510 freezes

[Jerry B]

I have a DVR 510 that is about 6 weeks old. It worked fine for the first 3 weeks but since then I've been getting an increasing frequency of problems, most frequent problem is it freezes and has to be powered off by the button on the console (doesn't respond to the remote).
Sometimes it fails to record an event. The freezes usually happen when you press the PVR button but sometimes just happen while watching a recorded event. When it freezes it will sometimes shut itself off then come back on and go through the sequence of acquiring satellites and after that sometimes will download the program guide before coming back on. It has gotten more frequent and now freezes about once an hour. At first it would miss a timer about 10% of of the time but now misses timers about 25% of the time. Sometimes while in live mode and not recording, it will not respond to the pause or reverse buttons, and then will freeze up next time you press PVR. When it misses a timer if you try to do on-demand recording it will say it has a timer conflict but still will not record if you delete the conflicting timer (the conflicting timer being the one it was supposed to be recording in the first place).
Anyone else have this experience?

 

[Mike_H]

I think the first thing to try is to reset the unit. This is done by holding down the power button for 4 to 6 seconds, until you see the red record light come on. This causes the receiver to flush some informaton and restart.

It's something I do every once and a while when my 501 becomes weird.

 

[Jerry B]

510 Freezes - Resolution

I called Dishnetwork and they gave me three things to try in sequence:
1. Remove the smart card for a few seconds then replace it to force a system reset -- that did not fix the problem
2. Unplug the receiver for 2 minutes to force a reset -- that did not fix the problem
3. Erase all timers and recorded events (in case the problem was caused by a corrupted recording) -- that did not fix the problem

In the meantime the problems continued to get worse with some new behavior. I observed that the red light would come on for one hour at the proper time to record an event then go off as expected. Going to the recorded event menu (after the screen freeze, followed by power button reboot) I observed one of two types of problems:
1. the recorded event was missing, no record of it
2. the recorded event was of a shorter duration than it was supposed to be (e.g. it only recorded the first 37 minutes of a 60 minute event)
I also let the system just sit there when the screen froze after pressing the PVR button (instead of pressing the power button on the console) to see what would happen. After 2 minutes the recorded events screen came up but there were no events it just had a message to please wait; then after another 2 minutes the events were displayed but the duration left was blank (had dashes instead of numbers); after 2 minutes it switched back to the live event. The system did not reset or power down so if I press PVR button again screen freezes again.
I called Dishnetwork and told them about what had happened when I tried the suggested fixes and they agreed to replace the unit.