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July 18th: DSR530 Code CC Fixes, Features & Bugs

153657 Views 1045 Replies 167 Participants Last post by  NO-CRTC
Check your target version tonight/tommorow.

As was posted here earlier and a C&P from another site that references a VP's response to a subscriber regarding the upcoming code:

The new feature set, if all passes, includes the following:

- Far improved operational stability for channel tuning (far few lock-ups during channel change -- in fact, so far we have seen none from that cause)
- Far improved timer performance for DVR recording, and for PPV recordings (again, so far no failures)
- Far improved performance for playback of DVR recordings (again, so far no failures)
- New sorting criteria for recordings
- A way to jump to identified times of recordings (i.e. 1 hour in)
For the majority of us that were on A8, this is great news as we'll finaly get the long sought after features that BC delivered to a selected few hundred.

For those of us on BC just waiting for the box to die after too many reboots, this should be a life saver.

Do check out all the new features in the beginning of the BC thread.

Enjoy the improved stability that CC brings.
Have faith that while not 100%, it's the closest the box has ever been and that new and exciting stuff is in the pipe.

From my experience in the past several weeks, what was quoted appears true for the most part.

Unfortunatly my source of information that gave me a closer view than most is no longer available.

Good luck and enjoy the efforts of many.

I'll still be around to help out as best I can.
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STARRATS said:
I tried to do that a week or more ago. I was told it couldn't be done. I was talking to a regular CS person. Should I have tried the Tech Support group?
You should absolutely speak to a Tech. If any receivers have been missed, they usually forward your account to a specific individual who will have your receiver targeted for the download, usually the same day.
Yes, I think a tech support person would be able to assist you better.
I think the CSR's are more into billing and package changes, while the TSR might be better at wrong channel maps, downloads and technical issues like that.
If that fails, try and ask for a supervisor and escalate it a wee bit at a time.
cellarboy said:
You should absolutely speak to a Tech. If any receivers have been missed, they usually forward your account to a specific individual who will have your receiver targeted for the download, usually the same day.
cellarboy said:
You should absolutely speak to a Tech. If any receivers have been missed, they usually forward your account to a specific individual who will have your receiver targeted for the download, usually the same day.
Well, first off, thank you for the advice!
I did call *C this afternoon and talked to Tech Support. Seems that the rolling out is being done by Motorola in California and it's out of their hands at this time. Oh well!
CC download? I'm back to A4

ARR said:
So quit worrying about it, call Starchoice and request a demand download right away.
Life is to short to go through it with A8 or BC!
My 530 which I had for the past 12 months gave up the ghost a couple of weeks ago. A replacement arrived quite promptly and fired up OK but it was loaded with A4. When it was brought online I was told to expect an upgrade within a day or so. A week later and it still has 00.A4 target 00.00. Another call to *C and I was told it would be upgraded eventually, and to call back if it hadn't happened by September! Perhaps I should stop paying until September as well to see if I get any better response!
To both the above posters, give them a call back and ask to speak to a technical supervisor. Roll outs of new firmware are usually around two week in duration for the HD receivers, so if you don't have the firmware by then, something was missed.

It happens every roll-out. For some reason certain receivers just aren't targetted. They can, and have in almost every deployment I can remember, compiled a list of missed receivers and (via a guy named Jasbir) forwarded those receivers to Motorola for immediate targetting.

Don't get thrown by that whole "it's being taken care of in California" line. The firmware is always deployed by Motorola in California (San Diego to be exact).
I am on A4 as well, on a receiver that was activated the day of the start of CC roll out. After 3 calls, I am still getting the same answer that the last receiver to get activited will get the new firmware last.

You would think that they could do an exception for A4 since I cannot record anything with it, but it has been over a week now, I have a $700 receiver that is just collecting dust.
Wow, where did you get a receiver that had such old code? I got a refurbished receiver from *C the week before the update and it came with A8 and took the CC update the first night it came down.
Weird info from Starchoice

I got CC and my box (which had been pretty stable on A* for the last 3 months) started crashing all the time. I removed most of my recorded shows and left 3 new ones. All the resets didn't help so I called SC for a factory reset. I haven't had any problems since, but I don't have much on the HD, and I haven't used the pause live record yet, and it has only been since tuesday night.

The interesting thing was that the gentleman from SC told me they stopped the distribution of CC at 4000 (or 5000) because of the problems they were encountering with it. He said that they have a total of 125k PVR users which I think can't be right. He seemed decent, but I hope what he says isn't true because that will mean when I start using my box to its full potential and load up the HD, I will start to get problems.
125K 530 Owners?

