I hate to rub it in, but I"m having a ball with this new firmware. This is what it should have been like out of the box!! I don't know how I got so lucky to be in this so called 500 club, but I'd be pretty pissed if I wasn't, and I'd be calling *C to let them know. They should give this to everyone soon so they can record their Christmas shows for the kids and family etc. Call and complain you guys...tell them to give you a nice Christmas present after having shelled out the $$'s for your receiver.
Ho Ho Ho.

And by the way, Merry Christmas to all on the forum.

Cheers.

Hopefully Starchoice is reading this forum and sees the good reviews for a change and will get this new update out to the rest of us REAL REAL soon!!!!

Please *C give the rest of us an early Xmas present too!

i guess more than anything is that i am disappointed that i will have to wait until january. originally i was told october, then they said november. then they said december. now they are saying january. it's even more annoying to realize that the new software is out there, but i don't have it after all of those empty promises. i guess i can wait another month with this buggy machine but like i said it is disappointing. the only thing that makes me feel a tad bit better is the fact that at least some people are saying that they have it. however the point of these people having the BC version is to test it. if they find problems with it that will mean yet another delay in getting the software. it may not come in january depending on what is found. from what i have read so far it does sound like a lot of the annoying bugs have been addressed. i am keeping my fingers crossed.

Well when you were told October, *C employee's were told October, but during the final days of the release it got pushed back until December. They have now released the frist 500 upgrades for the 530's and from some of the comments from people who have gotten them on this site it looks like the update has been working well.

Just out of curiosity, how did they decide which accounts to send the update to? Order activated? Most calls? Random? I'm hoping they've got some way to track which ones got the update and they'll be calling them to find out what they thing, otherwise this whole excercise seems kind of pointless.

Another story.

I just spoke with a level-2 tech rep about the new release. I didn't offer any info that I knew anything about the new release. He said that starting a few nights ago they are updating several hundred units per night. This cycle will continue until all are updated which could be a couple of weeks.

Except for the few that got it on day 1, has anybody received it since?

He did say that the updates were done done on a random basis based on serial number. I think he meant that it was random, but they were tracking the updates by serial number. He couldn't change the order of the updates.

Everyday checking ... oh the agnony .... On the bright side with all of this checking, I'm noticing that my signal strength is way up there, often over 90.

If this fog would lift and let the planes come in so that I could get home, I could find out what all the excitement is about. The family says we had the new code yesterday when I got them to check. My wife's biggest complaint had been the chopped off endings to some recorded PPV's; especially the one that died right before the tear jerker part. Hopefully tomorrow.......

My wife's biggest complaint had been the chopped off endings to some recorded PPV's;
Turns out that that was not a receiver problem, but the 3rd party guide data provider and the slight differences between the Eastern and Western PPV providers. I'm led to believe that is supposedly fixed now.

You may want to choose the upper PPV's above 210 or so.
It looks like they have removed the PPV Promo's in the guide for those.

Make sure you call in and get credited for the PPV as well.

There is just no excuse for that.

To those of you that have the BC code, did your target version number change the day prior to getting the new code? It usually does that but I haven't heard anyone mention it.

Mine still says A8, with a target of 00. Sigh.

-Mike

Yes, that's the way it works.
When your receivers hears eithers it name (Unit Address) being called or sees software newer than what it has if it's a broadcast, then the target version changes to the new one.

Then, at ~ 2 a.m. the following morning if the unit is in standby, it boots into a special mode to accept the download and then boots back up to it's previous state with the new code if all goes well.

Failing that, it will try again for ~ 7 days. If it still doesn't have it, then even if it's turned on and you might be watching a program, poof, it boots to take the load and says, hey buddy, give me a break, I've been waitin' 7 days for this!

Well when you were told October, *C employee's were told October, but during the final days of the release it got pushed back until December. They have now released the frist 500 upgrades for the 530's and from some of the comments from people who have gotten them on this site it looks like the update has been working well.i called Jim Cummins to complain about the 530 and to find out what he was going to do about it. a supervisor called me back stating that it was going to start working within 2 more weeks. that was at the end of september shortly after i bought the machine. it's caused me a lot of headaches although now that i am used to the glitches i have managed to find a way to avoid them most of the time. it still should not be working this way. now i find out that i won't get it fixed until maybe january 3. that really sucks the big one.

one of the big problems with the A8 release occurs when your unit is in native mode '0000'. If you are watching an HD program, and you press the guide menu the entire picture goes black and there is no easy way to fix it. you have to exit out of the program you are watching and start it up again. can anyone confirm that this was fixed with the latest BC code? thanks.

