Last night I tuned to a channel I don't subscribe to and it seemed to confuse my 530. When I tuned to another channel I got the channel banner, sound but no picture. I tried to access the DVR menu to call up a recording, however that menu never came up. At this point I lost the sound and no other function worked. Time for a reset, however the machine is not in the bedroom and I didn't feel like going downstairs to hold the power button for 7 seconds so I turned the TV off and retired for the night. This morning when I turned on the TV to catch the news I was surprised to find it working with both picture and sound. It looks like it got itself together during the night. Normally I wouldn't leave it in a froozen state but it does appear that sometimes they will come back on their own if you simply wait.

My machine has appeared to become stable again? Last week it was reset after reset, this week fine. I think it might have more to do with the info being sent to the machine, rather then the machine itself. It seems that others are reporting the same problems around the same times.

:confused:

I agree I also think it's the info sent to the machine rather than the unit itself...it seems to be like a monthly PMS problem. :confused:

My 530 had to be front panel rebooted many times from the begining of April but it has returned to stable operation this week. The only change has been the DVR list was cleared last weekend after a long back log of recordings.

My replacement showed up after a week, and so far, so good. Let's hope the new code brings some stability.

Our second unit is heading back. It's very eratic with recording now, breaking recordings, freezing during playback, etc. We did a factory reset last week and cleaned out all but 3 hours of recordings and it was stable until last night. Now, with 21 hours of HD remaining, it's completely useless for recording. New unit is on the way with no charge for shipping. Maybe this will be "THE ONE". I hope so, because we could never live without one!

I agree, as much trouble as the 530 has caused, it was sure tough when you don't have one for a week. There's no way we could go back now.

Well my second unit bit the dust yesterday. It had been really acting up over the past week and then I couldn't get into the DVR List anymore. Called SC and they did a factory reset, that didn't help.

They are sending me a NEW unit not another refurbished unit. No charge, no shipping. Lets hope the NEW unit works!!!!

PS. the timing couldn't be worse as we just left on 10 days vacation and I won't be able to record anything.

Same here, 2 factory resets yesterday, freezing up within 10 mins. But it was only freezing up on HD channels. Now this morning I'm staying away from Hd and every has been fine so far.

A NEW unit, I asked if it was new or refurb and he said he always request new in the work order. We'll see. I asked about charges he said it wouldn't cost me anything, no mention of a shipping charges, nothing, but I won't put up a stink if the $13.99 appears on my bill.

This was a 2nd level tech person. He said that new code was coming in 2 weeks but it would come in waves and depending on your status in the que, it could be the middle of June by the time it got you. He suggested that the code probably will fix the issues I was having however, he couldn't guarantee not having the unit in his hands. And given it could be up to 45 more days for the new code, he suggested a replacement. He seemed pretty matter of fact about the dates. The CSR I initially spoke to had no idea when the code was coming.

In passing I asked about the new guide. he said it is more functional, longer guide, named searches, etc, but he doesn't like the colour scheme or some of the graphics. "It works, I just like the look of the old one." I thought that was a little funny.

As an aside, my wife was watching one of her soaps. She couldn't figure out why the "skip fwd" wasn't working to skip over the commercials. Then she realized she was watching the show live. "Screw that", started recording, and went on to do something else.

I have a question for some of you guys with DSR505 and 530 having these problems; lockups, non-stop animated lines on the receivers, intermittent recordings and the such...
Do you have any other receivers connected to the same dish? If you do then what models are they and what kind of LNB do you have them connected to? If you don't know whats an LNB, its that part on the end of the dish where all the wires connect to. Rectangular with 4 plugs or the other with 2 tubes forming a "Y"?

Just an update to my previous post, my replacement unit came and it was a NEW unit with the 00.CE code.

Hmmmm.....interesting, I'll check my code when I get home.

My replacement came last week as a refurb with A04. They told me to expect to be targeted with CC within 14 days! I escalated and have a new unit on the way. My current CC unit records fine until it gets 4 or 5 hours of HD on the HDD, so I wasn't interested in A04 for 2 weeks. I don't know if my marriage could take A04 again.

My replacement came last week as well and it was new loaded with CE. The CSR never heard of CE even though we know it has been around for few months now.

So far so good.

I have to believe that SC was screwing around with the systems a while back and now that has eased off. The number of people complaining about lockups etc certainly has decreased and I noticed on my old system that it became much more stable for the week before I installed my new unit.

My new unit came yesterday and it is indeed a new one. This one came with CE. I'm loading up 8-10 hours of HD recordings to see how it performs with info on it. I had 1 lockup last night, but I was working it fairly hard, going back and forth between channels while recording another channel. I did notice a lot more very short audio drop outs than my CC unit. We'll have to monitor that.

While watching the CNN News live (502) at 8.30 pm I noticed a lot of very brief audio dropouts. This was using my 530. I did a front panel reset and after that there were no dropouts whatsoever. I have done this several times in the past when experiencing dropouts and in 90 percent of the occasions the dropouts were absent for several hours. Because of this I am convinced the dropouts are caused by the code. They do not occur when using the 500 unit which is hooked up to the same dish.
Lester

So far so good tonight. No drop outs at all yet. Lots of pausing, ffw, rew, and no grief. I'm not recording in the background, though.

Hi there,

I'm not sure if this similar to problems I've seen posted regarding audio dropouts, but I'm have problems with recorded programming. My 2 year DVR 530 died completely, and SC sent a replacement without much hassle. The replacement was activated and seems to be working fine in most respects withe CC version of code.

However, upon watching our first recordings, ALL of them were badly garbled, with artifacts across the screen, or explosions of colour, and audio dropouts. This goes on for the entire recording.

I also tested live recording (pause live program), and it seems to have exactly the same problem, though not quite as bad as the recorded program. Watching the program live, the video and audio quality are both just fine.

Has anyone seen this problem? Any suggestions on a fix? Receiver replacement again is not desirable

Thanks!

I would suggest getting *choice tech help on the phone and replicate the problem with them. If they can't offer a fix through a factory reset, have them replace the unit again, but stress that you want a NEW unit rather than a refurb. We're on our 4th unit now (a new one which shipped with code 00.CE) and it seems to be working fine. I've had as little as 12 hours of HD space remaining and all functions still work, something none of my other units could do.

Hi there,

I'm not sure if this similar to problems I've seen posted regarding audio dropouts, but I'm have problems with recorded programming. My 2 year DVR 530 died completely, and SC sent a replacement without much hassle. The replacement was activated and seems to be working fine in most respects withe CC version of code.

However, upon watching our first recordings, ALL of them were badly garbled, with artifacts across the screen, or explosions of colour, and audio dropouts. This goes on for the entire recording.

I also tested live recording (pause live program), and it seems to have exactly the same problem, though not quite as bad as the recorded program. Watching the program live, the video and audio quality are both just fine.

Has anyone seen this problem? Any suggestions on a fix? Receiver replacement again is not desirable

Thanks!
I am starting to get this same problem as you on some recordings. It is n't that bad, but I also was sent a refurb unit. I wonder if the hard drives in our units are just getting old and used up?