I am on my second set of VIP 612 receivers (have 2). One was locking up from day one. While scrolling through the guide the system would lock, requiring a hard reset. The second unit never locked. Both would drop audio or have audio stutter along with temporary frozen video of pixelated video.
On the first visit I could not get the 1st unit to lock up. The tech stated it just needed an update which would happen automatically. Weeks later it still locked and the audio / video drops got worse on both. On the second trip from the local tech, he stated it was "Impossible" for both units to be bad. Certainly unlikely but not impossible. He called Dish Network Im guessing and was relaying the signal strength of the SATs to the person on the other end. For 119 it showed a reading that jumped between 44 and 48. He told the person and although I could not hear what person said, the Tech responded "A 48 signal can cause audio and video dropouts?" So its safe to assume the person on the other end stated that the signal strength could be causing the issue. The tech followed up by saying "I don't know where you are getting signal strengths that high but in this area we never achieve higher than 50" So Im guessing the person on the line stated that the signal should be higher.
What ended up happening is they replaced both receivers. After switching out, and before the tech finished loading his truck. The new receiver 1 locked up and rebooted itself. Of course he could not explain why and said it must have been a fluke. Although he never watched any programming long enough to see if the audio/video skipped, he stated that he was reporting to his office and Dish Network that my problem was the HDMI cable I had run from my receiver to my set. I asked if this were the case, explain why the receiver in the other room using the HDMI cable they supplied was doing the same thing. He could not give a legitimate response other than to say "Its not doing it now" . He never watched any one program for more than 15 seconds so he could not back that up.
Within an hour of him being gone, Receiver 1 dropped audio and had stuttering vid. I have not watched the second receiver yet. To eliminate my HDMI cable as the problem, Im moving the receiver close to the set and using the cable they supply. As before I will watch in LIVE mode and then when I catch dropped audio and vid, I simply rewind and record it so I can show them later.
I really do not see this issue being resolved so I'm wondering who I should contact next? I feel that if I use the same route as before I will end up with either replaced receivers again or they will just try to lay blame on the HDMI even if I eliminate it as the problem.
