DirecTV Zaps all Sony receivers for 24 hours

[Rabushka]

In an act of irresponsibility that defies belief, D* zapped all Sony receivers yesterday until 6 AM this morning. After finding that the Sony receivers in my wife's study and my daughters room were not working although each was getting full signal, I called D* They were baffled and scheduled a service call for 10 days later. Not wanting to wait 10 days I called in my professsional installers thinking that there could be bad ports on the dish or faulty cables. After much testing, running jumper cables etc., the problem remained. We determined that the recievers were faulty or they needed to be reactivated because a later HR20 receiver worked when connected to the same cables. More calls to D* to reactivate the receivers didn't correct the problem. Another call to the tech department brought the suggestion to simply get new receivers! On the 8th call to D*s tech department I got a lady who said, " Oh Sony receivers? They got a download last night and won't be working until 6AM tomorrow!"

[SDizzle]

WOW!!! Never heard that one?

[TigersFanJJ]

So, are they working again?

[Rabushka]

Yes

[TigersFanJJ]

Not sure if they will give you anything, but I think I'd try to get some type of credit for those boxes not working for a day.

[Earl Bonovich]

Which particular Sony model?

As there have been probably at least 8 Sony models that I can recall off the top of my head...

Which account for several MILLION of the ~40 million receivers out there.

And right now...
There is not a single software update out there in the stream for ANY of the sony models.

[Carl Spock]

I sold a lot of Sony receivers in the past. I can guarantee you I would have heard about this over my cell phone today if this had happened to all Sony receivers.

[veryoldschool]

Which particular Sony model?

As there have been probably at least 8 Sony models that I can recall off the top of my head...

Which account for several MILLION of the ~40 million receivers out there.

And right now...
There is not a single software update out there in the stream for ANY of the sony models.
Following the posts here: Sony & Hughes HD receivers made by LG [aka Sony HD SAT 200/300] seemed to be the ones.

[Carl Spock]

I wonder if it's related at all to the problem with other LG receivers in this thread (http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=115695)?

[veryoldschool]

or this one: http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=115449
or maybe this one: http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=116447

[texasbrit]

I think that is what it probably was. It actually happened last week (Friday early morning) not yesterday. It was a change in the data stream from DirecTV. It affected all LG receivers of that "vintage" (with different brand names, Sony included), but other receivers (including other Sonys) were not affected. It only affected receivers that were rebooted, those that were not rebooted worked fine. And it was finally fixed last night. Nothing to do with a download. And you can hardly call it "an act of irresponsibility that defies belief".

[old7]

My 2 Sony SAT-T60 (Series 1 DirecTiVos) have been working fine.

[texasbrit]

My 2 Sony SAT-T60 (Series 1 DirecTiVos) have been working fine.

It only affected the older receivers made by LG including the Sony SAT200 and SAT300....

[CountryBumKin]

Glad I read this post. I have a Sony SAT-HD300. I was getting signal strenghts in the mid 90s but the unit had an error message on it about no date/time and to run the setup again (which I did but would fail each try). I was able to pull in local OTA channels but could not get the D* guide/programming. I called D* to find out what was going on the tech said unit must have went bad. I then repalced the Sony with my old RCA DTC100. (I forgot how bad the interface on that unit is).

Anyway, read this post and plugged my Sony SAT-HD300 back in. Works fine now.

Thanks forum.

[Rabushka]

Called and spoke to D*s retention. Said I would cancel unless they were prepared to compensate me for wasting almost an entire day of my time because of their action. They acknowledged the problem and said thousands of users were affected. A week of free sevice after repeated threats of cancellation.