# Spontaneous Reboots, Pixellation, Freezing, Tuner Not Connecting



## Jolard (Feb 14, 2006)

So far I LOVE my HDTV, and I love the Picture quality and the UI of the 622, however the 622 reliability and performance have been awful. 

Got my 622 4 days ago. Since then I have had a number of problems:

- Channel will pixelate severely, and then freeze. Sometimes I can change the channel, other times I have to reboot.
- Three times the system has spontaneously rebooted itself.
- Three times the system has frozen up, and I have had to unplug to get it working again.

So last night after having my recording of a show my wife wanted to watch ruined because of a freeze and spontaneous reboot, I called tech support.

We checked my signal strengths, and 129 was only coming in at around 65 to 70, which he said was low since I have two 500's, not a 1000. We ran a check switch. When it was complete, the three satellites on tuner 1 were fine, but on tuner 2 they were all showing "Conn" but with a red X for each of them, and a message saying it failed on Tuner 2.

I have an unusual installation, my original 522 installer ran two coax cables from the satellite instead of one using a splitter. So he suggested I unplug the sat inputs, and switch them, so we could see if it was a Tuner 2 problem or a cabling/satellite problem. Anyway, after numerous check switches, with the cables switched back and forth, we discovered that it didn't matter which cable was plugged into which tuner, it always failed on tuner 2. He said this pointed to a bad tuner, (since both cables would always connect fine on tuner 1) and is sending me a new 622.

At first he wanted to charge me $15 shipping, but I argued that it was a new install which had failed and he waived the charge. Still can't believe they wanted to charge me.

One other thing, I finally last night managed to get it to work on tuner 2, and then left it as it was. It seems like it might just be really touchy, or be failing intermittently. There is something seriously wrong with that tuner.

So here are my questions:

- Could this still be some kind of satellite cabling problem? Since I switched the cables and they both worked on tuner 1 all the time, I should be fine from that perspective correct?
- What level of performance is acceptable to dish? What I mean is will they keep sending people out if I continue to have problems? 90% of the time it works great, and I love the interface and the HD picture, but the reliability is critical if I want to be able to record shows and know they will be there.
- Does anyone else have any suggestions on what else the problem could be?

Anyway, thanks, I just wanted to add my experience so that maybe it would help. I will let you know how the new receiver works when it arrives.


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## Rob Glasser (Feb 22, 2005)

I'm not positive but the issue may be related to the signal isssues a lot of us, especially in the Seattle area, are having with channels on the 129 ortibal location. What channels is this happening to you on?

I too have had some less than stellar results in the past recovering a 622 without a reboot when I get signal loss on a 129 channel, especially when in a DVR event. To the point where I try and stay away from channels on high numbered transponders on the 129 bird.

You should check out this thread: http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=53697


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## ebaltz (Nov 23, 2004)

Rob Glasser said:


> I'm not positive but the issue may be related to the signal isssues a lot of us, especially in the Seattle area, are having with channels on the 129 ortibal location. What channels is this happening to you on?
> 
> I too have had some less than stellar results in the past recovering a 622 without a reboot when I get signal loss on a 129 channel, especially when in a DVR event. To the point where I try and stay away from channels on high numbered transponders on the 129 bird.
> 
> You should check out this thread: http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=53697


He shoudl consider himself lucky getting that good of a signal. I only get the low 50s on 129 on my Dish1000. I am thinking of having them re-aim to get stronger signals on 129, I could live with slightly lower on 110 and 119 since those are pretty strong.


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## Rob Glasser (Feb 22, 2005)

ebaltz said:


> He shoudl consider himself lucky getting that good of a signal. I only get the low 50s on 129 on my Dish1000. I am thinking of having them re-aim to get stronger signals on 129, I could live with slightly lower on 110 and 119 since those are pretty strong.


FWIW, here in the Seattle Area, I spent the better part of a day tweaking my Dish1000 a while back and was able to get the following results (generalized because it varies from transponder to transponder:

hight 60's to mid 70's for 129, when the periodic signal drop is NOT happening
low 80's to low 90's for 110
mid 90's to Max (120 or whatever it is) for 119

My neighbor had his Dish1000 professionally installed a couple months back and he has slightly better numbers than this on 110, his 129 and 119 numbers look the same.


