I have 3 Philips DSR6000R DirecTiVo's and one Philips regular tuner. DirecTV just started carrying locals a few weeks ago. One morning two of the three DSR's no longer worked on locals (1- and 2-digit channel numbers - 6, 8, 12, 23, 35, 65). The other DSR and regular units still work fine.

I moved the receivers around; it's definitely the units, not the wiring. DirecTV sent us new cards, did all the re-sending signals, all kinds of stuff. Nothing made a difference. They concluded the problem is within the receivers.

But why two and not all three of the DSR's? Why two and not just one? I want to try anything anyone can suggest before I have to deal with Circuit City. Fortunately, I bought 5-year extended warranties on everything, but it's still CC.

Thanx for any suggestions you may throw my way.

Larry
www.fineelectricco.com
My system

Larry has a problem!?! The only way it could get better is if I had the answer.see if DTV will send a temporary hit to authorize all channels or at least all locals and that could narrow it down to directv not liking your recievers or the recievers themselves. It just seems wierd that two of four recievers would drop the locals at the same time.
good luck.
Natas

I have a Client that is currently having the exact same issue. Here is her Email:

***

Hi Brian. Satellite is working fine in family room.

In the bedroom, there are extra channels from 1-68. For example we get:

NY2 which is local 2 and has a picture;

when you go up one you get WCBS2 with no picture; then
WCBSDT 2-001 with no picture.
The same thing happens with 4, 5 and so on.
It must be something in the settings? How do I fix that

Like I said, DTV did send a 'hit' several times. I spent over an hour on the phone with the tech dept. while we tried everything. All local channels had black screen and the message "channel not available".

Interesting details:

When I brought up the guide menu, sometimes different local channels weren't even displayed, and when that happened, the tuner wouldn't tune to those channels. We get NO 1- and 2-digit channels at all. Everything above 99 works perfectly.

Larry
www.fineelectricco.com

Another rotten service provider...I am currently switching all of my customer to Dish, whom are not much better. In the mean time say "(mr/mrs.customer) currently I am experiencing the same problem,as well as some of my other clients. This problem is due to problems at DTV. Here is the phone number and website to voice your disappointment. When I find a solution to this, I will immediately contact you to help."

I really enjoy my job, but dealing with Service providers is the worst part of the business IMO. tive

I had a similar problem on a DirecTV install yesterday. Installed 2 Hughes receivers, The upstairs one got all the programing, the downstairs didn't get the locals. Had them rehit the receiver, got the 2 lowest local channels, had them rehit, got 3 more channels, it took another 2 hits to get all their locals! My guess is CSR User error!

GG, I can't say that, because I am the customer. This is my personal system. If there's a number you know about I can call, please let me know.

Larry
www.fineelectricco.com

Larry, you misunderstood me. I ment "The DTV Customer Service Rep". I ment no disrespect to you. I think that they were not hitting the correct buttons on their computer system. The only solution to my install problem was staying on the line until DTV got it right!
Sorry, I don't have any super-secret no. for you to call, other then the 1-800-341-3288. Good luck.

Larry, I just check and one of my UTV's is missing the locals, it skips from channel 1020(Myshows) to ch 100. I have another UTV and two Dtivos that are fine. This is a problem on Directv side, not our's.

Larry, this thread at tivocomuunity might help you;

[Link: tivocommunity.com]

This might help me;

[Link: avsforum.com]

Dear Larry,
It makes sense to call DirecTV, but you also should have tried calling TiVo.

I have a TiVo customer -- TiVo with cable and an external DSS receiver -- who told me three weeks or so ago that there had been a message on the TiVo that service was going to change (some things were going to go away) and they had to make new choices. They called TiVo and were told to go through the channel setup of the TiVo.

Yup, it was just that unclear. We have no idea what this meant, or even whether it had to do with DirecTV or Adelphia.

I was there to fix something else, so I went through the "channels you can receive" routine. We actually chose all the same channels again, so ? ? ?

All is still well. They would have called if they had lost anything.

Might your customers have experienced the same thing? I have not done any DSS/TiVo combos for quite a while, so I don't remember if this channels thing is even in the setup of those models. just too intriguing that a similar thing seems to have been threatened on the external-DSS units.

Ernie

Ernie,
This should be totally different. Tivo in no way is in charge of us getting channels on a DTivo, nor is their part of the software. Part of why our fee just dropped from $10 to $5.

Well, it looks like the problem is solved!

All I had to do was connect the phone line, do a "daily" call, and let the software update from 2.0 to 2.5.2. After a restart, there they were! All my locals!

Apparently, the receiver loses knowing where it is if the last call is more than 30 days (in my case, 2 weeks) ago. I guess the receiver has to know where "local" is to tune local channels.

Larry
www.fineelectricco.com

So, Larry, none of your receivers had a phone line? DirecTV wants at least one connected to phone at all times. I had one connected to a Panasonic phone system that couldn't get dialed out until I connected it directly to the incoming line; not thru the system panel. One receiver that was goofy was fixed from then on.
=Tom

Tom, to be specific, the one DirecTiVo that kept receiving locals was the one that I had set up the TiVo on, and activated the recording and dual-tuner functions. The other two had never been hooked to the phone at all.

It was interesting that the one unit that used to be on phone was disconnected several months ago, and that locals worked on all units for two weeks, then pooped out.

As an experiment, I unplugged one of the newly-updated units, so now I have each of three in different "states": One just updated and plugged in to phone, one just updated and then disconnected, and one that was updated over a year ago, but no phone in many months.

DirecTV tech dept. told me that the complaint is recently wide-spread, they're working on a fix, that it could affect new receivers as well, and that no new DirecTiVo units would be included in the free exchange.

Fortunately, I got 5-year extended warranties when I got my DSR's ($5 ea), and Circuit City sent me a pair of Sony SAT-T60's as replacements. Now that mine are working, I have to decide which I'd rather have.

Spiky, where can one find out about the new rates and other changes?

Larry
www.fineelectricco.com