My current list of 921 problems

jcd4878

Well-Known SatelliteGuys Member
Original poster
Jan 12, 2004
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Thought I'd post my current problems with the 921 just in case they have not been reported elsewhere yet. A few of these are well known, but I think I found a few that are not well known about 720p DVI-D output.

1) Obvious one. The OTA tuner is really having problems. On my system, attempting to use it almost always causes the receiver to crash. Also in my attempts to get the tuner to detect all my digital channels, I was rotating the antenna alot and ran Scan DTV more than once. This has corrupted the channel listing database such that I ended up with multiple copies of the same digital channels. When I attempted to delete all the detected channels to start with a clean slate, some of the channels remained are were not deletable. When I exited the menu and came back in, the channels I couldn't delete were now blank boxes with no channel names. I then added the DTV channels back in and the empty boxes became duplicates of the first few channels I put back in. Doing a full system restore to factory defaults did not get rid of these phantom channels either. So as it is now, I got channel entries that I cannot delete and the OTA tuner cannot be used without crashing the box.

2) Onscreen menu video overlays do not work right. On all the onscreen menus where there is a video window in the upper right hand corner for a video overlay, the video is not in the box. Its shifted over to the left such that inside the video box its clipped on the left with a black bar to the right of the video.

3) DVI-D at 720p output is not centered correctly. I use a Benq PE8700 HDTV projector with DVI-D HDCP input. This is easily noticable when using the normal aspect to display a SD channel. The black bar on the left of the video is way bigger than the black bar on the right of the video. On HD channels like Discovery HD, the HD image fills the entire screen however the right side of the image is cropped off. I can tell because the station logos on the right of the screen are getting chopped. This is really apparent on our local HD FOX channel as well (when I get OTA to work) in which the FOX logo is almost entirely chopped off on the right side.

This is all I found so far. The big ones for me are to fix the OTA and the chopped fullscreen video. Its really annoying to have my image cropped and offcenter. I will post images of the offcentered video tonight.

-Jerry
 
Jerry, about the 720p image cropping, does the 921 let you set the image position like the 6000 does?

Yes the 921 has this feature, go to "Preferences", then "View Preferences", select "More" and you will see it. (Menu, 4, 2, More)

Unlike the 811, this feature actually works on the 921 ... even on the DVI output.
 
metallicafreak said:
Jerry, about the 720p image cropping, does the 921 let you set the image position like the 6000 does?
FREAK!

Nope, it doesn't. There is a feature to reposition the OSD menus, but none to reposition the actual video itself. It's a real pain. My parents have a 6000 that can reposition the video correctly on their Mits RPTV. My 921 has no such method. So I have a perfectly centered OSD with a lop sided and cropped video image.
 
928gt said:
Jerry, about the 720p image cropping, does the 921 let you set the image position like the 6000 does?

Yes the 921 has this feature, go to "Preferences", then "View Preferences", select "More" and you will see it. (Menu, 4, 2, More)

Unlike the 811, this feature actually works on the 921 ... even on the DVI output.

Doesn't work for me? It just repositions the OSD on my unit. Video stays offcentered and cropped.
 
Nope, it doesn't

Does on mine. 2 nights ago I noticed a "white dot" at the top left edge of the screen when viewing HD. I thought it was a problem with the TV. Decided to try the adjust feature, clicked twice on the up arrow, checked screen again and dot was gone. Went back did 2 clicks down and dot was back, redid the 2 clicks up and dot was gone again.

YMMV

Dave
 
928gt said:
Does on mine. 2 nights ago I noticed a "white dot" at the top left edge of the screen when viewing HD. I thought it was a problem with the TV. Decided to try the adjust feature, clicked twice on the up arrow, checked screen again and dot was gone. Went back did 2 clicks down and dot was back, redid the 2 clicks up and dot was gone again.

YMMV

Dave

Note that this is a known software bug. It will be fixed in version 1.44
 
New development, v1.45 of the software almost fixed my 720p cropping problem. It appears Dish redid the 720p timmings and my huge black bar on the left side went away on SD channels. The only problem now is that the bar is now on the right side! This is so frustrating. I wish there was a adjustment page like on the 6000 in which I can shift the video as I see fit. I do not think one set of timmings is going to work for all users. Give us a adjustment!
It obviously can be adjusted in hardware since I saw my oversized black bar move from the left side to the right side. So now the left edge of my HD signal is being cropped instead of the right edge. On HDNet this almost crops off the score clock logo when watching hockey. Before, it was cropping logos off the right edge of the screen. If a setting between 1.43 and 1.45 was used, I think it might actually end up centered.

-Jerry
 
Okay this is messed up. Apparently 1.45 fixes the 720p timmings perfectly.
I thought it was strange Dish can't seem to get this right (there are standards in place for 720p), so I did some more digging. I traced the problem to my video scaler. Apparently it was cropping the left edge off and shifting the image to the left. By pluging the DVI cable direct, bypassing the scaler, to the projector I have, the image is now perfectly centered on all channels, no cropped off logos. So apparently I have an issue to resolve with the scaler.

There was a problem with 1.43 for sure as I was loosing a good chunk of the right edge of the screen before, but now it appears that 1.45 has this fixed and the remaining issue I have with it cropped on the left is not a 921 issue.

-Jerry
 
Jerry-

Mine is perfect too. It wasn't when I first turned it on but after the L145 download it was fine. That page in Preferences also works to move the image about and default too. Some other funny stuff going on but nothing major. I want to verify it today to be sure it is still worth reporting.
 
Okay here is my updated list of problems now that I have the 1.45 firmware. My 720p crop problem is now fixed. A little tweaking in my video scaler setup allowed me to correct the remaining problem I had. I'm not too critical of getting #2 fixed quickly. #1 is much more important to fix fully.

1.) OTA is still having slight problems. It will freeze once in awhile, like once a day. It is very infrequent, but it still happens and cause the system to reboot. I also still have invalid channels listed in the locals setup screen and the program guide that I cannot delete. The 1.43 firmware created the invalid channels during channel scan and I have not been able to delete them since. A factory reset will not clear the channels either.

2.) PIP video displays while in menus are cropped incorrectly and the wrong size. It looks like the picture is correct in aspect, but the crop window is not 16:9. When using transparent menus, it looks really really bad with lots of garbage video showing through behind the graphics overlay.

-Jerry
 
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