Audio Dropouts on DVR playback

[JCO]

Hi, every 20-30 minutes or so I get a brief 1 second or so audio dropout
when playing back HD programming on my HR20 DVR. I dont ever seem
to get this with live HD or with chase play HD, only on recorded shows
played back later. Is there a fix? Do I need to exchange boxes? I just got
this a few days ago, but these audio dropouts are very annoying and unacceptable. What makes this worse, is that its not repeatable, sometimes
if played again, there is no dropout in the same spot as before ( possibly
in new spots, havent watched the same movie recording enough times to know for
sure)
I have the Dolby Digital box setting set to "on". Thanks in advance...

[mrshermanoaks]

Yes, I get them quite frequently as well. I posted yesterday (http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=74222) about it, but no one else responded. I couldn't tell if it was just the LA locals or more channels or what.

I don't know what the cause is or the solution, but I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one suffering from it.

[harryn]

Add me to that list..Very annoying.....I get many audio drops on live tv,also....The play back ones are very irregular..Also I am on OX10B and still have both problems.

[djfrankie]

Add me to the list also, (NY NBC HD channel 82 mpeg 2) this is the worst local channel. Mainly on LIVE broadcasts. I lose audio and video.

Haven't noticed it much on other local channels (HD). It did happen on the NY ABC local, was watching Sound of Music (saturday), but not much as on the NBC HD feed.

Frank

[peterpiper3]

Add me to the list. I was watching the Patriots game on Sunday and the dropouts were happening so often, I switched over to my OTA. The rest of the game was perfect.

[Stuart Sweet]

If you're getting intermittent audio drops, try pushing the jump back button once.

[mrshermanoaks]

I'll give that a try. But what I'd like to see is some recognition from DirecTV of this problem. I've been reporting this issue for almost two months (http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?p=717305&highlight=audio#post717305) and it gets no attention.

[NoGoSlo]

Me too, in the San Francisco area. Much worse on some MPEG4 channels than others. Terrible on Fox, not so bad on CBS.

I read somewhere that it is a satellite issue, not an HR20 issue. Anyone know about this?

[mrshermanoaks]

Could be. But then the HR20 seems to react badly to these problems. My other DirecTV receivers don't have audio dropouts like that.

[joekun]

I'm getting so sick of this. Happened a lot during football games over the last few days, and I was just watching a show on Discovery HD that had the dropouts at least once every minute or too. ARRGGHH!

[Mrmiami]

Yea add me too. It is very annoying and would seem to be a problem with the reception inside the unit I had a Sony 300 and Hughes 86 that did not have this problem at all. The problem is much worse and more frequent on DVR recordings. I give this unit and DTV 6 months to work out all the bugs in this release if not we'll either see a new reciever introduce (and it better be a swap out option!) or we'll see the demise of DirecTV. Reason being, this is the direction DTV wants to go (MPEG 4) and without fixing this they will be losing customers. The loss of customers will force them to raise there prices there will be no way around that and once that happens customers will leave realizing there are cheaper alternitives out there for them. Matter of fact there already are cheaper alternitives but customers have been bearing with the higher cost of DTV for over 4 yrs now with the promise of a wider selection of HD content. That "wider" selection has yet to materialize and now Fios and Cable have taken the lead in HD content. I don't know what the future holds for DTV but right now that future does not look to bright unless they start fixing all the bugs and start rolling out more HD channels and not 1 or 2 here and there but at least in blocks of 5-10 channels each push. Discovery and National Geographic are nice channels but are those the channels customers have been holding out hope for? I like those channels but don't you think by now we should at least have all our movie channel (500's) in HD, the ones we actually pay extra for already?

[NoGoSlo]

lamontcranston suggested the jump back button. This works in live broadcast, but doesn't appear to work on recorded shows.

[kenmoo]

I've had this issue all along but it does seem worse with Ox10b. I'm kinda surprised that it hasn't made the Catalog of HR20 Bugs detailed on another thread in this Forum? Maybe only a few of us are experiencing the audio drop outs. Had one 3 days ago on a recorded program for over 4 minutes. The audio on the commercials did work. I thought it was my Sac DMA locals but now realize it's more prevalent.

