Louisiana that come in when night time falls. Anyway, no problems in a while but L4.44 has put some "bugs" swirling around. I received L4.44 sometime last week.


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## ncted (Aug 19, 2006)

I have had 4.44 since last Friday. No problems so far.

Ted


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## Leprechuan (Apr 18, 2007)

I got it this morning, so far I notice no real changes.


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## MarcusInMD (Jan 7, 2005)

Since the past one or two upgrades out OTA tuner quality has really dropped. Frequent drop outs on some channels that never had issues.  Now that the new TV season has started the wife is not happy that her shows are partial recordings some are all messed up with digital artifacts and missing audio/video.


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## whatchel1 (Jan 11, 2006)

I've had L4.44 for a short time and so far (knock on wood) have had no problems here.


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## smackman (Sep 19, 2006)

Tonight I deleted some timers and I went to channel 08 to watch Criminal minds. Well, I had no OTA signal. I checked the other OTA channels and no signal. I make a mad dash to CBS(local) on channel 2(local) and I finally figure out that Channel 2 is actually showing channel 5 NBC and my receiver says I am on Channel 2 CBS. I had not had a drink in a week. I finally had to do a soft reboot to get things back in line. After soft reboot I lost my timers for this reboot time period.
It seems that me deleting the timers triggered a severe amount of "issues". This is all a result of L4.44 because I have never had issues like this. Heck, I do not know how to even explain this to Dish Quality. OTA issues, Timer issues and channels showing "other" channels.


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## Moridin (Mar 22, 2005)

Well, whatever the "AV fixes" were in this release, they didn't address the random loss of HDMI with a Sammy HLN series display.


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## Mike D-CO5 (Mar 12, 2003)

I've noticed since my 722 got L4.44, that my lost locks have gone up considerably. I now have 40 /98 and that is since I ran a check switch to clear the matrix with the sat cables not connected 2 hours ago. The seperator is brand new and so is the diplexor and the cables are new too. Yesterday the lost locks were at 21/150. I've noticed no lost picture or shows being not recorded. I am recording more shows off of my local ABC since it went HD , so the tuner is set on my ota a lot , but I can't see why the lost locks have gone up more than I've ever seen.


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## Stutz342 (Sep 29, 2004)

OK, I don't know when I received 4.44, but I do have it, and I've started getting reboots when I try to deal with timers, especially changing priority.

I currently have 92 timers, with 363 events, and the priority isn't being heeded correctly in a couple of spots. When I try upping the priority on the timer that has an incorrectly skipped event, I get a lockup followed eventully by a reboot.

A reboot also happened when I tried manually restoring an event without changing the priority.

I've tried doing a power-cord reboot, and a switch test, but it still happens.

This is a 622 in single mode, Software: L444, Hardware ID: RBDD-N, Bootstrap: 1710, and diagnostics shows MiniWatchdogs: 16389. Anything else I should note?

Oh yea, once the reboot completes, whatever change I tried to make, like the restore, did take effect. (Although the priority is still not beeing heeded 100%.)


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Stutz342... Good post. 92 timers and 363 events is a lot. That might be the triggering factor. I will have to try moving some things around on my box and see if that causes a reboot.

Additional comments: your mini-watchdog seems way out of wack. Anything else. One thing... The limit is 96 for timers and you appear to be rather close to it. As a test, I would try and remove 10 timers and see if the reboot issue goes away. Have you always had 92 timers?


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## kevin d (Sep 21, 2005)

Got 4.44 this morning and had an issue tonight. Until recently we only had one HD channel OTA without moving the antenna all around. Since I have no guide data, I just set up a manual timer for 7:00-10:00PM NBC (most watched network) every night. 

This has been working flawlessly for a year now. Last week FOX went online and with some increased signal output from other stations I was able to get good signal on all available HD's in my area (NBC, PBS, ABC, FOX). The manual timer has still been firing fine every night until tonight (post 4.44). . 

Tonight I have a three hour manual timer, set to record channel 7.1 (NBC) with FOX programming. I caught it about 2.5 hours in. I stopped it, turned to fox to see it was the same programming, changed back to NBC and it was now the correct NBC programming. All labels, history, etc is showing correct for NBC. I don't even have any timers setup for FOX.

I'll see if it glitches again tomorrow night before I start messing around.

Kevin D.


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## HobbyTalk (Jul 14, 2007)

I have a 622 with 4.44 and just now I tried to move a show from the HD to the EHD. The 622 locked up and then a minute or so later it rebooted.


