Satellite receiver has to be rebooted often

[RV Vagabond Jerry]

I had satellite installed just 3 months ago with Directv for fulltime traveling.  My in motion antenna auto repositions as needed, but when settling down the the day, I often have to reboot the receiver to get any channels coming in.  Is this normal?

[Biker56]

If the receiver lost power during the move or while you reconnect to shore power. A reboot is needed.

Replace that in motion dome with a Trav'ler that can get the 99 and 103 HD channels then the in motion SD 101 only satellite.

A Genie receiver that can record 5 programs at once. Then you will probably never watch live TV again after skipping all ads.

Will be a extra $23 a month for HD, DVR and Whole home service.

[Al F]

2 hours ago, Biker56 said:

If the receiver lost power during the move or while you reconnect to shore power. A reboot is needed.

Replace that in motion dome with a Trav'ler that can get the 99 and 103 HD channels then the in motion SD 101 only satellite.

A Genie receiver that can record 5 programs at once. Then you will probably never watch live TV again after skipping all ads.

Will be a extra $23 a month for HD, DVR and Whole home service.

Never travel with the receiver powered up.  Be sure to unplug from an 120V power source.

I'm assuming the Direct TV receiver/DVR is about the same hardware the Dish Network receiver is.  That is a desk top computer with a hard drive that is not designed for bumps and bounces like a laptop.  You can cause serious problems with the hard drive bouncing down the road.

[Mark and Dale Bruss]

An opposing opinion.  Hard drives actually survive better when spinning with the heads in contact with the disk surface.  A powered off drive can have the heads bounce.

Been full-timing with Dish DVRs for 11+ years and never power off the receivers.  Always on on the inverter.

My experience is 32 years as a computer hardware technician,

 

[RV Vagabond Jerry]

58 minutes ago, Mark and Dale Bruss said:

An opposing opinion.  Hard drives actually survive better when spinning with the heads in contact with the disk surface.  A powered off drive can have the heads bounce. Been full-timing with Dish DVRs for 11+ years and never power off the receivers.  Always on on the inverter. My experience is 32 years as a computer hardware technician,

I like your answer much better.  Unplugging while driving would totally negate the benefit of the in-motion feature.  I don't watch it while driving but it records programs while I drive.  But is it true that a momentary power failure would require a system reboot when powering back up?

[Mark and Dale Bruss]

If there is an interruption of power, yes a receiver will reboot.  That is why having an inverter always supplying power is useful.  Bigger units have built-in transfer switches that switch between shore power and inverted power without interruptions to the devices connected.

[remoandiris]

15 hours ago, Mark and Dale Bruss said:

An opposing opinion.  Hard drives actually survive better when spinning with the heads in contact with the disk surface.  A powered off drive can have the heads bounce.

Been full-timing with Dish DVRs for 11+ years and never power off the receivers.  Always on on the inverter.

My experience is 32 years as a computer hardware technician,

 

VERY good to know!!  Don't recall seeing that tidbit before.  Thanks much.  Now just have to figure out how to get the inverter power from the fridge outlet to the DVR outlet.

[Al F]

16 hours ago, Mark and Dale Bruss said:

An opposing opinion.  Hard drives actually survive better when spinning with the heads in contact with the disk surface.  A powered off drive can have the heads bounce.

Been full-timing with Dish DVRs for 11+ years and never power off the receivers.  Always on on the inverter.

My experience is 32 years as a computer hardware technician,

 

Actually the only time the heads are actually in contact with the surface of the disk is when the disk is powered down.  Then the heads are moved to the landing zone.  When the disk is powered up and in use the heads "fly" a very tiny fraction of an inch above the surface of the disk.  With the disk spinning at around 3600RPM (different disks have different speeds) having the head and disk surface in constant contact would wear the material down and they would not last very long.

However I only have 30 years experience as a computer hardware technician so what do I know.

However the above is just an argument about the minor details of how a hard drive is made.

What is important is that, at least for Dish Network, they caution that the DVR be powered down before moving to prevent damage. 

Now just how much of a jostle or bounce does it take to cause a problem with the hard drive in the DVR?  I don't know.  Hard drives are pretty robust devices these days.  Chances are that driving down the highway in an RV will not bounce the DVR enough to cause a problem.  However hit a significant unexpected dip in the road that causes the DVR to lift up off of the surface it is sitting on and then crash back down could cause a problem.  But even so, if all that the disk drive is doing at that time is writing the video to the disk then no problem.  You might have some distortion to the video upon play back, but no big deal.  However if the hard drive just happens to be writing some critical information about the location of the various files on the hard drive it could cause a problem. 

