942- L289 Release Notes and Discussion

[Jon Spackman]

So far so good for me with L289 on both my 942's. I have not had any issues with it.



Here is the official info from my source:

the main fixes/changes that the user would see.



Fix for off-air channel scan caused reboots
Fix for reboot when watching an off-air channels
Added support for 6th Satellite
Added support for DPP33 switch
Added support for 118.7 satellite
Fix for stuck 015 pop-up (acquiring satellite signal)
Fix for off-air recordings showing title as 'Recovered'
Added 'Please Wait' to the logo screen when coming out of stand-by
Swap key toggles between the last two sort options in My Recording
screen





Do you folks in Dallas/Fort worth area see an improvement on OTA reboot interaction?

[BobaBird]

Nice to hear it's coming. It's been a few months since we've seen notes for any DVR, and even longer for a non-DVR.

Could this thread be merged with the already existing Feature list for L289? thread?

[RBenson]

I have had several issues already with L289. First I lost all my search history (reboot did nothing). Second, while fast forwarding a DVR program, it locked up and has a frozen picture with the audio still running in the background. Stopped the DVR program and went to live and picture was still frozen with audio. Turned receiver off, waited a few seconds and turned back on and still had frozen picture with audio. Had to unplug receiver to reset and get working again. I have had no issues with my 942 recently until this update. Hope they haven't f*%ked things up again.

[Tom-Tx]

The only thing I noticed is that my OTA signals on all channels are now weaker than before and much weaker than on my 622. Some stations are now breaking up on the 942. Maybe the next 622 update will weaken that receiver as well.

[Moridin]

I also lost my entire search history, but I haven't experienced any of the freeze problems you describe. Also, my OTA signal strength seems unchanged from the previous SW version.

[Thor263]

Originally Posted by Tom-Tx

The only thing I noticed is that my OTA signals on all channels are now weaker than before and much weaker than on my 622. Some stations are now breaking up on the 942. Maybe the next 622 update will weaken that receiver as well.

Funny thing for me is that the OTA is much better now. Signal strength numbers appear to be the same, but it doesn't flip into the "lost signal" screen as it would have in the past with the same numbers. My tv has never had a problem w/ these signal strengths so it's nice to see things more in line between the 942 and my tv.

[jci-joe]

I do not subscribe to dish locals because I get them with my OTA great. I was receiving the program guide on these channels until 289. Dish sucks in that they make you buy the locals to get the program guide. I will try this for 3 months and i may be back to calble on a dish buyback program.

It can't cost dish that much to give us the local program guide.

[worldtrvlr]

With the latest upgrade, I now have various analog channels showing up on varying favorites lists, analogs that I never programmed. A reset fixes it for a few hours, but then it's back. When trying to alter favorites to remove the random analog channel, the receiver locks up and I have to reset again. Also, now when trying to create a manual schedule for a digital OTA, the receiver locks up and I have to reset. Both of these issues have happened multiple times since the software update. I wish I could have the old version back.

[CABill]

One thing I like about L289 is DVR Sort now has DVR date directly underneath Alpha sort. I switch back and forth between Alpha and Date fairly often and used to have to go down several items to resort by date. I'd still prefer a number shortcut and hit 1 for Alpha, 2 for Date, 3 for Length, ... but having the two I use at the top is welcomed.

[BobaBird]

Bill, the notes have been added to post #1 (thanks Jon & Dish!). You can use PIP Swap when viewing the DVR list without having to go into the menu.

[CABill]

Thanks - Swap works exceptionally well for my needs. It has been a while on 942 release notes so I hadn't gone back to look for additions to the 1st post. I've also seen the "Please Wait" logo from Standby mentioned, but didn't think too much about it. I'll put a watt meter on the unit to see if they ever spin down the disk. We're probably due for another drive spinning debate!

[adamhill]

I have nothing but major aggravation from OTA reboots, both before and after L289.

Any idea what causes it? It mainly occurs for me while watching HD "Heroes" and "Studio 60". But other HD shows cause no problems whatsoever.

Aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgv!!!!!

