OTA DVR issues

[ballz50401]

Looking for some insight or help with my current issue. I have tried calling, chatting, and emailing Dish. They have yet to find a resolution to my problem.

I've been with Dish for probably 15+ years. Most of that time I have used the OTA channels on my receivers. I have recorded these OTA channels on the DVR's with no issues. Over the last few months I have experienced an issue where the OTA DVR recording will "skip" during playback. There are no issues with watching OTA channels live or delayed. I have inspected everything with my antenna, cables, and booster. The issue has to be with the OTA dongle or receiver. The receiver I currently use is the Hopper with Sling. I was going to upgrade to the Hopper 3, but don't want to sign a 24 month contract or pay the $150 upgrade fee. Here is the video link showing a sample of our issues: Dish Hopper OTA DVR Issues

When I called Dish, they remotely performed a partial reset on the receiver. When I chatted with Dish, they told me they would pass on my issue to engineering. I haven't received a response from the Dish chat session or my email sent to Dish. Hopefully a DIRT member can reach out to me for a resolution. I just spent a lot of money upgrading my home theater and would like to record OTA channels for the better picture quality it provides over Dish's locals. We also missed out on some shows because of Dish's conflicts with our locat channels. I've spent many hours dealing with this issue and just want a resolution.

 

[MikeD-C05]

Get a new replacement receiver or upgrade to Hopper 3 is my advice. I had a problem with a skipping channel recently. My local ota CBS station was being upgraded to a new transmitter tower. For a while we had two channels of CBS . A weaker strength version on the old digital channel 25 and the newer one at 15 which was more powerful. Once they turned off the old transmitter this last Oct. 17th, then only new channel came popping in at 93 strength, but I still had the pixelation or skipping on both live and recorded shows on the channel. I finally went out and adjusted my ota antenna to get better signals on CBS. I got it at 100% and the other ota networks were coming in at 100% too. When I went back in to check my picture the pixelation and skipping were gone. Seems I had the antenna previously pointed where there was multi-path rejection, where the tail end of the signal will bounce off a near by structure or tree and hit in the middle of the signal causing the pixelation and skipping. Maybe you can see if you are having similar issues with your antenna also?

 

[dishdude]

Try the new AirTV adapter and see if that helps.

 

[ballz50401]

Get a new replacement receiver or upgrade to Hopper 3 is my advice. I had a problem with a skipping channel recently. My local ota CBS station was being upgraded to a new transmitter tower. For a while we had two channels of CBS . A weaker strength version on the old digital channel 25 and the newer one at 15 which was more powerful. Once they turned off the old transmitter this last Oct. 17th, then only new channel came popping in at 93 strength, but I still had the pixelation or skipping on both live and recorded shows on the channel. I finally went out and adjusted my ota antenna to get better signals on CBS. I got it at 100% and the other ota networks were coming in at 100% too. When I went back in to check my picture the pixelation and skipping were gone. Seems I had the antenna previously pointed where there was multi-path rejection, where the tail end of the signal will bounce off a near by structure or tree and hit in the middle of the signal causing the pixelation and skipping. Maybe you can see if you are having similar issues with your antenna also?

I have 100% signal on all of my OTA channels. I have perfect picture watching live or delayed OTA programs. Just issues when trying to playback OTA recordings.

Shouldn't Dish be responsible for replacing the faulty equipment?

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

 

[ballz50401]

Try the new AirTV adapter and see if that helps.

AirTV adapter that integrates to the Hopper?

Some of AirTV's other options look pretty good.

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

 

[JeffN9]

Looking for some insight or help with my current issue. I have tried calling, chatting, and emailing Dish. They have yet to find a resolution to my problem.

