DISH Picture Glitches

[JohnRyan]

During the past week or so, I've been getting those digital glitches on my TV.  During my shows, the picture glitches or pauses or farts (whatever you want to call it) and this happens on both the 508 and 301.  AND it's not just one channel or me either, a friend is having the same issues.  Why have there been so many of these glitches all of a sudden?  It's very frustrating as every second is crucial while watching all of the reality TV shows!

If anybody could shed some light on the siteeation, that'd be great!  Thank you.

[boba]

Contact ceo@echostar.com Charlie needs to know the problems his customers are seeing. Seriously ment!

[DarrellP]

Right in the middle of recording 24 Tuesday night I was watching something else previously recorded, my PVR 501 pops up a screen that says my smartcard is not inserted properly. I go over and do a reset and it comes back up ok and resumes recording, but I missed about 3 minutes. Luckily it was a repeat.

[Dgenx321]

I've been getting that smartcard not inserted properly alot lately. It's starting to get on my nerves.

[Nick]

No such signal/IRD problems with my 7200s.

Suggest everyone state the receiver model(s) in your trouble posts.

[scaredpoet]

My 301's are both working fine, though I know they're not exactly the height of sophistication.

[jhall]

also what channels are showing the problems? You said 24, and I THINK that is an NBC show, right?

[JohnRyan]

Just recently, the issues I've had have been with ABC and FOX.  American Idol was meant to be watched WITHOUT glitches!  :)  These digital farts are getting old.

[DarrellP]

24 is on Fox.

[poeppe]

I too have been getting these glitches on my 501, it seems to be happening on most channels (Starz, WB, ABC . . .)

When I called E* Saturday night I was told that, they didn't know of anyone else having this problem and that they didn't know of anything going on that could cause this problem.

Higher rates = poorer picture


The CSR had me do a smart card reset, not sure if this helped I have only watched one hour of TV since then.

Denis

[timr21]

I've been seeing these same glitches on my 508 and on my ol' 3900.

On my 508, I've also noted glitches in recorded programs that manifest themselves as a "skip" in the program...causing me to miss as much as a few seconds of the recorded material.

TimR><>

[cameron991]

I've been getting this problem on my 6000 reciever for the past few days, not on my 508 or 301. It has made some movies unwatchable.

[ryker]

I have had picture freeze pixellation on my 501 since I got it this summer. Only occurs on 119w transponder 21 and 110 transponder 27 so far. Probably will have to get a new receiver but gonna wait until this warranty is almost up. Thankfully it is only the payperview channels and mtv2.

[Lyle_JP]

My 501 just started exhibiting this a few days ago. I can't say for certain if my 4900 has been doing the same thing or not since I haven't been watching it lately, but I just assumed what I was seeing was a signal problem, not a receiver issue.

[Turbohawk]

But only on recorded programs, never, ever have I witnessed the glitches (skips, blocking) watching live. So it obviously seems to be a problem with the hard drive(?).

Interestingly, only full length movies seem to have the glitches (anything that lasts longer than an hour), as I have yet to see any type of glitching while watching pre-recorded one-hour-or-less shows such as X-files, 70's show, etc.

Also, it doesn't ALWAYS have glitches on these full length movies. In fact, it does it less now than it did right out of the box. Is it healing itself?

The hard drive in this unit is completely silent, the fan on my PS2 is louder than the 508. Every once in a while I hear a HD click or two when changing channels ( I assume that it's clearing the buffer), but other than this I wouldn't know that it's a PVR. Understand that I did have a DishPlayer (what a piece), and it was noisy indeed.

I haven't called Dishnet yet about this as I was expecting the problem to get worse with time. I wonder if the 2 software updates I've gotten since I started using the 508 helped this situation? I really don't want to get a refurbished unit. Maybe it wouldn't hurt the HD to do a reformat or equivalent. Is there a procedure to do this on a 508?

Hmmm...gotta wonder...

[kariato]

Last night I noticed a strobe effect on NBC NY. During fast transistions on the screen it looked as if the frame rate dropped to about 5 FPS. The was no compression artifacts just good quality images but a really slow update rate. It was as if the encoder was just putting out I frame without any B and P frames during high bandwidth needs. I was assumiong it was a software fault on the encoder but since I have a model 1000, may be my decoder just could not keep up.

Thanks.