My Bell 5100 (with 120 GB drive upgrade and re-seated Conexant tuner chip) had worked fine for about 5 months, but in the last 24 hours, showed a couple of unusual glitches.
i) On the "My Recordings" page, either the title, date or duration of certain recordings on the screen were blank. If I scrolled up and down the list, the same spots on the list of recorded programs (eg, 3rd and 4th line on the list as displayed on the screen) would remain blank, while the information updated on the lines above and below. Also, when I called up the TV guide, some program information was missing in the middle of the guide - half hour or 1-hour boxes would either be blank, or if the text was supposed to fill two lines, I'd see the bottom line only.
ii) I had it on early this morning - programming was fine, and it was recording for me. A couple of hours later, without me having gone anywhere near the dish or cables, I turned it on again and it had the "waiting for satellite signal" that one sees when the unit is first powered on. However, it was stuck on "Progress, 0 of 5" and instead was counting up the transponders.... EV91, counted up the odd TPs, then the even TPs; then it would switch to EV82, count up the odd TP's, then even TPs; then go back to EV91, etc. I went off to check that my other (non-Bell) equipment was fine, and 5 mins later, came back to find that the 5100 was operating normally again, recording had continued. Once the recorded program had ended, the duration on the "my recordings" page showed I had lost 16 minutes of programming because of this. [Weather was not an issue - lightly cloudly, but no precipitation]
I've since given the unit a hard reboot, and problem i) has gone away, and there has been no-recurrance of problem ii).
I'd read that these units require a hard-boot from time to time. Is this an example of the sort of flakiness that can happen if its not rebooted from time to time? Or a larger problem - Bell trying to move their satellite footprints further north than Boston?
Thanks
i) On the "My Recordings" page, either the title, date or duration of certain recordings on the screen were blank. If I scrolled up and down the list, the same spots on the list of recorded programs (eg, 3rd and 4th line on the list as displayed on the screen) would remain blank, while the information updated on the lines above and below. Also, when I called up the TV guide, some program information was missing in the middle of the guide - half hour or 1-hour boxes would either be blank, or if the text was supposed to fill two lines, I'd see the bottom line only.
ii) I had it on early this morning - programming was fine, and it was recording for me. A couple of hours later, without me having gone anywhere near the dish or cables, I turned it on again and it had the "waiting for satellite signal" that one sees when the unit is first powered on. However, it was stuck on "Progress, 0 of 5" and instead was counting up the transponders.... EV91, counted up the odd TPs, then the even TPs; then it would switch to EV82, count up the odd TP's, then even TPs; then go back to EV91, etc. I went off to check that my other (non-Bell) equipment was fine, and 5 mins later, came back to find that the 5100 was operating normally again, recording had continued. Once the recorded program had ended, the duration on the "my recordings" page showed I had lost 16 minutes of programming because of this. [Weather was not an issue - lightly cloudly, but no precipitation]
I've since given the unit a hard reboot, and problem i) has gone away, and there has been no-recurrance of problem ii).
I'd read that these units require a hard-boot from time to time. Is this an example of the sort of flakiness that can happen if its not rebooted from time to time? Or a larger problem - Bell trying to move their satellite footprints further north than Boston?
Thanks