I've been with Dish for probably 15+ years. Most of that time I have used the OTA channels on my receivers. I have recorded these OTA channels on the DVR's with no issues. Over the last few months I have experienced an issue where the OTA DVR recording will "skip" during playback. There are no issues with watching OTA channels live or delayed. I have inspected everything with my antenna, cables, and booster. The issue has to be with the OTA dongle or receiver. The receiver I currently use is the Hopper with Sling. I was going to upgrade to the Hopper 3, but don't want to sign a 24 month contract or pay the $150 upgrade fee. Here is the video link showing a sample of our issues: Dish Hopper OTA DVR Issues

When I called Dish, they remotely performed a partial reset on the receiver. When I chatted with Dish, they told me they would pass on my issue to engineering. I haven't received a response from the Dish chat session or my email sent to Dish. Hopefully a DIRT member can reach out to me for a resolution. I just spent a lot of money upgrading my home theater and would like to record OTA channels for the better picture quality it provides over Dish's locals. We also missed out on some shows because of Dish's conflicts with our locat channels. I've spent many hours dealing with this issue and just want a resolution.

The "skipping" I see in your video is exactly what I've been experiencing for over a year. I call it pixelation but others have different names for it. For me it occurred while watching OTA live on my two Joey 2's or any OTA recording. The only time the pixelation didn't occur was when watching OTA live on my Hopper 3. One trick that fixed the problem for me was to set an Autotune timer for any OTA channel once per day. For whatever reason this stabilized all of the OTA channels all day. The other thing that people are talking about fixing this issue now are the two new dual tuner dongles that are available. One is available from AirTV(as mentioned above) and the other branded with the Dish logo. See this thread:

any chance for a new dual tuner ota dongle?

 

[bnewt]

This exactly what I was experiencing when trying to watch a recorded OTA program & trying to watch live OTA programs on my wireless joey.

As someone else mentioned the 2 new versions of the OTA dongle

 

[sam_gordon]

I wonder if, despite claims to the contrary, Dish has problems playing back the MPEG2 stream (or recording the MPEG2 stream) from OTA. Maybe that's why reception is fine (when watching live), but the issue is only with playback, and only with playback of OTA.

The cynical part of me wonders if Dish is deliberately sabotaging OTA reception/playback so they can convince people to pay for locals. I guarantee if you called Dish with the problem, they'd say it's a problem with the station (despite the reception coming in perfect on other devices).

 

[MikeD-C05]

I have 100% signal on all of my OTA channels. I have perfect picture watching live or delayed OTA programs. Just issues when trying to playback OTA recordings.

Shouldn't Dish be responsible for replacing the faulty equipment?

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

Yes if they agree that the equipment is faulty then they should replace the equipment. I don't have faulty ota recordings on my hopper 3 so I thought that an upgrade might work out the same way for you. You could always see if they would upgrade you. I also found that the new Air tv dual ota tuner works well on my Hopper 3.

 

[ballz50401]

The "skipping" I see in your video is exactly what I've been experiencing for over a year. I call it pixelation but others have different names for it. For me it occurred while watching OTA live on my two Joey 2's or any OTA recording. The only time the pixelation didn't occur was when watching OTA live on my Hopper 3. One trick that fixed the problem for me was to set an Autotune timer for any OTA channel once per day. For whatever reason this stabilized all of the OTA channels all day. The other thing that people are talking about fixing this issue now are the two new dual tuner dongles that are available. One is available from AirTV(as mentioned above) and the other branded with the Dish logo. See this thread:

any chance for a new dual tuner ota dongle?

Yeah, this pixelation skipping is quite different from what I have experienced in the past with a poor digital signal.

I will definitely try your autotune trick. I tried a recording today as a test and received a new issue. The DVR only recorded 15 minutes of a 60 minute show displayed an error in the recording information. "A problem was encountered when opening the files for this DVR event. Please note the Error Code: 04"

I hope Dish will get this fixed for me. They have always helped me out with issues in the past, but I feel like they don't care anymore.

 

[ballz50401]

Yes if they agree that the equipment is faulty then they should replace the equipment. I don't have faulty ota recordings on my hopper 3 so I thought that an upgrade might work out the same way for you. You could always see if they would upgrade you. I also found that the new Air tv dual ota tuner works well on my Hopper 3.

That's the biggest issue...trying to get them to agree with me that their equipment is faulty. I troubleshoot industrial electromechanical systems for a living. I'm continuing to look into AirTV. Thanks.

