My Hughes HTL-HD got sick. Despite strong signal (per setup indicators) and good sig to other DirecTV boxes, rcvr won't decode the digits from the bird apparently. Spent an hour with a nice girl from DTV but could not get it to work including swapping to the cable from another DTV rcvr that is working. So it's sick but still makes a fine OTA converter even w/o pgm guide.

Also don't care about the extra-priced HDTV pkg, 5-LNB and MPEG4 for now.

Anyone ever try to get one of these fixed? Don't have a digital TV yet but the OTA pic still looks very nice on my trusty old Toshiba via Svideo. OTOH eBay has several for sale for around $20 (+ $22 shipping, no kidding). Seems like even w/o sat capability this makes a very nice digital OTA receiver with composite, component, DVI, VGA, RF outs and Dolby 5.1 digital out. Even for $42, still nicer than the basic converter boxes everyone is about to go and buy for 2/2009. This box came out at about $400, I bought mine suchadeal for $295.

Am I missing a downside here?

If you already have HD service, the package includes all of the new HD channels, there is no extra price. The only extra price is for the unique channels that aren't simulcasts of SD channels and it's $4.99 a month extra. Personally I'd upgrade unless you don't wanna be in the middle of a 2 year contract.

As for paying to have the HTL-HD fixed, probably be cheaper to buy a used one.

My HTL-HD is also not working. There is 90+ signal strength on all transponders (other than the spot beam tps not used here). I have unplugged, reset (button), rest NVRAM, reset AGP database and run initial setup many times. Diagnostics all pass. OTA HD works fine, but there is no guide (for anything). It always fails to build the channel list. Is this the same problem you have?

Based upon the research I've done this is effecting Sony, LG, and Hughes. I have two of the Hughes unit.

Take a look at the clock setup. If it says something about unavailable, then give DirecTV a call. Let them know you are have this issue. The other indication of this issue is the Channel list building at you indicate above.

See the DirecTV forum link below:

See:
http://forums.directv.com/pe/action/forums/displaysinglethread?rootPostID=10343790&returnExpertiseCode=

CM

I've been all over this today for about 4 hours. I have a LG LSS-3200A . That picks up the HD mpeg 2 signals.

Here is what I've found out since the DirecTV CS said "sorry dead unit".

On the High Def Forum 11 people have come forward since yesterday with this problem.

At DbsTalk I started a thread and others have indicated something is up with some of the older boxes.

I also discovered that DirecTV has their own Technical support forum and everyone with a problem needs to run over there and post a note with your problem so that we can get some attention.

See CM's link

also this thread:

http://forums.directv.com/pe/action/forums/displaysinglethread?rootPostID=10343921&returnExpertiseCode=

This problem seems to have been resolved.

Directv "fixed" their data stream this morning.

Unplug or reboot your HTL-HD and everything should be normal. :)

In an act of irresponsibility that defies belief, D* zapped all Sony and Hughes receivers yesterday until 6 AM this morning. After finding that the Sony receivers in my wife's study and my daughters room were not working although each was getting full signal, I called D* They were baffled and scheduled a service call for 10 days later. Not wanting to wait 10 days I called in my professsional installers thinking that there could be bad ports on the dish or faulty cables. After much testing, running jumper cables etc., the problem remained. We determined that the recievers were faulty or they needed to be reactivated because a later HR20 receiver worked when connected to the same cables. More calls to D* to reactivate the receivers didn't correct the problem. Another call to the tech department brought the suggestion to simply get new receivers! On the 8th call to D*s tech department I got a lady who said, " Oh Sony receivers? They and Hughes got a download last night and won't be working until 6AM tomorrow!"

This problem started on Wednesday the 9th, not yesterday. I was without DirectTV for over a week.

Loss of signal, loss of power or a reset would cause the problem to show up, so many people with these receivers where not affected.