Feb 2012 DirecTV firmware update and POWER SAVE

John Nagy

This morning the calls started coming in about DIRECTV boxes being dead.
Some are. Most are just waiting for a POWER command.
Last night in our area at least, DirecTV pushed new firmware that among other things, adds PANDORA RADIO and a POWER SAVE MODE.

Pandora's not too bad, kind of oddly different that the rest of the DTV look and feel, but welcome.
The power save mode defaults to ON and puts the unit in standby if you don't actively touch any control for it for 4 hours. No command but POWER seems to bring it back on, and of course POWER in IR is a toggle, so you can't be sure you are waking or putting it to sleep. Worse, the "power save" doesn't reduce the actual power used enough to be detected by power sensors, so you can automate it. Fortunately there are IP and even serial connections that do seem to have discrete power commands. All you have to do is go rewire and reprogram your jobs.

Or, convince the owner that the power save mode is the sham it is, and turn it off. All it does is turn down the dash lights and cut the video output, does NOT turn off the hard drive or fan. So you might save 5% in this mode.

Your customer will need to press the POWER button on the actual unit to get it awake again in most cases. Then they should, before 4 hours go by, go to the MENU, choose SETUP, choose POWER SAVE there, press again to active the ON-OFF menu, choose DOWN to pick OFF, and then exit.

Among the other joys this brought some, including me, one of my units is no longer outputting any sound, and the video isn't right either. Two reboots, no joy yet. It's running, the content can be seen and played from another unit, so the core of it is OK, something else went wrong in the update. This is my newest machine too. The 5 year old one came through it OK.

Any other experiences?

jimmyw

Force an update this friday between 11pm and 2am ET by pulling the plug, red button reboot wont do it
and then
Press 02468 at the first sign of spinning lights on the front panel or at the “Hello, your DIRECTV receiver is starting up” screen

this will force an update, the CE window was last Friday but is rumored to be available this Friday as well, otherwise the next confirmed CE window is next month


There was a bug with what got rolled out as NR, cant believe they sent it out without fixing, latest CE is fixed though.

John Nagy

jimmyw wrote: »

Force an update this friday between 11pm and 2am ET by pulling the plug, red button reboot wont do it
and then
Press 02468 at the first sign of spinning lights on the front panel or at the “Hello, your DIRECTV receiver is starting up” screen.

I just did this per instruction from DIRECTV support, RED BUTTON ONLY, not power, and it took the firmware, and corrected my deadish box. I did NOT wait for Friday...
The "02468" should be entered AFTER the HELLO screen appears, but before it moves on. If it takes, you'll see a NEW SOFTWARE loading screen...

We found discrete IR power on commands for the box after all. So we're revising the systems to send the ON command when the source is selected. That won't help if you happen to be watching something that runs longer than 4 hours. Like maybe the super bowl pre-shows and then, with 30 seconds to play, your 4 hours is up, and poof you are at blue screen. Time to issue the power command again. Real friendly.

I can't measure the difference in power use between the full and save modes. This is a political event. Just turn it off.

the8thst

DirecTV has had discrete Power On and Off IR commands for a long time and I use them on every job.
Here they are:

Power On
0000 006c 001f 000fffffffe 00e5 002e 002e 002e 0017 0017 002e 0017 0017 0017 0017 0017 0017 0017 002e 002e 002e 0017 0017 04a1 0072 002e 002e 002e 0017 0017 002e 0017 0017 0017 0017 0017 0017 0017 002e 002e 002e 0017 0017 04a1 0072 002e 002e 002e 0017 0017 002e 0017 0017 0017 0017 0017 0017 0017 002e 002e 002e 0017 0017

Power Off
0000 006c 001f 000fffffffe 00e5 002e 002e 002e 0017 0017 002e 0017 0017 0017 0017 0017 0017 002e 002e 002e 002e 002e 0017 04a1 0073 002e 002e 002e 0017 0017 002e 0017 0017 0017 0017 0017 0017 002e 002e 002e 002e 002e 0017 04a1 0073 002e 002e 002e 0017 0017 002e 0017 0017 0017 0017 0017 0017 002e 002e 002e 002e 002e 0017

jimmyw

Also, I have tested and confirmed that sending the power on command request on network control OR the "whats playing" command will prevent 4hour timer

/remote/processKey?key=poweron

Jimmy

the8thst

I guess IRLite didn't pull those power codes correctly out of the IRL file, so I have attached the IRL that I use.

John Nagy

A correction, the reload of the firmware I was able to do per DTV instructions rolled my box back to the January update. It appears they don't have the new version out for general reload now.