L3.65 Software Experiences / Bugs

[Ron Barry]

Post L3.65 experiences here

[brettbolt]

Post L3.65 experiences here
I (and many others) originally reported getting the dreaded Hard Drive corrupt message in the L363 bug section. However, upon rebooting my 622 I determined that I actually have L365.

I suspect that the corruption (or what fools the receiver into thinking its corrupt) is related to a problem in the download and/or installation of L365.

I'm hoping (in a big way) that I will never see the corruption message again and that it was a one time thing related to installing L365.

[DAG]

I (and many others) originally reported getting the dreaded Hard Drive corrupt message in the L363 bug section. However, upon rebooting my 622 I determined that I actually have L365.

I suspect that the corruption (or what fools the receiver into thinking its corrupt) is related to a problem in the download and/or installation of L365.

I'm hoping (in a big way) that I will never see the corruption message again and that it was a one time thing related to installing L365.


OMG...if this is true, there will be alot of unhappy 622 owners out there who follow the directions and delete their entire drive unnecessarily.

[David_Levin]

(Mountain Time Zone)
Crap, I just missed the first 15 minutes of Earl and Betty because my 622 was setting up the new software....

Thanks Dish for screwing up one of my favorite shows and the Season Premiere of what is supposed to be one of the hottest shows this season !!!!
:flaiming

[cooldude919]

I (and many others) originally reported getting the dreaded Hard Drive corrupt message in the L363 bug section. However, upon rebooting my 622 I determined that I actually have L365.

I suspect that the corruption (or what fools the receiver into thinking its corrupt) is related to a problem in the download and/or installation of L365.

I'm hoping (in a big way) that I will never see the corruption message again and that it was a one time thing related to installing L365.

As i said in the other thread what time today did you get the error? This release did not come out until around ~6pmCST today. If you did not have the error AFTER that time, then you were still on .63.

[Ron Barry]

Did you have it set for recording David? I thought the update would only occur if you have your box in standby and it is not set to record a timer. I always wonder if it is smart enough to detect that it does not have enough time to update and reboot before a timer fires (That is why I am asking).

[cooldude919]

Did you have it set for recording David? I thought the update would only occur if you have your box in standby and it is not set to record a timer. I always wonder if it is smart enough to detect that it does not have enough time to update and reboot before a timer fires (That is why I am asking).

apparently not, poor david missed some of his shows

[David_Levin]

Did you have it set for recording David? I thought the update would only occur if you have your box in standby and it is not set to record a timer. I always wonder if it is smart enough to detect that it does not have enough time to update and reboot before a timer fires (That is why I am asking).

Yes, it was set up to record (one from OTA and the other from Dish Local HD). Both set as record "NEW" event.

I noticed it NOT recording at 7:10 - Green light was on.

Turned on the TV and got the "memory being programmed screen".

Took another 5 minutes to finish, reboot, acquire sats, and finally start recording.

So, I missed 1/2 or Earl (which is NOT airing again). I can catch the start of Betty on ABCFM or Soap - IN LOVELY STD-DEF.

[Ron Barry]

Bummer..... David... Maybe someone that has a DVDR hooked up to there 622 could burn you copy. Looks like the 622 needs some logic to not do a update if it has a program scheduled in 45 minutes or less.

[James Long]

I always wonder if it is smart enough to detect that it does not have enough time to update and reboot before a timer fires (That is why I am asking).It isn't. It is a pet peeve of mine too. I've missed the beginning of recordings because of these rare updates. They do take a while. If I were E* I would not start an update within an hour of the next recording.

[wahoolions]

Have we seen a list of what's new / fixed in L3.65? I did notice that the TV Entertainment menu (option 3 on DVR menu) is now active. Mine has four programs automatically recorded in there.

-Gary

[cooldude919]

Have we seen a list of what's new / fixed in L3.65? I did notice that the TV Entertainment menu (option 3 on DVR menu) is now active. Mine has four programs automatically recorded in there.

-Gary

That has been active for a bit on the .63. It is supposed to fix the audio issue, and a few other thinks i hope.

[moman19]

I'm having new issues with 365 that I didn't have before.

1. I had two recordings (Season Passes) set to go at 9 PM CST. One on OTA and the other on satellite. The Satellite recording started on time while the OTA recording never happenned. If my update was midway thru, you would think that either none or both would start. I checked both timers and they were set to record new shows. Both programs were new (ER and Shark).

2. TV2 is studdering the video badly. TV1 video seems fine.

I'll do a hard restart later to see if it fixes these quirks.

[bkleven]

So far so good - this one installed faster than I expected, if it started coming around 5:00 MDT. I turned on the 622 at 6:30 MDT, everything was up and running. Pulled up the status page about 15 minutes later and there was L365.

I saw some lip synch issues on one of my DVR playbacks, but I have no idea if that was the original program or the playback (Star Trek Enterprise on HDNet either last night or Tuesday night). Otherwise, all looks good.

[whatchel1]

(Mountain Time Zone)
Crap, I just missed the first 15 minutes of Earl and Betty because my 622 was setting up the new software....

Thanks Dish for screwing up one of my favorite shows and the Season Premiere of what is supposed to be one of the hottest shows this season !!!!
:flaiming

Ugly betty will be coming on the ABC Family channel. So U will be able to get it that way.

[SHADO 1]

I saw some lip synch issues on one of my DVR playbacks, but I have no idea if that was the original program or the playback (Star Trek Enterprise on HDNet either last night or Tuesday night). Otherwise, all looks good.

That was from the original broadcast, as it was on both episodes these last two weeks.

[whatchel1]

The hows Grey's Anatomy and Six Degrees are totally unwatchable. It is over the weakest of the digital sd's in the area 28-1. I managed to chk and see that Grey's was bad during progress and rescheduled it for the replay tomorrow. Six Degrees doesn't play again wasn't sure even if I wanted to see the series it was a 1st test for me. Tried a soft reboot no help, will hard reboot unit but figure this one is a goner. BTW I checked Grey's out over my old workhorse Panasonic TU-HD20 it looked as good as this OTA SD ever looks ( all 980w w/humbars). They are running off the IPA (intermedate power amp) basicly

[MarkoC]

My 622 missed the first 6 minutes of Ugly Betty and Survivor. I guess I know why now . . .

[nightfly85]

I still have audio sync/loss isssues. Seamingly DD audio is the worst. Often I'll lose audio for 10 seconds or more during dvr playback of say Jericho or the Lost preview show. Lost had bad pixelation as well.

Also still no local OTA channel mapping in in LA territory. Has never worked for me and yes, I sub to SD and HD dish LA locals.

[brettbolt]

I read about this new bug in another forum and verified it on my 622.

Bug: If you pause live TV, wait a while, then press pause again it will take you to live TV! Not where you left off.

Work-around: While paused, press the "Skip Back" button. (This goes backwards only one frame). Then when you un-pause it will continue where you left off. Once you have pressed "Skip back", you will not need to press it again unless you catch up to live TV.

Yesterday (Thursday) proved to be a very bad day for my 622. I woke up to the message "Your hard drive is corrupt" and the only option to "Delete All". Then I found out about this new pause bug.

Is this pause "bug" intended to be DN's workaround for the TiVo patent infringement? Or is it unintended? If the latter, how could it have not been noticed in testing?

[tnsprin]

The bug introduced in L363, where adding or deleting an OTA channel causes the machine to lose picture and sound (and often reboot), is still there with L365

[sNEIRBO]

It isn't. It is a pet peeve of mine too. I've missed the beginning of recordings because of these rare updates. They do take a while. If I were E* I would not start an update within an hour of the next recording.

At least don't leave it up to the receiver to decide if it has enough time or not. Why not set the update to hit AFTER Primetime . . . say 3am eastern, midnight pacific.

[Mike D-CO5]

Sorry it takes me back about 30 seconds when I do the work around. I have done as you have said three times and every time it goes back about 30 or more seconds. So this work around doesn't work for me on live tv.

[boylehome]

Ugly Betty will be coming on the ABC Family channel. So U will be able to get it that way.

Is the ABC Family channel in HD? My local ABC station lost it's channel mapping and the 622 will not work with the channel with improper mapping (PSIP data corruption) so, I didn't get to seen any prime time in HD. I'm now looking forward to seeing it in HD on the ABC Family channel.

UPDATE: since I posted I found ABC Family is SD only. However, I did find that the full episode may be viewed at ABC.COM. The picture quality via Internet is quite good but is in a smaller size, but it better in quality than the satellite SD.

[ibglowin]

Just tried the pause wait 20 secs hit pause again and it didn't go to live TV on my 622 just started playing where it was paused from. It did not jump to live TV.

[ebaltz]

I read about this new bug on another forum and verified it on my 622.

Bug: If you pause live TV, wait a while, then press pause again it will take you to live TV! Not where you left off.

Work-around: While paused, press the "Skip Back" button. (This goes backwards only one frame). Then when you un-pause it will continue where you left off. Once you have pressed "Skip back", you will not need to press it again unless you catch up to live TV.

Yesterday (Thursday) proved to be a very bad day for my 622. I woke up to the message "Your hard drive is corrupt" and the only option to "Delete All". Then I found out about this new pause bug.

Is this pause "bug" intended to be DN's workaround for the TiVo patent infringement? Or is it unintended? If the latter, how could it have not been noticed in testing?



Testing?

[bobukcat]

Why would you hit pause again instead of hitting play when you wanted to re-start the show?

[gsarjeant]

Why would you hit pause again instead of hitting play when you wanted to re-start the show?

I didn't even realize you could restart by hitting pause again. Is the behavior the same when restarting with the play button, or does it work as expected?

[rfowkes]

I guess 365 started spooling sometime in the 7-8pm (EST) time frame last night (9/28) here in NY. So far so good (fingers crossed). Survivor was truncated to 53 minutes on one box but was fine on another (gotta love "Plan B"). And, more importantly, it looks like I no longer lose audio on one of the two tuners when I turn things on in the morning. (This required a soft reboot to get audio from both tuners). Here's hoping that this problem has been solved.

Time will tell.

[Ron Barry]

I still have audio sync/loss isssues. Seamingly DD audio is the worst. Often I'll lose audio for 10 seconds or more during dvr playback of say Jericho or the Lost preview show. Lost had bad pixelation as well.

Also still no local OTA channel mapping in in LA territory. Has never worked for me and yes, I sub to SD and HD dish LA locals.

I live in SoCal (North Orange County) and I get a large percentage of channels map. Including PBS. ARe you getting your OTA from Mount Wilson or from some other source?

Can you describe more of your set up because LA is one area that is definitely well supported in terms of OTA integration.

[Ron Barry]

I read about this new bug in another forum and verified it on my 622.

Bug: If you pause live TV, wait a while, then press pause again it will take you to live TV! Not where you left off.

Work-around: While paused, press the "Skip Back" button. (This goes backwards only one frame). Then when you un-pause it will continue where you left off. Once you have pressed "Skip back", you will not need to press it again unless you catch up to live TV.

Yesterday (Thursday) proved to be a very bad day for my 622. I woke up to the message "Your hard drive is corrupt" and the only option to "Delete All". Then I found out about this new pause bug.

Is this pause "bug" intended to be DN's workaround for the TiVo patent infringement? Or is it unintended? If the latter, how could it have not been noticed in testing?

This bug was not introduced in L3.65. It was introduced in L3.63 and reported in the bug thread. As for how could it not have been noticed. How do you know it was not? You are a software engineer right? Well from my experience as a software engineer, just because a bug is discovered during the test cycle does not necessarly mean it must be fixed before a release.

In my experience it all comes down to priority, severity, and complexity. All these factors go into making a decision to include a fix or wait until the a future release to address it.

Well hard to say if this is intentional behavior, but based on the behavior I hope not because it is not expected behavior. Also since there is a legit work around, they might have decided to push a fix on this one to a later release.

[Ron Barry]

At least don't leave it up to the receiver to decide if it has enough time or not. Why not set the update to hit AFTER Primetime . . . say 3am eastern, midnight pacific.

