vip722 Digital Optical Output
I'm a newbie on this site/thread, so apologies if I'm in the wrong place.
I have a vip722, using the digital optical audio connection to a Harmon Kardon AVR7000. External decoder on the 722 is set to Dolby Digital/PCM. Had this setup since the vip722 was introduced (replaced a vip622 optical audio attached to the HK with the vip722), and it's been relatively problem free.
About the beginning of August, the dolby-digital (mainly HD) channels would intermittently produce audio garbage sounding like gargling water. A front panel reset on the vip722 would fix this, but also could fix by changing channel to a channel not transmitting dolby digital, and then changing the channel back (e.g. CNN and CNNHD). Also noticed a single audio pop when changing from non-dd to dd channels.
Finally called the problem to Dish on 8/11/09. Lots of troubleshooting with the call center, swap cables, swap optical input ports on the HK, change external decoder settings, lots of resets, etc... Dish wanted to pin the problem on the HK, however I also have a DVD player attached to the HK using an optical cable, and the audio works fine when playing dolby digital encoded DVD's.
Long story short, they have swapped 3 vip722's since then. Finally on-line chatted with a dish tech yesterday, and going through some dates, this problem seems to be coincident with the push of L622 software on 8/5/09. She had no other reports of this type of audio problem using digital optical, but did mention something about HDMI (I'm not using HDMI between my 722 and HK).
I've had two other problems that I noticed on the replacement 722's, so I don't know if they were happening on the original one.
First is that the guide button configuration (favorites guide selection: guide button/guide pop-up) won't hold it's setting past a reset, including both the nightly and a front panel power button reset, and reverts back to the default guide pop-up.
I've also had problems with recording, such as recurring programming being lost, and programs that have stopped recording after a few minutes.
Is anyone else using the digital optical out and having the same audio issue?
I also have a vip 622 using the optical out and HDMI attached to a Sony surround sound switching center, so I can switch back and forth between the the two types of cables, but I haven't had any problems with it since the L622 software download.
vip722 software is: L622RJXD-N / BootStrap 1418RJXD
vip622 software is: L622RBDB-N / BootStrap 1730RBDB