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## Jolard (Feb 14, 2006)

It is very possible that these are being caused by watching an HDTV show, and from what I understand these are on the 129 satellite, correct? Honestly I am not sure what stations it is happening on all the time, but last night's reboot did occur on a HD show. (I think it was Rave)



> I too have had some less than stellar results in the past recovering a 622 without a reboot when I get signal loss on a 129 channel


Why would low signal strength freeze up the receiver or cause a reboot? Shouldn't it just lose signal or pixellate? It just seems like bad design to have the whole machine freeze up :eek2: Thanks to the link to the thread, it looks like I am not alone at least in the difficulties with 129.

I have two dish 500's, one was just installed on Monday, and I am assuming it is the one pointing at 129. Should I head on to my roof and try and get a better signal? How difficult is it to do that? My wife could yell at me when the strength goes up and down, lol. (like the old days with an antenna!) If I have one dish solely responsible for 129, it seems like I should be able to point it directly at it and get a better signal, but maybe the one I am getting is as good as it gets.


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## EJP (Jun 16, 2004)

You might get a little better signal, but it wont help much. I talked to dish yesterday and they said they are working on the problem and it will be resolved sometime. I asked when? He couldn't give me an time. I told him that I would like them to subtract $10.00 a month, VOOM COST, until they can fix the signal. He said he would forward my request.


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## Jolard (Feb 14, 2006)

EJP

I will wait for my new receiver, but if it doesn't fix the problem I will likely do what you did. 

It is so frustrating. This has really dampened our enthusiasm over our new Dish. Personally I wouldn't recommend dish right now, I am really frustrated. 

What makes me really mad is that the techs (I spoke to two last night) never mentioned anything about 129 problems. In fact one of them told me that he was surprised at my 129 signal strength, and said that it is only the North East that has problems with that. 

I still don't understand why a drop in signal strength would kill your receiver, either freezing it up or causing a reboot. What were they thinking when they were designing this thing?


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## Rob Glasser (Feb 22, 2005)

Jolard said:


> It is very possible that these are being caused by watching an HDTV show, and from what I understand these are on the 129 satellite, correct? Honestly I am not sure what stations it is happening on all the time, but last night's reboot did occur on a HD show. (I think it was Rave)


Bingo! This is one of the channels that is an issue on 129. It's on a high numbered transponder (which are more suseptible to drops in the area), transponder 30 if I remember right. Other channels that tend to have problems for me are HGHD, MonstersHD and HDNews. However, channels on lower transponders, i.e. StarzHD do not seem to have the problems. Keep an eye on which channels you are having problems on and then check it against the Echostar Knowledge Base to see if it's all 129 related or not. http://ekb.dbstalk.com/129list.htm


> Why would low signal strength freeze up the receiver or cause a reboot? Shouldn't it just lose signal or pixellate? It just seems like bad design to have the whole machine freeze up :eek2: Thanks to the link to the thread, it looks like I am not alone at least in the difficulties with 129.


Sometimes it does sometimes it doesn't. If I'm watching Live TV it tends to recover pretty well, especially if I change channels when the pixellation starts, or just leave it alone until it recovers. With DVR events with signal loss I typically had to reboot (it's been a while since I bothered to record off one of these channels, because of these issues, so I don't know if that is still the case.



> I have two dish 500's, one was just installed on Monday, and I am assuming it is the one pointing at 129. Should I head on to my roof and try and get a better signal? How difficult is it to do that? My wife could yell at me when the strength goes up and down, lol. (like the old days with an antenna!) If I have one dish solely responsible for 129, it seems like I should be able to point it directly at it and get a better signal, but maybe the one I am getting is as good as it gets.


It's not hard to do, just make a note of where you start so if things get out of whack it's easy to recover. Another way to check strength is to use your cell phone and a phone in your house, or if you have an intercom function on cordless phones in the house you can use that. What I have done, which not using a Sat Signal finder, is take my cellphone, using my headset so my hands are free, call my house phone, and then put the house phone by my speakers with the receiver on the signal strength screen for 129. Then I go up on the roof and start tweaking it until I get the highest pitch signal I can get. Works pretty well.