My guess is that if things go bad there is no one from engineering to jump on it. My company pushes releases at 6pm so that all required individuals are there to give it a smoke test with minimal impact to customes. In the case of DBS delivery accross the US, minimal impact is hard. Also, If I recall there are some legistically reasons why the push happens when it does.

Same goes for why the pushes are not usually done on Friday or the weekend. Too much risk.

The best solution if possible in my eyes is to enhance the download logic to only download if it is in standby and has a free hour before a timer is set to fire.

[gsarjeant]

The best solution if possible in my eyes is to enhance the download logic to only download if it is in standby and has a free hour before a timer is set to fire.

Agreed. No matter what time you choose, someone is likely to have something set up to record at that time. It would be preferable if each unit could figure out when it has sufficient free time to install.

[whatchel1]

All of my OTA signals now show about a 10 point signal decrease. This is very likely the reason my weak 28-1 is nothing but pixels buffering over & over. In fact it isn't even getting enough signal to lock on. The Panasonic TU-HDS20 is still locking on to signal.

[Bill R]

The bug introduced in L363, where adding or deleting an OTA channel causes the machine to lose picture and sound (and often reboot), is still there with L365

I have reported that problem to DISH.

[jrdnyquist]

Where are the release notes for L3.65?

[Mark Lamutt]

No release notes. All that changed was the fix for the audio drops, requiring the 622 to be rebooted to restore audio.

[whatchel1]

This is the email that I've sent to Tech Support.
Since the VIP622 firmware update 3.65 took place last night 2 things have happened. 1 The audio problems seem to have stopped (that's the good news). 2 The signal strengths for all my OTA ATSC digital channels have dropped about 10 points (this is the bad news). It has caused me to completely loose the local 28-1 over the air SD digital TV signal. It will no longer lock on to the signal. My old Panasonic TU-HDS20 tuner will still lock onto the signal. This has made it so I can no longer DVR the digital signal from KAMC TV in Lubbock, TX. In fact because of this all I got for my records (there were 3) was a jumbled mess that was completely unwatchable. Today it is even worse in that all it shows is signal has been lost. I have checked all of the OTA channels and all show the loss in signal strength.

[Ron Barry]

I will have to check my OTA signals whatchel.. I did not notice any drops last night but then again I did not check them. OTA seemed fine at my house.

[brettbolt]

This bug was not introduced in L3.65. It was introduced in L3.63 and reported in the bug thread. As for how could it not have been noticed. How do you know it was not? You are a software engineer right? Well from my experience as a software engineer, just because a bug is discovered during the test cycle does not necessarly mean it must be fixed before a release.

In my experience it all comes down to priority, severity, and complexity. All these factors go into making a decision to include a fix or wait until the a future release to address it.

Well hard to say if this is intentional behavior, but based on the behavior I hope not because it is not expected behavior. Also since there is a legit work around, they might have decided to push a fix on this one to a later release.
I don't know for sure that they didn't notice it. I assume, perhaps mistakenly, that they would hold off from releasing software that breaks a previously working feature.

And here's my vote, for whatever its worth, for E* to increase their engineering and testing staff so they don't have to make so many compromises with new releases.

As a software developer with 22 years of experience myself, I would not knowingly break an existing working feature unless someone was holding a gun to my head.

Unfortunately, the pause to live workaround that I proposed earlier does not return you to the exact point where you left off the first time you pause (its off by about 30 seconds). However, after the first un-pause, subsequent operation works as expected until you catch up with live TV.

[whatchel1]

I will have to check my OTA signals whatchel.. I did not notice any drops last night but then again I did not check them. OTA seemed fine at my house.

The weakest station sometime this afternoon has come back on. It is now showing 62 on the signal strength. The other stations are still at the same point that they were earlier. It could be possible that station was having a problem. But the total strength on all the other stations are still about 10 points lower on the signal strength scale still. The Panasonic I have doesn't show it's signal strength it just a work or drops off the cliff.

[gsarjeant]

I may be experiencing the OTA issue as well, but it's hard to tell because I'm so close to the towers. I used to receive 5 channels, 4 of which were in the high 90s - 100% and one of which was in the mid 80s. Now I have one at 100, one in the high 90s, two in the high 80s and one in the low-mid 80s with some dropouts. I'll keep an eye on it and see if it's just something atmospheric or something more systematic.

The good news for me is that I never watch the one that's dropping out. ;)

[Mike D-CO5]

I am getting the same ota strengths as before on 365 or 363 or 360. The other day I moved my skew on my sat dish to tweak the strength on 119 and 110 , which also moved my terk 44 clip on antenna and then I had to repeak the clip on antenna because I lost signal strength on my strongest hd station- cbs.

[Ewingo401]

3.65 seemed to to correct the two biggest problems I had with 3.63. The first of course was the audio drop outs, they seem to be gone now. Also I was experiencing a lot of "jumpy" video when there was alot of movement on screen on both live and recorded programming. 3.65 seems to have fixed this as well. Although for some reason my tv entertainment button has been disabled. It was working with 3.63...oh well I didn't think i would use it that much anyway.

[Ron Barry]

My guess is ewingo.. you will see it ungrey after a couple of days.

and... :welcome_s hope you find our corner of the net to you liking.

[boylehome]

My guess is ewingo.. you will see it ungrey after a couple of days.

and... :welcome_s hope you find our corner of the net to you liking.Ron,

Concerning "TV Entertainment 3," once content is included, how do we delete it? I have watched a program, but after it concludes there is no delete feature.

John

[Ron Barry]

I think the deletion and control is under Dish's Control based on the fact that it magically appears and the Delete buttons are greyed out. THat would be my assumption. Same Paradigm as VOD.

[nightfly85]

I live in SoCal (North Orange County) and I get a large percentage of channels map. Including PBS. ARe you getting your OTA from Mount Wilson or from some other source?

Can you describe more of your set up because LA is one area that is definitely well supported in terms of OTA integration.

Yes, from mount wilson.

[Ron Barry]

Hmmm I have no problems with OTA mapping. Wonder if the fact you are in Oceanside is the difference. Is Oceanside part of the LA area or consider part of San Diego? I am impressed that you can get a signal in Oceanside from Mt Wilson.

This is the first time I have heard of someone in SoCal not getting their OTAs to map.

I am surpised you can get both LA and SD locals. Well my only guess would be that subbing to both locals might be confusing the 622.

[Steve H]

Don't ask me why the I majority of my audio problems are when NASCAR is on (NBC is really bad on audio "worble")!!!!!! The race this weekend will be a good test. for what it's worth - NBC "worbles" on other shows as well but the NASCAR race seems to be the worst.

[JohnPgh24]

(Mountain Time Zone)
Crap, I just missed the first 15 minutes of Earl and Betty because my 622 was setting up the new software....

Thanks Dish for screwing up one of my favorite shows and the Season Premiere of what is supposed to be one of the hottest shows this season !!!!
:flaiming

wow... some people are never satisfied...

[MarcusInMD]

Experiencing the Pause to Live TV problem. I am thinking that this is an implementation because of the Tivo crap. Bye bye Pause Live TV.

BTW, it goes to LiveTV if you press pause to restart the video OR you press the play button to restart the paused video. It appears to me that this is by design and not some bug introduced because of strange audio drop outs.

I bet we will all have to get used to this. Thanks Tivo!! I hear your S3 is crap too.

[epaul]

I've got a question for the "live tv pause" folks. I'm at work right now and can't try it.

If you are recording a live program does the pause button work like it used to?

[David_Levin]

wow... some people are never satisfied...

Wow, far be it from me to actually expect my 622 to actually fire events at the programmed time (plus, I wasn't even experiencing the audio bug). Welcome to the forum, and thanks for the very nice first post.

PS. I think Dish was going to get 363 out the door even with minor bugs (though the audio problem was probably worse then then expected). They needed to get "TV Entertainment" up there to do the "Friday Night Lights" premiere on schedule.

Edit:
JohnPgh: As I ponder. You're initial message has the tone that you feel personally insulted. Perhaps you are an E* employee and just signed up to defend yourself. If so, you were probably under a huge amount of pressure to get the audio fix out. And, we do appreciate the software fix (even though the bug should not have gotten out in the first place).

But that's not to say this update couldn't have been handled better. As many people have mentioned. Update during off-hours. And, even better, add logic to the 622 so it doesn't start reprogramming the flash (memory), within 1 hour of a timer.

Actually, since the boxes sometimes require a reboot after a software updated, my preference would be to download the new software, then prompt the user before installing the update (this could be an option - like the 501/508/510).

[lakebum431]

wow... some people are never satisfied...

Are you serious? This didn't happen to me, but this is a big deal! I feel for the poster big time!

[James Long]

Gentlemen. Act like gentlemen.

People complained out the wazoo about L363 and Dish issued a fix (L365). Instead of waiting for overnight they made that fix available IMMEDIATELY - which some would consider good service getting the fix out there as soon as possible.

A side effect of immediate was that IF your receiver was in standby it took the update. (Actually, that is the idea of immediate rather than a side effect.)

Updates are not instant. Once the file is downloaded and the receiver goes into the "reprogramming your receiver do not disturb" phase the receiver can not do anything else except be reprogrammed. (If a DVR event fired during the download phase it is likely that the download would abort and one would lose less of their recording as all the receiver has to do is reboot and possibly grab the EPG).

The complaint boils down to "my receiver was broken and E*'s fix came at a bad time". Balance that against the demands to get a fix ASAP and you should be able to see the problem - and ask yourself "do you want it fixed or not"?

People who were watching TV (or had their receivers on) when L365 spooled were not affected by the availability of L365. But for the FEW that happened to have their receivers off there was a problem. (L363 did not cause the missed record - the combination of the availability of L365 and your receiver being in standby caused the missed record).

Sorry - perhaps E* shouldn't work so hard to fix things?

Whine when it breaks and whine when E* fixes it. I believe that is the point JohnPgh24 was getting at.

[lakebum431]

James -
I disagree with you on this one. I am well aware of the update process. And this is the exact reason that they usually send the updates at times other than prime time (in any time zone). The whole point of having a DVR is for it to record programs without you thinking about it. The time that they sent the update was not ideal, and I would hope that they think about this in the future. As I said before, this did not cause me a problem, but it did cause problems for several users.

[lakebum431]

And by the way, who isn't acting like a gentleman here?

[James Long]

I disagree with you on this one. I am well aware of the update process. And this is the exact reason that they usually send the updates at times other than prime time (in any time zone). The whole point of having a DVR is for it to record programs without you thinking about it. The time that they sent the update was not ideal, and I would hope that they think about this in the future. As I said before, this did not cause me a problem, but it did cause problems for several users.I believe that the first report of L365 had the update at 6:30pm EDT ... before prime time. And as noted, the receiver MUST be in standby to take the update. For the relatively few who had their receivers off for the hour before a recording the timing was a problem. But it is also a catch 22 where people were screaming "fix this immediately" and apparently not meaning "immediately".And by the way, who isn't acting like a gentleman here?Anyone who forgets that this is a support forum that has no bash rules. (The same no bash rules all of DBSTalk has, but they are expected to be followed more closely here than anywhere else.)

[lakebum431]

James, I get so tired of listening to you defend DISH all the time. At some points you just have to realize that they don't do eveything right. I think DISH does a lot of stuff right, but in this case I think they dropped the ball, and in my opinion that is an important "support" issue that DISH should be aware of. It did not spool to every receiver that was in standby at 6:30 eastern. As I'm sure you are aware not all receivers that are in standby get updates at the same time. And because of this DISH should be sure to address the issues that have already mentioned in this thread.

[Ron Barry]

Ok everyone.. I think the point has been made and there is definitely two sides to this coin.

There are logistical issues with having 3 time zones and there are possible solutions that could have prevented David's issues. I also understand there is only certain times a push may occur so you can't just through it up any old time. However, in this case the update happened during the premieres for some and that is just bad timing and added to the pain. In my opinion David brought up a good point and personally I would be a bit upset too if I ran into the issue.

