new HR20 stutter trouble

[KenKirk]

I have 2 new HR20's. One works great, the other one gives me trouble. Both get signals in the 90's. I have a new Slimline dish and the new Zinwell stacked multiswitches. No searching for signals... My trouble is that when recording a program, if I hit pause and back it up, it will start to stutter with missed frames and audio dropouts. I get pixilation too. If it is recording another program at the same time, it is worse. It is bad enough I really can't watch the program. It does not do this all of the time, but often enough. I hit the reset button, did not fix it. Should I do I complete system restore or just get on the phone for an hour and try to get a new box???

Thanks,

Ken

[mcbeevee]

Does this happen with OTA recordings? If so, what are your antenna signal strengths? As long as you don't care about saving any recordings/to do items, you could try the "Reset everything" menu option first. If you still have the problem, you could try reformatting the hard drive. If the problem still happens after a reformat, there is not much that can be done outside of replacing the receiver.

[KenKirk]

Originally Posted by mcbeevee

Does this happen with OTA recordings? If so, what are your antenna signal strengths?

Good question... I need to check. I had excellent OTA signal strength before I changed out my Spaun multiswitcher which handled the OTA signals from my OTA antenna. This problem did occur badly when I was recording a HD program OTA. Now that the OTA antenna connections are running directly without the aid of the Spaun's amp, it might be low.

Good suggestion and thanks.

I don't remember seeing the OTA signal meter in the set up program... I must have overlooked it. I hear the HR20's are hard to get right now, so I want to make sure it needs to be replaced before messing with tech support. If the signal strength is strong, I will reformat.

Ken

[mcbeevee]

Originally Posted by KenKirk

I don't remember seeing the OTA signal meter in the set up program

On the HR20, go to Menu -> Setup -> Sat & Ant -> Edit Off-air channels -> Signal meter

[KenKirk]

Originally Posted by mcbeevee

On the HR20, go to Menu -> Setup -> Sat & Ant -> Edit Off-air channels -> Signal meter

OK, finally got a chance to check the signal levels of the OTA tuners.

I get high 90's to 100's on all of the channels. I am lucky.

Is the "restart the recorder" the same as a reformat of the HD?

If not, how would you proceed from here. Also I noticed that when recording the Monday night football game of ESPN HD, it recorded for 24 hours and filled up the HD and then crashed. My son set the recorder so I am not sure how he managed to get it to record for 24 strait hours on the same channel. But this happened just last Monday and the trouble was happening long before that. Just another weird symptom. I deleted the game and things worked fine last night, but I never pushed it by recording 2 HD programs at once. The trouble reminds me of an out of memory problem on a PC, or a failing HD.

Personally I think these new HR20's suck compared to the old HR10-250's...

Ken

[knothead]

You might want to call D* for the info on reformatting but be forewarned. You'll lose all your settings favorite channels season settings for your shows and anything prerecorded on the hardrive.