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## krt (Jan 20, 2003)

I have a SW21-4SAT configuration. The receiver gives a 004 - A problem has been detected with your switch error at times. The SW64 is connected to 119, 110, and 61.5. The SW64 is cascaded to two SW21s, each connected to 129. All LNBFs are legacy duals. The switch matrix shows 1 - 129, 2 - 119, 3 - 110 and 4 - 61.5 on both tuners. A check switch passes everytime with no issues.

The 004 error is consistantly reproducible moving from a duplicated channel on 129/61.5 to a non-duplicated channel. eg: Channel 9710 to channel 9900. The issue is also seen often if the receiver is powered off at night, set to record something and turned on the next day. I had not seen this issue with L441.

(This seems to be a similar issue that I had with my 811 receiver a few years ago. This was fixed on the 811 with a SW upgrade. )


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## drmckenzie (Aug 28, 2007)

I've also had a couple of reboots on my 722, which occurred during timer editing.


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## bobukcat (Dec 20, 2005)

I had a weird thing happen last night, I was configuring a manual timer and someone called me so the Caller ID popped up. I hit okay and the caller ID screen disappeared but then I clicked on create timer on the timer screen and the caller ID screen popped back up (no, I was not receiving another call), I hit select and it repeated the loop. I tried cancel and any other options and it wouldn't quit until I hit the power button and turned the 622 "off" then back on which returned it to live programming and I could go create my timer. 

I didn't try recreating it to see if it was repeatable but I might tonight.


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## lujan (Feb 10, 2004)

bobukcat said:


> I had a weird thing happen last night, I was configuring a manual timer and someone called me so the Caller ID popped up. I hit okay and the caller ID screen disappeared but then I clicked on create timer on the timer screen and the caller ID screen popped back up (no, I was not receiving another call), I hit select and it repeated the loop. I tried cancel and any other options and it wouldn't quit until I hit the power button and turned the 622 "off" then back on which returned it to live programming and I could go create my timer.
> 
> I didn't try recreating it to see if it was repeatable but I might tonight.


Lot's of strange things happen when your working with the menus and you get a phone call. Try doing a search while you get a call. You hit OK on the callerID popup window and everything you've already typed in for your search is gone so you have to start all over again.


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## smackman (Sep 19, 2006)

I just had a interesting conversation with a very nice and cordial "tier 2" worker at Dish. TWO "Technical help" CSR hung up on me. The 3rd CSR said he would hook me up to "advance" technical which he did. I am having OTA issues, lock up issues and Timer issues since L4.44. We had a very nice conversation and she took my notes and said she would take them to Software. The 2 CSRs that hung up on me are "Technicians"and I am the Pope of Rome.
L4.44 has left me with more "bugs" that terminix can deal with. I still work around them and I still love my Dish but it is time for some software problems to be fixed. Having to do 2-3 soft reboots a day is not good.:grrr:


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## Boson (Aug 15, 2007)

Ron Barry said:


> Stutz342... Good post. 92 timers and 363 events is a lot. That might be the triggering factor. I will have to try moving some things around on my box and see if that causes a reboot....
> ...The limit is 96 for timers and you appear to be rather close to it. As a test, I would try and remove 10 timers and see if the reboot issue goes away. Have you always had 92 timers?


I don't think it is fair to say that 92 timers is a lot. That would be determined be each individual user. One of my largest complaints is that limit, as I am up against it everyday. I hit this limit 4 days after switching to DISH from my UTV(on DTV) - which had NO TIMER limit. I typically had 200-250 timers at any given time with 500-600 events. And this is on almost 10 year old technology!

I do think that the 622/722's are the best equipment available today, but, disappointingly, their functionality still severely lags the Microsoft UTV's designed and sold up to 10 years ago. Grouping, Sorting, UNLIMITED Timers, etc. are novel ideas for DISH today, but are conceptually old news. I ask...DISH, PLEASE ELIMINATE THE LIMITS!!!


