US Telco Support > AT&T > AT&T U-verse > New Black Cisco DVR

New Black Cisco DVR

Im on my second one as well, but with different symptoms. Mine will just randomly go to a black screen and become unresponsive to the remote. I have to cycle power to get it working again. Very annoying.

No that's the exact same thing. If you let it sit for a few minutes it will reboot on it's own.

I can't figure what they did in these boxes from the other ones that would cause this.

reply to gdm
I have this box and for the most part it has been ok although in the last week it started cutting the end of the recordings off and one night it just went to a black screen when watching a recording, but that only happened once I reset it and it seems to be ok again.

My guess is the black screen is an HDMI issue between your TV and the box, There were a few DISH network receives that had a similar issue a few years back and they fix was to use the component connections and not HDMI, the red, blue, green connections will still give you full HDTV, try this instead of HDMI and see if that helps resolve some of your issues.

Aslo I think and update is imminent, and hopefully this will fix your problems, I say this because I know they are working on an update for the XBOX's in the next few weeks, and in the past they have rolled out updates for the XBOX client and regular boxes at the same time, so hopefully this will address some of the problems your having.

David
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»www.w4lny.com

reply to gdm
I had this same issue with the black Motorola DVR. Tech brought out the silver Motorola DVR to replace it, and never had that problem again. Probably doesn't help you any, but thought I would share my experiences.

reply to gdm
I just had U-Verse hooked up again at my house this weekend after the cable company couldn't live up to their hype.

I was talking about the DVR box with the tech and I mentioned that the DVR he was hooking up was the same I had last year. He mentioned that there was a new black DVR, did not state a brand, but they were having issues with them freezing and rebooting. That's why he gave me the old model.

not sure if they are replacing them or have a fix in store. He stated they didn't know what was causing the issue yet.

It's a software bug from what I was told. I haven't tried the component cables yet but will this weekend.

reply to gdm
I am a new u-verse customer and got one of the black Cisco DVR's . It would freeze and reboot about once a day. I then replaced it but still had the unit reboot every two or three days. I moved the DVR to a different outlet in my house and no longer see the problem. Not sure why moving the unit appeared to fix the problem for me.

What connection type are you using from the box to the TV?

Mine isn't frequent like your was. It could go anywhere from 1 - 5 days before it would freeze and reboot.

reply to gdm
Mine has never had to reboot, I have the new black Cisco DVR and have had it since the end of October, I think I got mine the first week they came out, anyway mine is connected via ethernet directly to the RG.
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»www.w4lny.com

reply to gdm
About a month ago AT&T replaced our silver 350 GB DVR with a new 500 Gb black DVR. Almost immediately we started having problems.

When watching live TV on any of the seven TVs (each with a STB), the picture/sound will suddenly freeze and then, a few seconds later, a blue screen appears stating the signal was lost. The video/sound will sometimes restart a few minutes later but it then freezes again. The frequency at which this problem occurs varies widely but it seems most severe about mid-day/early afternoon.

At first I thought this problem was related to a new "smart meter" the electric utility installed as they installed the new meter coincident with the onset of this problem and it is only about 15 feet from the RG. The new meter communicates with the utility using a 900 MHz radio. The utility replaced the meter with a conventional meter but that did not resolve the problem.

I found that disconnecting the coax from the DVR seems to solve the problem (while it is disconnected). However, since the problem is very intermittent, and its severity varies depending on the time, it is hard to be 100% sure the issue goes away when I disconnect the DVR. AT&T has been here a number of times and been unable to find a problem. The DVR and STBs are all on an RG-6 coax network and separate from the cat-5e data network.

I am curious to know if anyone else has a similar problem.

reply to gdm
welp, my 3 yr old cisco dvr is locking up every half hr or so and going through the "gear" re-boot...which means its re-formatting and going back to initial setup. It them re-boots. Called tech, hopefully a new dvr solves the problem...but maybe its not the dvr????

reply to RhoXS
I switched the new black 500 GB DVR from coax to a direct cat-5e run directly to the back of the RG and it seemed to completely solve the problem I described above.

Someone (an AT&T employee) in another forum stated:

"If you have a black DVR and it is the Cisco ISB7500, sometimes they cause a little error on the coax lines because they are capable of running at higher connection rates than the silver Cisco DVRs. Unknown why this is happening, just seems to be the normal issue."

This triggered the obvious thought to divorce the DVR from the HPNA coax. This seems to have eliminated the problem even though our other six TVs and associated STBs are still on the HPNA coax network.

Yes that may confirm that I have been running it on ethernet this whole time with no problem, I had also mentioned above about using component cables versus an HDMI cable may solve some problems, according to someone in another forum there are handshake issues with some TV's and these boxes when using HDMI, so that could help some people with there issues as well.
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»www.w4lny.com

I'm on Cat5e already and tried the RCA which seemed to be ok but it could run for days without an issue. This weekend it rebooted twice in the same day. That was after I switched the cables.

I'm having DirecTV installed tomorrow, it's cheaper than what I'm paying AT&T for the TV side. I'll keep the two running together for a bit to test but I may just ditch the TV side of AT&T.

Good luck with DTV. If you love HD TV you will love DTV compared to the crappy Uverse HD.

reply to gdm
Ouch.

The "second generation" DVRs, those being the VIP2250 and ISB7500, do have a couple of semi-known issues at present. They do have improved HPNA capabilities and higher transfer rates for those interfaces, which some claim to be the cause of the issues.

However, simply put, in a document AT&T released internally, it is a known issue that the second generation DVRs have automatic reboot issues when connected via coax. When connected on Ethernet, symptoms generally improve or are resolved.

Current plans include a software fix, so at present there is at least some level of confidence in the new hardware. They are completely new devices though, so hardware design faults are still quite possible.
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I am a U-verse tier 1 agent but I am not employed by AT&T. My posts should not be viewed as official AT&T communication.

The document is wrong, it reboots when on ethernet. Doesn't matter if it's a new device. You don't release something with a flaw like that. It's not like that couldn't have been easily tested internally before releasing.

I have had the new Motorola VIP 2250 DVR since November. My DVR is connected by Ethernet cable, and so far, I have not experienced any random reboots. Apparently, experiences vary.

welp, the new isb7500 went black twice yesterday evening. this isnt very comforting.