Help! Local channels going all gray

934 Views 2 Replies 2 Participants Last post by Arbys_Night, Sep 29, 2007

Arbys_Night

Discussion Starter · Sep 28, 2007

Last week I turned on my TV after dinner and was confronted with a plain gray screen. I hit INFO and the unit showed that I was recording Survivor on LA2, but the status bar was at 0:00 even 30 minutes into the program. The second tuner was recording My Name is Earl on the hi-def NBC feed. I cancelled the Survivor recording and switched to the hi-def CBS feed and was able to successfully record the remainder of the program.

Once they both finished, I was able to play with the unit and I found that all of my local channels (LA2-LA58) were gray. Normally when I get a gray screen it's because I'm tuned to a channel that I don't subscribe to and there is a message saying call this number and ask for this extension. There was no message.

I called Directv and they resent the authorization codes 3 times and had me reboot the unit twice. On the third code resend, the channels showed up again.

Well, doggonnit, a week has passed and I turn on the TV again tonight to find Survivor is again recording a gray screen. I looked thru my recordings for the day and found that all recordings from the local channels had been successful, the most recent being NBC nightly news. It looks like Survivor is taking the brunt of this problem.

Does anyone have any idea what is going on? Is Survivor somehow to blame? Do the codes expire in a week? The Directv tech said I may be forced into the new HR20, which doesn't offend me other than I've increased the hard drive space in my current unit and don't know how to do that in the HR20.

Please enlighten me.

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milominderbinder

· #2 · Sep 28, 2007

Arbys_Night said:
...I've increased the hard drive space in my current unit and don't know how to do that in the HR20.

Please enlighten me.

You can add an eSATA drive like the Seagate FreeAgent 750GB. About $200. Here are the steps:
1. Unplug the HR20 from the wall.
2. Plug in the eSATA and turn it on.
3. Plug the HR20 back into the wall.

The HR20 will format the eSATA and install the software automatically.

Here are two of the testing threads:
http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=66201
http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=100196

Here are a few dozen sample setups:
http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=92029

Here is one thread specifically on the FreeAgent:
http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=98921

- Craig

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Arbys_Night

Discussion Starter · #3 · Sep 29, 2007

I figured out another detail tonight that points at an incorrect setup, but I still don't understand the problem:

When I put one tuner on LA2 (2) and the other on CBSW (81), the standard def channel comes in all gray. When I do a "Guided Setup" in the menus, the satellite data shows that tuner one cannot see satellites 110 & 119.

My setup is that I have cables connected to 2 of the four outputs from the dish. Those two outputs feed the input side of a 2x4 multiswitch. Two of those outputs feed the inputs of another 2x4 multiswitch. My TV is fed off the second multiswitch. Is is possible that the tiered multiswitches are causing the problem? I can pretty easily climb under my house and connect the dish straight to the TV since I'm not using any other cable runs in the house.

Whatcha think?

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