508 PVR flakiness with P168?

[MRP]

I've had P168DCMD-N in my 508 for a few days now and overall I am pretty happy with the new PVR functionality provided by the software upgrade. I did, however, experience a new problem last night. While watching a previously PVRed movie, I hit the pause button and nothing happened. As a matter of fact, all the middle cluster of buttons had stopped working: FF, REW, Pause, Play, Stop, Rec, Skip Back, Skip FWD. The PVR button itself and all the other buttons worked. The only way to cancel out of the PVR movie was to hit the view button to go to live mode.

I left the unit on to see if any other symptoms developed, but only the PVR buttons were affected. This was true for both previously PVRed content and for live mode broadcasts. I finally rebooted the 508 this morning and that has corrected the problem so far, but I was curious if anyone else had experienced this.

[Bob Haller]

I took a 508 to a buddies yesterday to demo what it could do. First it did what you described then if froze altogether on a gray screen.

My friends had a comment aboiut hey its just like our Dishplayer when I rebooted by pulling the card. I believe they will go to D and I REALLY dont blame them...

[TNM]

I had the same thing happen last evening (Sat 1/25) while watching South Park on Comedy Central. I got a window that said my hard drive had problems and a code (I did not write it down, my bad) The system rebooted itself and everything seemed fine, untill I hit the back button and nothing happened. Tried the other functions. Jump forward, fast forward, pause, stop and play gives me the live msg. PVR button brings up the screen with an error message 024, Unable to access this feature at this time.
Record brings up recording options but no recording happens when selected. Rewind button does nothing. The guide has been a bit flaky in the past couple of days. This morning it had to retrive info before it would display anything past the current time. I nam going to unplug it now ant hope for the best. I do wonder if the hard drive has truly thrown some errors and the 508 is working in a limp mode without the disk, using memory only.

[Filip1]

Over the last 18 months I have seen these problems and I had hoped we had seen the end of them, but it seems not. One of my 508'froze while recording then missed the next recording. A front panel reboot fixed the problem but it has made me leary about this machine. This happened about a week ago. I also have seen a re-occurrence of an old minor bug. It's hard to describe but when a show is over on playback the erase screens come up semi-transparent. This was a problem a few months ago and seems to have had a rebirth with 168. By the way always reboot at the first sign of a problem, no reason to wait to morning.

[TNM]

I wanted to wait to mess with it today because it was late, and working and I didn't want to miss the rest of the show I was watching or the Man Show after. I also hoped that the overnight update would correct a possible corrupt guide that I was guessing may have caused the problem. This morning I see it's still misbehaving so I have pulled the smart card and it has reloaded the guide. Seems to be acting normally now. All functions are back and timers are firing as they are supposed to.
I have been very happy with this 508 compared with the Dish Player it replaced and retired to the bedroom where it can still be as bad as it wants and when I want to watch that one (about once a month) I just cycle the power before I use it. It's always locks up. I really hope this 508 is not getting like the DP.

[Jacob S]

Tivo would have been a consideration but with it being so much higher after a lifetime subscription it would make one change their mind in a hurry. $400+$250=$650