[mrplow]

We had the same problems in Columbus, OH, I called the station, and they checked there equipment and found a bad card in one of there systems. Then Dish called them and helped the set up there HD. Now it works great. I would call your NBC station and have them call WCMH in Columbus, OH and they can tell how they fixed the problem.

[Jon Spackman]

Originally Posted by mrplow

We had the same problems in Columbus, OH, I called the station, and they checked there equipment and found a bad card in one of there systems. Then Dish called them and helped the set up there HD. Now it works great. I would call your NBC station and have them call WCMH in Columbus, OH and they can tell how they fixed the problem.

Nice post!

[tferrio]

I am sorry to report that we had 2 reboots last night on Dallas channel 5, NBC OTA, watching Medium. I checked and 289 firmware has been loaded.

I respectfully submit that it should not be my job to try to explain to the station that they need to get their equipment fixed. Dish has all the details and should have a technical person who can explain it better than me.

Discord in our household is growing (with helplessly missing the last few minutes of Medium)... I rashly said that the new firmware would fix it, about 30 minutes before the first lockup, and I am now being told to find an alternative.

[savecal]

Hi All,
I posted this in response to Jon's request for feedback on the reboots, but I thought I'd copy it here, too, just in case it gives some clues to the past problems with L289.

"Since day before yesterday, the issues I had with "bogus" OTA channels coming up in my program listings have disappeared, so someone has tweaked something. Also, the program guide before would jump to my lowest OTA channel (7) if I went out to the guide from the OTA channel I was watching. That has been fixed, too. So, everything is working as before the L288/289 downloads. No reboots, either."

Thanks one more time, Jon.

Rod

[Jon Spackman]

[quellebeast]

I too have had this problem for a year.

NBC5 KXAS resets my 942 over and over.
I have made them send me 4 new 942's over the last year-

THEY CLAIM TO KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THIS !!!!

I worked for SBC DSL engineering for 5 years and we saw widespread problems like this on occasion that the general public was kept in the dark indefinitely on- I guarantee that somebody somewhere at dishnet knows about this problem.

I have threatened to go to the atty general and still no help from them...

[PLHOG]

Originally Posted by mrplow

We had the same problems in Columbus, OH, I called the station, and they checked there equipment and found a bad card in one of there systems. Then Dish called them and helped the set up there HD. Now it works great. I would call your NBC station and have them call WCMH in Columbus, OH and they can tell how they fixed the problem.

Good grief. Maybe L289 didn't fix anything after all, and it was always a problem with the WCMH encoders. That could explain why we seem to be fixed in Columbus but the guys in Dallas are still crashing (the chief engineer at WCMH told me the DFW NBC affiliate uses the same encoders as WCMH).

[PLHOG]

Originally Posted by tferrio

I am sorry to report that we had 2 reboots last night on Dallas channel 5, NBC OTA, watching Medium. I checked and 289 firmware has been loaded.

I respectfully submit that it should not be my job to try to explain to the station that they need to get their equipment fixed. Dish has all the details and should have a technical person who can explain it better than me.

Discord in our household is growing (with helplessly missing the last few minutes of Medium)... I rashly said that the new firmware would fix it, about 30 minutes before the first lockup, and I am now being told to find an alternative.

I fully understand your annoyance with these guys. Nonetheless, calling the station is probably the fastest way to get it fixed.

[Outaspace]

I’m sorry to say that the L289 release for me (and my 942 receiver) has been a significant problem, and has prompted my first serious consideration of dumping Dish.

Here is what L289 has meant to me for the past three weeks (when the L289 update was done?):

1. An apparent, but not confirmed, reduction in the instances of freezing and reboot on certain OTA program material as discussed by others. (For me the problem centered on the DC-area NBC affiliate and certain programs like “The Tonight Show” and the Saturday-morning Qubo lineup.)

2. The elimination of the OTA program guide. Dish says that we are not supposed to get that unless we subscribe to the satellite-delivered local channels.

3. The addition of a 200-channel list of “phantom” channels with either the label “000-00” or a label of seemingly random characters and symbols. (This also was a problem for a period of time in the fall, and is a real pain to scroll through when browsing for programs on the program guide.)