[PlanetBill]

I've had my HR20 since Dec 30. last night I had audio drop from recorded HD (Mpeg4) show. Actually the show was still playing, I caught up to live, audio dropped a couple more times. I then switch to OTA, no more problem.

[mikeliedke]

Add me to the list. I'm on my second HR-20 since Nov. 15th or so. Both units have done the audio drop-out both before and after 10-b.

I haven't noticed it on recordings but seems worst on Discovery and football.

CHICAGO NO OTA.

Mike

[woward]

Add me to the list. I'm on my second HR-20 since Nov. 15th or so. Both units have done the audio drop-out both before and after 10-b.


Me too. I got a replacement HR-20 yesterday (my first one totally died after one week) and, after installing it, it updated its software. It has had regular audio dropouts since we started watching it last night, all on live TV. They were bad during the Sugar Bowl tonight, and mostly happened during commercials. I have a second, non-dvr, D* HD box and it did not have the audio dropouts during the same programming so the problem is almost certainly with the HR-20.

We get local feeds (SF Bay area) from D*, not OTA.

Who at D* can we report this to and try to get them to consider it an issue?

Bill

PS: I also have a non-DVR Comcast HD box and it does not have the problem.

[veryoldschool]

Me too. I got a replacement HR-20 yesterday (my first one totally died after one week) and, after installing it, it updated its software. It has had regular audio dropouts since we started watching it last night, all on live TV. They were bad during the Sugar Bowl tonight, and mostly happened during commercials. I have a second, non-dvr, D* HD box and it did not have the audio dropouts during the same programming so the problem is almost certainly with the HR-20.
We get local feeds (SF Bay area) from D*, not OTA.
Who at D* can we report this to and try to get them to consider it an issue?
Bill
PS: I also have a non-DVR Comcast HD box and it does not have the problem.
Welcome to the forum!
The best place to report this [IMO] would be customer retention. Call D* and have then transfer you to the customer retention group [CRG]. They log complaints that go to a review [group].

[btmoore]

There is defiantly a bug where it appears that the the HR20 is doing a block read of the audio stream input and that read block is not getting filled by the time it needs to be in order to be played ergo you get a short blank spot of audio. This appears happen when the pointer to the hr20 display of the video data is too close to the actual incoming data and what ever process/magic they are doing to load the buffer is not ready and so you get a blank spot in the audio. As I am sure many of you notice when you are watching "live" video on the HR20 it is actually delayed a sec or so, this is so it can be written to the hard drive and buffered appropriately. You can force this defect to present If you play with the ff you can some times force that displayed video pointer to be to close to the incoming data, and when you do that you will get audio skips. This may take a few times but if you keep trying you can make it happen. if you use the replay button or pause for a second it pushes back the current reference pointers back enough to allow the read block to fill up appropriately and no more audio drops. This defect happens on all data types, mpeg2,4 and sd. IMO if I am right it is a real junior programmer type error, lots of ways to fix this, the easiest and least sophisticated is to just make sure the UI won't let the user get that close to the incoming data.

mrshermanoaks, sorry I missed your post on this the other day. This problem has been in the HR20 from the start, when I added your bug to the catalog, I also added the use of the replay button as a treatment.

[mrshermanoaks]

btmoore -

There's also the issue of the dropouts that are baked into the recordings... They will reoccur in the same place every playback. Do you think there are two separate bugs?

(ps- there is such a ton of posts, it's easy to miss previous posts of issues... I reference them more for trying to link all the disparate posts together and for establishing some timeframes)

[btmoore]

btmoore -

There's also the issue of the dropouts that are baked into the recordings... They will reoccur in the same place every playback. Do you think there are two separate bugs?

