Here's another problem that I have with CC and also had with BC.

After the 530 has gone a few days without a reset, while turning off the unit and leaving the TV on, the screen flashes at least five times before showing no signal. I am connected to component video.

Has anyone else seen this?

It's not affecting the operation of the unit and is in all likelyhood, just the video mpeg buffers flushing.

I either turn the display off or have a different input on the switcher selected, so I've never noticed it.

:confused: So my machine froze up...for no apparent reason. I held in the power button to reboot...counted to ten (one mississippi and so on), released and nothing. No big deal. That has happened before. Reboot again. This time, the blue lines kick in and start running as they should...and then, they keep going! It was like the frickin' Energizer bunny had taken over my machine. I waited for the blue lines to stop...an unreasonable amount of time (we are talking minutes, not seconds) and finally gave up. I rebooted the machine during the reboot. I have never had to do that before. I can't think it is a good thing. :confused:

The DSR500 and DSR505 will do the same thing occationally.
Sometimes its related to a download, othertimes it just happens...I'm not sure why.

If you can unplug the receiver or get it back on through some other method, I don't think its too big a deal.

I got the new software the first day (July 18th) and my machine has been working so well, I've just been grateful every day that everything works as well as I expected over a year ago when we first bought the thing. But, as someone else mentioned, it's been a bit of a strain, waiting to see if something was going to happen to take all the happiness away. Other than a timer problem which happened a couple of times and then stopped, and getting used to the different operation of the skip buttons, everything has been great - until yesterday....

One of the best things about the new code was being able to record PPVs again. I hate going to the video store, so this was 75% of the reason for buying this machine. Since CC arrived, I have recorded half a dozen PPVs, no problem. Last one was August 6th, but when I went to set the timer for another one last night (Aug 9th), it tells me my Instant PPV status needs updating, but then it won't do a reportback, automatic or forced. (It has reported four or five others between July 18 and 29th) I call, am on hold for 25 minutes (what happened to the "we'll call you back" system?), they tell me they'll force it from there (wherever there was) and to check it in 30 mins. It was late, I went to bed, checked this morning, still showing unsuccessful, "failed, no answer". Called this morning (got right through - it was 7 am in Calgary) and on the Technical Services line I got a girl who seemed to really want to get rid of me. She sighed a lot, but did try a lot of things with me. We did determine the phone line is working because the caller ID is working just fine.

Finally, her answer was this - try a new phone cord or get a factory reset done. I wanted to know what a factory reset would do, exactly, but she couldn't tell me because the techs wouldn't be in till 9:00. She agreed to write up my file with the details of what we had already tried, so that I could call back later and get an answer.

But, if any of you have an opinion, I would love to hear it - should I get a factory reset done - will it cause more problems than it will solve, or is it the best thing to do? Help! and thanks.

All *C does at their end is get the account ready to listen to the reportback from the Receiver.

I went through this issue with the A8 and BC codes and used to keep on getting the error message of reportback unsuccessful. After a lot of tries the reportback worked properly.

You might want to do modem test. Options 6-4-9-8-8 and select modem test.

I do not think that a factory reset would help. Try unplugging the power of the receiver for some minutes and retry again. Unplug the phone jack when you do this.

the techs wouldn't be in till 9:00.


Should they not be able to transfer you to a tech anytime of day??

I thought that customer service and technical support were open 24/7/365. Anyone know if this has changed?
:confused:

You might want to do modem test. Options 6-4-9-8-8 and select modem test.

I tried this modem test - never knew those screens were there.... It said there was an error. The technical support rep this am did have me unplug the machine and the two coax cables but not the phone cord - do you think doing this again and including the phone cord would make any difference? Or should I just try calling them again and telling them the modem test reported an error?

Also, to answer bigb's question, it seems there are two different classes of tech support - the ones you get when you choose option # 3 on their phone menu, and then the ones they go ask when they don't know what to do. I did talk to one of those before, a year ago when they decided to replace my machine after my first fifteen or so phone calls in the first three months of owning the machine.... but it still had A8 so it didn't fix anything at that time.

I am worried they are going to want to replace the machine again and then I will end up with A8 again (since it seems CC is not still going out) - I really want to try to find another way to fix this if it's possible.

Sounds like your reportback got messed up. I had a heck of a time getting it set up properly the first time way back when I first got the machine. (From memory) If you go into setup and then system status....you then scroll down the list of stuff and see if the 1-800 phone number is listed there. If it's not there then you need to get trough to a techie who knows his stuff as I went through 2-3 before I got a guy who knew how to get it working.

Good luck.

Sounds like your reportback got messed up. I had a heck of a time getting it set up properly the first time way back when I first got the machine. (From memory) If you go into setup and then system status....you then scroll down the list of stuff and see if the 1-800 phone number is listed there. If it's not there then you need to get trough to a techie who knows his stuff as I went through 2-3 before I got a guy who knew how to get it working.

Good luck.


Yes, I went through that too, first time I tried to record a PPV after I got the CC software. The phone number wasn't there but they did fix it and it worked just great for about 10 -14 days. The phone number is still there, so it seems there's a different problem now. Thanks for the idea, though...

