Pixelation or complete stall on embedded commercials.

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BobStokesbary

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Jul 9, 2009
514
5
Southern California
For the last month or so we are getting heavy pixelation on "local" commercials embedded for shows on TNT and USA networks. At times the whole top of the screen is just large blocks of solid colors that go away when the commercial is over and at others it just freezes while the commercial is playing. Today the picture froze and would not restart until we changed channels and then came back.

We don't have an issues with local channels since all the commercials are local. And Fox News and Fox Business do not seem to have the same issue(s).

My first thought is the receiver going bad, but I did a full test on the disk and it came back clean. In the past, when a receiver was acting flaky a problem would show up on a disk scan. This time the diagnostics give a clean bill of health.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
Don,
Thanks for your reply. In our case it is serious blotching with lots of solid colors across the top of the screen. And again today a total lockup where we have to change channels and then come back to get things to start again.

Since I know that all programming is cached on an HR24, you would think there would be some stuttering or pixilation of normal programming material as we noted on another receiver that had serious disk issues and had to be replaced. In this case all normal satellite reception is clear and smooth. It is only the embedded commercials that cause us problems. I guess others are not experiencing this problem.

Thanks again,
Bob
 
people were complaining a while ago about the imbedded commercials causing issues. have you tried forcing a software download on the receiver?
 
I've noticed picture freezing but not during commercials. I would have to change the channel and it would fix itself.
 
Thanks for the input. I will try clearing the buffers. That is the only thing left to do. The situation has spread across more channels since my original post. The good news is that it no longer seems to lock up the receiver. Things just go crazy for about 30 seconds and then all is well again. I really don't mind missing the commercials. It was just that it was hanging up the machine along with it. I did get a software update, so that might have stopped the hangup.

Thanks again. I just guess this is one of those one-off situations.
 
just out of curiosity, do you have power save mode turned on? if so, try turning it off and restarting the box. i've had other techs swear up and down the power save mode can cause goofy issues like this, but i never really bought in. worth a shot eh?
 
Sorry for the delay closing out this thread. But, knowing the issue was resolved has taken some time.

Earlier, Zashel suggested that it could be traceable to having power saver mode turned on. Well I turned it off and the problem persisted. But, in fairness to Zashel, all the commercials that were failing were recorded before I turned off the power saver mode. It is two months later now and everything is cleared up now. Most of the commercials seemed to be election related, so everything cleared up right after the election. I just wanted to give things another month to be sure all is well.

So, if you are having issues with pixelated/freezing local commercials, it is worth a try to turn "power saver mode" off. At least it seems to have worked for me.
 
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