As for timing.. These same type of arguments can be said about how Monday football is set so that the east coast gets to watch it at a comfortable hour while us west coast guys don't (Can't make it home for work and thank goodness for DVRs).

David had a legit point, but also there was a lot of pain that over 50% of customers were feeling and it is obvious that Dish wanted to alleviate this pain as quickly as possible and in my opinion they did and actually used this group to do.

Dish takes a lot of Damn if they do Damn if they don't rocks and as James said, This is the support forum and we like to keep it rock free. David brought up a legit point and I think Dish should hear it. Good feedback on
an edge condition.

As for dropping the ball.. I disagree lakebum.. Yes folks ran into this issue, but personally I think the benefites outweighed the downside of when they did a push. Judgement call that can be Monday morning quaterbacked to death. You have the right to your opinion as so does James, Myself and David and thats cool...

So.. lets keep it constructive and let everyone voice their opinion. STick to the topic guys and lets try an avoid the personal digs..

[lakebum431]

Now that Ron has edited his post, I agree with almost everything that Ron just said. ;) I've already voiced my opinion so I won't repost. Either way, moving on.

[RWATTS]

I was just wondering. Why doesn't E* have the downloads come at the standard call out time? For instance, my receivers check in at 3:00am every night. Why not have the updates and downloads come at that time? We can set up our receiver to make that call out at whatever time we desire. Therefore avoiding the possibility of interrupting anyone's timers. We would just have to be aware of what timers we have scheduled. Of course, E* would have to inform us an update was coming maybe 24 hours in advance. How would they do that? Maybe run a Dish Network commercial every hour for 24 hours on each channel saying the update is coming? Just trying to find a solution to this obvious "hot button". What do you guys think?

P.S. With two receivers, should they call out at the same time or at different times. I just changed the time on my second receiver to make sure the info gets updated on both. Was that necessary?

[gsarjeant]

I may be experiencing the OTA issue as well, but it's hard to tell because I'm so close to the towers. I used to receive 5 channels, 4 of which were in the high 90s - 100% and one of which was in the mid 80s. Now I have one at 100, one in the high 90s, two in the high 80s and one in the low-mid 80s with some dropouts. I'll keep an eye on it and see if it's just something atmospheric or something more systematic.

The good news for me is that I never watch the one that's dropping out. ;)

Just updating this. My OTA signal strength is fine. I fiddled with the antenna a bit and everything is back to the way it was. I suspect feline misalignment syndrome.

[MarcusInMD]

What you guys should be really arguing over is the fact that we might have just lost a feature thanks to the Tivo lawsuit. :(

[lakebum431]

What feature is that Marcus?

[brettbolt]

What you guys should be really arguing over is the fact that we might have just lost a feature thanks to the Tivo lawsuit. :(
Assuming that you're referring to the new "pause to live" bug in L363 and later, I feel as frustrated as you are. But I have discovered something to make me think it is not intentional -- its a real bug.

I have tried pausing / un-pausing at different times under different conditions. And I've found that its not consistent. At different times I can repeat the exact same procedure and get a different result -- sometimes un-pausing goes live and sometimes it works as expected. If it was intended to sidestep the TiVo lawsuit, then I would think consistency would be a requirement.

Official word from E* would be nice, along with an ETA for the fix.

[Mike D-CO5]

I only suffer from the bug on live tv /not on dvr events. I hope this gets fixed as I liked the way it worked before the L363 update. Yes, I first noticed the bug when L363 came out. I think it is a minor bug not fixed with L365.

[MarcusInMD]

What feature is that Marcus?

Read up...

Well, from here it's been reproducible every time. I can pause recorded shows just fine but if I recall correctly, one of the Tivo "patented" (what a joke) features is the ability to pause LIVE tv and stop it were it restarted. Fortunatly I don't watch much live TV anymore, but if it is NOT a bug then we might lose more features because of the lawsuit.

[brettbolt]

Read up...

Well, from here it's been reproducible every time. I can pause recorded shows just fine but if I recall correctly, one of the Tivo "patented" (what a joke) features is the ability to pause LIVE tv and stop it were it restarted. Fortunatly I don't watch much live TV anymore, but if it is NOT a bug then we might lose more features because of the lawsuit.
Yesterday it was reproducible every time for me. Today it isn't happening here. Go figure. In fact, I was so surprised to see it working that I checked to see if I still had L365!

[lakebum431]

Nope, I'm well aware that some are experiencing the bug, I however am not. Therefore it is not a "Tivo related" software change. Just a bug.

[MarcusInMD]

Well thats good to hear. But it seems like a strange bug to happen to some and not others and considering that the only code change was for audio problems it makes it even more odd.

[lakebum431]

Well thats good to hear. But it seems like a strange bug to happen to some and not others and considering that the only code change was for audio problems it makes it even more odd.

How on earth could you know that? As far as I know there have been no official release notes for the new update. Also, sometimes when you try to adjust 1 thing it has adverse effects on something totally different.

[DAG]

I'm noticing the "bug" as well with pause/live tv...

We sure can't say "pause live tv!" anymore, can we?

[brettbolt]

Until they get this bug fixed, the best workaround that I know of is to press the back button once before un-pausing the first time. After that, you don't need to press the back button before un-pausing until you catch up with live TV.

This bug seems to come and go for me. It's back now :(

[dbconsultant]

I am experiencing the pause to live tv when using the pause on an event that is still recording. If it has completed the recording, the pause works fine.

Something else we just noticed. When using a search from the search history list, after the results have been retrieved and going back to the history list the search selected from history not only exists in its original position in the list but a duplicate has been placed at the top of the list - so now the same search is listed twice (or more times depending on how many times you use this item to search on). Nothing was changed on the search, just selected it and got results. This wasn't happening in 360, don't know about 363, but have 365 now and it's happening.

[Sam 8]

No major problems to speak of until these two most recent software updates hit.
I just watch TV guys, I am no where near as skilled or informed as most of you folks.
In the last 3 weeks, we have had more pixelization problems on the HD channels, and just in the past week we have started having audio dropouts as well. I can only state for certain that this has also happened on HD channels.
Yesterday, while watching Equator HD I believe I experienced what folks here call the complete audio drop out followed by the buzzing sound, which was a first for us.
Hopefully, Dish can get this all sorted out soon.

[dbconsultant]

Don't know if this is related to 3.65 but, for the first time, I saw pixellation on an SD channel tonight! Happened on TBS during the USC game. The only pixellation I've ever seen has been on HD!

[hmcewin]

Now experiencing audio drops and more pixilization than befor the update. The audio drops are momentary and do not require rebooting like in 3.63

[4bama]

Yesterday it was reproducible every time for me. Today it isn't happening here. Go figure. In fact, I was so surprised to see it working that I checked to see if I still had L365!

Same here for me. When 365 first updated I checked for the Pause bug and sure enough, it was working as described in the initial bug report here.

Yesterday it was gone!!!

It now works like before 365?? I watched a lot of football Saturday and paused live TV, paused a game being recorded and later paused a previously recorded game. Using the Pause button to resume play worked without a hitch on all modes....no more skipping to Live Tv...

As you said...go figure....SW still says L3.65 but not sure if letters/numbers changed after the L3.65. Could Dish have downloaded a quick fix???

[TBoneit]

Has anyone with the live pause problem tried doing a frame advance or slo-mo and then play? Just curious. I've always pressed play after a pause on all the Echostar DVRs. 7100, 501, 721 and now 622.

[Ron Barry]

Same here for me. When 365 first updated I checked for the Pause bug and sure enough, it was working as described in the initial bug report here.

Yesterday it was gone!!!

It now works like before 365?? I watched a lot of football Saturday and paused live TV, paused a game being recorded and later paused a previously recorded game. Using the Pause button to resume play worked without a hitch on all modes....no more skipping to Live Tv...

As you said...go figure....SW still says L3.65 but not sure if letters/numbers changed after the L3.65. Could Dish have downloaded a quick fix???

This one has been asked before. I seriously doubt Dish would push a software fix without a rev change.... From a support perspective it would be setting a bad precedence and I personally think it just would not happen. This type of practice is never done by large companies and given Dish's track record in this area it is something Dish would not do.

[jaymerkramer]

I was having the pause bug as described by everyone else. Seems to be gone today, very strange. My OTA signals have dropped by about 10 points. My local WB will not pick up at all which sucks because I only get it OTA. It works fine on my tuner built in to my plasma but now no longer will pick up on the 622. I tried rescanning channels automatically and manually, still no go. I tried doing the check switch with no switch plugged in and then doing it with switch to clear matrix( I know this shouldn't effect OTA , but ya never know). It was coming in fine before update so I don't get it. The good thing is, I was having lock ups every day after 3.63, 3.65 seems to have solved this. I have not had one lock up or audio drop since 3.65. So they fixed my big problem but created another. Patience is a virtue!

[hokie-dk]

Something else we just noticed. When using a search from the search history list, after the results have been retrieved and going back to the history list the search selected from history not only exists in its original position in the list but a duplicate has been placed at the top of the list - so now the same search is listed twice (or more times depending on how many times you use this item to search on). Nothing was changed on the search, just selected it and got results. This wasn't happening in 360, don't know about 363, but have 365 now and it's happening.

I noticed the same thing using 363.

[odbrv]

Same here for me. When 365 first updated I checked for the Pause bug and sure enough, it was working as described in the initial bug report here

Today it is gone

[MarcusInMD]

Hmm, It seems that the pause bug is now working here too. I have lost signal strength on one or two channels but it might be a local issue. Looking into it now.

[DAG]

Tonight, at about 8PM EDT, I was able to pause and unpause without erroneously going to live tv. I noted this was on my CBS digital OTA from Hartford (WFSB), channel 003-01, during the show "60 Minutes." I decided to experiment and found that the pause bug was still evident on the CBS satellite mapped down local 003-00 as well as on 7381. I went to other channels and the bug was still present on my satellite ABC (WTNH) and its download as well as on its digital twin, 008-01. In fact, every channel I tested had the bug except for the OTA CBS from Hartford, WFSB. Interestingly, my Hartford CBS also has a digital station intended for the heighboring city, Springfield, Mass., on channel 003-02. It too worked normally with the pause button, even when its commercials were different from the simultaneous broadcast digital channel 003-01. Note: none of these channels tested were broadcasting HS content at thetime I tested.

I hope these observations help out in finding the cause.

Update 10/2/06

As of this morning, the pause bug is present on all channels, digital OTAs, satellite SD and HD. Oh well. Very annoying.

[RockStrongo]

Odd, but some of my timers on OTA are X'd out....Im not recording anything arond them, so it shouldnt be X'd out. Not sure if this is new to 365, but definately a hassle. I have to go in and restore them.

[ChuckA]

Select the Xed out event and it will tell you the reason it was disabled. Maybe that will give you a hint.

[Ron Barry]

DAG,

My experience with the pause bug is similar. Seems to come and go and I have not found the reason why.

[tomcrown1]

Has anyone checked signal strength?? On my 622 I get 100 on 119 and 129 which before the update metered at 60. My 110 postion gets 60 which before the update was always 100 or above.

S T R A N G E

[Jeff P]

Has anyone checked signal strength?? On my 622 I get 100 on 119 and 129 which before the update metered at 60. My 110 postion gets 60 which before the update was always 100 or above.

Tom,

I just posted a thread on this, but my signal strength on the 129 satellite seems to have gone down considerably since L3.63/65 last week... so much so that I'm getting random dropouts on a lot of the HD channels.

My signal strength on most 129 transponders is in the mid 50s. I don't know what it was before, but this is the first time I've experienced dropouts on the 622 in nearly six months.

Note that my signal strength on 119 and 110 are still strong.

[tomcrown1]

Tom,

I just posted a thread on this, but my signal strength on the 129 satellite seems to have gone down considerably since L3.63/65 last week... so much so that I'm getting random dropouts on a lot of the HD channels.

