Help! HR24 Problems.
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Me too.
Hope he keeps us updated ....
Also lets us know what he found to be the problem so we can pass that info on to the next person that may have that issue
you guys will love it. D* really got it this time.Me too.
Hope he keeps us updated ....
Also lets us know what he found to be the problem so we can pass that info on to the next person that may have that issue
IIRC, the HR24 his not a Broadcom chip, but a new company. So in theory, there may be some difference between the two.
Well, I used the HR24 last night to see how it would perform. The blacking out of the screen really is not that big of a deal. It only happened one more time and is fixed by shutting off and turning back on or changing channels to something with a different resolution (like 1080i to 720p). I'm sure the earlier posters are right about there being a handshake problem. I had some of that with the HR20s (different symptom) also. It was pretty rare so I just lived with it.
My wife even made a comment about the picture quality last night. She said everything looked gray (washed out) when I flipped by the baseball game on ESPN2. Best way I can describe it is the colors look a little dull and the black level doesn't seem as good, less contrast, even with adjusting the TV picture settings.
I guess I don't quite understand. I always have Native ON because I don't want the HR to upconvert everything to 1080i then my TV upconvert again to 1080p. It looks better when my TV does all the conversion from 480i/p, 720p, 1080i to 1080p in one step.
So, what I don't understand, if I have native on, all resolutions enabled and I'm using HDMI the entire path, shouldn't the audio/video digital stream sent from D* be identical to what the TV receives?
D* -> HR24 -> Pioneer Elite -> Samsung DLP TV
I don't think any of those components would take the video, process it (color, sharpness, contrast, etc) then send it on down the path would they? If that's the case, why would the picture quality differ from the HR20 and the HR24? Not counting the protocol specific handshaking that can/does cause occasional glitches.
Don't get me wrong, it's not like the picture is unwatchable or anything. It just seems not quite as good as the HR20 and I am perhaps a bit too picky!
Sorry for the novel. I really appreciate all of you offering tips and opinions!
Oh yes, I did go HDMI straight from HR24 to TV as a test with no change in picture quality.
My wife even made a comment about the picture quality last night. She said everything looked gray (washed out) when I flipped by the baseball game on ESPN2. Best way I can describe it is the colors look a little dull and the black level doesn't seem as good, less contrast, even with adjusting the TV picture settings.
I guess I don't quite understand. I always have Native ON because I don't want the HR to upconvert everything to 1080i then my TV upconvert again to 1080p. It looks better when my TV does all the conversion from 480i/p, 720p, 1080i to 1080p in one step.
So, what I don't understand, if I have native on, all resolutions enabled and I'm using HDMI the entire path, shouldn't the audio/video digital stream sent from D* be identical to what the TV receives?
D* -> HR24 -> Pioneer Elite -> Samsung DLP TV
I don't think any of those components would take the video, process it (color, sharpness, contrast, etc) then send it on down the path would they? If that's the case, why would the picture quality differ from the HR20 and the HR24? Not counting the protocol specific handshaking that can/does cause occasional glitches.
Don't get me wrong, it's not like the picture is unwatchable or anything. It just seems not quite as good as the HR20 and I am perhaps a bit too picky!
Sorry for the novel. I really appreciate all of you offering tips and opinions!
Oh yes, I did go HDMI straight from HR24 to TV as a test with no change in picture quality.
you probably did this but just in case, when i changed the resolution to 1080i in the set up menu i noticed it wouldn't change on the front panel. it said 480p. so i pressed the res button until the 1080i lit up. the menus looked sharp after that. zero issues here so far!!!! hope you resolve yours. let us know please
In addition to what Rey just said, make sure you have 720p and 1080i selected as display modes in the setup->display menu. Otherwise it will default to 480p, even in native. You have to tell the box what res you TV can do.
Yep, theres nothing at all in common between the broadcom chipsets in the HR20-23 and the NXP chip set used in the HR24. Different CPU core (ARM instead of MIPS), different decoders, different video core, different tuners, etc.
About the only thing thats probably the same is the disk drive family. But it looks like the disk in the HR24 is inside of a black plastic box and has a lot of tie wraps stuck to it or routed on it.
So maybe the days of opening up your HR and sticking a bigger disk drive in it without being detected are over...
Wonder what that will allow them to do with this one (in the future), and how their software coding will work between the two sets of animals.
