Questions about apps, connectivity, HR24

[jdh321]

I got an HR24 on Wednesday. When I push the right arrow, I get "TV Apps is still initializing, please try again later. (301)" I called D on Thursday night. The CSR told me I need to go to the D site and download the Apps app. I could not find it and think she had no idea what she was talking about. Also, when I go to network services it tells me the same thing 301. I don't have MRV and the CSR told me that the Network services was for that. When I run a systems test, I have connectivity on both ethernet and internet. The HR24 is connected to a linksys router.

I am hoping someone on here is more help that the D CSR's. You always are.

 

[Dishpointer]

Here's the link to the App page: DIRECTV Apps | Home

You can add and remove apps to your receivers here if they are connected to the internet.

Hopefully this will get you pointed in the right direction.

 

[charper1]

Can you D/L VoD?

 

[jdh321]

I have been to the website and added the apps. Yes I can download VOD. I am connected....but not. From reading on other forums, including the on on the D site, MANY people are having the same problem. Not sure what the problem is. Many people have called and were told that it would be fixed with an update.. Who knows!!

 

[charper1]

weird indeed; none of my units have this issue and I don't recall any friends or family with it either. the fact that you can do VoD at least proves its not disconnecting.

 

[armchair]

There's a thread in-progress that might help here: TV apps still intializing 301 - DBSTalk.Com

Post your router make & model and ISP there and see if there's a common link to this issue.

 

[armchair]

I came across this post: DirecTV Settings a while back which gave some ideas on how to configure my routers to pass the network services connection test. However, I must caution anyone attempting this that it's not a suggested method, use at your own risk.

My HR24-500s don't seem to care either way but when I had my beta tomato configured for triggered port forwarding with uPnp cleaning rules, the HR24-500 would keep requesting the mapping of the forwarded ports within the 6 minute cleaning period to keep the mapping current. AFAIK, it not supposed to do that but the uPnp rules were enabled to allow the Devices to map their own ports. I had simply used outgoing UDP/TCP port 443 to trigger the assigned STB TCP port to the static IP of the DVR.

On my D-Link DIR-615 Router I used advanced port forwarding rules to trigger the assigned STB port. First I created a inbound filter using the IP of the post above as a trigger as a remote IP start/end. That was with the vendor f/w; the OpenWrt that I was using didn't require any special configuration but I think I did use the static IPs and port forwarding for a while but later stopped using it and was fine just using DHCP for everything.

 

[armchair]

Well this is yet my third router to get the network services test to pass connection test. I forwarded UDP/TCP port 443 and the manually assigned STB TCP port to the new static IP.

I had to run the network services test twice (1st test failed with 301 error; aha! this makes me wonder if this is the problem many encounter and give-up and never get TV APPS to work and leave the setup as-is w/o resetting to auto). Well second test was a success and gives a good status bit starting at 5001 and rolling. TV APPS are functioning.

This may not even be a good test being that this router was already working with DHCP and no assigned STB ports (Auto and ports N/A'd in network services). Plus I was using the router's IP as DNS server with no issue but changed to a opendns server for this connection test. I'll leave it this way for a few days and report any adverse behavior.

If you try this, keep in mind if there's a problem later that the network services s/b returned to auto, then run connect test and select cancel when error 202 is returned. This will return to default mode. You may have to run it more than once to get the 202 error.

Error 301 is not good, IMO, it's saying that the router or ISP is blocking the connection to the Directv server. If it's the router, it's possible that enabling or disabling filters like uPnp or multi-cast groups/packets may achieve a connection to Directv server. An error result of 202, although an error, should allow TV APPS to connect.