[lschwarcz]

UPDATE:

I was watching TV just a few minutes ago (live, not recorded) and saw this stuttering issue! So, it looks like I was wrong. It happens live too.

I should also note that we're currently having clear weather right now (about 70 degrees and clear).

So, any thoughts on this? Does this happen to others?

END UPDATE.

I searched around and wasn't able to find any other posts with this issue.

I've noticed that when watching recorded shows that the show will sometimes stutter for a second or two. The audio will breakup a bit and the image gets pixilated a little sometimes too. This hasn't ever stopped the show from continuing to play.

I don't recall ever seeing this symptom while watching live, only on recorded shows.

I have an R15-300 with revision 104B. I was having a lot of issues but did a 02468 reset a while ago and it's been working pretty well since then.

Should I do a "Reset Everything" or "Rec & Down Arrow" reset? Has anyone else seen this? Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!
Larry.

 

[carl6]

Most likely a reset (of any type) will not eliminate the symptoms you have described. Those are primarily the result of over compression - trying to squeeze too much signal into too little bandwidth. It is a periodic problem with DirecTV, and is effected by a number of different considerations.

However, a weak signal, can also cause those symptoms varying from mild to severe. What kind of signal strength readings do you have? Maybe your dish is just a tiny bit off of perfect alignment. Also, is the problem happening primarily on a specific channel or is it on a lot of different channels? Local channels or nationwide channels?

Carl

 

[lschwarcz]

Most likely a reset (of any type) will not eliminate the symptoms you have described. Those are primarily the result of over compression - trying to squeeze too much signal into too little bandwidth. It is a periodic problem with DirecTV, and is effected by a number of different considerations.

However, a weak signal, can also cause those symptoms varying from mild to severe. What kind of signal strength readings do you have? Maybe your dish is just a tiny bit off of perfect alignment. Also, is the problem happening primarily on a specific channel or is it on a lot of different channels? Local channels or nationwide channels?

Carl

It seems to happen on various channels. I noticed it today while watching the football game live on my local channel and I've seen it on other channels (like some recorded shows on TLC).

I just checked signal strength. It went through the 32 transponders and all but three were 90+. Transponder 7 was 88 and transponders 18 and 26 were zero. Could that be the issue?

Thanks,
Larry.

 

[litzdog911]

It seems to happen on various channels. I noticed it today while watching the football game live on my local channel and I've seen it on other channels (like some recorded shows on TLC).

I just checked signal strength. It went through the 32 transponders and all but three were 90+. Transponder 7 was 88 and transponders 18 and 26 were zero. Could that be the issue?

Thanks,
Larry.

Those signal readings look fine. The zero transponders are "spot beams" not aimed at you.

 

[rlambert7]

...I've noticed that when watching recorded shows that the show will sometimes stutter for a second or two. The audio will breakup a bit and the image gets pixilated a little sometimes too. This hasn't ever stopped the show from continuing to play.

I don't recall ever seeing this symptom while watching live, only on recorded shows.

I have an R15-300 with revision 104B. I was having a lot of issues but did a 02468 reset a while ago and it's been working pretty well since then.

Should I do a "Reset Everything" or "Rec & Down Arrow" reset? Has anyone else seen this? Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!
Larry.

I'm having exactly the same problem, but I have an R15-500. Doesn't happen a lot, so, for now, it's only a minor annoyance. I don't ever recall seeing this before I got 10e8. However, I don't think I'm getting the "black holes" in recorded shows, now.

My signal strength is good, too (low to mid 90's for most transponders, high 80's for 2 of them, also almost exactly the same for both tuners)

I don't plan on doing any resets because of this, although I have done a few resets since getting 10e8 for other reasons.

 

[carl6]

I'll try to explain in simple language what is most likely happening. DirecTV carries a number of channels on each of the transponders on each satellite. There is not enough capacity for every channel to be carried 100% real time all the time video. So what they do is use very sophisticated compression formulas that evaluate all of the video information and eliminate data that really isn't needed. For example, if there are 500 pixels in a given video frame that are black, and 495 in the next video frame that are still black, they will only send the changes for the 5 pixels that changed. So instead of 500 data bits, they send only 5.

This allows them to squeeze a lot more information into the limited bandwidth. That type of compression is very effective, and is used in many areas, not just satellite tv (mp3 audio is a good example).

Then, they take that process one step farther. They look at all of the video for all of the channels they are carrying on the same transponder. If one of the shows that is on has very little video activity (a news anchor for example), and another show has a lot of video activity (a sporting event for example), the system automatically balances the available bandwidth so the sporting event gets more space, and the slow moving news anchor gets less.

This process also works very effectively. This allows DirecTV to put maybe 8 to 12 channels on a single transponder, whereas in the very early days of satellite tv there might have been 3 or 4 channels in the same space.

DirecTV constantly monitors all of the bandwidth usage by all of the channels, and from time to time will move channels around, from one transponder to another, to better balance the usage.

But once in awhile, no matter how well things work overall, or on the average, there might be a situation where you've got high action video on all of the channels on a particular transponder at the same instant. When that happens, there isn't any bandwidth in reserve to compensate, and you get a momentary picture freeze, or pixelation, or audio stutter. That can, and does, happen regardless of how good your signal strength is, or how well your dish is aligned, etc. There is nothing at your end of the system that can compensate for when that happens.

So doing a reset, or format, or whatever, can't possibly help with that particular problem. The good news is that it normally doesn't happen very often and when it does start to become a problem on a particular transponder, there might be an adjustment of what is carried on which transponder to get the balance back to where it needs to be.

Carl

 

[qwerty]

Well put.

 

[lschwarcz]

I'll try to explain in simple language what is most likely happening. DirecTV carries a number of channels on each of the transponders on each satellite. There is not enough capacity for every channel to be carried 100% real time all the time video. So what they do is use very sophisticated compression formulas that evaluate all of the video information and eliminate data that really isn't needed. For example, if there are 500 pixels in a given video frame that are black, and 495 in the next video frame that are still black, they will only send the changes for the 5 pixels that changed. So instead of 500 data bits, they send only 5.

......

So doing a reset, or format, or whatever, can't possibly help with that particular problem. The good news is that it normally doesn't happen very often and when it does start to become a problem on a particular transponder, there might be an adjustment of what is carried on which transponder to get the balance back to where it needs to be.

Carl

Carl,

Thanks for the detailed explaination. Looks like it's just one of the (perhaps many) faults of DirecTV that I'll have to live with . While it should be an infrequent thing, I seem to hit it a few times per week. Makes me wonder if they're trying to squeeze too much onto their limited bandwidth? Maybe they're going for quanity instead of quality.

Thanks!
Larry.