[Radioactive_Toy]

Hey all,

I was wondering if someone may have seen this, or heard of this happening.
Problem started Thursday... Had one of my series recordings setup, got home, went to watch the program, it skipped right to the end and asked if i wanted to delete, tried everything i could to get it to play, but it would not..
This evening, I got home and tried to watch the Red Sox game I recorded, when it was doing the same thing.. So I started to do some troubleshooting... I set Grindhouse to record while i was watching the Olympics... I switched over to my playlist to start watching Grindhouse and it was giving me a black screen with no movie. Switched over to live TV and went to Starz, and I started getting error 771. Stopped recording and did a Sat Test, getting all 0's for all Sats. Switched to NBC, channel is fine, signals in the low 90's... back to Starz and the channels is working... More testing.. Started recording on Starz, switched to NBC, error 771, reset the box, same problems, switched Sat in connections, same issue, moved the box to another room, same problems.. I've got a service call... again (5th in 2 months) set for Wed..
Has anyone seen this kind of issue going on? ive had excessive 771 errors for the last 4 or or 5 months, I've had my Multiswitch replaced, my Dish replaced, my 3 HD boxes switched out and I'm still seeing these errors.. Anyone else have any suggestions as to what may cause this? or fix it?

thanks in Advance.

 

[lostman72]

Can you give us more info? What box do you have? Model. How many boxes do you have? Are they all doing this? Do you have trees near the dish?

 

[Radioactive_Toy]

Can you give us more info? What box do you have? Model. How many boxes do you have? Are they all doing this? Do you have trees near the dish?

The main box this is happening on right now is my new HR21-100, the other 2 other boxes in my house are not doing this. My HR20-100 has never had this issue happen to it, and was the only box to remain working when I started to have these issue. I have had an H20 that was replaced 3 times, and is now a H21-100 that is also working great.
There are no trees located by my dish, the closest tree is about 40 ft away with no branches hanging near the dish. When the issue is not happening all my signals test great, lower to mid 90's.

 

[rudeney]

Well, I see you are in So. CA, so I guess the possibility of rain fade is out of the question, huh? There is a known problem where the HR sometimes does not recover from rain fade until you do something like change the tuner to a channel on a different sat/TP or do a signal check. I suppose this could also happen with any sort of signal interruption. I’d check connections and BBC’s. I had a similar problem last week and it turned out to be a loose connection on a feed coming from the multiswitch.

 

[techrep]

Well, I see you are in So. CA, so I guess the possibility of rain fade is out of the question, huh? There is a known problem where the HR sometimes does not recover from rain fade until you do something like change the tuner to a channel on a different sat/TP or do a signal check. I suppose this could also happen with any sort of signal interruption. I'd check connections and BBC's. I had a similar problem last week and it turned out to be a loose connection on a feed coming from the multiswitch.

Or, a interrupted service download. A menu reset may help.

 

[jaficker]

my parents had this same problem on there hd dvr. I checked the sat strength meters and found out tuner 1 had no signal, but tuner 2 was fine. Called D* and they said that ever sence the 21st they have been having wide spread reported problems with this issue and they are working on it.

 

[Radioactive_Toy]

my parents had this same problem on there hd dvr. I checked the sat strength meters and found out tuner 1 had no signal, but tuner 2 was fine. Called D* and they said that ever sence the 21st they have been having wide spread reported problems with this issue and they are working on it.

Thats interesting to hear... The CSR rep that I spoke with last night really didn't seem like she knew what she was doing for the most part... I have another service appt setup for Wednesday, and I am guessing that my box will get swapped again... I am hoping that my external drive will keep my recorded stuff on it, when its swapped..

 

[alant40]

my parents had this same problem on there hd dvr. I checked the sat strength meters and found out tuner 1 had no signal, but tuner 2 was fine. Called D* and they said that ever sence the 21st they have been having wide spread reported problems with this issue and they are working on it.

This started happening to me over 2 weeks ago. No signal on Tuner 1 when recording from Tuner 2. Called tech support and they told me there was a problem with my cable. Then I switched the cable to Tuner 2 and got all high signals. There complete morons at tech support if the problem hasn't presented itself throughout the system. Guess I was a test case for this problem. They want to blame it on anything but their crappy receiver. HR21 series receivers suck. HR 20's more stable. Oh yeah, they said my splitter was bad also.

 

[compnurd]

I havent seen too many complaints about the HR21-700 and 200 but the HR21-100 appears to have a high failure rate

 

[psxjay]

I'm having the exact same problem. It's on a brand new HR-21. Does anyone think I should return it for a replacement?

 

[jjruff]

I'm having the exact same problem on an HR21-700. In fact, i've already had D* send me a replacement unit and it's doing the exact same thing. When I record SD, i never have an issue. It seems to be only on my HD recordings. My Sci-Fi HDrecordings always seemed to get hosed on me - sometimes it skips right to the end of the recording and wants to delete it, even though i didnt watch the program. Other times, I get to watch up to 15-30 minutes, then it skips to the end and wants to delete - i can never get to watch those missing minutes.

