[kvitense]

I have had my HR20 for a little over a week. It's been working pretty much OK. Last night I turned it on to watch some recorded shows. When I did a little surfing though on live TV first, I found several channels (mainly in the premium movie channels area) "fading" in and out. It was like a storm was going on and the signal was weak; very pixelated. I would also get the occassional "searching for satellite" message. Other adjacent channels were totally OK and normal. I went to check the signal meters, and on sat 101 on the odd transponders (mainly just checked transponders 1 and 3) the signal was acting VERY funky! It was "dancing" around every half second to second; 95, 55, 94, 43, not aquired, 95, 63, etc., etc. Both tuners were doing this. Even transponders were fine. Other satellites appeared to be fine. Called DTV and EVENTUALLY got to advanced tech support. Jeff was very helpful and seemed very knowledgable. We tried a few things, including plugging the two sat line feeds into my old TIVO box I still have nearby the HR20. Its signal meters for the above transponders were OK. We also bypassed the BBCs. Determined that it was indeed a problem with the box, and not anything else. He is shipping me out a new unit that should be here tomorrow sometime. I have tried to reset it several times, but the receiver gets "hung up" at the aquiring guide step (where it shows the percentage completed bar). It stays at 0 and flashes the searching for satellite message every few seconds. I left it unplugged all night and got up this morning to try again. Same thing. However, as I came to the computer to type this message and left the TV "unattended", it started the new software download on its own. It's now 66% completed. I doubt the new software will help as this problem "seems" to be hardware related to me. I can't access my previously recorded shows either now I guess. Too bad. Dead DVR. R-I-P!

On a related note, this same "dancing" of the signal meters happened the night we installed the HR20 on initial startup. I had the sat lines running through my Monster HTPS7000 Balanced Power/Line Conditioner unit and thought that was the culprit. I bypassed the conditioner and plugged the sats directly into the HR20 and the "dancing" went away. Maybe it wasn't the conditioner at all but a sign of things to come. I would sure like to hear if others have had a similar experience to mine.

***Update***
I just checked my software update status again before I submit this post and it is NOW saying 15% completed. Apparently it started over! Probably related to the above issue?

Kurt

 

[kvitense]

For some (good) reason, the HR20 must have acquired enough data to satisfy itself, as it is up and running. It also appears the download went through. It is still having the "dancing" signal problem though. I will swap the boxes out when the new one gets here. I do NOT plan on doing any more resets in the meantime either.

Kurt

 

[wmschultz]

Have you tried swapping the cables at the LNB to determine if the built in
multiswitch is bad?

 

[kvitense]

Have you tried swapping the cables at the LNB to determine if the built in
multiswitch is bad?

I plugged my old tivo into the same two cables now feeding my HR20 and had no "dancing" of the meters on the same sat/transponders. To me, that excludes any bad cables/multiswitch issues.

 

[wmschultz]

Sorry, I missed that part.

 

[patsrule316]

I had the same problem going on last weekend. It was on the 110 transponder, and it wasn't raining. The signal was bouncing around in the 70's and 80's, and none of the HD package shows were coming in clear. They all became pixelated, and I got the occaisional split-second message that it was searching for signal. It went away on Monday.

I called tech support and they ran me through everything but nothing could fix the problem, and they are sending out a tech in two weeks. We discussed this in a different thread on Sunday.