 

[ballz50401]

I wonder if, despite claims to the contrary, Dish has problems playing back the MPEG2 stream (or recording the MPEG2 stream) from OTA. Maybe that's why reception is fine (when watching live), but the issue is only with playback, and only with playback of OTA.

The cynical part of me wonders if Dish is deliberately sabotaging OTA reception/playback so they can convince people to pay for locals. I guarantee if you called Dish with the problem, they'd say it's a problem with the station (despite the reception coming in perfect on other devices).

I've wondered myself if their signal compression practices had something to do with this. Not sure what goes on with how they compress their signals or DVR recordings. I can notice a big difference in Dish's source picture quality since I upgraded to my new Sony X900F. OTA or streaming local channels look so much better than Dish's local channels.

I also thought about your sabotage theory. I first noticed this issue when we lost NBC a few months back. Tried to record OTA NBC shows and they were unplayable. It was embarrassing having a few friends over to watch a Vikings preseason game that I recorded. The picture and audio kept cutting out every couple seconds during the whole game. We had to mute the audio for the game and play some background music.

 

[edisonprime]

Does AirTV have two tuners? I’ll probably buy that soon; or the new one from Dish.

 

[DawnB]

Does AirTV have two tuners? I’ll probably buy that soon; or the new one from Dish.

It does have 2 tuners...for $30. The one from Dish is $60.


Sent from my iPad using SatelliteGuys mobile app

 

[Bobby]

It does have 2 tuners...for $30. The one from Dish is $60.


Sent from my iPad using SatelliteGuys mobile app

and they are the same device...

 

[DawnB]

and they are the same device...

It appears so....other than color. The one labelled AirTV is white, the one that says Dish is black.


Sent from my iPad using the SatelliteGuys app!

 

[bnewt]

I don't really remember having any problems recording/watching OTA on my 722 or 722K. In fact after I first switched to the HWS & wireless joey setup, I didn't have any issues. It was only after
a software "upgrade" that this became a problem. I don't remember the version that started the problem, but as long as it is taken care of by these new OTA dongles, that is all that matters to me.

 

[ballz50401]

Well, I spent another 40 minutes on the phone with Dish today. They were kinda beating around the bush, but I finally convinced them to send me a replacement receiver. Sounded like they wanted me to keep using my current receiver so they could get a better technical report from it. I told them that I didn't want to be their beta tester. They also tried charging me $15 for shipping! I asked for a courtesy Hopper 3 upgrade, but no go.

We'll see if this replacement fixes the issue or if I have to replace the OTA dongle too.

 

[pattykay]

I wonder if, despite claims to the contrary, Dish has problems playing back the MPEG2 stream (or recording the MPEG2 stream) from OTA. Maybe that's why reception is fine (when watching live), but the issue is only with playback, and only with playback of OTA.

The cynical part of me wonders if Dish is deliberately sabotaging OTA reception/playback so they can convince people to pay for locals. I guarantee if you called Dish with the problem, they'd say it's a problem with the station (despite the reception coming in perfect on other devices).

If Dish wanted to force subscribers to pay for locals, they wouldn't have given us the option to drop locals in the first place.

 

[pattykay]

Yeah, this pixelation skipping is quite different from what I have experienced in the past with a poor digital signal.

I will definitely try your autotune trick. I tried a recording today as a test and received a new issue. The DVR only recorded 15 minutes of a 60 minute show displayed an error in the recording information. "A problem was encountered when opening the files for this DVR event. Please note the Error Code: 04"
View attachment 135689

I hope Dish will get this fixed for me. They have always helped me out with issues in the past, but I feel like they don't care anymore.

I have also seen that Error Code: 04 on OTA recordings. This happens when it first starts recording an OTA channel, and it looks like the recording is split into two segments, but the first segment is less than a minute (more like a fraction of a second) which is why the start and stop times for that segment are exactly the same, and no recording length is displayed. (Using your picture as an example, the length of the recording would normally be where the dot is, next to "KIMTCB 003-01" in the info on the right-hand side.) This happens regularly on my Hopper Duo. This also used to happen to OTA recordings on my Wally, but that issue seems to be fixed lately for me.