[poeppe]

My Dish PVR 501 just lost all of its recordings for the second time. This time was slightyly different than first, this time I was in the middle of watching a recorded show and the 501 rebooted on its own. When it came back up all of my recording were empty, the titles were all still listed but none of the recordings are playable. It is also telling me that I have about 35 hours of record time available again.

I called Dish, they had me pull the smart card and then re-insert it. This didn't change anything. The dish tech I was talking to then tried to pass me onto another tech and lost me in the process. I called back, the new tech I talked to asked me for all the info about my system (receiver id, smart card # ...). He said that it sounded like my receiver was failing and then gave me the phone number for the Dish return authorization department.

My question is should I return my current unit and try a different one? (If I do return it I am going to request a new unit not a factory certified, is there an easy way to tell if they send me a refurbed receiver?)

TIA,
Denis

 

[scooper]

Question - how many hours of recordings did you have ? If you aren't saving 10% slack, you're playing with fire.

 

[poeppe]

I had about 12 hours (30%) of record time left. I had heard they had problems if you let them get to full and have been watching and then deleting recordings accordingly. I was in the process of watching another recording when it failed.

 

[HTguy]

Unfortunately, 1st tier CSRs are still telling everybody to pull the Smart Card. That's fine for most IRDs but not PVRs. If the Hard Drive is still spinning it can do more harm than good.

Assuming you've had at least the 1st major SW upgrade downloaded (you ought to be on v154 by now) the proper way to reset the PVR is by holding down the Power button on the front panel for several seconds.

Before you resort to RAing the unit you should try to reinitialize the HD:

• Hit Menu, 6, 3 to get the Diagnostics screen
• Hit Info, > (Browse), < (Theme) to get the Memory Dump screen
• Hit Stop.
• Reboot.

Now leave the unit in Standby ("Off") for ~1/2 hr or so.

Then power it up & see if everything is back to normal.

If it is necessary to RA the unit, forget about "talking them into sending you a new one." You will always get a factory refubished unit w/ the warranty prorated to what you had on the original.

In theory, this should be good because the replacement has been individually updated, tested & QC'd. But once in a while a unit does go thru w/ an intermittent problem that wasn't detected. In that case you RA it again. But, fortunately, that is a rare occurence.

 

[poeppe]

Hi HTguy

I have been trying to reinitialize my harddrive and haven't had any luck with getting it to work. I have tried the above sequence before going to bed in the evening, when I check the next morning I still have my test recordings (HD did not get wiped).

I have tried several variations of the above sequence including rebooting and also pulling the smart card after entering the codes. All of these variations have been suggested on this board as possible re-init sequences, but none of them appear to have worked (still have my test recordings).

Does anyone have any other suggestions on how to force a re-init of the HD?

Thanks,
Denis

 

[Tony S]

The hard drive re-init procedure given by HTguy worked OK with older software versions, but for the last several software revisions it seems that no one can get it to work anymore (E* removed it for some reason).

If you have the latest software (version P154) and you have tried resetting the 501, my advice would be to return it. Losing all recordings was a bug in the older software, but it has been fixed for quite a while now.

 

[DarrellP]

Return it and don't let them charge you $14 either. I sent back mine after fighting with it for 5 months and losing 30+ hours 4 times. My second unit had a noisey hard drive like the first so I returned it the same day I got it.

The 3rd unit works like a charm and I never have to worry about how much free space I have left. It does the auto-delete just like it should and I am a happy camper.

I still reset it once a week though, I just can't get out of the habit.