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## drmckenzie (Aug 28, 2007)

I just had two reboots in the last 1/2 hour on my 722 (v4.44). Both happened while scrolling through the list of events to be recorded. I only have about 25 timers. That's 4 reboots since yesterday. I think I had only 1 reboot before 4.44 in the last 6 weeks.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Boson said:


> I don't think it is fair to say that 92 timers is a lot. That would be determined be each individual user. One of my largest complaints is that limit, as I am up against it everyday. I hit this limit 4 days after switching to DISH from my UTV(on DTV) - which had NO TIMER limit. I typically had 200-250 timers at any given time with 500-600 events. And this is on almost 10 year old technology!
> 
> I do think that the 622/722's are the best equipment available today, but, disappointingly, their functionality still severely lags the Microsoft UTV's designed and sold up to 10 years ago. Grouping, Sorting, UNLIMITED Timers, etc. are novel ideas for DISH today, but are conceptually old news. I ask...DISH, PLEASE ELIMINATE THE LIMITS!!!


All embedded devices have to have limits. I am not familar with UTV but I am sure there was a limit at some place. Perhaps a limit that for pratically reasons would not be reached but none the less a limit.

As for fair.. Well when you have 96 timers avaialable 92 is a lot. My guess is that what might be happening is a memory over-run or some operation is taking too long causing the mini watchdog to fire and it makes sense to reduce the number of timers and see if the issue goes away.

As for 200-250 timers? Man.. Given the 622 model of what is a timer and what is a timer event, I can't even phantome having that many timers and I know you would fall into the %2 range of use cases for sure. About 3 updates ago they did increase the timer limit on both the timers and the timer events and from what I can tell given the posts since it seems to have addressed most peoples concerns.

As for unlimited. What is being balanced here is performance vs. limits. The wider the limits the more CPU it will take to manage the resources. This is definitely a constrained environment so I doubt you will see limits removed. Since I have not experience with UTV I am not sure how there box worked such that unlimited could be provided but we are talking about apples and oranges here. The 622 is a 3 HD stream box that can operated two rooms. Was UTV even a dual tuner box? Big difference in performance requirements of these two boxes.

I would be curious what the use case for 200-250 timers for given that one timer can be used to recorde a whole seasons of shows. If Do you need these timers to set up DishPasses for particular shows you are interested in? That is the only thing I could think of and my guess is that needing over 96 timers is something not a lot of people run into so I personally would rather have the performance in the box more than increased timers/timer events.

One thing for sure. TImers/Timer events are like warehouse space.. Sometimes there never seems to be enough.


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## lujan (Feb 10, 2004)

smackman said:


> ... TWO "Technical help" CSR hung up on me...


The level 1 technicians at E* are notorious for hang ups expecially if they don't know how to fix your problem or if you start raising your voice. I was just hung up on last week and had to call a second time. I'm going to start making sure that I catch their names, but I'm not even sure they give us their correct names.


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## Boson (Aug 15, 2007)

Ron Barry said:


> All embedded devices have to have limits. I am not familar with UTV but I am sure there was a limit at some place. Perhaps a limit that for pratically reasons would not be reached but none the less a limit.
> 
> As for 200-250 timers? Man.. Given the 622 model of what is a timer and what is a timer event, I can't even phantome having that many timers and I know you would fall into the %2 range of use cases for sure. About 3 updates ago they did increase the timer limit on both the timers and the timer events and from what I can tell given the posts since it seems to have addressed most peoples concerns.
> 
> ...


The UTV box was a dual tuner box (only 1 room, of course). I held on as long as I could, but couldn't control my urge to make the move to HD - so I left for DISH. The DISH HD-DVR interface/functionality was far superior than anything DTV had to offer - and DTV wanted $400 to get their HD-DVR - easy decision.

I don't know about the UTV CPU, but it had to be a mere fraction of the power of the 622/722 CPU, and it did the job. I believe they ran with Linux.

As far as setting up the timers&#8230;I don't really use DishPass directly now&#8230;but I typically use the reoccurring program function (same result?) The events just pile up mainly due to frequent repeats of cable shows that get skipped.

I am not complaining- just wishing for DISH to catch up to where UTV left off&#8230;They (Dish) are virtually emulating the UTV (Microsoft) interface FROM 1997 - just with about 85% of the functionality.

Please don't misunderstand me, I am happy with the 622/722 as they are now, given the current available options in the market today.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Boson.. Still think we are talking apples and oranges here but I understand your point. Since I have not familiarity with the UTV it is very hard for me to comment and my guess on the limits is based on past experiences doing embedded software development. There could be a number of other reason for the limits but given that they bumped them up less than a year ago my guess would be they increased them to a level they felt would continue to provide a snappy feel to the box while addressing most users concerns.