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## pdxsam (Jun 20, 2004)

Heat was my problem with Tuner 1 failing. When tuner1 would get hot it would fail.

I got the unit swapped out and put a small fan behind the 622 blowing air in and it's been virtually flawless since.

Sam


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## SaltiDawg (Aug 30, 2004)

Jolard said:


> ...
> 
> So last night after having my recording of a show my wife wanted to watch ruined because of a freeze and spontaneous reboot, I called tech support.
> ...


If you go back to the April - May time frame you will see many people had "Spontaneous Reboot" problems. I believe you will see that most found that it was *not* cable/:LNB related. It was *not* signal strength related. The frequency of these Spontaneous Reboots varied dramatically. In the 17 Days that we had our first 622 the situation deteriorated to the point that one evening we had a Spontaneous Reboot thee times in two hours.

Dish shipped us a replacement on May 17th.  It has had *absolutely no problems* in the nearly two months we have had it. The replacement is in the same location, same UPS, same everything. (Except the HDMI works - on the first one HDMI had died after 10 days.)


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## Jolard (Feb 14, 2006)

That is good news SaltiD. I am hoping my new one will be the same.

Rob,

Thanks for all your feedback, I will likely give re-aligning the dish a try tomorrow.

As for the reboots from watching a DVR'd event, I actually think that makes a little more sense. The pixellation and then channel freeze problem I have had seems to occur mostly when watching live tv. However the reboots could possibly (at least from my fuzzy memory) be from watching a DVR'd event.

All I can say is bloody hell! I feel like I am reasonable technically savvy, I don't know how "ordinary" people deal with this, Dish Network has a lot of nerve. 

So at this point I think I am going to try re-aligning the dish, and trying the new receiver they send me. 

PDxsam, I thought it might be heat related as well, although I do have a lot of space around the receiver. Maybe I should try the fan. Hopefully the new recevier won't run as hot.


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## BobaBird (Mar 31, 2002)

Jolard said:


> my original 522 installer ran two coax cables from the satellite instead of one using a splitter.


That can't be done with a splitter, it's actually a DishPro Plus Separator which can only be used if you also have a DPP switch (DPP Twin or DPP44).


> If I have one dish solely responsible for 129, it seems like I should be able to point it directly at it and get a better signal,


You can add a few points, about 10 IIRC from others' experience, by using an I-adapter on the Dish 500. That places the LNB on the centerline of the dish.


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## Steve H (May 15, 2006)

ebaltz said:


> He shoudl consider himself lucky getting that good of a signal. I only get the low 50s on 129 on my Dish1000. I am thinking of having them re-aim to get stronger signals on 129, I could live with slightly lower on 110 and 119 since those are pretty strong.


 You may want to get a 500 and use it for 129. I did and the signal went from 55 -low 60's up to the low 70's.


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## Jolard (Feb 14, 2006)

One update, I went up on my roof, and adjusted my second new 500 dish, and managed to get my 129 signal to go from averaging 65 to 70 strength to 70 to 75 strength by painfully slight adjustments. Since I made the change I haven't seen as much pixelation on the Voom HD channels, which is nice. 

Still having the reboot though. Should be receiving the new receiver today or tomorrow, so hopefully the new receiver will resolve that problem.


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## ebaltz (Nov 23, 2004)

Steve H said:


> You may want to get a 500 and use it for 129. I did and the signal went from 55 -low 60's up to the low 70's.


Is there a way to peak my 129 connection? I could live with a little lower signal on my 110 and 119.


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## Rob Glasser (Feb 22, 2005)

ebaltz said:


> Is there a way to peak my 129 connection? I could live with a little lower signal on my 110 and 119.


