[laurentmayer]

Thank you to Wirelezz for additional details.
These point to broadcast issues by the networks.

The thing that is disconcerting, however, is the report that the Tivo recording is missing the bottom time bar. Shouldn't the bar be there even if there is a loss of signal (blank recording)?...

 

[Wirelezz]

how can that be, Wireless?

i remember perfect picture and audio coming from the moon in 1969.

don't tell me the moon landing was a hoax!

HA HA! And the latest still photos from Mars ain't to shabby either!!

Say Joe, has your new Panny arrived yet?

 

[Wirelezz]

Thank you to Wirelezz for additional details.
These point to broadcast issues by the networks.

The thing that is disconcerting, however, is the report that the Tivo recording is missing the bottom time bar. Shouldn't the bar be there even if there is a loss of signal (blank recording)?...

You've read this thread very thoroughly haven't you!

You are correct:
Actually, my HR10 was very new to me when I made that statement. At that time to further analyze this blackout problem I ran through those recorded blackouts in slow motion, and what I didn't know then is when you first put the HR10 in slo-mode the time bar shows for about 2 seconds and then disappears. So the dissapearence of the time bar concurred with the black screen making it appear as though it was caused by the blackout itself. Duh!! The blackouts usually never last more than 5 - 10 seconds and when you fast forward or reverse through the recorded blackouts those black sections go by so fast you don't really even see them. That's why I viewed them in slo-mo.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention, I just edited that bit of mis-information from that post.

 

[Ragsy]

Laurentmayer:

The fact of the matter is, everybody seems to have slightly different video problems with the HR10-250. Some have the problem only with the network HD, some have problems with ESPN HD, some have problems with HD Net, etc, etc. Just when I think I've narrowed the problem down to a couple of channels, I have problems with other ones that have been good in the past. ESPN HD, ABC and NBC have seemed the worst for me. CBS, FOX and HBO were pretty good. But lately, I've had problems with CBS and FOX. The video problems seem almost completely random. I have problems with both satellite HD and OTA. Recently I've also had some problems with SD channels. And then, I'll watch 3 or 4 programs in a row and they are perfect. I never know what shows will be good and which will have the video blackouts and stuttering. I do not believe it has anything to do with a bad harddrive. I do not think it has anything to do with low signal. It has nothing to do with high temperature of the unit. It is not an HDMI issue. All my cables and the LNB have been checked and rechecked. The problem sucks and I don't believe it will be getting better anytime soon. It has been going on for over a year now. D* barely acknowledges the problem as they seem to claim that everytime someone calls in about this video blackout issue, it is the first they are hearing about it, That is obviously nonsense. I think that the truth of the matter is the HR10-250 is more susceptible to this video blackout and stuttering problem than other HD receivers. Why, I don't have a clue.

 

[joetoronto]

HA HA! And the latest still photos from Mars ain't to shabby either!!

Say Joe, has your new Panny arrived yet?

it's arriving today as a matter of fact, Wireless.

it so happens i won't be going in to the office today.

 

[Ragsy]

Here's an interesting development. I watched the Oscars at a friends house who has a Hr10-250. We watched on West Coast Satellite Channel 87 ABC. My friend insisted to me in the past that he never had any issues with video blackouts or stuttering. The broadcast was filled with blackouts and stuttering and pixellation. I Tivoed it at home and had the same problem. So you would think we have a problem on the broadcast end of things. Another friend has cable and he watched in on Cable HD and said he had no video problems at all. He has Time Warner cable. That would imply that it is not a broadcast problem, but ???

Did anyone watch it on OTA HD? Were there problems on OTA?? The randomness of this video problem is what makes it so annoying. You just never know whether a show your watching will have no problem or be awful with stuttering, etc.

 

[jimphillips224]

Yeah, I watched the Oscar's over my OTA HD and had 5 or 6 blackouts. The audio kept going as it usually does. There was about an hour during the middle that I missed; the gf and I got frisky.

 

[gquiring]

I noticed something that made my eyes go wide open. I bought a heating pad to aid in my recovery from having my hips replaced recently. When I turned on the pad it glitched my HR10-250! The pad only draws 50 watts. I switched over to my Xbox XBMC and tried the same thing and no glitch. So the plasma panel and receiver are not effected only the Tivo.

I suspect the power supply in the Tivo is not up to par. Maybe a better quality UPS may be the answer that someone noted a while back in this thread. I am using a cheapo Belkin I picked up from Home Depot a couple of years ago. This could explain some of the issues we all have that seem to be different.

 

[joetoronto]

Here's an interesting development. I watched the Oscars at a friends house who has a Hr10-250. We watched on West Coast Satellite Channel 87 ABC. My friend insisted to me in the past that he never had any issues with video blackouts or stuttering. The broadcast was filled with blackouts and stuttering and pixellation. I Tivoed it at home and had the same problem. So you would think we have a problem on the broadcast end of things. Another friend has cable and he watched in on Cable HD and said he had no video problems at all. He has Time Warner cable. That would imply that it is not a broadcast problem, but ???

Did anyone watch it on OTA HD? Were there problems on OTA?? The randomness of this video problem is what makes it so annoying. You just never know whether a show your watching will have no problem or be awful with stuttering, etc.

my daughter was watching the oscars on my new panny plasma which has an old sammy TS-160 receiver attached to it, NOT the tivo, and there was a hell of a lot of video dropouts.

this is clearly not a problem with the HR10-250 if you ask me.