Others from time to time have echoed hitting the limit before it was updated but you have been the first I can recall since the increase. What limit are you hitting? you talked about not using DishPass but you use reoccurring and you are still bumping up to the 96 timer limit or are you hitting the 576 limit? 

I just checked. I am at 33 timers and 230+ timer events. My box works pretty hard. I could see someone hitting the timer limit if they set up a lot of one time events or Dish Pass events trying to catch particular movies, but I can't see how anyone could hit it with New and All timer events type use cases. 

I guess I am trying to see if there are use cases out there that suggest another increase... Perhaps a new thread to discuss this is warranted. Yeah... Doing it know.


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## SingleAction (Apr 29, 2005)

4.44 has turned my vip622 into a random reboot machine.

This afternoon, I had the HD animal planet channel on, and noticed that after a while, there was no sound.

Went into the room, and had a picture, but no sound.

When I tried changing channels, the receiver reboot, with the usual aquiring satellites!

This has happened about a half dozen times in the last few days.


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## moman19 (Oct 22, 2004)

Not sure if this is a trend or just two flukes. However; since getting REL 4.44 my system has experienced two different issues related to USB program transfers. Both occurred while I was moving shows from the 622 to the USB External drive in background. The first incident occurred a few days ago when the channel we were watching froze when my wife touched the GUIDE button. The VDR locked up hard and had to be rebooted. Then, last night I tried to channel surf during a commercial only to find that the 622 simply would not respond to the remote. First, I thought perhaps I grabbed the #2 remote by mistake but this was not the case. I checked TV2 and that half of the receiver along with the #2 remote worked fine. But Remote #1 was suddenly completely useless. I was watching the game on TBS and the screen never froze. I simply lost all control of the DVR. I noticed that the flashing lights on the external drive......a sign that a transfer was in progress...had stopped flashing. 

A reboot resolved this issue. Something seems less than 100% stable.


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## langlin (Apr 8, 2005)

Ron and others, re: timers, I don't know if this applies to what your talking about but I just found out that on a timer that "record new episodes" the 622 will will only show 50 events at a time even though it will record forever. I had set a timer to do new Law and Order CI on USA and USA ran marathons of hundreds of old CI shows so that the "skipped" filled up the unit's 50 slots and it did not show that the new would be recorded until time passed and the skipped events became less than 50 prior to the new episode, then it showed it would record and it did record. So 50 is the number that can be in the cue at one time but I don't see how this would ever impact an actual recording.


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## kevin d (Sep 21, 2005)

Also noticed today that my fan had been locked on high speed ever since 4.44. A power plug reboot fixed it.

Kevin D.


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## hokie-dk (Feb 4, 2006)

I had audio dropouts over the weekend while watching/recording Va Tech/Clemson game on ESPNHD (6 PM kickoff). I had probably a dozen audio short duration dropouts during the game - .5 to 1 second long. Aggravating.

Earlier in the week, the receiver got stuck in side-by-side PIP mode. Nothing was functional on the remote. I had to reboot to clear - no problems since.


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## lujan (Feb 10, 2004)

hokie-dk said:


> I had audio dropouts over the weekend while watching/recording Va Tech/Clemson game on ESPNHD (6 PM kickoff). I had probably a dozen audio short duration dropouts during the game - .5 to 1 second long. Aggravating.
> 
> Earlier in the week, the receiver got stuck in side-by-side PIP mode. Nothing was functional on the remote. I had to reboot to clear - no problems since.


I think it has to do with the local station's broadcast and not the 622. I notice these audio dropouts on my local CBS digital station over OTA but not on other stations.


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## hokie-dk (Feb 4, 2006)

lujan said:


> I think it has to do with the local station's broadcast and not the 622. I notice these audio dropouts on my local CBS digital station over OTA but not on other stations.


Didn't notice any dropouts of the same broadcast on regular ESPN via my 508, but I wasn't watching that for nearly the amount of time I was watching ESPNHD via my 622.


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## CubeDude (May 11, 2005)

Is anyone having flicker issues with HD? About every minute or so the screen will freeze go black and then come back. It will happen if I am watching an SD channel, but recording something in HD. It only happens when the 622 is is viewing or recording HD content. I have tried the HDMI and the component video and both experience the same issue. I have a 52 inch Sony Wega rear projection LCD and the 622 is setup for dual TV use.


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## CubeDude (May 11, 2005)

*UPDATE* According the Dish support my issue will be fixed with L4.46 sometime next week.


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