# FROM MARK: I NOW believe the Blue Light DOES indicate a reboot (threads merged)



## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

*EDIT 3/4/04: Ignore the post that I left below. I do in fact no believe that the blue light (or amber light) on by itself does in fact indicate that the 921 has just rebooted due to user reports earlier today, and also due to another piece of information that I received today that can't yet be disclosed or talked about.*

Until this morning, I was with you guys thinking that the blue light illuminated on the 921 after being off for awhile indicated a reboot.

Now, I'm not so sure. I say this because early this morning I was deleting some recordings off of one of my 508s when I saw the blue light pop on. Within 3 seconds, I had the 921 powered on, and the receiver inputs switched. The green power light and the blue light were both on, but there was no video or audio signal from the 921. It was like the 921 was still stuck in standby mode, even with the LEDs powered up on the front of the box. There was no gray X screen, no DishHD logo, no acquiring signal message, no coming out of standby mode message. Just nothing.

So, I tried switching to SD by pressing the SD/HD button. No response. I then pressed the sysinfo button on the front of the 921, and the sysinfo screen immediately displayed on the tv. And, as soon as the sysinfo screen appeared, the audio of the channel that the 921 was tuned to also came on. I canceled out of the sysinfo screen, and the channel was displayed as normal.

Now, it's possible that the blue light came on after the reboot process was complete, but the behavior of the no video/audio and the pressing of the sysinfo button bringing it back leads me to believe that the single illuminated blue light has to do with the standby bug that I identified during the beta process, and the bug that some of you have run into that I suggested pressing the sysinfo button and then power cycling the receiver. I think it's all related to the same issue, rather than the random rebooting issue.

I sent this report to Eldon this morning, but I wanted to let you all know what I saw as well. I do think that reboots are happening overnight on a somewhat "random" basis because of your reports of split recordings made overnight with the 921 left in standby mode. I just no longer think that the blue light on by itself is an indicator of a reboot.

Comments?


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

Hey Mark,

Let's hope you're right about that one! We don't want to waste debugging time going after wild geese if we don't have to! 

Let me get this straight. You were deleting files on the 508, and you saw the blue light on the 921 turn on. Then you turned on the 921 and the TV to see what was going on. The 921 didn't respond until you hit "System Info" on the front panel, and then everything came back to life.

The idea is that if it had been a reboot, you would have seen the dish 921 medalian, then the "acquiring signal" dialog, etc.. 

I guess the only thing to answer in order to be conclusive is to find out if the blue light comes on at the beginning or the end of the reboot sequence if it does actually come on when the reboot happens.

If it happens at the end of a reboot sequence, then it is back to the drawing board. Otherwise, the reboot didn't happen (assuming again that the blue light goes on at the beginning of a reboot).

So, the question is.... Has anyone watched a spontaneous reboot happen? When it happens, does the blue light come on, and if it does, is it at the beginning or the end of the sequence??


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## bcw (Sep 15, 2003)

While I was playing around swapping inputs to my dp34's I realized that during a 'smart card' reboot there is a long period of apparent inactivity during the reboot. The blue hd light is on, but the only button that appears to do anything is the power button. During some of the long inactivity the sys info button will not do anything. I don't remember if I hit sys info when the 921 finally came back up or not.


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## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

My feeling is that the blue light being on in the morning is not related to a reboot; it seems unlikely that the receiver is rebooting every single night, and yet pretty much every single day the blue light is on when I wake up in the morning. Thus, I agree with you Mark that the blue light being on does not necessary represent a reboot.


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## anderdea (Jan 13, 2004)

Mark,
I haven't had the blue light indicator issue. What I have had however, at least once a day is with the 921 powered off, and all lights off, the amber (SD) light will come on with no input from me. At least I think no input from me! I am having the previously mentioned incident of the 921 turning on or off when I use the 921 remote to turn my TV on. 

If I turn the 921 power on, it comes up with no problem and when I turn it off the the amber light will also go off only to come on (no power light on) at another time.

I haven't seen it reboot with the new 1.46 software while the unit has been on. I do however, think it has rebooted while off at least twice as I have had two recorded shows split into two unequal time segmants.

Don


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## markcollins (Jan 27, 2004)

anderdea said:


> Mark,
> I haven't had the blue light indicator issue. What I have had however, at least once a day is with the 921 powered off, and all lights off, the amber (SD) light will come on with no input from me. At least I think no input from me! I am having the previously mentioned incident of the 921 turning on or off when I use the 921 remote to turn my TV on.
> 
> If I turn the 921 power on, it comes up with no problem and when I turn it off the the amber light will also go off only to come on (no power light on) at another time.
> ...


I think if you are in SD mode you will have the amber light and in HD the blue light,maybe someone else knows for sure.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

That sounds reasonable. I very rarely put my 921 into SD mode, and I don't believe I've turned it off while in SD mode.


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## 4HiMarks (Jan 21, 2004)

jsanders said:


> I guess the only thing to answer in order to be conclusive is to find out if the blue light comes on at the beginning or the end of the reboot sequence if it does actually come on when the reboot happens.
> 
> If it happens at the end of a reboot sequence, then it is back to the drawing board. Otherwise, the reboot didn't happen (assuming again that the blue light goes on at the beginning of a reboot).
> 
> So, the question is.... Has anyone watched a spontaneous reboot happen? When it happens, does the blue light come on, and if it does, is it at the beginning or the end of the sequence??


I have watched plenty of spontaneous reboots, but never when the unit was off. I can't say for sure when in the process the blue light comes on, but the beginning isn't even consistent, and I don't think it happens then. Sometimes it goes to the half-tone X-windows screen first, sometimes the picture freezes, and sometimes it just goes black. Eventually all LEDs go off, the screen goes black and my TV displays "DVI no signal". After a bit I see the Dish Network HDTV medallion, then it goes black again. Then I get the "Acquiring data from satellite" message. That message blacks out for a scary second or 2, then comes back. At that point I think at least one of the LEDs is on, maybe both. Then it resumes. If I was watching a live program, I get the same channel back (sat. or OTA, SD or HD). If I was watching a recorded event, it usually does *not* resume. I then have to go back into the PVR menu, and "Start Over" (Resume is grayed out). If I was recording, the recording resumes, but it is split into two segments in the menu and the period during which the reboot happened is, of course, missing. Again, that doesn't matter whether it was sat. or OTA.

