Ok, Ron, Moman19 and everyone else, I'm here to share the highs and lows of my experience with L6.16 tonight. Sigh, sigh....
We began the evening by watching directly from the EHD an episode of a series from HBO recorded two months ago and moved to the EHD. The three previous episodes all had dropouts using L6.15. Then we watched "Leverage" recorded tonight from TNT. The past two episodes using L6.15 had dropouts, two dropouts and one dropout. Tonight, no dropouts on the cable channel recordings. Imagine the hope building in my mind.
Next, we turned to tonight's "NCIS" (on CBS Bay Area, satellite). One repeatable dropout in the program, but with a never-been-seen-before odd slight video stall.
So rather than switch networks, we watched tonight's recording of "The Mentalist" on CBS already 54 minutes into the show. There were a total of 4 dropouts in the show and I deliberately, with great pain, watched one batch of commercials which had a dropout. When the first dropout occurred I immediately skipped back. When it got to the dropout point again, it froze up completely. I was able to FF ahead, then back to the beginning. The dropout occurred in the same place and it also had a video stall exactly at the dropout point. Each and every one had a repeatable simultaneous audio dropout with video stall. Fortunately, whatever I did on the first one to cause the freeze didn't happen again.
Tomorrow, we will start with L&O:SVU (NBC) followed by the two episodes of Scrubs (ABC) all recorded this evening. We'll probably watch T.. ...ples Choice Awards (CBS) after that.
Just a quick historical run through.
- L4.49 was reported to have caused dropouts on 622's as early as March 2008, but if it did on my 722, I was not aware of them.
- L5.12/L6.10/L6.12/L6.14 had really bad dropouts on ABC and Fox and occasional dropouts on CBS and NBC, but with no visible video effects. This was on the ViP722 I sent Echostar Engineering and on the one they replaced it with.
- L6.15 made the ABC and Fox dropouts quit switching the dolby off/on and appeared to reduce the number of dropouts on those stations to nearly none. The dropouts on CBS and NBC were still there and may have increased in number. Unfortunately, I started getting very slight occasional dropouts on the cable channel recordings.
- With L6.16 the cable channel recording slight dropouts seem to have disappeared. But on CBS, the dropouts now come with a short video stall.
I'm am, of course, frustrated as I am sure everyone else is. Exactly what happened between L4.48 and L4.49 (or L5.12) that altered the way the stream was handled?
And P Smith - if the 622 has a 2xBCM7411 and the 722 has a 2xBCM7412, what does the 612 use? My 612 has the dropouts, but they are much less disruptive and have never turned the dolby off/on. (So far, they haven't messed with it, thank you very much.)