 

[Ragsy]

OK. If it wasn't a problem with the Hr10-250 specifically then what was the problem with the Oscar video? I would be most curious to hear from others who have Cable HD to see if they had the same issues. The one person I checked with claims no problems with the HD Oscars on his Cable. Was it somehow a D* problem which was evident on both OTA and Satellite HD thru D*? During the rap number, my friends TV went crazy, glitching with every strobe light. This is apparently a known issue with digital broadcast and stobe lights. Yet my TV had no problem with that segment of the show. Very odd. What I do find interesting is that my friend had claimed no issues with his HR10-250 and I couldn't figure out why his had no problems and mine did. Turns out he simply doesn't pay nuch attention to that kind of thing and had the same issues I have. How many people are like that? If there are a bunch of folks out there who had no issues with the Oscar show in HD, then I am totally baffled as to the cause of the problems some of us had. But did everyone have these issues??? If so, the broadcast would obviously be to blame. Lets hear from those of you that had no issues whatsoever with the HD broadcast of the Oscars, if you are out there.

 

[RonH54]

I started using my HR10-250 last Friday. I don't have my HD set yet so this unit is running to my old Sony CRT via S-video connection and audio is running through my Surround sound system. I have had 1 Video "blackout"(still had audio) and one audio drop so far. The audio came right back on in about 5 seconds,the video lasted about minute or so.. GRRRRRRR

 

[gquiring]

Here are my results from this weeks American Idol on Ch 88 (NY HD)

Audio Glitches Tue:
8:03,8:05,8:08,8:11,8:13,8:16,8:19,8:21,8:24,8:27

Audio Glitches Wed:
8:02,8:03,8:05,8:08,8:10,8:13,8:16,8:18,8:18,8:21,8:24,8:26,8:50

Audio Glitches Thu:
8:07

Blackouts Wed:
8:02, 8:15

If you look closely almost no glitches after 8:27 for Tue or Wed, why? Thursday was almost flawless. I watched several other shows on ABC like Invasion and Boston Public with no issues. I just don't get these inconsistencies.

 

[Ragsy]

And therein lies the problem. There is no real consistency to the audio and video problems. Just when you think you have it figured out, the pattern changes. Shows that never have a problem all of sudden develop problems and others that have problems get better for a time. My conclusion, so far, is that there is some combination of broadcasting issues and HR10-250 issues as well as some D* issues that all combine to create a totally unpredictable set of problems, both video and audio.

 

[jazzwind]

I am also seeing these blackouts, usually 3-5 secs, both video and audio, happening once every hour or two. Except that if I rewind about 5 sec and replay the portion that blacked out, the video and audio are there. Has anyone else experienced this? At first I suspected my Panasonic TH50 plasma but after reading this thread I'm thinking it might be the HR10-250.

 

[Budget_HT]

I have experienced similar problems, but my scenario differs from some here.

I have two HR10-250 HD TiVo's. One is connected HDMI to an LCD HDTV display. The other is connected component video to a rear-projection CRT HDTV display.

In both cases, I do not see the blackouts being described.

For a time, I had one HD TiVo connected to my small, 15" LCD HDTV using component video (at 1080i). With this combination, I get get video blackouts every time there is a very bright (usually white or near-white) picture, such as during a still-camera flash, or an explosion in a show, or any other very bright scene. Watching the same live or recorded program on my other HDTVs, I never see this issue.

Now I have the little LCD HDTV connected to a Hughes E-86 HD STB, receiving DirecTV and OTA HD (just like with the TiVo's, but no recording capability). I get the very same types of dropouts on bright scenes, whether watching satellite HD channels or OTA HD channels.

At this point I suspect that the HDTV cannot handle the bright scenes. I once had a Hitachi 36" direct-view CRT HD-ready TV, and it had the very same symptoms, but only on component inputs, not RGB. There was a factory service bulletin that called for some component changes to resolve the problem, which it did.

So, I believe that at least one possible problem here is some issue with the signals being incompatible (maybee too high of voltage) on a component video connection during very bright scenes. It does not affect all HDTVs, since I have two that do not seem to have the problem. (I have tested the component inputs on the larger LCD HDTV that I currently have connected via HDMI, and saw no problem).

The fact that my non-TiVo HD receiver also interacts identically with my small LCD HDTV leads me to believe that the TV is at least partly at fault. BTW, with a different HD receiver, fed via RGB, the little LCD HDTV works perfectly--no blackouts at 1080i.

I would suggest that folks pay attention to whether the video blackouts occur at very bright scenes only, or not.

 

[Ragsy]

The video stuttering and blackouts I have on my HR10-250 do not occur during very bright scenes. They appear at random times with no apparent cause.

 

[gquiring]

I don't believe it has anything to do with the video brightness, as any blackout I see also has no audio.

 

[terrylmc]

Did anyone ever come up with a resolution to this? My HD Tivo has been doing the same thing.. The HR20 I have isn't doing it.

 

[TimmyVan]

As far as I can see, the problem lies at the source, and has no reflection on TiVo, or DirecTV. HD television isn't quite perfected yet, and the "blank spots" that appear occasionally are directly from the source at NBC, CBS, NBC and so on. The uplink to the satellite at DirecTV must be different than of standard definition. When recording a show on a non-HD channel, I don't see a problem with the recording, of the same show - the same spot - where there is a problem on HD as you compare side by side.

NBC has gotten much better over time, and my hope is that it will continue to improve as they refine the process.

I hope this helps!

 

[stivovance]

After switching & recording everything except CBS via OTA HD, I don't have any problems. I see the occasional stutter (less than 3) this year on CBS. OTA on NBC, ABC and FOX has been near flawless. The occassional pixelation but that could be the placement of my antenna or local OTA problems, but I'd take that any day over the blackouts.