As I've alluded to recently, my DSR530 has been behaving badly of late.

Some timers quite working and after clearing them out they worked again.
Total lockup while watching a DVR event.
Total lockup while wathing live video, LOD enabled, but not activated.
Failure to enter LOD mode, but a channel tune recovers it.
Unable to enter Options shortly after a reboot, ( 1 minute later)

So after several days of Front Panel resets, AC power cycles and such, today I AC cycled it and it got stuck on the flashing blue lights.
Cycled again and same thing.

So I removed power for a few hours and tried again.
It flashed the light 5 times and stopped.
Same again.
Can't seem to wake it up any more.

I had been trying to test a theory that's been postulated here.
That the temperature of the unit affects it.
Why do some CC users have great improvemenst while others see it the same or worse than A8 or BC?

I had been running around 57C according to Diags R.
So I opened the cabinet doors and let a fan blow in from a few feet away.
Next day, it's running at a cool 47C.

Now the the unit was on the top shelf with closed glass dorrs, but a 3" high vent exit out the back for cables and 6" of vertical clearance and 2" of side clearance, so lots of free air volume.

This unit has NEVER had nor required a factory reset.
And other than a few days in the past 20 months of usage (yes, that long) it had worked exceedling well but a few days of hell.

Not quite sure just what to make of it.

Friggin' piece of $h1t anyways!

Thank goodness the other handfull of PVR's and HD boxes still work.

Friggin' piece of $h1t anyways!

:)

I love it!
Welcome to the club Arr.

Friggin' piece of $h1t anyways!OK, where is ARR and what have you done with him?

This is shocking.

The heat issue may have some merit. I have been very lucky with my 530. Even on A8 code I had very few lockups. My 530 is in my cool basement on an opened shelf. My home is air conditioned and off course the basement can get quite cool. I use the UHF remote to control the unit from my upstairs family room.

Another problem I am now experiencing with the CC download is that my machine is freezing up and it seems to be remote control related. I will be in the middle of searching the guide, or changing a channel, and suddenly the machine will no longer respond. I tried fresh batteries, no difference. I checked the antennae, no difference. I tried turning the DVR off and back on with the remote (this worked) but the screen held the guide the entire time, losing the channel picture, and the satellite icon turned red. Both times I have had to reboot to rectify the problem and it has happened two days in a row.

I am so sick of this download!

Well ARR my machine seems to act alot like yours and it is on the top shelf, and open on all sides and it doesn't seem to make a difference what the house temperature is, it works the same in hot weather and cool weather.

If it's anything like mine if you keep trying it will eventually boot up although my blue lights cycled for over an hour twice it will start eventually. As for crashes I haven't come up with anything that makes sense. I'm getting several crashes a day with the CC code. All of them different.

The good news is that Starchoice is sending me a new machine. They said it would have A8 code for about a month until they release a new code.

Today I had a very strange problem since getting CC. I tried to play back a recording and instead of it playing back the screen froze with the current live tv picture and the audio of live tv continued. When pressing stop I got a very strange "Recording details display". The program name looked something like: UuUNo{, the time was 1:43PM, and the duration was: 34579173:-20.
The same above info repeated several times to fill the screen. I took a photo of it in case SC ever express interest. I've got a bad feeling about this. I don't bother calling SC much anymore because the people I need to speak to are never available and don't return msgs. Maybe they will see it here.

I will tell you that I have been really disappointed all along with the 530. I never trusted that any firmware would fix the problems because the main problem appears to be a very SLOW CPU in the 530. It runs slower than my old 286 computer did years ago. For a machine that is dedicated to doing just one thing - this is unacceptable. I stopped getting my hopes up long ago. I'm not calling StarChoice to bitch any longer because they either don't care, or they cannot do anything about it as they have already sunk tons of money into the development of this poorly engineered machine.

So what now? Switch to Bell? I hate dealing with the Bell CSRs. I also hate the 2 to 3 year contract ordeal. However, my neighbours and friends who are currently with Bell don't have these problems that we have been facing for over the past year. I know some have already taken the plunge. The unfortunate thing is that some people like me, will have a difficult time justifying and coming up with another $800 to purchase a new PVR. This is really the only thing that is keeping me hanging on to StarChoice.

It really is a shame because I was hoping that *C would do something to fix this ongoing problem. Then again, no companies appear to be loyal to their clientelle anymore. So what was I thinking? What they really need to do is replace each and every one of these Motorola DSR530s with brand new equipment. Are they going to do this? Hardly. So we are stuck with what we've got, and the prospects of it getting any better are just out the window. If it could get better, it would be better right now! Enough time has been spent and wasted.

You might be right about the 'bad feeling'
My fear was confirmed today when I used some special influence to have a post mortem done on it.
The flash file system is corupted and can't be repaired at the moment as the rev. level of the board is too early.

This was NOT supposed to happen.
That was a BC issue, but it seems the 'fix' in CC to correct the BC death problem causes it's own issues evidently.

It is a shame that you lost your machine ARR as I can imagine you've had some recordings on there that you will not see. It's really unbelievable. I guess I will keep my fingers crossed that mine does not fall into this dead machine syndrome.

I guess this is why *C is no longer releasing the CC code to people.