My signal strength on most 129 transponders is in the mid 50s. I don't know what it was before, but this is the first time I've experienced dropouts on the 622 in nearly six months.

Note that my signal strength on 119 and 110 are still strong.

I saw your thread and noticed the reponse. I think the the signal strength meter on our 622 does not show the true nature of the signal we are receiving. I have not noticed any problems on any of the shows I watch.

[dbconsultant]

Reported this on the 3.65 audio loss thread but thought it should go in both places.

Someone noted that they were losing the voice track on broadcasts of programs on sat locals. You would hear the background track (music, traffic, etc.) but no voices. Commercials played fine just not the program.

I experienced the same thing on dvr recordings of Law & Order last Friday night, NBC, sat local 004 (don't have OTA) and Cold Case Sunday night, CBS, sat local 002. My locals are out of Los Angeles. I don't have OTA. Friday night the voice track came back on after 40 minutes of no voice. Cold Case had the voice track cut out intermittanly throughout the broadcast. In both cases, when the voice track was non-existent, the screen would go to a 4x3 display, then the voice track would come back on, then the screen would go to a 16x9 display. On Cold Case this happened numerous times - both recordings from the two shows were unwatchable.:(

I have the audio hooked up via optical to my a/v receiver. I also have it connected via rca composite to a dvd recorder and the sound was the same on both connections. Fastforwarding, rewinding or pausing did not correct the problem and the voice track would go out during Cold Case when I wasn't doing anything but watching it - not pausing, ffing or rewinding. Commercials were fine just the voice track on the actual programs was lost. Didn't happen during the footballl games recorded on the same channels only network programs.

[David_Levin]

I didn't watch L&O, but I'm pretty sure Cold Case was a problem at the source (I was watching the West Coast feed on 148).

Yes, the center channel was intermittantly going out. But, did you notice that when it initially came back the picture also went to 4:3? That's the station switching to the SD feed.

Then they bounced back and forth between SD & HD while they tried to get the audio fixed (with the HD center channel still broken).

Eventually (15 mins total), they figured it out and got the audio back.

[dbconsultant]

I didn't watch L&O, but I'm pretty sure Cold Case was a problem at the source (I was watching the West Coast feed on 148).

Yes, the center channel was intermittantly going out. But, did you notice that when it initially came back the picture also went to 4:3? That's the station switching to the SD feed.

Then they bounced back and forth between SD & HD while they tried to get the audio fixed (with the HD center channel still broken).

Eventually (15 mins total), they figured it out and got the audio back.

I initially thought it was the source, as well, and did note the switching between SD & HD, but when the same thing happens on L&O on NBC and Cold Case on CBS I'm more inclined to think it is a software issue. My sat locals are on 129 out of Los Angeles (I don't have OTA) and I haven't had any problems of this type until now. I e-mailed dishquality@echostar.com.

[Slordak]

What's the story with the pause button now, anyhow?

I've had several times where, after resuming from a paused state, the playback position was shifted back a number of seconds from where it was paused. I assume this is to try and eliminate audio/video synchronization problems, by skipping back to the last I-frame?

Additionally, I had a problem where the pause didn't seem to "work". I was watching "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" on 005-01 (WMAQ OTA) and I pressed the pause button. The pause bar came up and everything seemed to be paused, but when I pressed "play" to resume playback a minute or two later, playback resumed from roughly the point where it would have been had I not paused at all, i.e. I had to rewind a minute or two to get back to where I should have been paused!

[Ron Barry]

The pause issue you mentioned Slordak is a known bug that was introduced in 3.63. If you look through this thread and a few recent ones you should see a lot of talk about it.

[Slordak]

Sorry. I thought several people above were saying that felt this was fixed, when based on my experiences, I had never noticed it being a problem until 3.65. So I just wanted to confirm that this is still an active fault!

[Ron Barry]

Based on my experience Slordak. this one seems to come and go. Has a Random sort of feel to it.

[James Long]

I've only noticed it on short pauses ... the 10 second variety. Most of the time it will pause normally and restart right on the mark (if not a second earlier). About a minute later I get a jump to live. On very short pauses ... the 5 second variety ... the receiver is more likely to ignore the pause. It may have to do with how the receiver is using the hard drive - if the time to live is too short the receiver has problems.

The "fix" of hitting the back button seems to support this ... that adds more time to live to the buffer. I generally watch things well into their start time (set a DVR event then start watching the show 20 minutes late) so I normally don't see this issue. So much happens once on computers and is hard to reproduce. This one certainly has gone from 'fluke' to 'problem'.

[Mike D-CO5]

The pause button only works during recorded events . ON live tv it doesn't work and I go to live just about every time. When I attempt to go back with the back arrow , it goes back very far and then I have to use the forward arrow till I get where I was before I paused it- like with a vcr.

[borfhead]

So I haven't done a lot of testing, but this is what I've found. I have two 622's and on one, it seems to pause and restart without any problems as it should, after pausing only a few seconds to a minute or so.

On the other one (which seems to be the buggier one too) after a pause of 10 seconds up to a few minutes, it was jumping back to live TV when unpausing. I then tried the trick of hitting the back 10 second button when paused (which BTW really only goes back a few frames not seconds) it seemed to start back up at the paused location and I also noticed that after the first pause, any subsequent pause/unpause worked fine when it was all ready delayed, but as soon as I went back to Live TV and paused/unpaused it would go back to live TV, in other words, if you were delayed by several minutes, it worked properly....

But then at a different time when testing on the same box, it worked correctly the first time....go figure.

[borfhead]

I aslo am seeing video jitter again, which I though went a way a few versions ago....argh!

[Mike D-CO5]

I haven't seen any video jittering in a while but if it is there it must be related to 363 when they screwed up the pause function.

[geoinacton]

My audio is better, but not cured. I am now only getting a few dropouts clustered together for a few seconds and then it clears up. Saw video frame dropouts for a few seconds last saturday while watching Numbers that I had recorded on Friday.

I wonder if the processor(s) on the VIP622 just aren't fast enough to handle all the functionality of the unit.

[kmcnamara]

I wonder if the processor(s) on the VIP622 just aren't fast enough to handle all the functionality of the unit.

If that was the case, I wonder why the audio was OK before 3.63? They added the TV Enhancements feature and episode dates. I wouldn't imagine that would have crossed some processing power threshold.

[Skates]

My audio problems seem to be improved since the new update, however, my box seems to have become much more unstable.

It literally froze solid while recording "Dexter" Sunday night on Showtime. I was watching the program while it was recording, about 5 minutes behind the live action. I was able to get out of it, but it literally just stopped recording on its own and the screen froze.

Also, for the first time in months, it spontaneously rebooted while I was watching live TV.

Also, it has become very sluggish accepting commands from the remote since the update.

P.S. I didn't experience the 'pause' bug that others are talking about.

[65notch]

Post L3.65 experiences here

Is this when 3.65 was patched into the DVR?

If so that seems about when I started having video problems...no audio prior or since, just video.

My sat bars are good to excellent. 110, 119, 129.

I'm in N.E. L.A.

Can someone refer me to how I might be able to do the "manual reboot" or hard reboot or whatever the multiple step thing is, so I don't have to pay $30 for a tech to come out.

thanks,
Dave

[ebaltz]

My audio problems seem to be improved since the new update, however, my box seems to have become much more unstable.

It literally froze solid while recording "Dexter" Sunday night on Showtime. I was watching the program while it was recording, about 5 minutes behind the live action. I was able to get out of it, but it literally just stopped recording on its own and the screen froze.

Also, for the first time in months, it spontaneously rebooted while I was watching live TV.

Also, it has become very sluggish accepting commands from the remote since the update.

P.S. I didn't experience the 'pause' bug that others are talking about.

After months without a spontaneous reboot, my machine did so 3 times on Sunday afternoon. Decided to do a hard reboot and it hasn't happened again.

[Ron Barry]

Is this when 3.65 was patched into the DVR?

If so that seems about when I started having video problems...no audio prior or since, just video.

My sat bars are good to excellent. 110, 119, 129.

I'm in N.E. L.A.

Can someone refer me to how I might be able to do the "manual reboot" or hard reboot or whatever the multiple step thing is, so I don't have to pay $30 for a tech to come out.

thanks,
Dave

Hold down your on/off (Stanby) button on your 622 and count to 10. :D

[SonicBee777]

Hold down your on/off (Stanby) button on your 622 and count to 10. :D

OK, you can let go of the button now. :lol:

[Ron Barry]

:lol: oh... Forgot to tell them to let go. ;)

[dhclaypool]

Numerous problems since getting 3.65:

- Ignores all attempts to control through remote or front panel, requiring a reboot. Station continues to play just fine.
- Lost audio on un-pause of live TV.
- While recording on tuner 2 and watching tuner 1, changing channels on tuner 1 displays "You will stop recording your program if you continue"
- Only records to tuner 2 if simultaneous tuner 1 and tuner 2 recordings are scheduled.
- Will not record OTA if a SAT tuner 1 recording is scheduled.

[Mathew]

Figured I'd chime in and say since the 365 update I'm having the pause live t.v. problem too. Never had any problems with this box for the 6 weeks I've had it prior.

[AVJohnnie]

I've only noticed it on short pauses ... the 10 second variety. Most of the time it will pause normally and restart right on the mark (if not a second earlier). About a minute later I get a jump to live. On very short pauses ... the 5 second variety ... the receiver is more likely to ignore the pause. It may have to do with how the receiver is using the hard drive - if the time to live is too short the receiver has problems.

The "fix" of hitting the back button seems to support this ... that adds more time to live to the buffer. I generally watch things well into their start time (set a DVR event then start watching the show 20 minutes late) so I normally don't see this issue. So much happens once on computers and is hard to reproduce. This one certainly has gone from 'fluke' to 'problem'.

James, I agree with everything you've stated -- And I'll add that, for me at least, this 'problem' seems to be even more acute when viewing mpeg4 encoded/tagged content.

[odbrv]

I didn't watch L&O, but I'm pretty sure Cold Case was a problem at the source (I was watching the West Coast feed on 148).

Yes, the center channel was intermittantly going out. But, did you notice that when it initially came back the picture also went to 4:3? That's the station switching to the SD feed.

Then they bounced back and forth between SD & HD while they tried to get the audio fixed (with the HD center channel still broken).

Eventually (15 mins total), they figured it out and got the audio back.

I saw the same thing

[Jeff P]

I just realized last night that I'm also having the "pause" problem.

Boy -- what the heck was going on with this software update?

My 622 performed basically flawless for nearly 6 months until (apparently) L3.65 just wrecked all sorts of havoc...

:confused:

[MilYellow02]

Figured I'd chime in and say since the 365 update I'm having the pause live t.v. problem too. Never had any problems with this box for the 6 weeks I've had it prior.

Exactly what I was going to type. Other than the pause issue, everything seems to be A-okay.

knockonwood

[Ron Barry]

Jeff.. Just so you now the pause problem was in L3.63. L3.65 was uploaded to help the audio issues a lot of people were seeing.

[Grandude]

Last night while watching an event recorded on the hard drive, it stopped and displayed a lost satellite signal screen (sat 119 which has a good solid signal)three or four times in one hour. Had to fiddle around with selecting menu or guide or something, and then DVR and the program I was watching followed by 'resume'. Never had this before 365. Did not have to reboot but BOY was it annoying.

[Hunter Green]

I had that too last night, but that's because it was pouring rain, so I wasn't surprised.

[BillJ]

I had frequent audio stuttering and drops last night on ABC from Chicago. Not sure if this was a 3.65 problem or a problem with that particular station. It has a low signal (60) off 129 and has generally been more prone to video breakup than the other locals. IMHO E* made a big mistake not putting Chicago locals on 61.5, where signal is around 100. Even a minor rainstorm knocks out 129 because signals are so weak from that satellite.

