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Dec 12th: DSR530 Code BC Fixes, Features & Bugs

93K views 625 replies 105 participants last post by  hugh 
#1 · (Edited)
So now that the new code is out, I think a new thread might be in order since, hopefully, many of the issues in the old thread are resolved.

I'm also of how existing owners would rank the DSR530. It seems, judging from the feedback on this forum that the DSR530 that this product was a dog when it first came out. (The fact that Star Choice called me repeatedly asking me to shut down the threads and posters also was a clue!)

So how would you rank the product now and what issues remain unresolved?
 
#103 ·
I just spoke with a tech, they said that only those 500 people are getting it, and the rest will get opportunity downloads when its available. The guy was helpful, but seemed to bash his fellow employees a lot, stating that CSR's are not up on anything HD-receiver related, and only a portion of the techs get it right.

According to him:
  • 500 receivers are getting it, thats it for now
  • Jan 3 is not a confirmed date for any further downloads, what if something big comes up?
  • Most of the non-dvr fixes(timers and such) will go to the 500 and 505 during a HD software merge

I don't know how much to trust him, as there is a lot of conflicting info, but there it is.
 
#104 ·
Wtf

I agree, it's confusing.
I've heard just 500 for now until Jan , but I've also heard that each days new trouble callers are getting on a list as well for the next days download or maybe it was an immediate forced??
Then I've heard the rest of the bigger list (1000+) will get it at once and then finally everybody else.

Sheesh! who the heck knows what's going on down there anymore.

We need more members to post here when they get it and what they were told to try and extract some sense of all this.
 
#105 ·
It happened again! Tried to change channels and remote totally locked up. Red satellite on left lit up - no response on the remote at all. Did a front panel reset and it came back OK. Both times this has occurred I've been in the HD channels - wonder if there's a conflict in that area? One odd thing - upon restart the timer reminder came on to say it was tuning to a timer for another channel that had already been activated and finished.
 
#106 ·
If the front panel resets aren't doing it for you, try an A.C. power cycle.
That's a much deeper reset.

Take a moment to tune through each of the HD channels and have a look at the signal strength (Oprions 6-4-7) and see if any one is radicaly lower than the others.

Also try and switch the coax # 1 & # 2 and see if that changes anything.

What type of Dish/LNB are you using?
Dual Stacked or Quad?
 
#107 ·
Re- Some of you have receive Bc version ?

No, I look every morning, no change, wait until jan. for see..............

I thing that maybe we gone have surprise in jan. They give the Bc version like they promise in december. I been working in sofware in a big compagny and when you have a leeder that know how long it will take to give the final it's fine. But sometime, surprise happen and change the end date. Sofware is always long, bug, test and retested have to be made. If you give people and other fast update and trouble comeback again you someone have to pay and I don't know if *C want a lose that game.............
 
#108 ·
Scrambled picture when using Skip Ahead

ARR said:
If it's not in the set top, then it's not their problem if they can't control the input signal.


BTW, what was the question?
This problem can't be blamed on the satellite signal (even though this seems to be part of the symptoms) it has to do with play back of the signal from the Hard drive.
The fast Forward function works okay but the skip ahead button does not. The skip ahead button jumps to the next frame a fixed distance in time the fast forward button does the same thing but automatically repeats this. So why do you get a clean frame with fast forward jumps and not skip ahead jumps.

BTW: They are not downloading BC to the complainers since I have reported this for each release so far, so maybe they are avoiding me
 
#109 ·
Got mine at noon yesterday! So far so good. Love the skip button. A push of 4skip on recorded material jumps a whole block of commercials if the timing is right, ie:8x30 second slots. I think I'll change my skip back timing to 30 sec so if I go past by one slot, it'll be easier to get back to the start. It sure made watching "The Apprentice" finale which was plagued with commercials much less frustrating to watch.
 
#111 ·
victorvdc said:
This problem can't be blamed on the satellite signal (even though this seems to be part of the symptoms) it has to do with play back of the signal from the Hard drive.
It has everything to do with the signal as what is recorded to the hard drive is exactly what is transmitted over the air. i.e. If content being sent over the the air is a MPEG2 stream, then the file on the hard drive is an MPEG2 file. Another analogy that you could use is that you can watch a streaming video on the net vs saving the stream to you drive and watching it off the drive. If the stream has defects then the file will have the same defects.

