922 Sling Issues?

[breser]

After further testing with the web interface on the Mac I've come to the following conclusions:

In order for local connectivity to work your web browser must be allowed to listen for connections.

You can verify the firewall settings by going to the System Preferences, click on Security and going to the Firewall tab.

You have the following options to allow local network streaming with the sling feature:

a) Turn the firewall off entirely. If you're behind some other sort of firewall or using a non-routable addresses, this may be fairly safe and easy thing to do. This will allow the local streaming to work for any browser.

b) Specifically add your browser to the list of applications that are set to Allow incoming connections. Click the Advanced button in the lower right corner of the firewall config. Click the + button under the list of applications and choose your browser. Verify that your browser appears in the list with a green dot next to it and says Allow incoming connections. This will work for any browser you do this for. This makes me somewhat nervous doing this for an entire browser.

c) If you're using Safari you can use the "Automatically allow signed software..." feature. Safari is signed and checking this box is sufficient to make Safari accept the connection from your 922. This will not work for Firefox as Firefox is not properly signed to support this. I'm more comfortable with this configuration simply because I believe this option is checked by default.

If you're going to use Safari on Snow Leopard you must force it to run in 32-bit mode (the web interface will tell you if you need to do this). You can do this by following the directions here: Sling Media Support - Configuring Safari in Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) to work with Slingbox.com

I've actually had a great deal of luck getting local streaming working with Safari on my Mac. The only real issue I've been having with it is that when clicking Dish Remote Access link on dishnetwork.com the browser hangs up and sometimes I have to hit the back button a couple times to get it to finally take me through to the sling.com site.

Hope this information is helpful to those of you out there that are having issues. I unfortunately don't have a Windows machine setup to give as detailed information on what you need to do over there.

 

[breser]

In further testing I've found that I get periodic drop outs. After doing some investigation I noticed that the ethernet connection on the 922 drops out for a bit. It then does a DHCPDISCOVER and brings it back up.

In the past 12 hours since my 922 was first installed it's dropped the Ethernet and brought it back up 79 times. Now some of these were of course necessary reboots for software upgrades and a few times when I unplugged it to move cables around as I got everything settled. But 79 times is insane. I'd say maybe 5 of them would be legit discover requests.

In comparison, no other device on my network has made a single DHCPDISCOVER in that entire time (granted none of them have been rebooted). So this is far from normal.

I've tested this with 3 different switches and sets of cabling and can reproduce it.

Whenever someone connects or disconnects with the sling system to watch live tv there is a sound drop out on the main box.

Also at one point when I was in looking at the timers setup in the DVR via the remote access system, I lost about 60% of my timers and had to put them back in again.

So even once you get past the complications of the web based system seems that the slingloaded feature still needs a lot of work.

I'm curious if other people are seeing the issue with the network dropping out periodically or if perhaps my box has a defective network port.

 

[Lphybred]

My 922 does the sound drop out when someone begins watching through sling. As for the other drop off issues I haven't had the chance to take a look to compare if that's happening with mine.

 

[breser]

I called Dish today about the network dropping out on my unit. I described my problem, he put in a ticket, but said they had not heard about this issue. Talked to people above him who told him my 922 needed to be connected to a router and not a hub or a switch (which is complete nonsense). He had me do a hard reset on the machine, which did nothing to resolve the network issues (it's still happening) and finally told me that there would be a new software release in a few days.

Hopefully the ticket was written up in an understandable way gets to someone that is knowledgeable enough to know what I explained to them.

 

[breser]

So I ran a trace of the traffic to and from my 922 tonight and discovered what was causing my network drop out problem. My DHCP server was misbehaving and providing the wrong server-identifier (ip address of the DHCP server in non-DHCP protocol terminology).

This issue didn't cause any issue during the initial request for the ip address, because the server-identifier is not used in the initial exchange between the DHCP server and the 922 to get the ip address initially.

Where it did cause problems was with the renewals of the lease. The 922 addressed the renewal request to the invalid server-identifier. The ip which it directed the request to received the request and returned an ICMP reply saying that the traffic had been administratively rejected (firewall filtered). However, the DHCP server would still see the traffic, and respond to it giving the ok to renew the lease.

Per the DHCP protocol, the DHCP server does not technically have to respond to the request. The lack of a response is supposed to be treated by the client as a successful renewal.

In this particular case the 922 received an ICMP telling it that it's request was filtered AND the ack telling it that the requested was accepted. I'm not sure if the 922 saw the ICMP and stopped listening for the ack and therefor didn't see the ACK and is requiring that the ACK be sent in order to treat the renewal valid or if the 922 was seeing the ICMP response and treating it as a NAK.

