721 Weird Video Problem

[Stargazer]

This is the first day that it started doing this. The 721, on prerecorded events as well as live events that are recording, will only show the video on the left side of the screen and have mostly green and one purple and one black vertical bars on the right side of the screen. This is very strange and I have never seen this problem before with any satellite receiver. I have a few attachments below and this is not channel specific. I have even tried viewing the same stations on another receiver without the same thing happening on the other receiver, just the 721. Yesterday the receiver would not turn on at the front of it or with the remote but I heard the fan running. Even unplugging and waiting for a few minutes then plugging it back in would not allow the receiver to turn back on. Finally it would turn on and say that it was verifying the hard drive and so forth but kept doing that over and over and then it finally worked.

I am sick of Dish and their hardware issues. I had three 501's go bad and now this makes the third 721 that must obviously be going bad. When are they going to finally make these receivers reliable? I have not had a DVR receiver last for even one year (other than the 7100 which NEVER failed on me and neither did the 7100's I sold to my customers).

 

[Stargazer]

Attachment below:

 

[Stargazer]

This attachment below is using the PIP functionality of the same station on both tuners. The main screen shows the problem I am having while the second tuner in the PIP window does not have the problem. This is happening with or without any recording to the hard drive. While I captured this picture below it was with no recording going on. Someone from DBSTalk had indicated that this looks like a tuner problem. Has anybody had such an issue as this?

Another Attachment Below:

(attachment will not attach)

 

[Stargazer]

A reboot has resolved the issue (at least for now). Seems like some pretty bad software glitches if a reboot fixes it. Why me and nobody else though? Perhaps it is a tuner issue or something else that will progressively get worse over time. Previous recordings that had this issue appears to not have this issue now after the reboot. This is very odd.

 

[SimpleSimon]

The fact that recordings that showed the problem before, and don't now rules OUT the tuner as a problem - the data stream made it to disk A-OK, but played back 'wrong' until after reboot.

I believe that would indicate a 'hang' or other 'soft' problem in the video output area.

 

[iKramerica]

bad tuner...

I am having somewhat similar problem. Mine is with tuner2, going blocky and losing signal. I don't get the Dish looking signal loss signal though, but the Linux black screen with white letters.

After some testing, swapping cables, etc., no matter what I did, this only happens on tuner2. If I record from tuner2, it is on the recording. If I tune tuner1 and tuner2 to the same channel via pic n pic, only the tuner2 will show the artifacts or drop out.

Doing a switch test, tuner2 fails, actually just 110 ODD fails. All others are fine.

It's not the switch though, as I can swap outputs of the 64 switch and no matter what is plugged into what, the 721 says tuner2 has a switch problem on 110 ODD. That screems tuner problem to me.

This happen very infrequently for a few months, so much so that I thought it was the channel, not the tuner (because I didn't recognize the signal loss screen). Now, it is happening far more often, to the point I can't watch anything that uses 110 ODD on the second tuner. Otherwise, everything is functioning fine.

Anything I can do, or do I need to send it in?

 

[SimpleSimon]

Kramerica - your problem sounds considerably different. Assuming you swapped the cables at the back of the receiver, so we know 100% of the hardware has been swapped, then I'll bet on bad tuner, and it's time for a replacement box.

 

[Stargazer]

I agree SimpleSimon, after thinking about this, seeing that it has nothing to do with whether the video is being recorded or not and that the shows that were previously on the hard drive that were having this issue before the reboot and not afterwards, that wouldn't indicate a tuner problem. If there was a tuner problem then wouldn't that be indicated by pixellation? It seemed like it may have been tuner specific so maybe it was something connected to that tuner or software only affecting a particular one.

I see this is not a widespread problem so that even makes me wonder if it is software related but a reboot fixed it in which usually indicated a software issue being resolved.