The fast forward is a different animal from a skip forward. When you are fast forwarding there is sufficient information to accurately create the image from the compressed data (Somewhat) and also depending on the amount of compression fast forward is going to be better on some channels then others. Skipping forward to a point in time requires that sufficient data be available to create an accurate representation of the image which when there is a lot of compression may take some time. I am probably not explaining this correctly and if you are interested, you can google MPEG to get an idea of how statistical nature of the compression works ... or even better start with JPEG to understand how an static image is compressed and then extrapolate to a moving image (Again I am being rather simplistic).

The issue with the skip forward can be resolved by caching x frames and rendering the image in memory before displaying it. i.e. Gathering enough MPEG data to accurately display the picture before displaying the picture which will require a different size cache depending on the amount of compression. The downside is that everyone will be complaining that there is a delay to change channels, move forward etc. You are damned if you do and damned if you don't.

I find that HD content is excellent (With BC) when skipping forward ... very little break up of the image. I find that some SD channels are worse than others and appears to be related to the amount of compression being used on a given channel. The worst being the PPV channels ... which we get the priviledge of paying a premium to watch crappy content.
 
#112 · (Edited)
BCScott said:
Got mine at noon yesterday! So far so good. Love the skip button. A push of 4skip on recorded material jumps a whole block of commercials if the timing is right, ie:8x30 second slots. I think I'll change my skip back timing to 30 sec so if I go past by one slot, it'll be easier to get back to the start. It sure made watching "The Apprentice" finale which was plagued with commercials much less frustrating to watch.
I think that you will find that the commercials are in 15 second increments.
 
#113 ·
victorvdc said:
This problem can't be blamed on the satellite signal ...
The fast Forward function works okay but the skip ahead button does not. ...
BTW: They are not downloading BC to the complainers since I have reported this for each release so far, so maybe they are avoiding me
OK, I checked again.
Initial testing showed ROCK SOLID jumps on HD content and NEAR PERFECT jumps on SD material until I found a couple of channels that behave like you describe.

The behavior was IDENTICAL whether recorded and played back from the HARD DRIVE, or paused and played back with the buffer, which is essentially the hard drive again.

Based on the selective nature of the problem on specific channels, I hold my original observation that it is CONTENT and not box problem.

It appears other knowledgeables are beginning to concur.

WRT to BC have/havenots.
So is BC a reward for good behavior or a penalty for complainers.
I don't think ot really matters.
Everybody will eventually get it.
At least they are consistent being inconsistent with their plans.
 
#114 ·
satellite said:
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.

It was all random, they picked 500 random 530 owners and sent the update to them. I don't even think Star choice had a idea who it was being sent to. I think motorola made up the list!
 
#115 ·
This is incorrect, They only released 500 updates and then from what i was told they will be waiting a couple of days maybe a week to see how the update works with the 530's and then release the update to the public.

Only one big problem is with X-mas on it's way the people at Motorola will soon be going on hollidays. So the updates might be delayed or put on hold until after xmas.

oh and SCMAN = Service Call man ..


smp01 said:
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.
 
#116 ·
Remote freeze-up

ARR said:
If the front panel resets aren't doing it for you, try an A.C. power cycle.
That's a much deeper reset.

Take a moment to tune through each of the HD channels and have a look at the signal strength (Oprions 6-4-7) and see if any one is radicaly lower than the others.

Also try and switch the coax # 1 & # 2 and see if that changes anything.

What type of Dish/LNB are you using?
Dual Stacked or Quad?
Had a freeze-up again today - did an AC reset, checked all the signal strengths - nothing out of the ordinary. TSR suggested changing the native resolution from 1080i to 720p, which I understand actually matches the resolution of my KFE 42A10. Dish is a quad. Remote is now OK, for the moment. If this is a glitch from the new firmware, at least *C is aware of it and should have a fix in the next download.
 
#117 ·
Scrambled signal on skip forward.

ARR said:
OK, I checked again.
Initial testing showed ROCK SOLID jumps on HD content and NEAR PERFECT jumps on SD material until I found a couple of channels that behave like you describe.

