HR21-100 Users... How is SWM

It's been great for me. I have noticed a few blips in picture lately (slight pixelation) but I can't be sure if that's signal or SWM related.

But I have not one complaint really... the HR21-100 with SWM from day one of hook-up has been great!

 

I have recently upgraded from an SWM-5 to an 8 tuner version (with later firmware). Everything appears to be operating normally. However, I have found a few issues with the HR21-100 that may simply be cosmetic in nature. Since I upgraded my SWM the same day I downloaded the 1F8 CE for the HR21-100, I'm not sure which might be the cause.

When I look at the signal strength screen showing all transponders for a single satellite, I see a few zero readings on the HR21 for 103(c) -- the rest are in the 90s as expected.

None should be 0, so this worried me! However, I find that if I leave the screen up for awhile and watch as it refreshes, these zeros are replaced with the proper readings (but others may then drop to 0). Also, when I look at the (continually refreshed) signal meter screen (individual transponders) for 103(c), I get strong and stable signals on both tuners on all transponders -- leaving the screen up for minutes on each transponder, I do not see any transient drops to zero that I see when I look at the screen with all transponders at once. So, it seems that my signals are fine, and the code behind the "whole satellite" screen is sometimes simply giving up too quickly on acquiring a signal for display. Given that there were recent code changes made to speed up this screen, and that additional milliseconds of negotiation with the SWM may be required for locking a signal, this isn't shocking to me. Heck, for all I know, this was happening on the HR21 with the SWM-5 that I replaced -- I really didn't spend much time looking at signal strengths, as I had no reason to.

When I do a similar signal check on the my two HR20-700s, I don't really see the problem and have strong signals on all 103c transponders -- though if I leave the screen up for a long time, I might see it happen once. So it seems to be a software issue on my HR21-100.

I also found that, as I spent a lot of time testing signals with the HR21 meters, the time to acquire a signal grew longer and longer -- and when I was done and went back to live TV, the box was operating very sluggishly and I was getting 771 errors on all channels. I did a menu reset, and all was back to normal. This also seems to be a software issue, but not one that would ever happen in normal use of the DVR.

For sake of comparison, I temporarily moved one of my HR20-700s and connected it in place of the HR21-100 at its normal install location. I found that:

1. In general, signals with the HR20 are consistently 2-5 points higher than with the HR21. Since I know this is not unexpected with different models, it doesn't concern me.

2. I get major differences in picking up signals on the 103(s) spotbeam bird: the HR20's pick up 7 transponders (6 in the 90s), the HR21 picks up only one (Tr. 17) consistently (at 96-97) and the rest are zero (though a few others pop in and out, sometimes on only one of the two tuners, if I leave their signal test screen up for a few minutes). Since I am not having problems with my HD locals on the HR21-100, I've convinced myself not to be concerned about this, but it is a big and consistent difference between the DVR models.

Some of the above may be related to SWM and some may not. Regardless, in normal use the HR21-100 appears to be working fine with the SWM module.

 

so far with the SWM-5 the only thing is noticed is the brief "searching for sat" popup with channel changes. and on the new HD channels i do see some huge blocking going on. but i haven't seen this with the HR20-100.
also i'm not sure if it's SWM issue or not? but i have my HR20-100 running off the same splitter and the signals across the board is 10pt's higher than with the HR21-100. to eliminate any chance that this could be because of the splitter or coax i have switched them and still have the same result. none of the software updates has changed the signal readings that i am seeing.
tomorrow i will connect the HR21-100 to the WB68 and see if i get the same results as i have with the SWM.