-Chris


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## guruka (Dec 27, 2003)

jsanders said:


> So, the question is.... Has anyone watched a spontaneous reboot happen? When it happens, does the blue light come on, and if it does, is it at the beginning or the end of the sequence??


Yes, I have and the blue light comes on towards the end of the process. No green light (receiver is in standby) - just the blue light.

.....G


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

A note on the "scary second or 2".

My observation is that as the box is booting, the display starts out in 480 mode. 480p on the HD output, 480i on the SD output. Somewhere in the boot process, the 921 figures out that I want 1080i, and switches gears. I'd guess the SD output probably gets turned off at the same time. I think the blue light comes on before that. I don't see the yellow light at all.

My box is in HD mode most of the time, so that's a condition of this observation.


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

It is probably reasonable to assume that the boot process doesn't change based on the previous state of the 921 (i.e. if it was in standby mode, recording in standby mode, live viewing, live viewing while recording, DVR viewing, or DVR viewing while recording). 

It would be really nice if we could find some indicator for the start of a reboot while in standby mode, to be sure that the blue light appears at the end of the standby reboot sequence. I sure can't think of one though.

I guess the developers are the one to answer the question if the booting sequence is different at all.

Is there a way we (you) can ask them that type of a question without getting in their way Mark?


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## anderdea (Jan 13, 2004)

I watch the majority of the time in the SD mode. When I want to watch a HD signal I switch to my JVC DILA projector. Do to the high cost of the Xenon bulb I am very selective in what I watch in HD. This will change soon as I will be replacing my SD direct view 32" TV with a Sony 60" HD LCD. My point, OK, here goes. Since I watch a lot more SD than HD with the 921, at least once a day, WITH POWER OFF, the amber (or Yellow) light is on. No power light on. It doesn't seem to effect anything because when I power up the video is in SD mode and looks OK. But this does occurr at least once a day, abber light on, power off.

Don


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

I asked the question about the blue light awhile ago, and their initial thoughts were that it was a holdover from the 721 code having to do with standby states. But that was more than a month ago, and things may have changed. I'll ask the question again, but I know that there are much higher priority things going on right now.


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## ErinKG (Feb 2, 2004)

I've had an issue with the blue light as well, but I think I know why it's happening. Recently, I've noticed that when I use the TV power button on the 921 remote (the one below the main power button), that it causes the lights on the 921 to flicker. Sometimes the power of the 921 actually comes on, sometimes just the blue light and very rarely nothing happens. I've also tested this by pressing TV mode and using the main power button and the same thing happens. I'm not sure if it is the TV code that is causing it, or if the remote has a problem. 

Erin


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## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

ErinKG, what you are referring to is new L146 behavior with the remote improperly controlling the 921 even when operating in "TV" mode. This is discussed at more length in another thread:

http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=23998

But certainly one bug could be related to the other, in terms of odd behavior with the lights and the receiver in general.


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## bobl (Jan 17, 2004)

I still think the blue light being on in the morning is an indicatior of a reboot during the night. Here's why-whenever a reboot occurs (forced or random some mornings) the PIP window returns to the lower right corner of the screen. I always move it to the upper right corner so I can check if a reboot has ocurred. The blue light is on in the morning every few days and in every case the PIP window has returned to the lower right corner of the screen.

Bob


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

bobl said:


> I still think the blue light being on in the morning is an indicatior of a reboot during the night. Here's why-whenever a reboot occurs (forced or random some mornings) the PIP window returns to the lower right corner of the screen. I always move it to the upper right corner so I can check if a reboot has ocurred. The blue light is on in the morning every few days and in every case the PIP window has returned to the lower right corner of the screen.


Very cool observation! It does this with a forced reboot and when the blue light special shows up? That is a great indicator! Seems like that would settle the issue, and the other observations work in harmony with it, that the blue light turns on at the end of the reboot sequence.


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## bobl (Jan 17, 2004)

Yes, the PIP window moves to the lower right corner with either a forced reboot or when the blue light is on by itself some mornings which means to me that a random reboot took place overnight (no recordings scheduled for overnight).

Bob


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## bytre (Sep 10, 2003)

Simple Simon got me thinking about this a bit further.

I belive the blue light is a side effect of a reboot, but not an intentional indicator of it. I can simulate the condition, although can't guarantee it is the same mechanism.

1: Turn the receiver off (stand by, keep power to it)
2: Pull your smart card and re-insert
3: The machine will reboot itself. When it starts up, it displays the medallion in 480p. All lights are still off. As soon as the machine switches to 1080i mode, the selected mode light (blue or amber, depending on your last setting) comes on.
4: A "Receiver is in stand-by. Booting..." (Dialog 680) your receiver is rebooting from standby mode" message comes up. After a few minutes, it vanishes and the receiver goes back into standby mode, with the light remaining on.

My speculation is that a routine is called during the boot process to read the user's preferences and set the display mode accordingly. The requirements for this routine called for turning the light on (or calls another routine that turns it on), assuming that it would only be called either when:

a: the display is initialized when the machine is turned on
b: the user changes preferences

Either case would assume that the machine is currently on and displaying, and not consider the case where the display gets initialized when the machine is in an "off" state.

I can speculate on some other variants of this, but it pretty much comes down to the same general thing.


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## bytre (Sep 10, 2003)

One more interesting observation - when the machine is in this blue light only mode (after a reboot), a black screen is displayed - not a null display (my TV shows blue if no video signal is present).


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

We have discussed the stability of L1.46 since it came out, and the reviews seem to be split evenly down the middle. Some like it better, others don't.

For me, things seem to be working a *LOT* better!

However, two thins happened that changed my circumstances......

L1.46 got downloaded, and the DTV transmitters changed function. Before L1.46 came around, all of the DTV stations on Sutro Tower in San Francisco were shut down every morning for some sort of maintenance. They are transmitting in the mornings now, and it seems to have coincided pretty well with the release of L1.46.