This is likely a gray area in the RFCs for DHCP and a situation where the 922's implementation of DHCP is different than most other clients and resulted in the problem I saw.

I resolved the incorrect server-identifier and my 922 is no longer dropping the connection. Watched a show with the Sling feature tonight and it seems to be working fine now.

I'll call dish and see if I can't get this information added to my ticket.

 

[sdanz618]

breser

Great work breser! I am going through some very similar issues and can't get any remote sling outside of my home network. I just had a baby and have been at the hospital with 11Mbps downstream and 10Mbps upstream. At home I have 5.4 down and .65 up. So I should be able to get SD remotely. It connects and works for about 20 minutes then stops and won't work anymore. I do not have any issues at my home pc which is hardwired to the same Belkin Wireless N router that my 922 is hardwired to. Any ideas? Dish tech support has been no help at all.

 

[DVDDAD]

I posted this in it's own thread however I'm placing a copy in this Sling specific thread as well. I hope that's okay with everyone.

S105 hit my box this morning. At first all seemed well. My a.m. timers fired up without a problem and the 922 seemed to be operating fine. I then tried to transfer a folder of shows that previously gave me problems and they transferred successfully. All's well so far.

Then I tried to Sling on my BlackBerry Bold 9700 and received the following message:

"SlingPlayer cannot connect to your Slingbox. Please check the internet connection on your phone and try again."​

I tried again several times and received the same message. However I was able to connect to my standalone Slingbox Solo without a problem. When I got to the office, when I tried with again on my BlackBerry with the same results, then I tried on my PC with dishnetwork.com I received the infamous black box that plagued us in prior days that said:

"There was a problem communicating with your Slingbox. Please try again later."​

It seems that either it's a coincidence that they are having trouble with the Sling servers again, or that S105 broke Sling. What is everyone else finding about S105? Did it break your Sling?

 

[n0qcu]

One thing Dish needs to fix with sling on the 922 is after you connect with sling the receiver turns on both TV1 and TV2 (there should be no reason to turn on TV1) then when you disconnect it does NOT turn TV1 off. They need to make it leave TV1 alone.

 

[daygk70]

I have a EHD that I could use with my VIP 722, but when I plug it into my 922 it says that the EHD is configured for another dish account, DISH has been no help... Does anyone else have this problem? Or better yet a solution!!! I am getting sick of this 922...

 

[scottbakertemp]

I'm still getting the old - "There was a problem communicating with your Slingbox. Please try again later." error. I'm using a windows 7 PC (IE8) on the same wired network as the 922.

 

[wojo]

I am occasionally getting the "problem communicating with your Slingbox player...". However, the most common error is that the network connection is the 922 disconnecting.

It will be reset the connection, but it will drop a minute later. Every other connection to the router is working correctly.

I had a Slingbox Pro/722 for 2 years without issue. The 922 was installed last Sunday.

This is getting very irritating.

 

[SabreFan]

ViP 922 "On-Screen" remote will not pop up

Has anybody run into an issue with the "pop-up" remote control not appearing?

I just had the 922 installed a week ago and everything works really well, for the most part, except for this issue.

I have had numerous technicians and technical support people try to resolve this issue. I am very close to having the receiver replaced with a non Sling version and scrapping the whole thing.

Has anyone had this issue and resolved it?

I would really appreciate the help.

 

[tomcrown1]

Has anybody run into an issue with the "pop-up" remote control not appearing?

I just had the 922 installed a week ago and everything works really well, for the most part, except for this issue.

I have had numerous technicians and technical support people try to resolve this issue. I am very close to having the receiver replaced with a non Sling version and scrapping the whole thing.

Has anyone had this issue and resolved it?

I would really appreciate the help.

DEMAND A NEW 922 you have a defective receiver. The 922 is a pice of junk period. You may need to go through three boxes before you get one that works--good luck.

 

[SabreFan]

DEMAND A NEW 922 you have a defective receiver. The 922 is a pice of junk period. You may need to go through three boxes before you get one that works--good luck.

Do you really think this will solve the issue? I would think it is a problem with their website or settings.
They have pushed me off saying their is going to be another firmware and software update, but that hasnt happened over the past 48 hours.
My thought was that there was a internet setting or something was overlooked. If this has, in fact, been an issue for someone else and the fix was a new receiver, I will make them replace it.