The raw benchmark speed of the NXP chip is short of double the power of the broadcoms MIPS core, but thats never an apples to apples comparison when you're working with different architectures.
Since the decoding/decrypting and display stuff is all handled in separate hardware, the perf boost will be visible in remote response, menu response, processing guide data, processing autorecords. User interface and background housekeeping in other words. The big thing that holds up seeing the big performance boosts is there are so many real time things happening in the directv box that the cpu may just have to wait on handling a lot of UI stuff and its own housekeeping. For instance if its recording a couple of things, doing mrv or directv2pc, processing a big lump of new guide data and trying to decide whether to record something or not, responding to the user interface may be pretty far back on its priority list.
I think the NXP based units also have more RAM which should help a number of things since I think memory was tight in the HR20-23.
As to coding across platforms, its fairly straightforward. In the case of these platforms, they're all running a version of linux and the linux crew handles the port of the operating system. There are going to be some drivers that the NXP folks have to develop to work the tuners, decoders, decrypters, networking and so forth, but the interface to those should require minor changes to the directv code to adapt to.
Of course, there'll be all sorts of timing issues and error handling things that may require a lot of fiddling with.
At least they're not having to develop across multiple operating systems AND different platform architectures.
I suspect the principal motivation to adopting the NXP platform in the HR24 was cost but the extra speed is a nice bonus. I dont have directv's costs for the broadcom/NXP chipsets but NXP quacks an awful lot about low cost. I'd bet that they dropped their pants on the pricing to swipe the directv business from broadcom and broadcom didnt think directv would jump ship.
Since the decoding/decrypting and display stuff is all handled in separate hardware, the perf boost will be visible in remote response, menu response, processing guide data, processing autorecords. User interface and background housekeeping in other words. The big thing that holds up seeing the big performance boosts is there are so many real time things happening in the directv box that the cpu may just have to wait on handling a lot of UI stuff and its own housekeeping. For instance if its recording a couple of things, doing mrv or directv2pc, processing a big lump of new guide data and trying to decide whether to record something or not, responding to the user interface may be pretty far back on its priority list.
I think the NXP based units also have more RAM which should help a number of things since I think memory was tight in the HR20-23.
As to coding across platforms, its fairly straightforward. In the case of these platforms, they're all running a version of linux and the linux crew handles the port of the operating system. There are going to be some drivers that the NXP folks have to develop to work the tuners, decoders, decrypters, networking and so forth, but the interface to those should require minor changes to the directv code to adapt to.
Of course, there'll be all sorts of timing issues and error handling things that may require a lot of fiddling with.
At least they're not having to develop across multiple operating systems AND different platform architectures.
I suspect the principal motivation to adopting the NXP platform in the HR24 was cost but the extra speed is a nice bonus. I dont have directv's costs for the broadcom/NXP chipsets but NXP quacks an awful lot about low cost. I'd bet that they dropped their pants on the pricing to swipe the directv business from broadcom and broadcom didnt think directv would jump ship.
Well, it def does all those things faster "remote response, menu response, processing guide data, processing autorecords".
I was always amazed how long it took the little orange "R", or the triple "R" to show up after a button press.
I was always amazed how long it took the little orange "R", or the triple "R" to show up after a button press.
Oh man, my HR20 takes so long to do that sometimes I think it didnt 'get the message' and hit the record button again and then end up with a series link instead of a recording.
Yeah, I got to the point where I'd hit it once, wait for it to show on the guide and above, then hit it again and wait. Pretty lame, but dont have to do that anymore!
Update....looks like I'm going to be keeping both HR24s after all. I was about to give up yesterday and hooked my HR20 back up........PAINFULLY SLOW! I had to give the HR24 another shot. I got spoiled using it for one night. I ended up giving the component cables a shot even though I thought it wouldn't work very well since my Pioneer receiver would have to convert component in to HDMI out to the TV, but it was actually quite a bit better. Color and contrast were better than HDMI and of course no more HDMI handshaking problems. Tried the original HR24 that I was going to return on another TV and same story. Looked better using component and worked fine. So I now have 2 speedy HR24s doing the heavy work and 2 HR20s have been demoted to light duty replacing an SD and H21 receiver.
All is right with the world again.
Thanks again for everybody's help and advice, much appreciated!
All is right with the world again.
Thanks again for everybody's help and advice, much appreciated!
I'm glad using component cables worked (like I suggested!
), but have you tried a different hdmi cable?- Status