Do you think there is any correlation?

For those of you that have been having more troubles, are the DTV OTA stations going off the air at night, or are you for some reason loosing the 8VSB signal? When you turn the 921 off at night, is it tuned to a satellite station or a terrestrial one? Would you be willing to try tuning to a satellite station at night to see if the reboot problem becomes less significant?

You are all really good at proving an idea true or false, so let's see if this idea is "bulletproof" or not! It benefits both ways. If it is true, we helped the developers, it it isn't true, then we have eliminated a path for them to look at.


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## MNipper (Jan 20, 2004)

jsanders said:


> For those of you that have been having more troubles, are the DTV OTA stations going off the air at night, or are you for some reason loosing the 8VSB signal? When you turn the 921 off at night, is it tuned to a satellite station or a terrestrial one? Would you be willing to try tuning to a satellite station at night to see if the reboot problem becomes less significant?


Sorry to whack this theory ('cause god knows I'd love to know the problem). I get NO channels OTA. I'm in the mountains west of Denver, and get absolutely zero signal on everything I've tried. Having said that, my receiver has pretty much rebooted once a day since getting 1.46. That's not an exaggeration, either. I witness most of them, and all but a few have happened while simply watching a program.

I do notice that it doesn't take much to "corrupt" the picture that sits behind the PVR menu and/or Guide. If you do enough things while messing around in those menus, you quickly get a picture that expands well beyond the bounds of the box in the upper corner. Sometimes it "stretches" the bottom portion of the picture all the way (down) through the menu you are viewing. In short, it's obvious that there are memory corruptions (i.e. picture content where it isn't supposed to be). Anyone who has ever written code knows that once that starts (data in places that you didn't intend), it's probably just a matter of time before whatever got "stepped on", causes further problems, resulting in something else getting stepped on, and so on until eventually the whole thing implodes.

One other theory that I've also heard someone toss out in this forum is a simple memory leak (obviously induced or initiated by some sequence of events). That could also result in the random deaths that some of us appear to see for "no reason at all".

All, FWLIW....


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

Thanks for the input MNipper,

That is a good test case. You have set up the antenna to try to acquire the signal? Is the antenna still connected to the 921, or is that input completely disconnected?

I thought there was someone else that had a 921 that didn't even bother connecting the antenna inputs. Curious if that person has the same problems.

When you said, it doesn't take much to corrupt the "picture", what were you referring to? The guides, or the program being viewed? What things are you doing to get a picture that expands well behond the bounds of the box in the upper corner? When you are referring to the box in the upper corner, are you talking about the scaled program while watching the channel guide or the DVR menu? How can you tell?

I've noticed on mine that the channel guide and the DVR menu are really overlays on the screen. Try setting the transparency to medium and watch the DVR menu. Are you thinking that it is blitting bits outside of the memory range of the video memory then? How do you do that?

It would be really interesting if we could just yank out the 8VSB tuner card and see how stable the 921 is without it.


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## guruka (Dec 27, 2003)

Nope. That's not it. I just watched a reboot happen from standby (receiver off - no lights on.) I saw the DishNetwork Limited Edition Commemorative Medallion, and after the "Receiver is in Stand-by. . ." banner the receiver ended up in standby again and only the blue light was on.

Mark - I absolutely DO believe that the blue light on after the receiver was left in standby with no lights on means a reboot. I've watched it happen.

.....G


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## guruka (Dec 27, 2003)

jsanders said:


> . . .It would be really nice if we could find some indicator for the start of a reboot while in standby mode, to be sure that the blue light appears at the end of the standby reboot sequence. I sure can't think of one though.


I just watched a complete spontaneous reboot happen again from standby.

No timers firing. No user interaction at all. The 921 was off with no front panel lights on. The DVI output was not 'hot'. I saw the DishNetwork Limited Edition Commemorative Medallion, and after the "Receiver is in Stand-by. . ." banner the receiver ended up in standby again and only the blue light was on. The DVI output was now 'hot.'

Mark - I absolutely DO believe that the blue light on after the receiver was left in standby with no lights on means a reboot. I've WATCHED it happen twice now.

.....G


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

guruka said:


> Nope. That's not it. I just watched a reboot happen from standby (receiver off - no lights on.) I saw the DishNetwork Limited Edition Commemorative Medallion, and after the "Receiver is in Stand-by. . ." banner the receiver ended up in standby again and only the blue light was on.


When you put the receiver in standby, was it tuned to an OTA station? When we set a timer for anything, whether in standby or while watching something, we don't tune to an OTA station. Because we can record while in standby, it would suggest that being tuned to SAT or OTA can make a difference. I'm looking for a correlation for standby reboots.


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

guruka said:


> I just watched a complete spontaneous reboot happen again from standby.
> 
> No timers firing. No user interaction at all. The 921 was off with no front panel lights on. The DVI output was not 'hot'. I saw the DishNetwork Limited Edition Commemorative Medallion, and after the "Receiver is in Stand-by. . ." banner the receiver ended up in standby again and only the blue light was on. The DVI output was now 'hot.'


You left the TV on and waited for a standby reboot! Now that is dedication! :bang

It seems like we have plenty of evidence from this comment, and the reseting of the PIP window preference, to figure that the blue light is a reboot, and the blue light comes on at the end of the booting sequence.


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## MNipper (Jan 20, 2004)

jsanders said:


> Thanks for the input MNipper,
> 
> That is a good test case. You have set up the antenna to try to acquire the signal? Is the antenna still connected to the 921, or is that input completely disconnected?
> 
> ...


Hopefully I can address most of your questions. I suspect that I may already see one difference (and this could be a key difference).....

I still have the OTA antennae connected, but nothing (obviously) configured on it, and it truly gives no signals on any channels.

Here are two ways to corrupt the picture, but first you need to know that my system is configured for High Transparency (probably not important), and (more importantly) Transparent Guide is NOT enabled. So, when I select PVR or Guide, I always get the scaled picture in the upper right-hand corner (and the picture NEVER fits within the window that is drawn).

