Anybody else's HD looking stretched/bad?

My HD reception (through my 811 satellite receiver) has suddenly all become stretched & funky looking. When I switch over to OTA HD it's fine. I checked the settings in system setup, and they look correct. (16x9 aspect ratio, 1080i, etc).

I think I might just have a screwed up receiver though, because it does reset at LEAST once daily, and generally 2 or more times... Usually it will freeze up, and then go into its routine of steps to recover.

It's very annoying to tune to HDNet for a hockey game, have the receiver reset & go through "the 5 steps", download the entire program guide, and then tell me that my smartcard does not show I am authorized to receive this channel~ :mad:

My theory is that it's got a bad hard drive, because often it will take 3-4 times to try to download the program guide info, getting almost all the way through, then just closing the guide & kicking back to the show I was watching. When I press guide again, it will try downloading again. This happens almost daily, but there ARE times that it works exactly as it's supposed to... :confused:

Also, what is with that second "local channel" guide that attempts to download all the time lately?? It says it may take up to 5 minutes, but it never adds anything to my program guide, and is basically just a pain in the *ss that makes me have to press cancel to see the real guide! Wow~ felt good to "vent"~ :)

Seriously though, I haven't called dish because I am afraid I will just get another moron who will try unsuccessfully to diagnose the problem, and I will be stuck on the phone for hours~ Do they ever just send a replacement & let you return the faulty unit?

Thanks~

I am not sure what's causing the 'stretched' look if you are viewing a normal HD formatted image.
Channels like TNT often have pseudo or lite HD, which does look stretched. But the Voom channels should look quite spectacular.
On the resets, do you often get messages that say it can not locate a satellite? and starts timing out, then suddenly works again, or does not work and you keep resetting it.
If that's the case, disconnect both cables going into the separator behind the 622. Then get on the menu and run 'switch check' under setup and Dish Aiming.
Let it run through all 38 checks. Yes, it will fail, because you disconnected the cables. but it will allow it to fully exercise the function.
Now hook it back up. Power the receiver down for several seconds, and then power up. No need to reset.
My resets have dropped significantly over the last month since doing this.
Again, I can't relate this to a 'stretched picture' or any drive anomaly.

My HD reception (through my 811 satellite receiver) has suddenly all become stretched & funky looking. When I switch over to OTA HD it's fine. I checked the settings in system setup, and they look correct. (16x9 aspect ratio, 1080i, etc).

I think I might just have a screwed up receiver though, because it does reset at LEAST once daily, and generally 2 or more times... Usually it will freeze up, and then go into its routine of steps to recover.

It's very annoying to tune to HDNet for a hockey game, have the receiver reset & go through "the 5 steps", download the entire program guide, and then tell me that my smartcard does not show I am authorized to receive this channel~ :mad:

My theory is that it's got a bad hard drive, because often it will take 3-4 times to try to download the program guide info, getting almost all the way through, then just closing the guide & kicking back to the show I was watching. When I press guide again, it will try downloading again. This happens almost daily, but there ARE times that it works exactly as it's supposed to... :confused:

Also, what is with that second "local channel" guide that attempts to download all the time lately?? It says it may take up to 5 minutes, but it never adds anything to my program guide, and is basically just a pain in the *ss that makes me have to press cancel to see the real guide! Wow~ felt good to "vent"~ :)

Seriously though, I haven't called dish because I am afraid I will just get another moron who will try unsuccessfully to diagnose the problem, and I will be stuck on the phone for hours~ Do they ever just send a replacement & let you return the faulty unit?

Thanks~
Have you tried playing with the format (*) button? Press it several times. You will see what I mean. ;)

Have you tried playing with the format (*) button? Press it several times. You will see what I mean. ;)

You hit the nail right on the head... I pushed the (*) button & it toggled back to HD-Normal~ I think it was on HD-Stretch or something...:o Must have pressed it in error sometime!

Anyway, Thanks man!

PS Like your avitar~ I saw them (Yes) live in Spokane, WA sometime in the early to mid 70's when they still had Rick Wakeman. It was awesome~ :yippee:

Thanks for the post~ It turned out to be a user error on my part... :o I'll save your procedure for future reference though. Thanks again~

Don't feel bad, lol. My girlfriends son came up and did the same thing to me. It took me a few hours of wondering if TNT was worse than I thought or if something had changed. Once it happes once you never forget. I have yet to figure out why he felt that the gaming channel in HD on a 55" TV wasn't big enough.