 

[Unthinkable]

I noticed something similar Thursday on some of my G4TV programs I recorded. Before you jump to conclusions that its a hardware or tuner going bad issue here, you should know G4 was having all kinds of technical problems on Dish over the course of the last 24 hours. First ten or fifteen minutes of one of my shows had a Dish Network blue slate up stating that "this channel is experiencing technical difficulties right now" fyi. I noticed some green horizontal lines momentarily on the upper portion of The Screen Savers two days ago while watching a recording of the 7pm EST show later as well as frequent audio dropouts on numerous shows just seconds after pressing play. Think it was an isolated issue on this channel. I imagine they are still working some of the kinks out from last Friday when G4/Tech TV merged.

 

[gredneck]

I think it's some kind of secondary mind control programming that g4 is using to get techtv watchers to like there programming.

 

[Stingray]

Could it be overheating? My first 721 seemed to run much hotter than the 508 it replaced while in the same location in my equipment cabinet. The audio failed on that unit in less than 10 days. I took some readings with a digital thermometer on top of the case and found the 721 was running over 104 degrees. The 508 used to run about 94 degrees with no problems exibited.

Dish sent me a replacement which runs around 94 degrees in the same location as the previous units and it runs perfectly so far.

Just a thought!
Stingray

 

[Stargazer]

It is NOT TechTv, it has done it on several other channels as well. If you look on SatelliteGuys you will notice that I have a picture with a different channel attached which done the same thing. I even have a PIP of a channel where it does it on the main screen but not on the PIP box. It has not done it since the reboot.

Now I have been experiencing more problems just as others have described in the past only more strange. I had to reboot the receiver last night because when I pressed the "info" button the System Info screen would come up instead of the Show Info screen. I have never seen that problem before but the other problem I had experienced before was the fact that most of the buttons were unresponsive. It would not allow me to turn channels but it would allow me to get to the PVR Events, press the "info" button which displayed the System Info when it shouldnt have, and press the live button which was the only way I could get out of the PVR Events screen and the System Info screen. If I had it on the station then it would display the banner at the top as it should. The reboot fixed the problem last night but this morning the same thing happened so I had to reboot it again. What in the world is going on with this stupid 721? It is WAY too buggy in less than a day's time.

The temperature here the last few days has been in the 60's so it has been really cool weather conditions for the 721 but it is a possibility for the 721 itself to be overheating. Too bad they had to take the temperature reading out of the System Information Screen.

 

[Stargazer]

It is NOT TechTv, it has done it on several other channels as well. If you look on SatelliteGuys you will notice that I have a picture with a different channel attached which done the same thing. I even have a PIP of a channel where it does it on the main screen but not on the PIP box. It has not done it since the reboot.

Now I have been experiencing more problems just as others have described in the past only more strange. I had to reboot the receiver last night because when I pressed the "info" button the System Info screen would come up instead of the Show Info screen. I have never seen that problem before but the other problem I had experienced before was the fact that most of the buttons were unresponsive. It would not allow me to turn channels but it would allow me to get to the PVR Events, press the "info" button which displayed the System Info when it shouldnt have, and press the live button which was the only way I could get out of the PVR Events screen and the System Info screen. If I had it on the station then it would display the banner at the top as it should. The reboot fixed the problem last night but this morning the same thing happened so I had to reboot it again. What in the world is going on with this stupid 721? It is WAY too buggy in less than a day's time.

 

[Unthinkable]

It is NOT TechTv, it has done it on several other channels as well. If you look on SatelliteGuys you will notice that I have a picture with a different channel attached which done the same thing. I even have a PIP of a channel where it does it on the main screen but not on the PIP box. It has not done it since the reboot.

You might want to recheck your posts above in this thread. I'm unable to view your second attachment. There is a message saying that your attachment failed after the one picture you posted from a well known TechTV/G4 show. Anyways, I don't think the last software upgrade finalized itself entirely quite the way it was supposed to judging from all the repeat reboots right afterwards.

 

[Stargazer]

It has been working good for the past day or two so perhaps that is what the issue is, the software upgrade not finalizing or something. I had issues with the receiver during the software upgrade. None of this happened before the software upgrade was done.