Recreating problems....
If I am on an SD channel, and I go to PVR, and then begin viewing a program, and allow it to finish, it will jump back to the program-specific PVR menu, and the last image of the recorded program will be in the scaled window. I THEN select Erase (and confirm that), the 921 will obviously begin erasing the program. However, it automatically jumps back to whatever SD (live) station I had previously been tuned to before jumping into PVR. The kicker is that instead of displaying that station in the upper box, the station is now displayed under the "deletion window" (that window that tells you it's going to "take a long time to delete"). The problem is that the SD image being displayed is stretched into la-la land. It fills the entire screen, but you are probably seeing only the middle 1/9th (??) of that SD picture. It remains that way until the deletion completes, and then corrects itself. However, it is certainly a significant bug, and one has to wonder what is happening with all of that picture content when this occurs.

The "stretching the bottom of the scaled picture" problem that I mention is a constant when jumping to a menu from an HD program. Once again, it attempts to display the program in the scaled window, but again, the picture is always bigger than the window, and the bottom portion of the picture will "stretch" most of the way down the screen (behind the transparent menu). Depending on what the picture content was in the lower slice of the scaled window, you can see (or not) that it is actually stretching material taken from that bottom slice. I.E. if it's just "blue sky", then obviously you just see a big blue block. If it is printed material, then you can see the stretched lettering (stretched down behind the menu).

Again... that picture content is obviously not where it is supposed to be, and (again), computer data that is in the wrong place, is a "good first step" to something subsequently going right down the tubes.

So... again, it sounds like some folks are enabling the Transparent Guide, and possibly not using the "scaled program". I wonder if that is a key difference in some of the stability problems that some of us are reporting(?).


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

Since you don't get any OTA stations anyway, would you mind disconnecting the antenna? It probably won't make a bit of difference, but it still eliminates a variable.

I will try recreating the first problem you mentioned. I've seen very similar things to what you are describing with medium transparency btw.

Is the "stretching the bottom of the scaled picture" problem different? If so, how do you reproduce that one?

You are right, memory leaks are generally bad things, and they can be hard to track down too. 

However, a memory leak onto the video display generally isn't an issue (if it *stays* in video memory) other than being unsightly. It is when, in this case, it blits data to a place that you can't see, say to some of the control registers of the video card or a data structure. If it blits data to the video memory, then that is what you see, but that strictly wouldn't cause instability in itself. If it writes to memory that you don't see on the screen, that can be a real problem!


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Guruka - that's pretty conclusive. My basis was that the component video was not hot immediately after the process.


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## guruka (Dec 27, 2003)

jsanders said:


> You left the TV on and waited for a standby reboot! Now that is dedication! :bang


I guess I just lucked out (twice.) The TV was on, the 921 was off, and I was sitting in the room working on my laptop. The TV shows "YPBPR" onscreen when the DVI input isn't hot and "Digital" when it is hot, so it was easy to see. It was the sudden appearance of the medallion onscreen that made me look up.

.....G


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

I have changed my opinion about this, and have edited the first post in this thread, and the title of the thread to reflect that.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

I'm going to merge this thread with my Blue Light thread.


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## bytre (Sep 10, 2003)

btw, my setup has no OTA channels configured and no OTA antenna connected, although I could get a number if I hooked it up (LA area)


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

bytre said:


> btw, my setup has no OTA channels configured and no OTA antenna connected, although I could get a number if I hooked it up (LA area)


Cool. How often does your 921 reboot??


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

I tried setting my transparancy level to "high", without having transparancy "enabled". When I enter the DVR menu, sure enough, the Preview box is simply a cropped image. The entire image is underneith the rest of the menu, the transparancy is an overlay in this case. Actually, I changed the horizontal overscan on my tv such that I can see the edges of the overlay. However, the channel being viewed is shifted down a bit, and the image looks like it might be stretched or zoomed. It is hard to tell. I've seen this before actually. It is definetly a problem, I'm not sure it would cause a memory leak though. It depends a huge amount on how everything is implemented.


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## wileadams (Dec 6, 2002)

I have noticed the last two night while staying up to get caught up on work that the 921 seems to reboot itself at about 2:40am. Or at least mine has turned on and rebooted the last two nights at that time.


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## David_Levin (Apr 22, 2002)

Then I guess I'm getting 1-2 reboots a day. I almost never walk up to the box (after overnight or work) without the blue (or amber) light on.


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## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

If, as noted, the blue light coming on by itself really is directly connected to the receiver rebooting (always), then I'm experiencing at least 2 reboots a day as well, since it's always on in the morning and always on when I get home from work (even though the receiver is off).


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## guruka (Dec 27, 2003)

David_Levin said:


> Then I guess I'm getting 1-2 reboots a day. I almost never walk up to the box (after overnight or work) without the blue (or amber) light on.


Yup. I concur. With L1.46 I'm getting 1 to 2 reboots every 24 hours.

<fingers crossed> New software is spooling now.

.....G


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## TV Director (Feb 14, 2004)

FYI...I just had the new 147 software downloaded, and when all was said and done the blue light was on while the unit was off.


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

TV Director said:


> FYI...I just had the new 147 software downloaded, and when all was said and done the blue light was on while the unit was off.


Maybe it is supposed to reboot when it downloads the new software! Maybe that is the mulligan.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

The receiver is designed to reboot itself after a new software version is downloaded and installed.


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

wileadams said:


> I have noticed the last two night while staying up to get caught up on work that the 921 seems to reboot itself at about 2:40am. Or at least mine has turned on and rebooted the last two nights at that time.


Okay, that is good to know. Is there anything significant happening around 2:40am? Are any DTV stations going off the air at that time?


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

wileadams said:


> 18 HD stations off-air, but where is UPN?


The UPN thing must be a local problem. They transmit Enterprise and Jake 2.0 in HD here. However, the encore showing of Enterprise is ony SD, make sure you watch it on Wednesday.


