Two HR10-250s first black screen, then gray, guide and banner OK

[i_magic]

Several of my HR10-250's were turned off for about a month while I was on vacation. When I turned them back on, one had a message x721 and when I called d*, they reactivated it. :up:

Second one came up, but had a black screen and no message. Guide, all menus and channels show up, but when I select a channel, all I see is black. No audio either. :confused: I did Clear & Delete Everything and when the thing finally came back up, I started getting gray screen instead of black. No video or sound. Again all menus and info banner are fine. I spent hours on the phone with csrs at d* and they said they will send me HR20 instead. I said, No, I hate it. :eek:

I had another HR10-250 without access card, which I bought off ebay awhile ago and it was sitting in the closet for some months. I convinced csr to transfer access card from bad receiver to this one. Power it up and bang, exact same problem -- black screen. Menus and guide are OK. I spent another lord knows how many hours on the phone with csr and still no go. They are ready to send HR20 in replacement. But I hate them, so I said, No. :eek:

Signal strength shows in upper 90s on both tuners. I already have HR20, which I am not using (because I hate them :eek: ), so I hooked it up just to eliminate the possibility of the feed being bad. The feed is good and I was getting video and sound. :( When I hooked HR10 back up, it showed black screen again... :mad: I am now doing Clear and Delete on this one as well...

I have 2 other HR10-250s in the house and they work OK. :)

It is possible that my original HR10-250 decided to go bad while being completely turned off and disconnected from power and dish. It is also possible that the extra receiver that I bought off ebay was already bad or went bad while sitting in the closet.

It's just seems so very improbable... Or is d* is messing with me trying to get me to switch to HR20?..

Any ideas on what to do to fix it?

Thanks,
TJ

[coachO]

I really dont have a clue what is wrong with your HR10; you do know they just went to 6.3f? However, I took my original hard drive out and stored it and used a hacked hard drive. After a year, I re-installed my original hard drive and was shocked that it was dead.

I have had to replace both the Hard drive and the power supply on one of my HR10s but they did not exhibit the problem you describe.

Also, the HR20 is getting better. It now has the 30 sec skip, I get locals in HD and the Scifi, USA and CNN in HD. I can now live with the HR20 but don't count me as converted; it might be time to try it again but don't hold your breath....

[i_magic]

OK, this is getting very frustrating... I did Clear and Delete on my second receiver and it is now also coming up with gray screen. *Igzact* same phenomena as the first one. :mad:

Could it be because my software is 3.1.5f? Although it don't make sense because my other receivers are also 3.1.5f...

Anybody know ke pasta?

TJ

[codespy]

I'll take a shot here- even though I'm a rookie at this-

The grey vs black screen- after a C & D everything, you will have to reset your settings back to black bars instead of grey. This color of the bars may coincide with your video color (or lack of video), due to IRD's being dormant for awhile.

The x721 is normal occurance after about 30 days without power on. You can also do a resend authorization on DirecTV.com if you are set up on that. This gets you off the phone with CSR's and speeds up the process.

I would resend authorization on all your receivers that are not working.

If anything, after resending authorization, leave IRD's on for 24 hours or so to get guide data and crap the units need to continue operating. 3.1.5f is still a viable software version (slow as it is).

Verify signal strength on all 3 satellites if using the multi-sat dish.

Using OTA antenna- if so, have picture or not?

[i_magic]

This is unreal... After days of d!cking around with the 2 receivers and spending literally hours on the phone with different CSRs trying to prove to them that improbability factor of both receivers being broke in exactly the same way could only be achieved inside Heart of Gold, I finally got to a guy who was L.I.V.R. (the Learned, Impartial, and Very Relaxed). ;)

After I described to him my problem and what I have done, he agreed that it probably weren't the receivers. So, by process of elimination we narrowed down the problem to the only thing that I have not changed out.... THE FRIGGIN' ACCESS CARD! :eek:

I grabbed the card out of my HR20 receiver (which makes me feel wretched every time I use it) and stuck it into the "BROKEN" HR10-250. Viola! I had picture on channels 100 and 200! So, now I am ordering another card or maybe even 2 that I can put into both of my "BROKEN" units. Except, they won't even send me the cards until I pay upfront... and they will charge me $20 for each card... and of course my wife is not gonna like it... but that's OK. I am happy I don't have to boat-anchor my TiVos. BTW, when I pulled up System Info page, I had a message saying: "Boat-Anchor Status: TRUE!"

This is probably an unnecessary addition to my post, but I must vent: DirecTV CSRs are the dumbest stupidest knuckle-headed a$$es I have ever had to deal with in my entire life. I was so close to ditching them and switching to cable. I dunno how far up the a$$ they had to stick their head before they decided to release their own units, which are not entirely unlike pieces of crap, but I am gonna stick with TiVo. And I hope some time in the future they will pull their head out of their a$$ and ask their customers what they want and come out with another TiVo-based DVR.

Thank you for reading (you don't have to reply). :)

TJ

[funinthesun]

DirecTV customer service is a misnomer that is for sure lol.

I have never met a D* customer service that I didn't not like. :D