(ps- there is such a ton of posts, it's easy to miss previous posts of issues... I reference them more for trying to link all the disparate posts together and for establishing some timeframes)

yes, 2 different bugs. One defiantly looks like a read buffer problem the others well, I don't know if it in the data stream and the HR20 is just recording GIGO or the HR20 is creating data errors by malforming the incoming data when storing stream, or something is goes loopy, the cpu get bogged, memory resource issues, or io constraints, or a thousand other things where the data presentation process get bad data. I have heard them and I have seen video dropouts when there there is no good reason for any data errors, I have not studied these issues enough to have a good opinion on what is going on.

[keep amonte]

Count me into the audio drop out club! I had relatively very few problems until the Ox10b release. My major gripe seems to only affect recorded viewing after pusing live viewing. Meaning, watching the sugar bowl, I get up to get a drink and press pause. When I resume play, I encounter multiple random audio drop outs that can only be fixed by changing channels and coming back to original channel live. I have not called DTV because because I don't want to sit on hold and deal with them.
This is definately a problem for me!

[MartyS]

Count me in as well, in South Florida. I have the same problem with audio dropouts on recorded programs.

I'm still on my original HR-20 which was installed the day before Thanksgiving. When I called DTV I was told, well, does your computer ever have any glitches? Naturally it does and the rep explained to me that since the DVR is basically a computer they would expect some glitches and that they were aware of the problem, but didn't have a solution yet.

So, while I'm not ready to get another unit, since everything else that I've done seems to be working, I hope that they get this audio problem fixed. The skip usually comes just at a critical time in the program, and my wife always blames it on HD, not DTV.

[JCO]

Count me in as well, in South Florida. I have the same problem with audio dropouts on recorded programs.

I'm still on my original HR-20 which was installed the day before Thanksgiving. When I called DTV I was told, well, does your computer ever have any glitches? Naturally it does and the rep explained to me that since the DVR is basically a computer they would expect some glitches and that they were aware of the problem, but didn't have a solution yet.

So, while I'm not ready to get another unit, since everything else that I've done seems to be working, I hope that they get this audio problem fixed. The skip usually comes just at a critical time in the program, and my wife always blames it on HD, not DTV.
I have been watching analog tv, both over the air and cable for over 40 years and there were NEVER any audio dropouts. Theses are completely unacceptable, and just because the box is a "computer" is no excuse. So are CD and DVD players and I havent had any droputs with the digital audio on any of those in over 20 years!

[btmoore]

I have been watching analog tv, both over the air and cable for over 40 years and there were NEVER any audio dropouts. Theses are completely unacceptable, and just because the box is a "computer" is no excuse. So are CD and DVD players and I havent had any droputs with the digital audio on any of those in over 20 years!

Well you may not of had dropouts, in the analog days you had static, pops, hiss and a many other analog issues which were very common. I have had dropouts on DVD and CD from damage to the disk of failing hardware, it does happen. I agree, assuming good source data there is no excuse for the HR20 having these dropout issues, the bug where it runs into the front of the read buffer is just lame.

[mstecker]

yeah add me to the list too. i've been getting audio dropouts as well with my HD channels every now and then... seems like more often lately. but for me, it's on the live feed. I also seem to get digital flutters where it seems to freeze for a second and then the audio cuts out while video catches up and then the audio comes back. should i reset?

[JCO]

Well you may not of had dropouts, in the analog days you had static, pops, hiss and a many other analog issues which were very common. I have had dropouts on DVD and CD from damage to the disk of failing hardware, it does happen. I agree, assuming good source data there is no excuse for the HR20 having these dropout issues, the bug where it runs into the front of the read buffer is just lame.
Wrong, analog TV used FM radio type transmission and was very good fidelity, no pops, hiss etc. and NO DROPOUTS whatsoever. Its was better than the picture in terms of signal strength, such that if your picture was good enough to watch, the sound was always fine. No it was not super high fidelity, but it was very good fidelity, and it didnt drop out, either on live broadcasts or VHS tapes made from live broadcasts in that era. This audio dropout problem is TERRIBLE and unacceptable to me at all. All you need to miss is one key word and it can alter whole meaning of a movie or story to the viewer. I very frustrated by these dropouts and they need to be fixed/stop immediately IMHO.