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## ggw2000 (Dec 22, 2003)

NOT over thrilled with this L146/L147 S/W. My 921 is now pretty much rebooting everyday when before it was once every 3-4 days. Last night it gave the infamous "x" while watching a HD recorded program but aleast did not dump the program off the harddrive. This was about 7:15pm and I had a timer set to record Cold Case on CBSHD at 8pm. About 8:15 I noticed that the red light was not on, went into the guide and found that it had also dumped the timer after the reboot. Will the unwelcome quirks with this unit ever be corrected- I sure hope so. I would rather see them as I mentioned in another thread schedule an automatic reboot at 4 am everyday until stability has been achieved... Gerry


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## topom (Jan 4, 2004)

ggw2000 said:


> NOT over thrilled with this L146/L147 S/W. My 921 is now pretty much rebooting everyday when before it was once every 3-4 days.]
> 
> I am experiencing the exact same phenomenon. With L146 I saw the blue light maybe 1-2 times/week at most. Now, it is on every morning.
> 
> :nono2:


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## thevoice (Sep 24, 2002)

For starters, I have had many reboots with L146 and never had a blue light indicator... On the other hand, a few days before I took L147 - I had the blue light all night and even when I woke up in the morning, I then turned on my satellite and watched T.V for at least 6 hours, with no reboot. These are some of the reasons I do not believe the blue light is an indicator.


Now for the logical side of me trying to prove a point, for those of us (and I am sure there are many of us here) when coding in Linux this code would probably be done in something as basic as writing to a device node to turn the lights on or off. There are so many instances in code when this can happen, it could be hard to debug this (especially when the receiver isn't really turned off when it is in standby) that is why on the 7/921 you can record when the power light is off (unlike any of the other receivers that I know of).

I guess my point is that the receiver probably has a "device node" enabled b/c of HD mode blue light indicator, it may check in with the xserver every now and then and it happens to be at a time when you are in standby (causing the blue light to come on). 

I can't picture a bug indicating (blue light) a reboot as if dish new it was about to reboot they probably would know of the bug/s causing the reboot and it would have been fixed by now. - Got me? This would make it very simple for them to fix the problems!

Well I hope this helps you all (software and non software oriented) understand a little more about my point as I am pretty sure it is correct in this manor, but then again - I am only a programmer so I do make mistakes!


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

Here is a question for you, "The Voice". You claim that you have seen reboots that don't end up with the blue light on. What about looking at things from a different perspective. Have you seen the blue light magically turn on by itself when a reboot didn't occur (when in standby mode)? How did you know that a reboot didn't occur when the blue light magically came on? If a tree falls, and there is nobody to hear it, did it make a noise?

To say that you see reboots without the blue light, therefore a spontaneous blue light in standby mode doesn't indicate a reboot is sophestry! It is the same as sayng that all elephants are animals, therefore all animals are elephants! It's simply not true. It's not logical either.

Reboots in standby mode may occur without the blue light, that isn't in question. It could be determined by looking to see if the PIP preferences get reset spontaneously. It does appear to be the case that when the blue light turns on while in standby mode, it is an indication of a reboot. Many people here have provided ample proof of this, just read through the first part of this thread.

If the 921 developers use the blue light as a debug indicator (if that is what you were talking about, the sentence was hard to read), it doesn't mean that they know why it was rebooting. It only means that they know it *is* rebooting. It doesn't make it any easier to learn *why*, and solve the problem.

You do understand that we are talking primarily about rebooting that occurs while the receiver is in standby mode, right? No real way to see a reboot occur without the blue light turning on, unless you noticed some preferences spontaneously reset.


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

By the way, it was BobL that gave reference to detecting a reboot by detecting preference changes when he said, 

"I still think the blue light being on in the morning is an indicatior of a reboot during the night. Here's why-whenever a reboot occurs (forced or random some mornings) the PIP window returns to the lower right corner of the screen. I always move it to the upper right corner so I can check if a reboot has ocurred. The blue light is on in the morning every few days and in every case the PIP window has returned to the lower right corner of the screen."

Read the first part of the thread to get the context.


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## TV Director (Feb 14, 2004)

I DON'T think the blue light indicates a reboot. Many times when I shut the reciever down for the night, the blue light will appear only seconds after I turn the receiver off. A few times I've turned it immediately back on, and a reboot was NOT in progress.


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

TV Director said:


> I DON'T think the blue light indicates a reboot. Many times when I shut the reciever down for the night, the blue light will appear only seconds after I turn the receiver off. A few times I've turned it immediately back on, and a reboot was NOT in progress.


Does the blue light stay on, or is it transient? Have you ever seen the unit power off properly, and then seen the blue light on in the morning?


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

TV Director said:


> I DON'T think the blue light indicates a reboot. Many times when I shut the reciever down for the night, the blue light will appear only seconds after I turn the receiver off. A few times I've turned it immediately back on, and a reboot was NOT in progress.


Maybe it is more accurate to say you dont think it *always* indicates a reboot. We have seen many cases where it actually did indicate a reboot.


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## guruka (Dec 27, 2003)

TV Director said:


> I DON'T think the blue light indicates a reboot. Many times when I shut the reciever down for the night, the blue light will appear only seconds after I turn the receiver off. A few times I've turned it immediately back on, and a reboot was NOT in progress.


Hmmm... EVERY time I turn the 921 off (via remote OR front panel button) the blue light goes off and stays off - unless the receiver reboots. This is consistent. I'm using DVI out for HD and S-Video for SD - component outs are not connected.

.....G


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## TV Director (Feb 14, 2004)

jsanders said:


> Does the blue light stay on, or is it transient? Have you ever seen the unit power off properly, and then seen the blue light on in the morning?


It will stay on if I don't mess with it. In other words if I turn the unit on and then off, the blue light will disappear. But it will be there again in the morning. And yes, I have seen the unit power off properly...at least 50% of the time. Personally, unless this is a symptom of a larger problem...this really is only a minor annoyance to me as it doesn't seem to affect any function of the unit (at least that I know of).


