Audio Issues are Worse!!!

[kokomogator]

A few weeks ago I started having audio dropout when trying to skip forward. The situation got a little better and now it's worse than ever! I have tried skipping backward and they playing, hitting the play button again, pausing and restarting, etc. It is about a 3 second audio drop and it is driving me nuts as I keep having to back up again as I miss part of the dialog....anyone? I know that there have been several software updates and that apparently this is a known issue but when will this be resolved? I have the HR21-100 and HR21-700 and love the receivers except for this issue.

 

[carlos31820]

Try downloading the next available CE release. Think of a CE release as a beta version of the receiver software. The CE releases are not automatically pushed to all customers. You have to explicitly download them during a pre-determined date/time window of availability (usually around a 3 hour window). The date and time of the next CE release is posted in the forum below a day or two before it's available.

http://www.satelliteguys.us/directv-cutting-edge-ce-discussion-forum/

The past few CE releases fix the audio issues with the HR21. If you don't want to download the CE firmware you could wait for the next national release as it will surely address the audio issue.

Personally, I could not stand it any more and tried the CE release. The last CE release (on April 1st) even fixed the slow guide on my HR21.

 

[kokomogator]

Try downloading the next available CE release. Think of a CE release as a beta version of the receiver software. The CE releases are not automatically pushed to all customers. You have to explicitly download them during a pre-determined date/time window of availability (usually around a 3 hour window). The date and time of the next CE release is posted in the forum below a day or two before it's available.

http://www.satelliteguys.us/directv-cutting-edge-ce-discussion-forum/

The past few CE releases fix the audio issues with the HR21. If you don't want to download the CE firmware you could wait for the next national release as it will surely address the audio issue.

Personally, I could not stand it any more and tried the CE release. The last CE release (on April 1st) even fixed the slow guide on my HR21.

Do you know what the time gap is between the CE release and the national roll out? I have considered forcing the download but am a little nervous about having problems. Do you know if I could call tech support and they will force the download to my receivers to fix the issue?

 

[joed32]

Do you know what the time gap is between the CE release and the national roll out? I have considered forcing the download but am a little nervous about having problems. Do you know if I could call tech support and they will force the download to my receivers to fix the issue?

We are not supposed to contact Directv about CEs. You can only get them when they release them in a short time window. I just wait for the national roll out , they might go through numerous CEs until they think it's ready.

 

[carlos31820]

Do you know what the time gap is between the CE release and the national roll out? I have considered forcing the download but am a little nervous about having problems. Do you know if I could call tech support and they will force the download to my receivers to fix the issue?

I don't know what the time gap between CEs and the national release is. I would think is at least several weeks if not longer.

If you have any problems with the CE release, you can easily undo it. To undo a CE release, all you do is force a software download after the CE release window has elapsed. After the CE release window passes, you would end up downloading the latest national release - basically the release you were on before you tried the CE release.

 

[Paul Wozniak]

The same audio problem started on my HR20-100 about a week ago. Sure is irritating! I hope they come up with a fix soon. It seems like the unit has problems dropping the Dolby Digital audio feed during commercials. It then takes a few seconds to lock back in to the DD when the program resumes. I thought it was possibly my Onkyo 805 receiver, but this only happens when I'm watching D*.

 

[kokomogator]

There has been an improvement in the audio dropout. It must be the new software update. What a relief! I'll be interested to see what other improvements are part of the new rollout. Thanks everyone for the help and sympathy

 

[vurbano]

The same audio problem started on my HR20-100 about a week ago. Sure is irritating! I hope they come up with a fix soon. It seems like the unit has problems dropping the Dolby Digital audio feed during commercials. It then takes a few seconds to lock back in to the DD when the program resumes. I thought it was possibly my Onkyo 805 receiver, but this only happens when I'm watching D*.

A week ago, Yup!!! my HR20-100 unit occasionally drops digital and I get no sound, started about a week ago. This weekend when It did it I tuned to CBSHD and it came back. Last week it was like Coax stopped working (always preffered it over optical) and I had to switch to Toslink. I assumed it was my AV recievers problem. Not sure what is going on with these things now that problems continue.

 

[jcrandall]

They are still having audio issues on the hr21. They actually removed a feature this week in the CE process - but I think that was something that just was affecting guide speed.

Hopefully soon, but all I can say is they are working on it.

 

[redhot47fl]

HR20-700 has major audio issues as well.

- Buy a PPV HD movie and chances are that half of it will be badly out of audio/video sync.

- Watch something live, pause it or roll it back, and it may go out of sync. Hit pause and then play and maybe you can get it back in sync, but then you'll get audio dropouts.

- Channel up or down, maybe you can get rid of the audio dropouts, but then you may have sync problems again.

Hey D*: Video + audio = television. It doesn't get more basic than that. Fix it. Quick.

 

[Paul Wozniak]

A week ago, Yup!!! my HR20-100 unit occasionally drops digital and I get no sound, started about a week ago. This weekend when It did it I tuned to CBSHD and it came back. Last week it was like Coax stopped working (always preffered it over optical) and I had to switch to Toslink. I assumed it was my AV recievers problem. Not sure what is going on with these things now that problems continue.

I'm connected by COAX also. Did switching to TOSLINK help? Maybe I should run out and pick up another HDMI cable, and try that. Anybody having the same problem through HDMI?

 

[michaelbudney]

No, messing with the cables won't help. It will be a waste of time.

The more common audio issues I think have been fixed. A couple of us have found on the latest CE releases that our receivers were detecting audio errors under differing conditions. I can't change from a non-DD to non-DD (SD to SD) channel and maintain audio. Others have the same issue with DD to DD.

It seems to be audio receiver specific but I think the root cause is some buggy audio streams coming from the D* receiver.

 

[Paul Wozniak]

Thanks for the answer Michael.

 

[Coaster fiend]

it's still broken

and the rep was rude. 20 minutes on the phone to tell me that it was a known issue. I asked what they would do for me and she offered to search for the next time the shows I lost would be shown so i could record them again.
I am so impressed with that level of service. Way to go D!!!!!

 

[Jimbo]

Fortunatly, using my HR20-700 I have had NO audio issues, at least in the last 6 months.

Jimbo

 

[eScNuK3r]

DTV needs change

HR20-700 has major audio issues as well.

- Buy a PPV HD movie and chances are that half of it will be badly out of audio/video sync.

- Watch something live, pause it or roll it back, and it may go out of sync. Hit pause and then play and maybe you can get it back in sync, but then you'll get audio dropouts.

- Channel up or down, maybe you can get rid of the audio dropouts, but then you may have sync problems again.

Hey D*: Video + audio = television. It doesn't get more basic than that. Fix it. Quick.

I normally have the same issues on my R15-300. But the HD-DVR are higher price of equitment and all I have seen is that they need to do a rebate program and have tivo make the HD-DVR, that will solve Directv HD-DVR problems. Its so hard to believe a company that is fortune 500 company and it seems like they have monkeys working at the corporate level, since we have epic failure after epic failure of equitment. While the issues keep happening, they increase prices on everything and except you to pay your bill or the cut off the service. Why dont they make it where if DTV doesnt meet the customer agreement then we should be able to disc services and get rid of crappy tv.:

 

[Paul Wozniak]

Latest (national) software download solved the problem on my unit. (HR20-100).