[gsarjeant]

I had some odd video stuttering last night. I was watching a recorded episode of Ham on the Street off of the Food Network (SD). I think the recording was taken last night, possibly the night before. The beginning of the episode had a lot of stuttering in the video. I skipped ahead to see if it was an intermittent thing, and sure enough after a few skips everything was fine for the rest of the episode.

The odd part is that after the episode was over, I restarted it just to see what would happen, and this time there was no stuttering at all. So whatever happened was not a recording issue, just a playback issue, and somehow skipping ahead in the recording cleared it up.

I've noticed stuttering video on Food Network SD before. It usually clears up on its own, but once I did have to do a soft reboot. I've neevr had jittery video from an HD channel or OTA. I don't recall seeing it on any other SD satellite channels either, but I don't find myself watching them too often recently.

EDIT: If it helps, the receiver was not recording anything else at the time of playback. It was running in dual mode with the second output turned off. The TV1 output was set to one of the HD sat channels (ESPN, I think - wherever that FSU travesty was).

[bkushner]

Have we seen a list of what's new / fixed in L3.65? I did notice that the TV Entertainment menu (option 3 on DVR menu) is now active. Mine has four programs automatically recorded in there.

-Gary

Is it true this programming is recorded onto my DVR and takes up my space and I can not delete or shut it off?

[James Long]

Is it true this programming is recorded onto my DVR and takes up my space and I can not delete or shut it off?E* has set aside completely different space on your hard drive. It isn't space that you have ever had access to for your recordings.

[Rob Glasser]

Is it true this programming is recorded onto my DVR and takes up my space and I can not delete or shut it off?

Yes, but it is space on a different partition that has been reserved for On Demand content and your partition for personal recordings is not affected, it will not eat into your 30 hours worth of HD recording.

[debpasc]

I seem to be among the last groups to get the updates so I suspect I haven't had 3.65 as long as some of you. I now am having lots of picture break-up (green cells) on ABC Dish HD. Lasts less than a minute and sometimes freezes but always comes back on it's own. Also, frequent audio problems -- not drop outs or out of synch but gurggle under-water type distortion. Haven't had this before and I have component not HDMI connection.

[brettbolt]

Yesterday from 5 to 5:15 PM, my recording of the KCRA Sacramento Channel 3 news (via satellite, not OTA) was black with no audio. Then at 5:16 the audio and video came back. We had good weather here with no overcast (so I don't think it was a signal issue).

I wasn't watching it live so I don't know if the problem was receiving the video or storing it.

[stol]

Yesterday from 5 to 5:15 PM, my recording of the KCRA Sacramento Channel 3 news (via satellite, not OTA) was black with no audio. Then at 5:16 the audio and video came back. We had good weather here with no overcast (so I don't think it was a signal issue).

I wasn't watching it live so I don't know if the problem was receiving the video or storing it.

This is the time of year for solar outages. Maybe that's what caused it? Take a look at the Tech Portal on the Dish site for more info.

[James Long]

Wrong time. California had it's solar conjunction from 1:15-1:45 PM PDT.

Also the outage should have been the usual skip in the recording --- not an extended black screen. Could have been a backhaul problem (lines do get cut). Ant OTA viewers at the time to say they were just not off the air?

[JerryEl]

Numerous problems since getting 3.65:

- While recording on tuner 2 and watching tuner 1, changing channels on tuner 1 displays "You will stop recording your program if you continue"

My unit just started doing that a few days ago. Anyone know a workaround to get off that channel without cancelling the recording? I always have mine set up for Mode 1 (1 TV).

I'm also getting a message sometimes that TV2 is on and recoding something will screw up TV2's watching (can't remember the exact message). This is all since the software update as far as I know.

I tried changing it to Mode 2 and back again but it didn't seem to make any difference.

[Aliens]

Being as 3.63 is closed I thought I'd post here.

I sure wish they’d resolve the pause issue.

[gitarzan]

Jittery video is much worse on my 622 since 3.65. I now see the problem everyday. With 3.63 I was only seeing the problem maybe once a week. I see it on all the news channels the most. It is almost unviewable.

[zdman]

Problems I have had since 3.65: (Had no problems in the previous 4 months)

1. Paused a live show for a few minutes on TV1. Resumed and it had no audio. No audio on any stations. Only a power line reset resolved this.

2. Turned on TV2. No video or audio on TV2. TV1 was working fine. Finally did a power reset and then had to check switch to get issue resolved.

3. Watching a recording on DVR on TV1 while recording in the background on TV1 and TV2. Recording stopped and would not continue. Went to guide and tried to switch channels. All were blank except the OTA channels. The recording on TV1 was on an OTA channel and it kept recording. The other recording was lost. Finally did a power reset. Unit would still not work. Came up and said it was testing and the spotbeam number kept changing. Waited 30 minutes and nothing happened. Went in and did a check switch and it came up and the guide downloaded. Went and turned on TV2 and noticed its guide was downloading as well.

At this rate, I went from no problems ever to a major problem every day for three days straight. I hope this is not becoming another Dishplayer.

[lionsrule]

Jittery video is much worse on my 622 since 3.65. I now see the problem everyday. With 3.63 I was only seeing the problem maybe once a week. I see it on all the news channels the most. It is almost unviewable.

I have a MUCH HIGH FREQUENCY of jittery video with 3.65. I've had to reboot my 622 once a day 3 days in a row. I've noticed that my SD stuff (both recorded and live) is jittery, while the HD stuff is fine.

DISH PLEASE FIX THIS!!!

[lcajiga]

I too experienced loss of signal strenght, specially on 61.5 Sat. The difference between signal strenght from day to night is about 10 points. This is weird.

[Mustang Dave]

Newbie here with his first post on the forum. (Hey I heard that back there let me finish at least). :)

These are new problems after 5 months of mostly flawless sat/hd service.

The last couple of weeks I have experienced several times where my FP went black after switching channels on the 622. I could switch channels around (still had audio) but still black. I basically powered things off, reseated cables and somehow got the picture back. In the back of my mind I am hoping I don't have a failing cable and that it is a signal problem of sorts.

Tonight when I got home from work turned everything on and had the black screen of death again. Did my usual cable and power gymnastics but to no avail. I read the suggestions on here to do a reset on the front panel so I figured I would give it a try. I finally got a picture to show up after SEVERAL resets. What I didn't notice until later was that I had lost sound over the hdmi cable to the FP (I have digital out to a SS system which is my primary sound). I have tried a couple more resets and I still don't have sound over the hdmi. I think this is a similiar problem problem that I have seen on reported on this forum?

Anyway the recent interruption to my happy sat living seems to correspond to the release of this latest upgrade. I just thought I would share my experience and hope to be reading soon about the next software release. Cheers.

[Ron Barry]

:welcome_s Dave.

Seems you have a few things going? My gut tells me that your HDMI might start to be failing but that is just a guess. Next time you get a black screen, if you have component hooked up you might want to try switching and seeing it the picture is hot on the component. The reason I am thinking your HDMI might be going out is you seem to have restore your picture by playing with cables.

Just a thought and the software update is more than a week old so if you just started having issues, I would more lean towards that your HDMI port might be going, but need some more troubleshooting.

[guruka]

My unit just started doing that a few days ago. Anyone know a workaround to get off that channel without cancelling the recording? I always have mine set up for Mode 1 (1 TV). Yup. Activate PIP, switch to other tuner (PIP Swap) and tune away. .....G

[Ron Barry]

Don't need to activate PIP to do a pip swap... PIP swap will get you to the other tuner.

[Mustang Dave]

:welcome_s Dave.

Seems you have a few things going? My gut tells me that your HDMI might start to be failing but that is just a guess. Next time you get a black screen, if you have component hooked up you might want to try switching and seeing it the picture is hot on the component. The reason I am thinking your HDMI might be going out is you seem to have restore your picture by playing with cables.

Just a thought and the software update is more than a week old so if you just started having issues, I would more lean towards that your HDMI port might be going, but need some more troubleshooting.

Ron, thanks for the welcome. I am starting to believe as well that I have failing HDMI port. I have a blank screen everytime now when I power on the FP and the 622 and the only way I can get the picture to come on is to apply light, but firm pressure on the hdmi cable connection for about 5 seconds on the back of the 622 and then the screen comes on (still no sound though). Funny work around huh? I won't be putting up with it for long though calling E* for a replacement 622 tomorrow. Thanks again.

[Ron Barry]

Definitely the direction I would go Dave.. Given the experiences with the HDMI, it does seem to be a fragile point and can fail. I am sure it would not be able to handle that type work around for long. Let us know if the replacement fairs better.

[geoinacton]

I just had a good experience with L365! I have a 4:3 TV that displays HD letterboxed. I have both S-Video and component video connections from the 622 to the TV. I watch mostly HD shows. In the past, to get an SD program full screen I would have to switch to the S-Video signal and change the format to "stretch". Then to watch HD I would have to switch to the component video signal and change the format back to "normal". I just discovered that since L365, switching my TV to the S-Video input now displays SD in full screen without my having to change the format. That makes it easier to switch between SD and HD shows. It would be even simpler if SD signals could be displayed full screen on the component video input, since my TV automatically detects the type of signal and switches screen formats.

[Mathew]

I'm reposting this here as I originally posted it in the Poll thread...

I had no problems with the ViP622 until this latest update.

The problems I've experienced have happened randomly and only once for each problem. All have required a reboot.

1. Changing to an OTA channel - no audio or video on any channel.

2. Changing from an OTA channel - no audio or video on any channel.

3. Changing from an OTA channel - a frozen Point Dish screen pops up.

4. Re-positioning OTA antennae - no audio or video on any channel when closing "Local Channels" screen.

5. Hitting Stop when watching a DVR event and switching to an OTA channel - no audio or video on any channel. (This has actually happened several times.)

[JerryEl]

Yup. Activate PIP, switch to other tuner (PIP Swap) and tune away. .....G


It just doesn't want to record on tuner #1. If a planned recording is going on on tuner #2 and I try to add another recording it brings up the conflict screen to set priority -OR- if I hit record on what I'm watching it says a recording is in in progress and it wants to switch to live mode and cancel the other recording.

Can't figure it out, it never did this prior to the software update and it acts like I have only have one tuner (to record on). No way does it let me record two shows at the same time. I can watch on one channel while recording on another but can't record on tuner #1. It always records on tuner #2.

[hmcewin]

It is back. Tonight kept rebooting to a point I just turned it off. Getting very annoying this 622. Proving to be unreliable with audio drops, rebooting etc. I moved over from D and these types of things would happen a couple of times a year.

I hope Dish gets its act together and gets all the bugs out of this system. Really sorry I still have over a year to go on contract. Otherwise I would probably bail.

[odbrv]

Well the audio loss is back. I was recording a show on tuner 2 and watching a show on tuner 1. I paused the show on tuner 1. When I started the show on tuner 1 I lost all audio on tuner 1. A swap to tuner 2 brings in tuner 2 sound. I will wait for the early morning update. I don't want to reboot and lose my recording.

[JerryEl]

...I moved over from D and these types of things would happen a couple of times a year.

I hope Dish gets its act together and gets all the bugs out of this system. Really sorry I still have over a year to go on contract. Otherwise I would probably bail.

<sigh> I have 3 months left they tell me so I'm thinking of going back to "D" too. I was with them since they started and only changed because of the availability of local channels. I've since discovered my tower antenna can pick up all the digital over air channels even though I can't pick up 2 of them clearly with standard TV.

My stint with "D" was trouble free but admittedly I didn't have HD either. Maybe they have similar problems with their HD-DVR.

[ChuckA]

I had the corrupt hard drive error this morning for the first time. A soft boot did not make it go away so I clicked the Delete button. The receiver booted again and everything was okay. It did not delete the recorded programs.

[wje]

My stint with "D" was trouble free but admittedly I didn't have HD either. Maybe they have similar problems with their HD-DVR.

They did with the HR10-250, and they do with the HR20. That's why I left them, not to mention the conspicuous lack of HD content. Interestingly, the HR10 had the same HDMI issues as the 622 has had (hardware and software), and the HR20 seems to be even worse than what's been reported for the 622.