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## thevoice (Sep 24, 2002)

jsanders said:


> To say that you see reboots without the blue light, therefore a spontaneous blue light in standby mode doesn't indicate a reboot is sophestry! It is the same as sayng that all elephants are animals, therefore all animals are elephants! It's simply not true. It's not logical either.
> 
> You do understand that we are talking primarily about rebooting that occurs while the receiver is in standby mode, right? No real way to see a reboot occur without the blue light turning on, unless you noticed some preferences spontaneously reset.


Well I guess this may help you see my perspective then (I was trying to simplify it). What I am trying to say is that when you have a blue light on in standby, it isn't necessarily indicating a reboot. It maybe just be a minor bug w/ a device node setting. You say it isn't logical, why not? Makes perfect sense to me, but then again - I program for a living so bugs seem to follow.

You also tell me I am not looking at this in a different perspective, this is why I am telling you guys this! I just am saying it doesn't always indicate a reboot, especially in my situation.

I have tested many things and am not trying to rip on what others have to say before looking into it myself (I leave that to the conservatives), I am just trying to help.

My tests seem to have different results than some of you guys. I didn't get the blue light when I rebooted in standby as others. It seems to me you are saying either way you look at it a blue light comes on after reboot (That is what I think you are saying and this was something I did test) Try putting your receiver in standby (this is when you hit the front power button) No lights should be on. Then pull/reinsert the smartcard (emulated reboot). What do you get? I get the logo and acquiring data screen but never a blue light. Then try having it powered on and doing the same, what do you get? I get both lights then the blue one (indicating the device node was set properly).

Besides, a majority of my reboots are during the viewing of an event and not when the receiver is in standby. I have researched this and researched it multiple nights in a row after I saw the blue light in standby, these are my results.

#1 - No logo - I have turned the TV on many of the times when I see the blue light and there is no logo or graphics. We all know that when the 921/721 reboots you get a logo (probably from the frame buffer as the Xserver isn't loaded yet). I have nothing on the screen, if it was rebooting wouldn't you see something, at least acquiring data screen?

#2 - Records - I have studied this problem and many others. I have studied it to a point of taken out my drive (this will void your warranties) and observed what is going on. I can tell you almost exactly when my receiver did @ what time and I can tell one thing for sure - it never rebooted during the time of the blue light or after.

For the record, I did read through the first part of the thread (mainly Garukas) and nothing seemed to prove exactly what was going on to me. The PIP windows moving could be anything and I wouldn't trust that over a log. Mainly what was mentioned was a blue light only in standby and reboot. I have had plenty of the blue lights when in standby and NEVER a reboot (before or after). This is why I posted this, not to post false information, but give you guys another perspective.

Sorry if I didn't reply to the analogy you gave as I still don't get it...


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

Hi, "The Voice". I think we are starting to be on the same page now. If you read the first part of the thread, the very first part, you will note that Mark didn't think that the blue light indicated a reboot. 

So, the question was posed, does the blue light happen at the start of the sequence, or at the end of the reboot sequence. A number of people, verified it to be at the *end* of the sequence. That is why you don't see the logo, or the "acquiring data" screen. If you see the blue light, that stuff has already happened.

Then Guruka, had the TV on, while the receiver was in standby mode. He did see the dish logo, then the acquiring data screen, and *after* that, the blue light.

When I try with a forced reboot, I see the dish logo, then the first acquiring data screen, then the blue light, with another, brief receiver is in standby, acquiring data screen. After just a moment the screen goes blank because the receiver is in standby. There are two ways to force the reboot, force the reboot while the receiver is in standby mode, and force the reboot while the power is on. You get two different results.

If you turn on the tv when you see just a blue light, you won't see a picture, because the 921 is in standby mode. If you see a blue light and a green light, then something will be showing because the 921 is on. I hope that makes sense.

You have taken your hard drive out to look at "records"? What records are you looking at? Have you forced a reboot at a specific time, according to the 921's clock, *then* removed your hard drive to see if you can detect your forced reboot at your pre-determined time?


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

TV Director said:


> It will stay on if I don't mess with it. In other words if I turn the unit on and then off, the blue light will disappear. But it will be there again in the morning. And yes, I have seen the unit power off properly...at least 50% of the time. Personally, unless this is a symptom of a larger problem...this really is only a minor annoyance to me as it doesn't seem to affect any function of the unit (at least that I know of).


That is interesting, I've never seen the blue light stay on when I turn off my receiver. I know it is a stupid (obvious) question, but if you leave the TV on while you turn it off, and the blue light stays on, I take it you don't see any rebooting sequence, right? You said you can power it on and off again in short order, so sounds like it isn't rebooting.

Could you try the PIP window experiment for when you see a blue light in the morning? Hit the "PIP" button on your remote, then hit the "Position" button near the "PIP" button. The PIP window should move. The PIP window should remain in that place if you power the receiver off and on again. BobL found that when he gets the blue light, that the PIP window position resets to the bottom right position. Do you see that happeninng when the blue light magically appears in the morning?


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## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

One thing to note about this...

The screwed up TV button on the remote has an interaction with the blue light. What I mean by this is, since L146, the TV mode button now has the habit of sometimes turning the 921 on or off when "Power" is pressed. When one does this, one can actually get the blue light to go on or off as well, i.e. there are scenarios and combinations of using the SAT power and TV power buttons to get the 921 to turn off and leave the blue light on.


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## sleepy hollow (Aug 25, 2003)

thevoice said:


> I have tested many things and am not trying to rip on what others have to say before looking into it myself (I leave that to the conservatives), I am just trying to help.
> 
> ...


Huh? What kind of cheap shot is this?

You should look into specific conservative views before you "rip on" what all conservatives have to say. How "helpful" are you really trying to be?

As for the blue light deal. I get it after power off with the annoying new power button feature that should be eliminated and rerturned to it's prior state. But I do not always get it. I get the blue light in the morning as well after shutting down all night. But I do not get it every night. I am not convinced at all there is ever a reboot associated with it. In fact I am sure mine has never had a reboot associated with this blue light deal. I am also sure it is harmless, though it should not be coming on like that.