One thing I noticed is that I get 771's on some of my HD channels as well. It's not signal related - I just had an installer realign my dish last week and my signals are all 80+ on 103c and 99c. I bought a new HR22-100 from Best Buy and hooked it up to the same cables and I have not had the issue with that box at all over the last 3 days. Now, I moved that same HR21-700 to my office which only has 1 cable connection and I am still getting error 771's on a few HD's all at random. The previous reciever that I had hooked up to that outlet has not ever had any issues. The other recievers in the house(HR22, H20) are all running just fine - the problem seems to have moved with the receiver. The channels i'm having problems with so far are 521, 544, 542, and 537 (havent checked any more channels yet - sometimes they 771 within 1 minute, other times it takes a few hours).

Things i've tried that have not solved the issue:
- Red button reboot
- reformat HDD
- guide refresh
- re-download software 0x255
- unplugged unit overnight
- swapped BBC's with another unit
- No line-of-sight issues with the dish

on a side note, I was just watching my signal strengths on 103c, and while I was getting the 771, I saw that transponders 2 and 4 on Tuner 1 both dropped to zero for about 30 seconds, then popped back up to 89 and 82 respectively. A few minutes later, transponders 3 and 4 went to zero, then popped back up into the 80s. Not sure if this means anything - I guess it's someting to talk to D* about tomorrow.

 

[Radioactive_Toy]

New box was brought today... Tech came to the house, I walked him through what happened and he seemed confused by what was happening with the HR21-100... More testing was done that I had done, swapped cables from tuner 1 and 2, same issue, moved the box again, same problems. So it was swapped out... I now have an HR21-200 installed... Everything seems to be working ok so far on this box. The only problem I am having now is that my External drive will not read on the HR21-200. Is there any problems with these working? I have powered off the box and the drive, removed power from the box, connected SATA cable, powered on the hard drive, reconnected power and started it up, but recorded content still is going to the drive in the HR21. I tested without the drive connected and recorded a show to have something on the drive to test... Put the drive on and im still showing the content i recorded, which means usually that its not reading the external drive, correct?

 

[nobull23]

same problem here

tuner 1 signal strength 0
tuner 2 all in the 90's

 

[Radioactive_Toy]

same problem here

tuner 1 signal strength 0
tuner 2 all in the 90's

What STB do you have? I had a Tech out on Wed for mine, swapped me from a HR21-100 to a HR21-200 and the new box seems to be holding solid. Then again the 100 was working great for a few days as well, so im just trying to keep recording stuff to see if it happens again, which i hope it doesnt... You may want to call support and have them either send you a new box, or get a tech out to swap out that box for ya.

 

[nobull23]

What STB do you have? I had a Tech out on Wed for mine, swapped me from a HR21-100 to a HR21-200 and the new box seems to be holding solid. Then again the 100 was working great for a few days as well, so im just trying to keep recording stuff to see if it happens again, which i hope it doesnt... You may want to call support and have them either send you a new box, or get a tech out to swap out that box for ya.

Thanks for the info
I have Model: HR20-700

reset the box is working fine now, but I don't think it will last long as I reset it a few other times worked fine for a little while than went bad again.

One other thing last night my remote became very unresponsive and was unable to power STB down with the power button on the STB. This happen to anyone else?

 

[rtisovec]

There are multiple posts in multiple areas where others with the hr21 series are experiencing the same, myself included. I believe it is a software problem since there were a lot of people using their HR21's without this problem until recently. I am a Directv customer of 8 days and have posted this problem to multiple areas. It seems that the box switching from tuner to tuner fouls it up, which is likely why you and myself are getting 0's occasionally on the signal meter. My dish was realigned 2 days ago and the symptoms still persisted. I have a new slimline 5, and all of my non DVR HD boxes have not had any problem. I can get the same station on them despite the DVR giving a 771 error. (I have a brand new out of box HR21-700, btw).

Try this as a workaround if watching live tv- Find the station that is giving you a 771. Tune to another HD channel (i go between my local HD's and ESPN as I have seen them 771, but rarely at the same time. Hit record on the functioning station, and then go back to the 771'ed station. That seems to solve the problem for me. In my experience, swapping cables works sometimes (not sure if the order is important, such as if pulling tuner 2 first vs tuner 1 makes a difference), or the red button reset- someties works, sometimes doesn't,

 

[nobull23]

Just lost the signal on Tuner 1 again, was going good for about two days. Just did a red button reset everything seems fine for now.
I will probably call D* in the next couple of days when it happens again to see what they have to say, I'll post their response here for anyone else with the same problem.

 

[TerryB]

I had the problem when I had a loose co-ax connection in one tuner path. Using one tuner to watch or record only was OK, but trying to record when the bad path was needed caused the 771.

TerryB

 

[kenman]

I'm having a very similar problem with my HR21-700, but it only is effecting local channels. For instance when I am recording on any channel and try to tune to my local hd stations, I get the 771 message. The local sd channels work fine. All other hd channels come in as well. Just the local hd channels have the 771 message. If I stop the recording and tune to the hd local channels they will be fine.

A RBR will fix the problem for a while (anywhere from 10-15 minutes to a couple hours), also checking the signal levels will fix the problem for the same amount of time but the problem keeps coming back.

This problem has just recently started within the last month.

I've checked all the connections and tried switching the cables going to the box. Not sure what else I can do.