Fortunately, the 622 has worked (almost) flawlessly for me, 2 easily recoverable problems, no serious ones. See my next post....

[wje]

After about 5 months of excellent results with my 622, it had a hiccup today. I turned it on out of standby, and was greeted with a popup that said the disk was corrupted and that it would have to erase everything to recover. Given that 'proceed' was the only choice, I proceeded. It then sat for a looong time until I finally rebooted it. After a while, it came up with everything intact, so it didn't actually seem to erase anything.

I doubt this is a 365 release issue, because it sounds like some other reports I've paid vague attention to in the past.

I suppose I could be affected by some audio dropouts, though. I'll occasionally get (one every few days) about 1 sec of dropped audio. It's so infrequent that it's really not much of a problem, and it could just as well be a dropout upstream somewhere.

So, anyway, I'm still happy, and much, much happier than I was with my HR10-250!:)

[Rob Glasser]

After about 5 months of excellent results with my 622, it had a hiccup today. I turned it on out of standby, and was greeted with a popup that said the disk was corrupted and that it would have to erase everything to recover. Given that 'proceed' was the only choice, I proceeded. It then sat for a looong time until I finally rebooted it. After a while, it came up with everything intact, so it didn't actually seem to erase anything.

I doubt this is a 365 release issue, because it sounds like some other reports I've paid vague attention to in the past.


A lot of people had this problem today. You can check out this thread for more info:
http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=65633

[bkushner]

OMG...if this is true, there will be alot of unhappy 622 owners out there who follow the directions and delete their entire drive unnecessarily.

I couldn't get rid of the message but soft or hard reboot so I pushed the delete button, unit reset and has been fine and I DID NOT LOSE PROGRAMMING. I read elsewhere that others who pressed the button did not lose shows either.

[KJTEX1]

I am on my 2nd Rx and I have had the same problem with both, ie all of a sudden the Rx will arbitrarily skip from one channel to another at the quite impressive rate of @ 8 channels a second and menus pop up for no reason, is this a common problem?

[langlin]

I know this has been reported before but I just had it happen for the first time and want it to be on record. I added an OTA channel and saved the results, the 622 waited approx. 1 minute and then froze the picture, I had to do a soft reboot to clear it.

[Grandude]

I reported this in a Poll thread but thought I would include it here as I think it is a bug in the latest software:

Well, Saturday night was very annoying. I was watching ESPN, college football and three or four times I got the lost satellite signal message. I turned on my 921 to another TV and ESPN was coming in fine. Changing channel up and down again brought the channel back immediately. No amount of waiting seemed to be of any use for it to find the signal again without changing the channel.
Later in the evening I started watching a recorded program and it was interrupted by the loss of signal message. Had to change channel up and down again which stopped my viewing of the recorded program. Had to do a resume on it. Not wanting to be interrupted again I switched off of ESPN before resuming the PVR program.
I checked the signal strength on ESPN, satellite 110 transponder 17 on my 921 and it was around 69/73 and also checked the signal strength on my 622 for that same sat/transponder and it registered around 59/60.

I checked other transponders on the 622 and they were all in the 90s or higher.
The same check on the 921 showed consistantly higher levels, in the area of around 10 points higher.

I have swapped the signal cables between the 921 and the 622 earlier for this same problem and didn't gain anything.

First of all, it appears that once it gets a lost sat signal it can't recover by itself and second, it prevents watching any recorded program once this happens. I think both of these conditions are unacceptable for such a 'sophisticated' receiver.

I never had this happen prior to the latest software download(s).

Has anyone, or can someone check the signal level of Satellite 110 transponder 17, the ESPN channel and see if it is a lot lower than the other transponders and also compared to other receivers?

[tnsprin]

I reported this in a Poll thread but thought I would include it here as I think it is a bug in the latest software:

...
As far as the numbers showing lower on the 622 then the 921, that is normal. ESPN-hd is currently running about a 63 on my 622. Seems to be a solid HD broadcast at the moment

[Ron Barry]

Hmmm... Something I have not looked at but thought I would through it out. The 622s OTA scale is 0-100 while the 921 is 0-125. Being a while since I had my 921. Is the 921 dish scale the same as the 622 or are we talking apples and oranges like the OTA?

Just a thought....

[Grandude]

Hmmm... Something I have not looked at but thought I would through it out. The 622s OTA scale is 0-100 while the 921 is 0-125. Being a while since I had my 921. Is the 921 dish scale the same as the 622 or are we talking apples and oranges like the OTA?

The scales on both are 125 for satellites on the Point Dish screen.
My points are numerous:
1. Overall, the signal level(s) on the point dish screen are consistantly lower on the 622.
2. ESPNHD chan 9424, satellite 110 transponder 17 is dramatically lower than the other transponders on that satellite.
3. Once the satellite signal is lost, it doesn't appear to want to come back by itself but requires that I change channels to get the 'lost signal' screen to go away.
4. Even while watching a recorded program, if the tuner is still set on the very weak signal and the signal dips a little, it interrupts the viewing of the recorded program.

I think all of the above need to be corrected by Echostar. 1,3,an4 by repairing the software and 2 move ESPNHD to a better transponder.

[Grandude]

As far as the numbers showing lower on the 622 then the 921, that is normal. ESPN-hd is currently running about a 63 on my 622. Seems to be a solid HD broadcast at the moment

But why is the lower signals on the 622 normal. It is a newer, better, more sophisticated receiver and should work better than the 921, not worse.

Also, running 63 on ESPNHD may be fine but we are entering the winter, rainy season and are in the football season so we need, no, must have a better signal for that channel. (At least till football season is over):grin:

[Ron Barry]

The scales on both are 125 for satellites on the Point Dish screen.
My points are numerous:
1. Overall, the signal level(s) on the point dish screen are consistantly lower on the 622.
2. ESPNHD chan 9424, satellite 110 transponder 17 is dramatically lower than the other transponders on that satellite.
3. Once the satellite signal is lost, it doesn't appear to want to come back by itself but requires that I change channels to get the 'lost signal' screen to go away.
4. Even while watching a recorded program, if the tuner is still set on the very weak signal and the signal dips a little, it interrupts the viewing of the recorded program.

I think all of the above need to be corrected by Echostar. 1,3,an4 by repairing the software and 2 move ESPNHD to a better transponder.

Interesting.. Wonder why the changed the OTA to 0-100 like the 811 and kept the Dish at 0-125. Interesesting.

[boylehome]

Interesting.. Wonder why the changed the OTA to 0-100 like the 811 and kept the Dish at 0-125. Interesesting.They most likely just wished to keep it realistic. When I had my 921's I did get OTA signals over 100% on OTA, but they really were not 100% when compared to other receivers that had a scale to 100%. On the other receivers it was more like 75% to 89%. The 125% may have some factors for different ratings for the satellite signals, but even the 125% signal received on satellite 119 transponder 5 in my area is still just 100%. It is like a car gas gauge, usually they have an F for full. The gas gauge needle sometime goes past the F when the tank is full.

[jaymerkramer]

I am on my 2nd Rx and I have had the same problem with both, ie all of a sudden the Rx will arbitrarily skip from one channel to another at the quite impressive rate of @ 8 channels a second and menus pop up for no reason, is this a common problem?


This almost sounds like a neighbor has dish also or something else in the house is on the same frequency as your uhf remote. Try setting your uhf remote to a different channel to see if it solves it.

[Darrell]

This bug was not introduced in L3.65. It was introduced in L3.63 and reported in the bug thread. As for how could it not have been noticed. How do you know it was not? You are a software engineer right? Well from my experience as a software engineer, just because a bug is discovered during the test cycle does not necessarly mean it must be fixed before a release.

In my experience it all comes down to priority, severity, and complexity. All these factors go into making a decision to include a fix or wait until the a future release to address it.

Since pausing live TV and being able to resume exactly where it was paused is one of the fundamental (not minor, not extra, but fundamental) features of a DVR, then this certainly is a "severe" problem for the user.

Most of my use is time shifted, but a few days ago my son informed me of the bug. I didn't believe him (thought he must have pressed the wrong button) but I just tried it myself and yes, it does exist on my system. Not intermittently, but consistently.

We can reasonably argue about things like how many trouble calls have been received to justify resources to correct it (for all I know 99% of them may work fine) and things like that, but what we cannot argue, at least not reasonably, is whether or not this bug is severe in nature.

My thanks to the person who posted the workaround. That will get me by in the interim, but surely there are many nontechnical people out there that don't read forums like this and have this DVR with this bug. To argue this issue is not a critical issue is akin to arguing its not a critical toaster issue if a toaster cannot make toast. This issue is not a minor added feature that separates it from the competition. It's one of the very things that make a DVR a DVR (by most's definition of a DVR.)

Well hard to say if this is intentional behavior, but based on the behavior I hope not because it is not expected behavior. Also since there is a legit work around, they might have decided to push a fix on this one to a later release.

I tend to believe it's intentional to a certain degree. If they knew about it in the last release, and intentionally failed to address it in this release, then that pretty much answers the question. Any "workaround" like the one posted is surely not going to make it into enough customers' hands to reasonably warrant delay of a fix.

[Darrell]

Why would you hit pause again instead of hitting play when you wanted to re-start the show?

Bigger button :) .

Seriously, in this context they both have the same functionality. They both "un"pause.

[James Long]

I tend to believe it's intentional to a certain degree. If they knew about it in the last release, and intentionally failed to address it in this release, then that pretty much answers the question. Any "workaround" like the one posted is surely not going to make it into enough customers' hands to reasonably warrant delay of a fix.It could depend on WHEN they knew about it. Perhaps the development of L3.65 was too far along to go back once they found out there was a real issue. Instead of delaying L3.65 further (which was important for other reasons) they let the minor bug go and will fix it the next time. Or perhaps they changed something bigger and are still working on a way of getting back the full functionallity.

Frustrating? Yes. Intentional disabling of the machine? No. Just normal development. In the grand scheme of things it is an annoyance, not a critical failure.

[Ron Barry]

Since pausing live TV and being able to resume exactly where it was paused is one of the fundamental (not minor, not extra, but fundamental) features of a DVR, then this certainly is a "severe" problem for the user. ......


Well I would agree that the issue is fundamental. I would disagree with what you would classify as severe based on what software development organizations I have worked for use to classify the defect. Of course all companies use different guidelines, so I am basing mine on the 3 Fortune 500 companies I have worked for. Not sure if by severe you mean Critical or High? I will for this discussion assume Critical. Even it High was your feeling I would argue against it. To me it feels more like a moderate one but since I don't have some information in terms of exposure it could creep into the high area.

1) There is a legit workaround. In most cases if the workaround is reasonable then that in itself lowers the priority.

2) Exposure. Ok.. This is a very hard one to classify without knowing the call center numbers, but based on traffic here and the fact my wife as not even mentioned it I would think that not everyone is stumbling across this one in a daily basis. If this was the case the support forums would be draped with user poster the pain.

3) I believe this jump to start only occurs with live content and not DVR content (At least this is my experience). Once again I see this as lowering the customer exposure and pain.

4) Does it happen 100% in my case. Nope.. It has been a while since I read the posts on this issue, but when I did read them and with my experiences playing around with the defect it was not 100%. I know you stated that you were able to reproduce it 100% of the time, but based on posts here that does not seem to be the case.

Ok.. Do I think it needs to be fixed. YES... Most definitely. But I also think given the workaround and the number of times I have hit it myself with 365 I personally don't think this is huge like the audio issues of 3.63 was. I mainly watch either delayed content or recorded which I believe limits the bugs exposure. I also think that most other people's viewing habits are more on the delayed/recorded side than live since this is one of the huge benefits of a DVR.

These are the reasons why I don't personally classify this issue as severe. Perhaps your viewing habits are more along the watching live path so it feels more severe in your case. Just two opinions.. .But obviously I don't see this one as black and white as you do.

Well lets hope it is addressed in the next cut.