As far as the satellite in-motion feature.  That is a feature of the satellite dish hardware and the manufacturer of that hardware is not associated with either Direct TV or Dish Network and the DVR's they provide. 

It would be interesting to know what, if any, cautions the satellite in-motion documentation has to say about the operation of the DVR's while driving. 

One could always call Dish or Direct TV and ask about using the DVR while driving.  Or reviewing the documentation about moving the DVR while powered up. 

But anyways, if the DVR ever fails, I would be sure to not tell Dish or Direct TV that you use it with Satellite in-motion and that if asked say that you always power it down while driving. 

Laptop hard drives have accelerometers to detect the motion of the hard drive and the the hard drive suspends writing and reading until the hard drive is stable again.  It buffers or stores the data in internal memory until it can safely read or write to or from the disk again.

It could be that some DVR hard drives have accelerometers built into them.

[Mark and Dale Bruss]

Yes, when in operation the heads are flying on a micro boundary layer of air but are stable.  When parked, the heads are retracted to a not data zone and physically.  In the landed mode, the head can bobble.

Asking the satellite providers is useless.  There answer is no to everything.

Not only does my Hopper 3 run all the time, the data storage computer and it 3 USB connected  SATA 3.25" drives run all the time too.  Only been doing this for 11 years.

 

[RV Vagabond Jerry]

Does "powered down" mean pulling the AC cord from the unit?

[Mark and Dale Bruss]

For a DVR, yes only pulling the power plug shuts the unit down

[Twotoes]

My son is an installer with Comcast. He did many years with Cox too. He said that even in their vans with the equipment in a box on a shelf they do get bad receivers from bouncing going down the road and these units have no power. I leave mine powered up while traveling down the road in my Class A and have never had a problem. 

[RangeMaggotBob]

On 7/26/2017 at 9:20 AM, Al F said:

Actually the only time the heads are actually in contact with the surface of the disk is when the disk is powered down.  Then the heads are moved to the landing zone.  When the disk is powered up and in use the heads "fly" a very tiny fraction of an inch above the surface of the disk.  With the disk spinning at around 3600RPM (different disks have different speeds) having the head and disk surface in constant contact would wear the material down and they would not last very long.

However I only have 30 years experience as a computer hardware technician so what do I know.

However the above is just an argument about the minor details of how a hard drive is made.

What is important is that, at least for Dish Network, they caution that the DVR be powered down before moving to prevent damage. 

Now just how much of a jostle or bounce does it take to cause a problem with the hard drive in the DVR?  I don't know.  Hard drives are pretty robust devices these days.  Chances are that driving down the highway in an RV will not bounce the DVR enough to cause a problem.  However hit a significant unexpected dip in the road that causes the DVR to lift up off of the surface it is sitting on and then crash back down could cause a problem.  But even so, if all that the disk drive is doing at that time is writing the video to the disk then no problem.  You might have some distortion to the video upon play back, but no big deal.  However if the hard drive just happens to be writing some critical information about the location of the various files on the hard drive it could cause a problem. 

As far as the satellite in-motion feature.  That is a feature of the satellite dish hardware and the manufacturer of that hardware is not associated with either Direct TV or Dish Network and the DVR's they provide. 

It would be interesting to know what, if any, cautions the satellite in-motion documentation has to say about the operation of the DVR's while driving. 

One could always call Dish or Direct TV and ask about using the DVR while driving.  Or reviewing the documentation about moving the DVR while powered up. 

But anyways, if the DVR ever fails, I would be sure to not tell Dish or Direct TV that you use it with Satellite in-motion and that if asked say that you always power it down while driving. 

Laptop hard drives have accelerometers to detect the motion of the hard drive and the the hard drive suspends writing and reading until the hard drive is stable again.  It buffers or stores the data in internal memory until it can safely read or write to or from the disk again.

It could be that some DVR hard drives have accelerometers built into them.

I guess I don't get this guy or don't understand. I thought the OP wanted to record while traveling, thus the in-motion satellite setup. Why do you insist that shouldn't be done? I just don't get what you're talking about. But I don't have 30 plus years in computer technology.