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

To summarize: It looks like we have at least three people now, (Sleepy Hollow, Slordak, and TV Director) saying similar things about the blue light going (staying on? Does it blink or flicker?) when powering down to standby mode. This really doesn't sound like a reboot issue, and seems benign.

Does this mean the blue light in the morning is equally benign? Maybe, maybe not. Some have seen reboots happen when the blue light appears at the end of the sequence. If the power is on, the reboot ends in a powered on state, if in standby mode, video is present, but turns off after the reboot is done. 

It has been observed that some preferences get reset (PIP window prefs).

My own experience has been that when the reboot happens, I loose all of my OTA channels and have to re-scan them. However, this doesn't happen all the time, I would guess around 25% of reboots.

It doesn't sound like any of us think much of the power down blue light. The question to ask is, again, does the blue light in the morning *always* indicate a reboot? We have proven cases where it does. Can anyone prove the case where it didn't mean a reboot?

Guruka's brute force method was interesting. Anyone ever seen the blue light turn on without any video happening *before* the blue light turns on?


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## sleepy hollow (Aug 25, 2003)

jsanders said:


> Does this mean the blue light in the morning is equally benign? Maybe, maybe not. Some have seen reboots happen when the blue light appears at the end of the sequence. If the power is on, the reboot ends in a powered on state, if in standby mode, video is present, but turns off after the reboot is done.


I have never initiated a reboot except while powered on



> It has been observed that some preferences get reset (PIP window prefs).


I have not noticed any of my preferences being reset. I'll set a couple and see what happens with an overnight blue light.



> My own experience has been that when the reboot happens, I loose all of my OTA channels and have to re-scan them. However, this doesn't happen all the time, I would guess around 25% of reboots.


I have never lost OTAs with a reboot, but I have also only had my OTAs since L146 and have had only one reboot.



> It doesn't sound like any of us think much of the power down blue light. The question to ask is, again, does the blue light in the morning *always* indicate a reboot? We have proven cases where it does. Can anyone prove the case where it didn't mean a reboot?


I cannot prove it, except I do know the blue light was not on after I got L147 which came during standby mode and should have caused a reboot, I believe.



> Guruka's brute force method was interesting. Anyone ever seen the blue light turn on without any video happening *before* the blue light turns on?


Not exactly sure what you mean, but I can say there is no video output on the components when the blue light comes on without the power light. If I turn on the TV when the blue light only is on, there is no signal. Also no audio. Must power down and then on again. Everything works fine then.


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

sleepy hollow said:


> Not exactly sure what you mean, but I can say there is no video output on the components when the blue light comes on without the power light. If I turn on the TV when the blue light only is on, there is no signal. Also no audio. Must power down and then on again. Everything works fine then.


Try this: Turn the TV on, then turn the 921 off. Do a reboot of the 921 when the power is off. You will see the medallion logo, then the "Acquiring Data, rebooting receiver in standby mode" bit. The blue light then comes on, then probably a 2nd acquiring data screen. After that, the video turns off. This is because the 921 reboots and goes into standby mode. At this point, you will see a blue light, however, no picture on the screen. If you saw the blue light on, and turned on the TV, you would see nothing because the reboot video was already finished.

What I am asking, is if anyone has had the TV on (while the 921 is in standby), seen nothing on the screen, i.e., no medallion, or acquiring data screen, and suddenly see the blue light magically come on.


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

Whoops! Forgot to mention the conclusion, that forced reset while in standby mode ends up with the blue light on and no video signal. Which is what we have termed, the bluel light special.

Anyway, since some have seen the light come on when the 921 is put into standby mode, it can be said that not all blue lights are created equal. Some are created from a reboot, and in the power down case, they are not. The question again is, are all blue lights when the 921 was safely put into standby mode, the result of a standby mode reboot?


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## thevoice (Sep 24, 2002)

sleepy hollow said:


> Huh? What kind of cheap shot is this?


Sorry, didn't mean to step on your toes - just doing it for a laugh as I was trying to lighten things up...


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## TV Director (Feb 14, 2004)

Let me try to clear up what I see. Sometimes when I turn off the receiver at night...the blue light goes out, but COMES BACK ON a few seconds later. THEN, I have turned the TV back on and everything seems normal. I then power off the receiver and the blue light goes off, but is almost always on when I get up in the morning. I'm at work right now, but I'll try the PIP suggestion when I get home later tonight. One thought though...it kind of struck me that I'm getting pretty used to letting the TV power switch just turn off the receiver, too. I wonder if the blue light is just a symptom of the TV power switch bug? Just a thought...


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## guruka (Dec 27, 2003)

jsanders said:


> What I am asking, is if anyone has had the TV on (while the 921 is in standby), seen nothing on the screen, i.e., no medallion, or acquiring data screen, and suddenly see the blue light magically come on.


Nope. Never. .....G


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

guruka said:


> Nope. Never. .....G


Ah, man, Guruka has been watching the blank screen again! !rolling I'm guessing that the whole Dish vs. Viacom dispute wasn't that inconvenient for him. :hair:


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## TV Director (Feb 14, 2004)

A couple of points here. First, I was able to actually trigger the blue light to come on. :eek2: I hit theTV on/ off button on the remote and while the TV came on...only the blue light came on on the receiver. So I powered everything off again, and after a couple of tries made the blue light come on again. Second, I tried the PIP test as suggested above. I set the PIP window in the upper left corner of the screen. Fiddled with the TV on/off switch a couple times until the blue light came on. Then powered up the receiver and checked the PIP window position. It was still in the upper left where I had left it. It did not default to the lower right even though I was able make the blue light come on.
Conclusions?  Who the heck knows, I'm a Director not an engineer! I still have a hunch the blue light might be a product of the TV on/off switch bug. As for the PIP window test...triggering the blue light to come on may not be a valid test of this theory. I'm going to check the PIP window position in the morning when the blue light is glowing on its own.
Hope this is somehow helpful..in the meantime this HD stuff is sweet!


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

_"Huh? What kind of cheap shot is this?