Maybe a better fix is to get a regular HD DVR and buy a SlingBox?

Any thoughts?

Thanks

 

[junk67]

It is best now to leave the EHD disconnected from the 922 until Dish fixes known problems with them. People who didn't listen have lost recordings for good.

My first post.

I just received my VIP 922 today. When the technician and I moved my external hard drive from my VIP 622 to the 922 we could not get to any of the content. I then tried a blank unformatted drive, then a FAT32 formatted drive with a few pictures (to see if they would transfer), then an NTFS formatted drive with the same pictures. The external hard drive functionality does not seem to work at all.

Has anyone else actually tried to move an EHD from a 622 or 722 to the 922 and suceeded?
Has anyone transferred anything from an EHD to the 922? (How did you do it)

Thanks

 

[gdarwin]

My first post.

I just received my VIP 922 today. When the technician and I moved my external hard drive from my VIP 622 to the 922 we could not get to any of the content. I then tried a blank unformatted drive, then a FAT32 formatted drive with a few pictures (to see if they would transfer), then an NTFS formatted drive with the same pictures. The external hard drive functionality does not seem to work at all.

Has anyone else actually tried to move an EHD from a 622 or 722 to the 922 and suceeded?
Has anyone transferred anything from an EHD to the 922? (How did you do it)

Thanks

to Satelliteguys.

As you have read Dish had this function but decided to disable it until they get it right. Hang in there, it will be turned on "soon".

 

[MikeD-C05]

I got my 922 Thursday. I know I said I would wait, but I had to have it anyway. I talked to the DISH advanced tech that night and again today and he said that you can only transfer 4 shows or less from you external hard drive to the 922 internal hard drive. If you do more than 4 you might end up with corrupted recordings. So I tried to do 4 and it did work. So the key is not to transfer more than 4 shows at a time.

 

[junk67]

My problem is the external drive does not show up in the 'my media transfer' menu, so I could not try to transfer anything.

I found a method that seems to work, is very painful, and seems relatively safe.

1. I kept my VIP 622 receiver
2. I attached a 'new' external hard drive and formatted it
3. I recorded a show for 2 minutes
4. I disconnected the 'new' external hard drive from the VIP 622, and connected it to the VIP 922
5. The 'new' external hard drive showed up on the VIP 922, and it allowed the transfer - up to this point is really just a test

6. The VIP 622 was empty because I had moved all my shows to an 'old' external hard drive, so I connected the 'old' external hard drive to the VIP 622, and then moved files from the 'old' external hard drive to the VIP 622
7. I disconnected the 'old' hard drive, connected the 'new' hard drive and moved the files from the VIP 622 to the 'new' hard drive
8. I moved the 'new' hard drive to the VIP 922, and transferred the files successfully
9. I am repeating steps 6-8 until all the files are moved

I said it was painful

after reading the thread:
922's EHD's to be DISABLED tonight.
it seems like a bad idea to even try until the problem is fixed

 

[wojo]

No support for xfering from VIP922 to EHD

I am disappointed with many of the bugs in the VIP 922, but the major feature of the 622/722 that was excluded is the ability to transfer from box to EHD.

Sling advanced tech support indicates it may be a future enhancement.

 

[mojoe4]

My problem is the external drive does not show up in the 'my media transfer' menu, so I could not try to transfer anything.

I found a method that seems to work, is very painful, and seems relatively safe.

1. I kept my VIP 622 receiver
2. I attached a 'new' external hard drive and formatted it
3. I recorded a show for 2 minutes
4. I disconnected the 'new' external hard drive from the VIP 622, and connected it to the VIP 922
5. The 'new' external hard drive showed up on the VIP 922, and it allowed the transfer - up to this point is really just a test

6. The VIP 622 was empty because I had moved all my shows to an 'old' external hard drive, so I connected the 'old' external hard drive to the VIP 622, and then moved files from the 'old' external hard drive to the VIP 622
7. I disconnected the 'old' hard drive, connected the 'new' hard drive and moved the files from the VIP 622 to the 'new' hard drive
8. I moved the 'new' hard drive to the VIP 922, and transferred the files successfully
9. I am repeating steps 6-8 until all the files are moved

I said it was painful

after reading the thread:
922's EHD's to be DISABLED tonight.
it seems like a bad idea to even try until the problem is fixed

I see this post was a few days ago, so might already have figured this out. But you need to wait 12 hours or so and you will see your EHD. For some reason it takes awhile for the 922 to see the EHD. Look at some of the other post on here about the 922 and EHD.