What causes the color to keep flickering?

2421 Views 18 Replies 17 Participants Last post by NYG8OR, Oct 12, 2007

johncdbass

Discussion Starter · Oct 8, 2007

I have a DirectTV Hughes Tivo system and the color starts to flicker on the tv. It would go in and out. I read somewhere that if you held the yellow pause button for 3 seconds and then press it again it would reset the color and it does. It works but it does not stop this from happening over and over several time a night. anyone know what causes this to happen or was to prevent it, thanks John

1 - 19 of 19 Posts

litzdog911

· #2 · Oct 8, 2007

How is your Tivo connected to your TV? You should try replacing the video cables to see if that helps.

johncdbass

Discussion Starter · #3 · Oct 9, 2007

I have both s-video cable and a yelow/red/white cables. But I'll change them and see if thats the problem, thanks John

IminMs

· #4 · Oct 9, 2007

You need to use either or. If you use Svideo you can still use the red/white for audio but not the yellow.

pinballfan

· #5 · Oct 9, 2007

If the picture is going black and white, I'd certainly suspect the S-Video cable. S-Video cables split the signal into 2 parts. One is responsible for the underlying contrast information (the black and white), and the other provides the color. I have seen the color go out due to a bad cable before.... Good luck!

Duffycoug

· #6 · Oct 9, 2007

It's pretty weird that you had this issue....I've never had this problem, but last night it happened several times during the Cowboys game...I thought it was the broadcast.....just a flicker for a couple seconds, then it fixed itself.

swipper74

· #7 · Oct 10, 2007

Funny you should post this! Mine started doing the same thing about 2 weeks ago! Have mine hooked up via SVideo, and it is just fine. I thought the receiver may start to be going bye bye.

KF9WM

· #8 · Oct 10, 2007

Mine did the same thing. I believe it is another bug caused by the 6.3E software. I went back to 6.2 and the color is back to normal and no more reboots.

leftstrat

· #9 · Oct 10, 2007

I've had the same issuss on a Phillips DSR-708 since the 6.3 release. It is on the input for S-voideo, and ANT input. 8 second rewind usually fixes the problem.

scottt

· #10 · Oct 10, 2007

I've been having the same issue. Looks like a software bug

Mark Griswold

· #11 · Oct 10, 2007

scottt said:
I've been having the same issue. Looks like a software bug

Same here. Only happened a couple times. Nowhere near as many as reboot/lockups.
I'm convinced its a software problem, because it seems to occur 10-15 minutes before a reboot.
It's not S-video related because I'm not using S-video. It happens on both RCA and RF outputs.

bguppies

· #12 · Oct 10, 2007

scottt said:
I've been having the same issue. Looks like a software bug

Mine started doing the same thing about two weeks ago. (mostly notice it while watching the Sunday Ticket each Sunday.)

I doubt it is a software bug though, as none of my 3 Tivo's has made a call in for well over a year now. (and after seeing a million threads on this 6.3 update, I damn sure wasn't going to try now.)

Bill

snetrich

· #13 · Oct 11, 2007

Mine did the same thing. I believe it is another bug caused by the 6.3E software. I went back to 6.2 and the color is back to normal and no more reboots.

How did you back to 6.2... Mine has been doing this for about 2 weeks now...

chuckg

· #14 · Oct 11, 2007

I had brief (several seconds) color dropouts with 6.3e. Because I could rewind to replay the colorless segment and it was almost or always (old age, don't remember) now in color it was obvious (I also have two TVs, dual LNB dish, and two S4040Rs making it easy to trouble shoot problems) that the problem was DTivo related.

The TV uses a Color Burst signal on the Back Porch of the Horizontal Sync Pulse to set the color for each horizontal line. The DTivo has to generate an Analog Horizontal Sync Pulse with appropriate Color Burst on the Back Porch for each and every line of each and every Frame.

It generates this information from information embedded in the MPEG2 digital data stream. How I have not been able to ascertain!

The correct information exists in the stored MPEG2 data stream else rewinding and replaying could not recover the color information!

Conclusion: 6.3e is off somewhere doing something else whilst it should be generating the appropriate Color Burst. Remember it did generate the horizontal sync pulse. It just didn't find the time to perch the appropriate Color Burst signal on the Back Porch on the first pass!

Correct me if I am wrong, of course.

P.S. If you can rewind and replay and it does not correct the color then the problem is in the MPEG2 stream. Probably.

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yy4u

· #15 · Oct 11, 2007

Add me to the list of color loss. Its not an S video problem because it happens on my other TV in the bedroom that comes from coax output. Rewinding the recoded show works to restore color.
How do I go back to 6.2 Or how do we get DTV to see that many people are having a bug with the 6.3e upgrade.

KF9WM

· #16 · Oct 11, 2007

snetrich said:
Mine did the same thing. I believe it is another bug caused by the 6.3E software. I went back to 6.2 and the color is back to normal and no more reboots.

How did you back to 6.2... Mine has been doing this for about 2 weeks now...

You can either do the Instant Cake thing or get a preconfigured drive from Weaknees. Weaknees has 6.2 on their drives and I think Instant Cake installs that version as well. Install your new drive and plug the phone in long enough to do the guided setup then disconnect it until this all blows over.

bearbig

· #17 · Oct 11, 2007

I had that problem as well as others. Called DTV and they said to reboot ( one of the problems was random reboots). What do ya know after rebooting the problem is gone! This all happened after the 6.3 software install.

tivoupgrade

· #18 · Oct 11, 2007

KF9WM said:
I think InstantCake installs that version as well. Install your new drive and plug the phone in long enough to do the guided setup then disconnect it until this all blows over.

Just to confirm, the version installed on our kits (and also with IC) is 6.2a and will remain that way for the foreseeable future. I've not heard of this particular problem with 6.3e, but if you are having a problem with it, please reply to this poll as I'm trying to raise awareness by consolidating some of the known problems.

Lou

NYG8OR

· #19 · Oct 12, 2007

I have been having this problem on all 3 of my DTivos. It happens on both live and recorded shows. It is most definatley a DTV issue and not cable because it happens at the same exact spot on a shows I have recorded on multiple DTivos.

A reboot did not solve this for me.

Has anyone had any luck getting someone at DirecTV that is aware of this issue that knows when it might be fixed?

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