I run mine in 0000 native all the time to take advantage of my RPTV scaling 480i 4:3 into full 16:9.
Works like a charm. I always have full screen TV that way.

Since BC, I've not seen what you describe.
I mostly watch HD content and frequent the guide as well as check timers and call logs, so from my perspective, I'd say it was fixed.

If you have BC one of the first things to do is change the Skip Backward duration (Option 6 4 8 1) to 15 seconds. This will allow any skip forward/backwards to align better when skipping ads as all ad's are in 15 second increments.

When you are watching a recorded show press 3 and Skip Forward (Skip 3 minutes). You will generally find that all ad's are around 3 minutes in length with them being longer (4 to 5 minutes for survivor finale) during sweeps week. It may require an additional Skip Forward then Skip Backward for a 3 minute 15 sec ad (For example).

You will notice that if the Skip Backward is at 10 secs that the it actually only skips 6-9 secs depending on the shows compression. This leads to the skip backward not aligning with ad's.

If you follow this technique there is a minimal number of keypresses to skip ad's. You will notice on BC that there is now a timer showing the remaining time in a recorded show to aid in making your observations.

Try it and let me know your results???

If you have BC one of the first things to do is change the Skip Backward duration (Option 6 4 8 1) to 15 seconds. This will allow any skip forward/backwards to align better when skipping ads as all ad's are in 15 second increments.

When you are watching a recorded show press 3 and Skip Forward (Skip 3 minutes).

I find most commercials vary from 2 to 8 minutes. My favorite technique is setting the forward time to one minute to get you quickly to the end of the commercial + 0 to +60 seconds then a few 15 second back taps gets you to the start of the show.

This will work a lot better if the the scrambled picture problem on compressed channels when using the skip ahead was fixed in the BC version. Does any body know if it was?

Last night, while watching TSN HD, I tried to change channels using the + - key and the remote just locked up, with the exception that the bar at the bottom of the screen showed the channel info changing, but nothing happened. The skip and FF/RW buttons didn't work, nor did the power button. Also, the "Sat" button light came on when I pressed any key. I had to turn the 530 off manually, and everything came back to normal. Anyone else have this problem?

Hopefully you phoned this in to *C as those of us who aren't part of the "500" are depending upon those who are to not only test but to also report.

I did indeed report it! My file at *C is quite thick - I've had the 530 since mid-May and have given them a load of information. It's nice to see some of the new features like the fast skip and one-day guide advance. I'm sure there'll be a bunch of new glitches, but it looks like there's finally hope...

...This will work a lot better if the the scrambled picture problem on compressed channels when using the skip ahead was fixed in the BC version. Does any body know if it was? I don't think it was ever a set top problem due to some content providers that own/operate their own uplinks to Anik and encoding techniques using a disproportionate amount of MPEG B & P frames and possibly less resolution is at the heart of the problem.

Thats why some content works very very well and others, less so.

Last night, while watching TSN HD, I tried to change channels using the + - key and the remote just locked up, with the exception that the bar at the bottom of the screen showed the channel info changing, but nothing happened. ... Anyone else have this problem? I've seen it on the rare occasion, but have also noted that often it recovers by itself if you wait 5 seconds or so. I usually just use the remote and kick it into Standby and back up. Or I use the Last Ch a couple of times and it's all good then.

When the box goes stupid, everything is unpredicatable.

A trick that seems to work quite well that was passed on to me is this:

Just go into Options 6-4 and comes out again.
That seems to clear a lot of issues.
It probably still holds true for BC as much as it did for A8.
Give that a try before resorting to a front panel reset or A.C. power cycle.

Thanks, ARR!! Here's another good 'un - a few minutes ago, I switched channels, and placed the remote <carefully> on the coffee table. About 15 seconds later, the channel went BACK to the original one! Spooky!

I don't think it was ever a set top problem due to some content providers that own/operate their own uplinks to Anik and encoding techniques using a disproportionate amount of MPEG B & P frames and possibly less resolution is at the heart of the problem.

Thats why some content works very very well and others, less so.

How can they give this a low priority, it is by far the most common problem being encountered. It is not a major bug but statistically it happens numerous times every few minutes. The skip ahead button is used multiple times for every commercial and this scrambling is right in your face making it difficult to see when the commercial is finished.

It has been mentioned in this Form that Bell does not have this problem.