The behavior was IDENTICAL whether recorded and played back from the HARD DRIVE, or paused and played back with the buffer, which is essentially the hard drive again.

Based on the selective nature of the problem on specific channels, I hold my original observation that it is CONTENT and not box problem.
Thanks for checking. I have a list of known problem channels and when I get BC I will see if this changes.

I still think it is a box problem, take theses scenarios. On fast forward the box is processing compressed data fast enough to display 4 unique frames every second and the frames are about 1 second apart to give you a FF of about 4 times. If you set the skip ahead to 1 second and hold it down it tries to display 4 frames a second like the 4x FF but the picture stays scrambled since in this mode it takes about 2 seconds to unscramble frame. The real clincher I think is that when you go from FF to Play the frame that was just uncompressed scrambles it self and then takes 2 seconds to clear up before running at normal speed.

It seems they have the capability to handle the decompression at a good rate but the transition from the FF or skip ahead mode to Play mode is corrupting the data.

Anyway if this is still a problem on my favorite channels with BC I will give *C a call and hopefully now that they have eliminated the serious problems they may get a chance to look at this one.
 
#118 ·
Weird!!

I used the Dialogue Zone on Friday to express my dissatisfaction with having to wait until January for the new code. I received a reply today indicating that I am now added to the list to get it and it would happen within 1-2 weeks. I figured the 2 week time frame would be it since that takes us pretty much to Jan 3. I checked my target version around 4:30 and it was 00.
Here's the weird part - While watching the Simpsons the reciever rebooted itself at 5:20 and then the "numbers" screen appeared so it looks to be downloading the new code. I can see "bc" referenced on one of the lines. It's been going for 28 minutes so far and I have no idea how long it takes. I'll let you know when it's done and what I have.

Rob.
 
#122 ·
i prepared a huge list of problems that i have been having with my 530 and i called starchoice this morning and asked to speak to a manager. the csr wanted to know why i wanted to speak to a manager. i started reading the list of 20 some odd items. she put me through to a supervisor before i finished reading the list. i read the list to that supervisor and told him it was unacceptable. he put me on hold and came back to say that he contacted some other department and they would try to get me upgraded asap. around 6 pm this evening my machine rebooted and went through a series of numbers. i now have BC and am very happy about it. so far it seems to be working really well. i have not had much time to test it, but many of the bugs i was experiencing are now gone. two bugs that are still there are on playback of an HD program, if you press pause and then press MENU and then EXIT, your entire screen goes black. this only happens if you are using 0000 mode. at least it comes back on when you hit play. the previous version kept the screen black even when pressing play. so i can live with this. the 2nd bug is the dvi output still does not function as it should. the other bugs i have not seen yet. i really love the fact that the name of my show is now showing up in the timer list. that is very awesome. it was so difficult to determine what was being recorded previously. even fixing some of the bugs makes me happy. it gives hope. i will let you know if i find anything else.
 
#123 ·
Fantastic.

It seems tricky for the box in 0000 Native mode doesn't it?
It must be all the extra scaling and switching between the graphics and the video operating at 2 different resolutions.

I bet it's quite solid if locked at 1080i or 720p.

I don't recall on any of the alledged fix lists posted here, their being any mention of DVI improvements.

I thought the plan was to wait and do it right and do HDCP at the same time.
I'll take the fixes we have now, thank-you very much!
 
#124 ·
ARR said:
I thought the plan was to wait and do it right and do HDCP at the same time.
I'll take the fixes we have now, thank-you very much!
Wait until when exactly, the Christmas 2006 bug fix? It's not unreasonable to expect the DVI interface to work with or without HDCP. Sheesh!

-Mike
 
#125 ·
i don't know about you guys, but for me even waiting 1 week for this machine to work is 1 week too many. maybe i have been lucky. i have never purchased anything before that was riddled with so many bugs. granted they tried to do what they could for me today by giving me the BC version. i still have not had much time to examine that version. in any case i am not happy that there are still some things not working. i am sure lots of effort was put into the fixes. this probably would have been a better time to fully release the 530. not back at the beginning of the year. i believe the gun was really jumped with this unit. the dvi connection should be working like other dvr's. it's not a huge deal considering we can use component for now but it does cause concern.
 
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