You should look into specific conservative views before you "rip on" what all conservatives have to say. How "helpful" are you really trying to be? 
"_

Hey I know the answer to this-
As a mother tongue-engineer taking a grad program in scientific data collection through UofFa few years ago, I was corrected by an academia member scientist(PHD). He told me that all good science is politically motivated, has a political agenda and all good scientists are liberals. I questioned this as I thought good science was the pursuit of the truth. He said," not if it upsets your political agenda." 
Does this now make sense? LOL! 
Later, working for a volunteer program that that was directed by this same person, I discovered scientific data was being manipulated to show results favoring his agenda. This and several other reasons resulted in my resignation from the volunteer program. 
Today I don't trust any "scientific" data as truth by definition. All data needs to be verified by by politically competing sides since some scientists with established reputations seem to have different definitions.


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## sleepy hollow (Aug 25, 2003)

thevoice said:


> Sorry, didn't mean to step on your toes - just doing it for a laugh as I was trying to lighten things up...


I have strong toes. I just cannot help wondering why you thought it would be humorous rather than rude and insulting. After all we are all complete strangers to each other. Do you just assume that everyone you "speak" with agrees with your liberal views? Note I am assuming (with some fairly strong evidence) that you are liberal though I am not sure you are convinced of it.

[To eveyone else, just go past this post. Sorry to waste your time. Not directly related to the 921, but I just cannot allow such silliness to go unchided. The Lord presents many opportunities, even on this strange bulletin board thing we all use here, and believe it or not I really care about people whose logic appears to be so twisted. They should be told about real logic. That's what drives this 921 machine after all, and is the underlying source of disatisfaction with its bugs. The bugs are nothing more than logic that does not serve the intended purpose, or that even thwarts it. I think our friend, thevoice, may be applying buggy logic, and I am probing and being provocative. Thanks for your indulgence. I realize it is not my site and is paid for with someone else's money. OK, I'm done.]


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## Bogney (Jul 11, 2003)

Here is my method to determine if a reboot has occurred and when it happened.

I set a manual timer to record channel 9900 (dish 500 still frame that uses minimal disk space) starting at midnight. Today the 921 was powered down at 1am. At 9 am and the blue light was on. I checked the channel 9900 recording status and it was divided in to two sections. The first one was 259 minutes long and the second was still recording. 

This seems to indicate that there was a reboot at approximately 4:19 am eastern time.


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## TV Director (Feb 14, 2004)

For the first time in a long time, the blue light was NOT on when I got up in the morning. So much for the PIP window test! Ugh... :bang


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## TV Director (Feb 14, 2004)

Don't know if this is connected or not. For the first time in a long time I didn't have a blue light on in the morning. Now for the first time with my 2nd 921, I've had a spontaneous reboot.


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

If is of any consolation, I completely lost all of my PIP functionality after the lst few reboots! I hope it all comes back someday.


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## thevoice (Sep 24, 2002)

sleepy hollow said:


> I have strong toes. I just cannot help wondering why you thought it would be humorous rather than rude and insulting. After all we are all complete strangers to each other. Do you just assume that everyone you "speak" with agrees with your liberal views? Note I am assuming (with some fairly strong evidence) that you are liberal though I am not sure you are convinced of it.


This is the end of any post for me not dealing with the topic but because a few seemed to have taken this personal, I wanted to address it.

I was testing a theory and although I may have wanted a laugh, I still believe in what I stated. I never take things personal or as an insult from people I do not know and think it funny to see how personal many conservatives I run into seem to take things. I also get my friends stirred up daily - it is good for them, keeps them thinking.

I just read a book from Al Franken and don't quote me directly as his book does it more justice and I'm sure to get it wrong. It went something along the lines of "Conservatives look at the world and its problems like it is their mommy (when you are 4), if you say anything bad about her or question her they get MAD and whoever said it is a BAD person." I was just testing that theory while stating something that I firmly believe. About 97% of all my friends, co-workers and family are conservative so I don't know where that leaves me..


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## guruka (Dec 27, 2003)

jsanders said:


> Ah, man, Guruka has been watching the blank screen again! !rolling I'm guessing that the whole Dish vs. Viacom dispute wasn't that inconvenient for him. :hair:


<hee hee> Yeah, I'm just sittin' here contemplating my navel waitin' for that blue light to come on.

Ooommmmmm

@;-)##


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## bobl (Jan 17, 2004)

Here's a little additional information about the now labeled "blue light special". I believe there are at least two different events which can trigger the blue light coming on. One, as I mentioned previously, is a reboot which I earlier stated was confirmed by the fact that the location of the PIP window changed. I have also seen the blue light come on when simply turning the unit off as mentioned by TV Director. In this instance no reboot has occurred as evidenced by no movement in the location of the PIP window.

It seems as though other individuals are now reporting seeing the blue light when turning their units off since version L146 by using the button which turns off both the 921 and the TV (I never use this button nor the 921 remote at all since I have a Pronto style learning remote). I can add that I saw this behavior prior to the release of L146.

Prior to version L146 there was no discrete power off code but there was a discrete power on code (both codes now exist since version L146). I used to simulate a power off code by sending a discrete power on code followed by a power toggle (I sent the two codes together in a macro). These two codes in tandem always assured that the 921 was turned off regardless of whether it was turned on or off before the codes were sent. Sending these two codes together resulted in the blue light coming on because the two codes were sent without anytime between them. I was eventually able to eliminate the blue light by inserting a delay into my macro between the codes. I gradually increased this delay until the blue light never came on again.

I believe too quickly sending two codes which affect the power on/off status results in the "blue light special" although I no longer see it since release L146 as I now use the true discrete off code rather than the macro to ensure that my 921 is turned off. It may be that the new 921/TV off button is utilizing a macro to accomplish what it does and therefore is simply sending codes too fast resulting in the blue light coming on when powering down the unit (i.e. no reboot but a blue light).

Bob


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

Last night, I set PIP set to top center then shut down using the TV Power button on the 921 remote. No front panel lights on.

Blue light was on when I looked this AM. I then hit TV Power on remote. Blue light went off. Hit 921 Power on remote. Green and blue came on.

Checked things out:
- PIP position reset to bottom right
- Recording split at 07:20MST. Lost 4 minutes.


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