Keane - While I don't have anything to back this up, 125K 530 owners seems high. I seem to recall that SC only has around 800K total subs. That would mean that more then 15% of SC subs have 530 receivers. With all the problems with the receiver, I can't see that they could have sold that many,, but I could be wrong. Others will probably comment on this. As far as your problems with the CC code most people are reporting that it is far more stable then any other version. I went from BC to CC 10 days ago. I did not do a factory reset nor did I erase any of my HD movies. I see that the factory reset seems to have helped your unit. Hopefully it will be stable now. I have used my unit normally during the last 10 days. I've recorded several movies, made timed recordings, watched a recording while it is still recording it (chase recording). I have also paused and reviewed live TV on many occations. So far my box has not needed one reset, with BC I would have had 2 or 3 lockups by now. If CC starts to act up on you again, perhaps you can do up the ladder at SC and get them to send you a different unit to try. Good luck.
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Those numbers are bogus!

They only ordered 20K units and ~ 1/2 are still warehoused with A4.
They should start moving now that CC is out and the boxes bad reputation is changing for the better.
ARR said:
They only ordered 20K units and ~ 1/2 are still warehoused with A4.
They should start moving now that CC is out and the boxes bad reputation is changing for the better.
Not everybody is following this thread, so unless the vendor told the customer how bad the box was, there was no way to find out until it is too late.

If you visit the SC website, its sounded like the unit of the century... which was far to be true.

It may take sometime before the bad reputation is forgotten.
How would the average Joe find out about the new version CC since StarChoice did not send me any notice about the improved upgrade and new features?

I assume that many customer will only notice that their unit is no longer acting as a fisher price product anymore.
I got the target CC on July 15, but last week I noticed that the target had gone back to 00. What do I do now?
What is your "Current Version"? 00.CC?
Then the next line will read Target Version: 00.00
There might be some truth to *C having stopped the roll out of CC. My new box that had A4 on it got updated to A8 last night. The tech support guy had told me last week that I had to wait in line to get CC on my new box and that A8 was no longer being used.
I have the CC code. I used to have the A8 code. I didn't really have any problems with A8, except for the resume function while watching a recording.

CC for the most part has been fine for me (knock on wood). I have found that my machine has locked up more often than it did with the A8 code, but a reboot on the front of the machine has allowed me to continue. Someone earlier mentioned unplugging their machine and that it solved the problem completely, maybe I will try that.

My one complaint about the CC code is the change in the FFWD speeds. Granted, I did think that FFWD was a tad slow with A8, but boy would I take it all back now! With CC, I find the first FFWD moves at about a 4-6 second increment, plodding along more slowly than a VCR. The second FFWD, however, gallops along at almost a 2 minute increment! So, when I try to stop the machine to watch, I typically land 2-3 minutes past my projected stop. Then I have to backtrack. It is terribly frustrating. :confused:
I have had CC now for over a month (I was lucky enough to be a beta tester) and while there are still a few issues (I have had to reboot twice), but overall I am quite happy this version compared with past versions. I did have an issue after the initial load and there was a lockup, but after a soft reset it has worked fine.

With A8 and BC I sometimes had to reboot 2-4 times a day especially if there are too many recordings. I now run with the harddrive almost full of both SD and HD programs without worrying.

For those people that want to get the most out of CC, you need to look back at the BC new feature list. For example pressing 3 and then skip forward/backward will skip you forward or backward by 3 minutes.

Thats my 2c.
A4 code on "new" 530's

GaryE said:
Wow, where did you get a receiver that had such old code? I got a refurbished receiver from *C the week before the update and it came with A8 and took the CC update the first night it came down.
I got it straight from *C. At least the replacement came quickly and I was told it was new rather than refurbished, but it is hard to tell. The box had been opened and resealed a couple of times but there could be any number of reasons for this.

I did get A8 downloaded last night so I am off A4 although the target is still 00.00. The "new" 530 is a definite improvement in that I don't have to reboot every 30 to 40 minutes like I did with the old one and so far I have had no broken recordings. With the old unit almost all of the recordings were broken.

I seems that there are hardware and software causes of the problems wth the 530, and that the problems tend to get worse as the disk fills or the machine gets older (both seem to happen at the same time, not unsurprisingly).

The new machine still has drop outs on the DVI video output and delay in the audio if you use the optical audio connection. On further testing I note that the delay varies according to the channel being watched. On most HD channels it is acceptable but it is very obvious on channels like the BBC world news with mono audio output. This is so obvious and so reproducable that I am amazed nobody else has reported it, but it is the same with both of the units I have had using A8 and earlier software. It also occurs on many of the music channels but is unnoticable unless you connect a separate sound system to the normal digital outputs at the same time.
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osmosis said:
For those people that want to get the most out of CC, you need to look back at the BC new feature list. For example pressing 3 and then skip forward/backward will skip you forward or backward by 3 minutes.

Thats my 2c.
I guess I am one of those people.

That is a good suggestion to fix the problem.

I did go back to the BC thread, but after sifting through 10 or more pages of chatter, I gave up. There were still another 30 some pages to go.
GaryE said:
What is your "Current Version"? 00.CC?
Then the next line will read Target Version: 00.00

Current version is 00.A8
Target version 00.00

It used to be Curent 00.A8 Target 00.CC
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