Receiver channel volatility

DirecTV system:
I've been using Hughes receivers in my motel headends for a couple of years, after I found out that they were more stable than the RCA ones, and didn't change channels by themselves.
Recently, I set up a system using RCA 420RE receivers, since the Hughes E11 receivers are getting hard to find, and the owners say that they have to put several receivers back on the proper channel every week! What's with that? They will go to the promo ch (100) for no apparent reason.
I have several possible solutions, but I thought I would ask on this board if anyone else has any ideas.

The first Idea I had would be to go into the menu's of the receivers and delete all the channels from the guide list except for the channel that the receiver is supposed to tune.

The second idea would be to install a UPS unit on the receivers, just in case the receivers are changing channels due to some kind of voltage fluctuations.

The last idea I had was to put some black tape over the "eye" on the receivers, just in case the room had some kind of signal that was causing the receivers to change channels. There is other equipment in the room such as computers, hotel reservation satellite equipment, copiers, in-house music and paging system, a lodgenet PPV system, fluorescent lighting, and the hotel telephone switch and computers.

I wasn't aware that Hughes E-11s are now in short supply. I have a stash of about a dozen, and if they are no longer readily available, I'm going to raise my price on them, because they are far and away the most reliable, inexpensive headend receivers I have used.

A few years ago, I bought them retail through Best Buy and Montgomery Wards for about $160-$180 each. Then, someting changed in the way DSS receivers were sold, and I could buy the residential ones from Circuit City for the same give-away price that residential customers paid and I didn't get any kind of a chargeback on my credit card when I activated them commercially.

I haven't tried buying receivers from a consumer electronics store recently. I've read that some receivers are now being sold without cards in them and that cards are now being more tightly controlled, so until I use up my stash of E-11s, I won't have any first hand knowledge of just what we can get away with as far as using residential products for commercial applications is concerned.

RCAs have been the worst in headend applications. The DRD303s have a service menu that can be accessed by pressing "down" and "info" at the same time. When in that menu, it is possible to enable "channel lock" and "power lock" features, which make them more suitable for headend use, but they still freeze up occasionally and need to be unplugged and replugged when that happens. Plugging the RCAs into uninterruptible power supplies did not reduce the freeze-ups

Someone in "the other Forum" (and you thought that this was "the other forum") said that the RCA 420 has a service screen that can be pulled up by pressing two other buttons at the same time. I believe they were "menu" and "left". If that doesn't do it, you might call DirecTV commercial and ask which buttons pull up the service screen on that receiver, if it has one. And of course, if the support tech says it doesn't have a service screen, you should hang up and call again, because the next tech might know about it.

I service a lot of DSS racks for a couple of national companies that use Sony receivers (B50, B55) and they are fairly stable, in that the receiver power stays on during an interruption, and the selected channel memory is firm. I always favored the Hughes over the Sony when I was selling a lot of commercial DSS headends because I could buy the Hughes for less money than the Sony, but when I compared prices of the E-11 and B-55 a few months ago, the price difference had become small.

When I said that the Hughes E11 receivers were getting hard to find, I was speaking about their availability at my local Best Buy and Circuit City stores. I understand that Hughes is coming out with some new models, and perhaps the supply of the older models is dwindling in the pipeline.
I just finished making the rounds to obtain 20 RCA DRD430 receivers for a system I'm working on. Circuit City makes you use a credit card and sign an agreement saying that you are liable for a $200 charge if you don't activate it within 90 days. In the past they had a similar agreement, and I've never been charged for putting them into a commercial system. They are selling them for $50, versus the $155 price from a wholesale distributor. There is a significant financial incentive for someone to try to obtain these receivers from a retailer in this manner. In my case I saved over $2,000 on this system alone!, which is a giant portion of the profit on the overall system price.
I wish they would do something about their pricing scheme. The last customer almost decided to obtain their own receivers, rather than pay the $195 for "commercial" receivers. I was able to talk him out of it by telling him that they might not activate a "residential" receiver in a commercial system setting.
I hate having to go around and scrounge receivers in a deceptive, though not illegal, manner.
BTW, Best Buy now says they will only sell one or two receivers to a customer, depending on the store, and Circuit City seems to have a four or five receiver limit per customer. Taking my girlfriend with me didn't work, since they knew we were together. I suppose we could enter the store as strangers, but the purchase of multiple receivers in a 15-minute period would be suspiscious. The manager of Best Buy's Biz center, which is their bulk sales division, said that DBS receivers are no longer sold in bulk, and to proceed with my deceptive buying. I'm somewhat concerned with getting my residual commissions, since they "activate" the receivers when you buy them, whatever that means.

As I understand the transaction, a DSS receiver manufacturer sells a wholesaler a receiver for a high price: like maybe $250, but at the same time gives him an advance activation credit of maybe $200, but if the receiver is not activated, which is to say, a programming account is not created and initiated, then the advance credit eventually gets removed.

A few year ago, when I looked into different dealerships that I might obtain, I was told that the commercial activation credit was much smaller than the residential activation credit. At the time, at least three years ago, I was told that the chargeback for a commercial receiver was $35.

Recently, a DirecTV dealer (they handle both commercial and residential) furnished me with three Sony B-55s for me to use in a residential installation, which had big red stickers on them that said something like "This receiver is intended for commercial use only. Failure to activate it as a commercial receiver will result in a chargeback..."
The deal I had with the dealer was, I paid him a price based on his invoice from his distributor, but if he ever got an additional chargeback, I would pay that also. I doubt that will happen, because the residential credit paid to the distributor is probably larger than the commercial credit.

Anyway, did you find a hidden, service screen on the DRD420 or DRD430 that allows you to enable the "power lock" and "channel lock" features, like the earlier RCA's had?

Hmmm
No, I haven't looked for a hidden screen to activate a power-on lock or a channel lock. I do remember reading about hidden service screens a long time ago, but have forgotten how to access them. Once, while I was on the phone with a tech at commercial dealer support they had me push some buttons to reveal some diagnostic screen(s) that I hadn't seen before, but I didn't remember the button sequence later.

I just activated 23 new RCA receivers today in a hotel. When I go back next week I'll find out if they are all still on the proper channels. I did go to the profiles menu and erase all the unwanted channels from the scan list, and I have UPS units on all the receivers.