[vttom]

I'm having the same problem mentioned by a previous poster. Basically, anytime I visit the "Local Channels" setup menu, and do anything there other than Cancel to get back to watching something, within a few seconds to minutes, the picture goes black and the audio falls silent. I can still access the EPG and the setup menues, change the channel, etc. I've found no way to recover the picture/audio other than to reboot it with the front-panel power button.

Normally this is not a big deal, because how often do you access the "Local Channels" menu? Unfortunately, in my case, there's a lot of activity in my market with several OTA HDTV stations coming online over the course of several weeks this fall, so I find myself mucking around in that part of the setup menu quite often.

[Darrell]

Thanks James and Ron for your comments. I still disagree with the "severity" level, though. I emailed Tech Forum about the issue so maybe I'll hear something back from them as to when a fix can be expected. (edited for typo)

[Ron Barry]

Nothing wrong with disagreeing.. ;) Just wanted to through out my perspective on this particular defect given my experience.

[Grandude]

They most likely just wished to keep it realistic. When I had my 921's I did get OTA signals over 100% on OTA, but they really were not 100% when compared to other receivers that had a scale to 100%. On the other receivers it was more like 75% to 89%. The 125% may have some factors for different ratings for the satellite signals, but even the 125% signal received on satellite 119 transponder 5 in my area is still just 100%. It is like a car gas gauge, usually they have an F for full. The gas gauge needle sometime goes past the F when the tank is full.

I'm happy to report that the signal on sat110 transp17 on my 622 is now at 85. Glad to see that they have fixed the problem. MNfootball should be good for now.
Thanks Dish for fixing this.:)

[crackasmile]

On this version of software L3.65, I just experienced audio loss on TV1 through HDMI cable AND through the coax distribution. My ViP622 is new. Had it about a week. Here's what happened:

I recorded 2 NFL games simultaneously from an HD station and a SD station to show to friends later on.

I put it on single mode where I could play back both the SD and HD versions at the same time with PIP. Got them synced up so I could do an PIP swap comparison. When I finally stopped them both and went back to live TV, I had no audio on TV1 (still in single mode), but when I swapped to TV2 or tuner 2 on single mode, the audio was fine. Went back to dual mode and still no audio on TV1, but TV2 fine. I rebooted and all so fine again so far.

That will be a pain having to reboot like that is problem persists.

BTW, had the hard drive corrupt message when I first got the system and upgraded to L3.65 software. Had to reboot.

[AVJohnnie]

Still getting occasional audio drop outs on recordings with L3.65. Last evening I made a special point of watching two shows live; Star Trek Enterprise and Heroes; while my 622s also recorded them. No problems with the live content – later played back the recordings and noticed the occasional audio drop issue on both 622s, video was unaffected. One 622 runs in single mode, the other in dual. No other recordings were being done at the same time.

[Grandude]

I am still having extreme pixelation and loss of sync on primarily one channel that I have noticed so far. It is Ch5 KGO ABC local supplied by Dish in MPEG4. It seems to happen once or twice per program and gets recorded to the HD if I have it set that way.
Last night it was very severe and when it resynced the audio was way out of sync. I was able to skip back twice and that cleared it up. This was on a program that I was watching live.
Does anyone know if this is a local ch7 problem, and ABC problem, or a Dish VIP622 problem?

[lujan]

I am still having extreme pixelation and loss of sync on primarily one channel that I have noticed so far. It is Ch5 KGO ABC local supplied by Dish in MPEG4. It seems to happen once or twice per program and gets recorded to the HD if I have it set that way.
Last night it was very severe and when it resynced the audio was way out of sync. I was able to skip back twice and that cleared it up. This was on a program that I was watching live.
Does anyone know if this is a local ch7 problem, and ABC problem, or a Dish VIP622 problem?

I suspect that it is a station problem and not a 622 although it could be both. I have noticed the same from my MPEG4 ABC station except not as severe as you. I notice it once or twice for a few seconds in a one hour show.

[Mike D-CO5]

I am still having extreme pixelation and loss of sync on primarily one channel that I have noticed so far. It is Ch5 KGO ABC local supplied by Dish in MPEG4. It seems to happen once or twice per program and gets recorded to the HD if I have it set that way.
Last night it was very severe and when it resynced the audio was way out of sync. I was able to skip back twice and that cleared it up. This was on a program that I was watching live.
Does anyone know if this is a local ch7 problem, and ABC problem, or a Dish VIP622 problem?


Same here in Houston with the mpeg4 ABC Ktrk channel 13 . I have sent numerous emails to the dishquality folks over the last 7 months and I keep them updated weekly on what I'm seeing go bad in pq and audio . I wonder if this is somehow related to ABC itself in mpeg4.

[bdj6020]

I guess this finally spooled to my system two days ago. For the last two days after my programming update runs at 5am the receiver starts playing the audio from a random channel over the optical audio line. It's not showing a channel as the Dish screen saver is still up. Needless to say hearing people talking in my living room at 5am was not a plesant experience. Has anyone else noticed this odd behavior?

[DAG]

Hanging on a black screen or still image now about once per week. This did not occur with 3.63. It requires a front button reset to get out of it.

[tnsprin]

Hanging on a black screen or still image now about once per week. This did not occur with 3.63. It requires a front button reset to get out of it.

Any Particular programs? E.g. I had this yesterday trying to play this weeks Law and Order recorded form Dish's WNBC-HD). In two different spots it that program it would freeze, and ignore all controls until the receiver was rebooted.

[DAG]

Any Particular programs? E.g. I had this yesterday trying to play this weeks Law and Order recorded form Dish's WNBC-HD). In two different spots it that program it would freeze, and ignore all controls until the receiver was rebooted.

Last evening it did it while watching this week's House on DVR, Fox HD OTA. I can't remember what I was watching last week, but it was live TV.

[dbconsultant]

Up until last week, the worst sound problems I had were the stuttering but pause or reverse fixed it. Last week, we starting experiencing actual audio drop-outs and lots of them. Tried reversing but the drop-outs happened in the same place. Noticed some screen "blackouts" as well - no video but audio ok. The programs this happened were all on Sat Locals (no OTA where we live) out of LA, all dvr'd recordings (we don't watch live tv) and all the networks, CBS, NBC, ABC. Very annoying as the drop-outs always seemed to happen at crucial times during the program!!! Also happened during the football games several times as well. Nothing has changed in my set up and I use optical out to my AV receiver. Still on 3.65 software.

[Ron Barry]

My Sunday night Amazing Race on Dish HD locals really had some audio issues starting about half way through. I did a reboot and replayed and the problem was still there. This is the 2nd time I have had this experience with Amazing Race on Dish HD locals. Other than that have not seen much in terms of audio issues lately. Not sure what it is about Amazing Race, but it has been my worse show in terms of getting a recording.

[scaesare]

Same here in Houston with the mpeg4 ABC Ktrk channel 13 . I have sent numerous emails to the dishquality folks over the last 7 months and I keep them updated weekly on what I'm seeing go bad in pq and audio . I wonder if this is somehow related to ABC itself in mpeg4.

Ditto. ABC 7 local via Dish's MPEG4 feed breaks up severely several times during lost. Happened several weeks in a row now.

[debpasc]

I'm sure you've seen my posts scattered about regarding ABC HD -- same problems you are reporting here. I, too, have had e-mail back-and-forth with Dish Quality. Nothing has changed as far as I know but I have not watched any DVR playback for the last 2 evenings -- Dancing with the Stars has been pretty bad in the past, as has Desperate Housewives and The Nine. All are on tap to be watched tonight. We'll see.

[Steve H]

A couple of ways that I'm trying to describe the audio problems to Dish are "eletronic voice" and/or "computerized voice", these are in addition to the audio dropouts. Are these a good way of describing what you guys are hearing also?

[Mike D-CO5]

Occasionally I get a metallic machine sound stuttering and it then goes back to normal. Recently for 3 days I had an audio warble on the Dish Abc hd station . Every word sounded like a bird warbeling . I sent an email to the dishquality folks and they fixed it .

[dbconsultant]

I sent an e-mail to dishquality@echostar.com this morning detailing the problems we've been experiencing with audio/video drop-outs since last week. Hopefully getting details about the problems occuring will help them to fix the problem more quickly because watching programs with all that missed dialogue is really getting annoying! NCIS this week was almost impossible to watch because the audio drop-outs happened so many times!

[lujan]

I sent an e-mail to dishquality@echostar.com this morning detailing the problems we've been experiencing with audio/video drop-outs since last week. Hopefully getting details about the problems occuring will help them to fix the problem more quickly because watching programs with all that missed dialogue is really getting annoying! NCIS this week was almost impossible to watch because the audio drop-outs happened so many times!

Good luck with a resolution! I have been complaining to dishquality since 4/06 since I got the 622 about the locals on satellite (audio/video dropouts and green pixilation) and there has been no resolution yet. They keep telling me that they're working on it but I don't see it clearing up.

[dbconsultant]

Good luck with a resolution! I have been complaining to dishquality since 4/06 since I got the 622 about the locals on satellite (audio/video dropouts and green pixilation) and there has been no resolution yet. They keep telling me that they're working on it but I don't see it clearing up.

You've been experiencing this since 4/06?!?!:eek2: I've had my 622 since July and last week was the first time I'd seen it. This doesn't sound good!!!!:nono2:

[Ron Barry]

Lots of HD DMAs to tweak for sure. Los Angeles at that time was bad and it is much improved though I still think they have more work to be done. Reporting issues to dish quality is the right way to go and when doing it is always good to be specific of what channels, what programs, how often, both Live and recorded? etc. These are all things that help on these type of issues.

I mentioned a long time ago about a big paradigm shift both in delivering HD locals, MPEG4 (I know LA is not in the catagory) and new receivers. Lot of new variables in the mix an my feeling is the type of experiences are part of the growing pains. Hopefully this type of issues will be less frequent over time.

And definitely a YMMV depending on the area you are in.

[lujan]

You've been experiencing this since 4/06?!?!:eek2: I've had my 622 since July and last week was the first time I'd seen it. This doesn't sound good!!!!:nono2:

Yes, I try to stay away from the MPEG4 digital locals on satellite and watch the OTA locals instead because they are much more stable. I feel for those of you that only have the digital locals over the satellite.

[RWATTS]

Lujan,

Are you having any difficulty OTA with KOB Channel 004.01 right now? Over the last two weeks or so, I have seen a lot of breakups and then a lost signal repeatedly. It was great Sunday afternoon and evening, but horrible again by Monday afternoon. I have given up recording OTA on that channel and go to the Dish Local instead (004.00). My antenna is still fine and has not moved. Do you think this is a problem with KOB?

[debpasc]

I got fairly long response from Dish Quality about my locals over the satellite issues -- green block break-up, warbling audio, missing audio for dialogue but not background. They are working on it ... not big news, I know. However, they also said they are getting many complaints from my area about these issues so now I have a little more confidence that they really are working on it. Watched my Desperate Housewives and Dancing with the Stars DVR playbacks last night -- a little picture break-up, less than in prior weeks, and only very minor audio warbling, almost imperceptable.

[RWATTS]

Lujan,

Are you having any difficulty OTA with KOB Channel 004.01 right now? Over the last two weeks or so, I have seen a lot of breakups and then a lost signal repeatedly. It was great Sunday afternoon and evening, but horrible again by Monday afternoon. I have given up recording OTA on that channel and go to the Dish Local instead (004.00). My antenna is still fine and has not moved. Do you think this is a problem with KOB?

I e-mailed the KOB tech guys and got a response back saying they were dealing with a "very slippery issue on our end". They claim to be working on it, so that's all I can ask. I sure am glad I also get the Dish Locals now!

[lujan]

I e-mailed the KOB tech guys and got a response back saying they were dealing with a "very slippery issue on our end". They claim to be working on it, so that's all I can ask. I sure am glad I also get the Dish Locals now!

Yes, I've had a bunch of problems lately with KOB, but fortunately, I only watch one or two shows a week on this station (ER and Kidnapped). I hear that Kidnapped may be canceled due to poor ratings so it will be down to one show a week. NBC is not putting out any good shows IMHO.