You can peak your DISH to whatever Sat you want. I can tell you if you go for the absolute best possible signal on 129 with a Dish1000 you will lose 110 and get a pretty weak signal on 119, at least up here in the northwest, I tried. The trick is finding that happy medium. Here is something I posted about setting up my Dish1000 in another thread recently:



Rob Glasser said:


> Your numbers remind me of my setup when I followed the install instructions with my Dish1000, i.e. peak your install for 119 and all should be setup. When I did this I had awesome numbers on 119 and 110 but my 129 signal was too low and dropouts happened almost constantly.
> 
> So, what I did next was start with the highest possible for 129, then found the ideal spot for 110 and started going between where it was for 129 and 110 until I found the ideal middle ground. Then I found the best signal for 119 and started going between it and the other middle ground until I found that sweet spot. After that I tried some subtle movements to see if it made anymore difference, which it didn't, so I left it.


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## Jolard (Feb 14, 2006)

Ok, so I have received my new receiver, got it last Thursday (the 20th) and it has been running with no problems for 5 days now. No reboots, nothing. It also appears to be running cooler, (checked the diagnostics) and seems like I might be in a good position now. 

The old receiver was an "E" model, and the new one is an "F" model. 

My advice? If you are experiencing the same problems as me, get a new one. I haven't changed anything but adjusting my 129 dish, and I was still getting reboots on the old receiver after those changes.


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## lastmanstanding (Mar 22, 2003)

I have a bigger problem. My old DVR died without my permission so I decided to upgrade to the 622 now. Works fine except for the rare reboot. Had to adapt to the DVR features and recording priorities, but we're cool with that already.

With all those channels, and now with a suite of HD experiences, there is nothing on worth watching. Too many of the HD shows boil down to a bug crawling along a stick in 1080i resolution. 70% of what is there should have been edited out long before transmission. 

I feel like a traitor. As an avid early adopter I am all for the latest and newest, greatest and coolest gear, but I just can't cheer for HD as it stands. Hopefully this is like the early time of the Internet, and what will follow with justify it all. 

I have my finger on a 1080p projector for the theater room, but after this experience, well, I don't have the heart to move forward.


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## dbconsultant (Sep 13, 2005)

lastmanstanding said:


> I have a bigger problem. My old DVR died without my permission so I decided to upgrade to the 622 now. Works fine except for the rare reboot. Had to adapt to the DVR features and recording priorities, but we're cool with that already.
> 
> With all those channels, and now with a suite of HD experiences, there is nothing on worth watching. Too many of the HD shows boil down to a bug crawling along a stick in 1080i resolution. 70% of what is there should have been edited out long before transmission.
> 
> ...


I, too, have just upgraded to 622. I am still oohing and ahing at the bug on the stick and travelogues but, yes, you can only watch them so often before they get old. I had expected to be watching the hd channels every spare minute I had but find myself returning to the history channel and tlc because there's not much on the hd at any given time that I haven't seen (although the Italy thing bears re-watching). What I am pre-excited about will be seeing some of my favorite network shows broadcast in hd. Once the 're-run' season is done with, I probably won't have to watch the bug anymore! Some of the sports things are pretty cool, also. Like the sailboat racing I saw yesterday - awesome!

Have hope that more hd content will be coming!


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## rhman044 (May 12, 2007)

Help! I have the vip622dvr receiver from dish network. It has been constantly rebooting itself every 5 minutes and sometimes it won't reboot for about 1/2 hour. What is wrong with my receiver?


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## ChuckA (Feb 7, 2006)

It is not working properly. Call Dish support and ask them to send you a new one. The one you have is obviously bad.


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## kbuente (Mar 25, 2007)

Anyone else notice pixeling while watching local HD channels such as ABC? My 129 reception (via it's own Dish 500) gets close to 85 - 90 on my tp's. The audio remains intact, just occassional gray boxing....pixeling if you will.

I don't see this on other HD channels--just the local HD.


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## emoney28 (Mar 1, 2004)

Jolard said:


> Ok, so I have received my new receiver, got it last Thursday (the 20th) and it has been running with no problems for 5 days now. No reboots, nothing. It also appears to be running cooler, (checked the diagnostics) and seems like I might be in a good position now.
> 
> The old receiver was an "E" model, and the new one is an "F" model.
> 
> My advice? If you are experiencing the same problems as me, get a new one. I haven't changed anything but adjusting my 129 dish, and I was still getting reboots on the old receiver after those changes.


How do you find out what model you have? I checked all over this site and have had no luck.


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