4. (And these next two are the really annoying ones.) The complete disabling of the manual timer function. With L289, if I select “Manual Timer” from the menu, the timer screen appears for a few moments (with the labels “%d” shown for “Priority %d of %d” and length “%d hr, %d min.”) and then the system crashes and begins the reboot. (This, of course, further forces one to subscribe to the satellite-delivered local channels to get the program guide, which is now the only way to be able to record ANYTHING from OTA.)

5. Some kind of scrambling of material recorded to the hard drive after about two hours of recording. For example, if I leave the machine tuned to any particular channel for more than a couple of hours (so that the hard drive is recording the live TV), the video will begin to periodically glitch and show massive pixilation. If I then try to rewind the live TV I get a scrambled picture that is a mosaic of material from different times in the recording shown as a single picture (so I might have the profile of the head of a newscaster that is filled in not with a face but with images of trees from minutes earlier in the same broadcast -- amusing, but I didn't get my 942 to create abstract art!!). At that point it becomes impossible to rewind and I am forced to go live. If I have selected at some point to record the program (by just pressing “record”), that recording becomes useless. I had never had any problem like this prior to three weeks ago.

I am very curious as to whether other 942 owners are experiencing either of the last two problems. From my experience the L289 “update” is a terrible tradeoff and Dish should immediately go back to the previous software version until they can properly debug L289.

[Jon Spackman]

outaspace. never seen anything like it. Have you pull the power and rebooted it like that yet?

[Outaspace]

Here’s the latest on my experience with L289 since January 30th:

1. The freezing and reboot caused by OTA programming from the DC-area NBC affiliate continues. It is somewhat less frequent, but still happens (like last night during “The Tonight Show”). I’ve also observed a slightly different problem that I’m sure is related: the program (picture and audio) will freeze, but the receiver will not reboot. Sometimes after several seconds the program will resume on its own. Other times (after waiting more than a minute) I have to do a soft reboot. So far the frequency of the occurrence is similar to the old “freeze and reboot” problem, and it is occurring on the same NBC-affiliate programming (but maybe I’m just watching too much NBC!!).

2. Concerning the scrambling problem, I have done at least two hard reboots (unplug-replug) since January 30th and a dozen or more soft reboots. I’ll try another hard reboot tonight. I have observed the problem (so far) only for OTA (but not limited to the NBC affiliate) and, I think, for both SD and HD programming. One can almost set one’s watch by it. If I select a channel and let it run, two hours later the problem is likely to start. To fix it, all I have to do is clear the “live” recording buffer by, for example, changing the channel, and then I’m good for another two hours. But once the buffer (or any recording being made from the buffer) is corrupted, there is no going back. This again does not appear to be a hardware problem since changing the channel for one second seems unlikely to change anything like operating temperature. Maybe a buffer memory addressing problem (since it seems to be plucking random blocks of data from the buffer to fill the screen)?


In tangentially-related news, I was told by E* customer service yesterday that they are no longer selling satellite-delivered HD packages to 942 owners and that they will terminate all satellite-delivered HD programming to 942 owners in the next few weeks as they convert to MPEG-4 and consolidate the HD programming on a single satellite. After checking with his supervisor he confirmed that this is not just for the “new” HD channels, but for all HD channels. If true, soon the 942 receiver will only be usable for HD from over-the-air and, as we’ve seen, that has gotten pretty problematic recently.

[Tulsa1]

Originally Posted by Outaspace

In tangentially-related news, I was told by E* customer service yesterday that they are no longer selling satellite-delivered HD packages to 942 owners and that they will terminate all satellite-delivered HD programming to 942 owners in the next few weeks as they convert to MPEG-4 and consolidate the HD programming on a single satellite. After checking with his supervisor he confirmed that this is not just for the “new” HD channels, but for all HD channels. If true, soon the 942 receiver will only be usable for HD from over-the-air and, as we’ve seen, that has gotten pretty problematic recently.

I find this a little difficult to believe. I can't imagine E* suddenly cutting off
HD programming from their 942 customers without more notice and transition.
I hope this is bad info

[Jon Spackman]

This would surprise the hell out of me too.