[Grandude]

I have a new bug. When I am watching a recording on the hard drive which has the sound in Dolby D and a new recording starts, it drops the Dolby D and goes to pro-logic with the standard increase in volume. I then need to do a skip back or forward to get it to again start feeding Dolby D to my audio system.

At first I thought that the louder volume was just that the transmission from Dish was screwed up, but this isn't the case as I can always get it to start again with the skip back or forward. This only happens when another recording (from one of my timer setups) starts. Never at any other time.

[DAG]

Another spontaneous screen freeze while watching Harry Potter on ABC downfeed from DISH, not HD. It was a live show and no buttons were touched on the remote. Needed a front panel button press and hold.

Frustrating. These type of freeze ups are getting more common lately. Software related? Or crappy hardware again?

[DAG]

Ditto 12/3/06...increasingly annoying. I'm getting tired of my wife and kids saying "the TV is frozen".

[Tweakophyte]

Hanging on a black screen or still image now about once per week. This did not occur with 3.63. It requires a front button reset to get out of it.

I am having the same thing, too. It really just started this week. It seems to happen for me when I try to change channels. I go to change and it just locks up with a black screen. I wish they'd just make the box work. I am tired of rebooting, especially since the box is in my basement.

By the way, has anyone noticed the UHF pro remote does not have very good reception compared to the standard UHF (for my 721)? The boxes are right by each other (with the 622 on top) and the 721 kicks the 622's tush.

[bamahd]

brettbolt,
How do you recognize which 622 software version you currently have? I have received the "corrupt" message twice with my latest 622 but have not experienced any other major problems. Occasioally the picture will pixalate or go to black for a couple of seconds but this doesn't happen too often.

[Ron Barry]

Hit Menu twice on your remote and you will be able to see your software version. You should be a L3.65.

[brettbolt]

brettbolt,
How do you recognize which 622 software version you currently have? I have received the "corrupt" message twice with my latest 622 but have not experienced any other major problems. Occasioally the picture will pixalate or go to black for a couple of seconds but this doesn't happen too often.
There are a few ways to find it, but Ron's suggestion above is the fastest. However, I think you have to cancel out of the program guide first, if it is currently displayed.

It's interesting that you ask me this, because I have been checking the version number every morning, hoping for an update that will fix some problems (already reported) with OTA HD.

Any word on when we will get new 622 software?

[Ron Barry]

Last word brettbolt was on the Tech chat and that was December timeframe. There has been nothing more definite but I believe Mark did say soon.. Of course soon means different things to different people.

Since the POP feature was mentioned to be in the next release ... Hope soon is before the bowl games.

[Mark Lamutt]

At this point, I have absolutely no idea when the next version will be ready for delivery. There's a huge amount of work going on, but how it's all going to break out I don't know.

[Bogey62]

At this point, I have absolutely no idea when the next version will be ready for delivery. There's a huge amount of work going on, but how it's all going to break out I don't know.

I'm not sure how they approach the software development for the 622 (separate teams that work on features versus bugs, etc.), but I sure hope the jittery video issue is job ONE there. This is annoying beyond belief and still not solved in the 8-9 months that this unit has been on the market. *sigh*

[brettbolt]

I'm not sure how they approach the software development for the 622 (separate teams that work on features versus bugs, etc.), but I sure hope the jittery video issue is job ONE there. This is annoying beyond belief and still not solved in the 8-9 months that this unit has been on the market. *sigh*
I hope they fix the problems I'm getting with OTA HD. About twice a minute there is a very brief skip of a second or two (both audio and video). I'm noticing this on KCRA (NBC Sacramento). I started a thread about this last month and discovered that it is also affecting some users in Dallas, TX (also NBC).

It's not a reception issue because if you go back 10 seconds you can see (and hear) what you missed.

[Mark Lamutt]

Both have been worked heavily on. I really hope the jittery video is fixed now.

[Slordak]

And are any of these fixes related to the "pausing of live TV doesn't really pause every once in a while" bug, where one presses the pause key, the receiver believes it has paused, but then when one resumes, one is several minutes farther into the broadcast (i.e. about the duration for which one had the unit paused)?

Forgive my ignorance; I haven't been monitoring all of this recently.

[lujan]

And are any of these fixes related to the "pausing of live TV doesn't really pause every once in a while" bug, where one presses the pause key, the receiver believes it has paused, but then when one resumes, one is several minutes farther into the broadcast (i.e. about the duration for which one had the unit paused)?

Forgive my ignorance; I haven't been monitoring all of this recently.

I don't know if I've just been lucky but this has never happened to me and use the pause button almost continuously.

[Slordak]

It doesn't happen on the standard MPEG-2 channels, but watch live TV on an MPEG-4 channel, and you'll see this happen periodically. It doesn't happen all that often, but it happens often enough to be irritating.

[Aliens]

I have no problem pausing satellite programming, only OTA stations. Have they looked specifically at the OTA pause issue? When I rewind 10 seconds or longer I can get the pause to work, otherwise, it won’t.

[Ron Barry]

The Pausing/unpausing jumping to Live TV has been discussed before. Number of threads on it and should be pretty easy to find with a search.

I believe this is what you are describing slordak and Aliens and I hopefully we will see it in the next update.

[Eagles]

At this point, I have absolutely no idea when the next version will be ready for delivery. There's a huge amount of work going on, but how it's all going to break out I don't know.

A source from within told me that nothing will be released prior to January the 8th due to the holidays. After that, anybody's guess is as good as mine or the inside source for that matter.

[raymondylee]

I just got my 70xbr2 - when using it with the Dish 622 receiver through HDMI - when the TV is turned on in HD/SD on the HDMI input - I get a smaller horizontal picture than through the components. Basically HD does not occupy the full screen under Normal setting and SD side black bars are very wide under Normal setting. Even if I zoom it does not occupy the full screen - there is always black bars. This problem does not exist through the components.

If I reset the Dish 622 or sometimes by switching between the Video inputs - this problem goes away.

Any thoughts whether it is the Sony XBR2 or the Dish receiver?

RL

[Ron Barry]

:welcome_s ramondylee... What happens when you toggle through your TV zoom modes? I assume you do not see this when using component? I have seen a similar type of behavior but it was with my 4x3 Sony.

Have you tried changing your output resolution from 720p to 1080i and see if that works around the issue?

[Larry Caldwell]

By the way, has anyone noticed the UHF pro remote does not have very good reception compared to the standard UHF (for my 721)? The boxes are right by each other (with the 622 on top) and the 721 kicks the 622's tush.

Back when I had a 4000, there was a way to adjust the UHF sensitivity of the receiver. It has been years, and I can't remember the procedure, other than the fact that it was pretty simple. Does anyone know if you can do the same thing with the 622?

[BobaBird]

The UHF sensitivity procedure is at http://ekb.dbstalk.com/uhfextend.htm, item 3. I don't know if it applies to newer receivers.

[emoney28]

I am having the same thing, too. It really just started this week. It seems to happen for me when I try to change channels. I go to change and it just locks up with a black screen. I wish they'd just make the box work. I am tired of rebooting, especially since the box is in my basement.

By the way, has anyone noticed the UHF pro remote does not have very good reception compared to the standard UHF (for my 721)? The boxes are right by each other (with the 622 on top) and the 721 kicks the 622's tush.


I'm having the same problem with the screen going black and everything freezing up. It seems to always occur only when I am recording an OTA program. I didn't have this problem until the last few weeks, so I am guessing it is related to 3.65.

[Ron Barry]

If you just started seeing this the last few weeks emoney28, I would look at your signal strength and make sure it is above 70 to be sure. Hmmm 3.65 has been out for a while and since it is OTA it can't be a Dish Stream change. Is it a particular OTA channel or all?

[emoney28]

If you just started seeing this the last few weeks emoney28, I would look at your signal strength and make sure it is above 70 to be sure. Hmmm 3.65 has been out for a while and since it is OTA it can't be a Dish Stream change. Is it a particular OTA channel or all?

All of my OTA channels come in less than 74. Most of them don't get over 70. The strange thing is though that this wasn't happening before, even though my OTAs were still low. I will look at getting a better antenna and raise my signal quality; hopefully that will eliminate the problem.

[odbrv]

Well the audio loss is back. I was recording a show on tuner 2 and watching a show on tuner 1. I paused the show on tuner 1. When I started the show on tuner 1 I lost all audio on tuner 1. A swap to tuner 2 brings in tuner 2 sound. I will wait for the early morning update. I don't want to reboot and lose my recording.

Last night I was watching a DVR event. I paused . When I started the play again I lost sound on the DVR event and on TV1. TV2 had sound. My quick fix was to swap to the TV2 using the PIP swap . Then started the DVR event again and it had sound. When I turned on the receiver this morning TV1 still was without sound. So I had to do a soft reboot to get the sound back. The overnight update did not restore the sound on TV1.

[Ron Barry]

All of my OTA channels come in less than 74. Most of them don't get over 70. The strange thing is though that this wasn't happening before, even though my OTAs were still low. I will look at getting a better antenna and raise my signal quality; hopefully that will eliminate the problem.

I think you would do better to get those signals up if possible. So are you seeing you issue with all OTA channels and i tis not specific to one?

[dbconsultant]

Has anyone else noticed that when you hit 'pause', the picture quivers on the screen. Paused it during a close-up of a football pass and the player's hand was moving so much it looked like he was waving! Just noticed it in the last couple of days - hadn't seen it before.

[Wake Jitsu]

We get REALLY bad sound stutters on ABC HD recordings for Desperate Housewives and Brothers & Sisters. It stutters like every couple of seconds. Pausing/rewinding does not make any difference. It's VERY annoying. :mad:

[lujan]

We get REALLY bad sound stutters on ABC HD recordings for Desperate Housewives and Brothers & Sisters. It stutters like every couple of seconds. Pausing/rewinding does not make any difference. It's VERY annoying. :mad:

Sounds like it could be a station issue and not a 622 issue. Can you see if you notice it over OTA?

[Wake Jitsu]

Sounds like it could be a station issue and not a 622 issue. Can you see if you notice it over OTA?

I'll switch my recording next week to OTA to see if it's the same. Thanks.

[Wake Jitsu]

So the real test will be the 2 shows that have been the worst, but I did record Boston Legal last night both OTA and thru the satellite and there was stuttering on the satellite recording but none on the OTA recording :D

So what does that mean though?

[lujan]

So the real test will be the 2 shows that have been the worst, but I did record Boston Legal last night both OTA and thru the satellite and there was stuttering on the satellite recording but none on the OTA recording :D

So what does that mean though?

E* has had problems with their local digital stations (Mpg 4) over satellite since they first came out with it last year. They keep saying that they're working to correct the problem, but have not seen much of an improvement in a whole year. I use the OTA locals much more for this very reason.

[ibglowin]

At first the OTA locals were breaking up quite often(about a year ago). Now I may get one 2-3 second breakup burst (green smear) on any given channel in a one hour show. The MPEG4 versions are my first choice to pick to record these days. Use less hard drive space for sure. Doesn't tie up my OTA tuner for watching my top shows or CBS since we don't have them. If it wern't for the MPEG4 version of KOB we couldn't even watch it much since the OTA breaks up and STUUTTTERRSS every 3 seconds. I have a seperate wing dish (D500) peaked for 129 all by itself. If your experienceing problems still with 129 I bet you have a Dish 1000 and more than likely its not peaked properly.



They keep saying that they're working to correct the problem, but have not seen much of an improvement in a whole year.

[lujan]

... Now I may get one 2-3 second breakup burst (green smear) on any given channel in a one hour show. ...


You shouldn't be getting any breakups at all. I have to admit, it is a little better than it was a year ago, but I'm thinking that these breakups should not happen at all after a year of troubleshooting.

[dahauss]

I have the jittery video as well. This is horrible. I cant even watch TV when this happens. I am paying for service I cant use...