Our VIP2250 DVR has seizures.

How much older is it?

Well, the tech that was here did a few tests with his votage meter; he also went to the box down the street and switched ports.  Also, there was another tech here the next day that was doing something outside the house and then came to the door and said he had checked everything and it all seemed fine... though now I have a little bit of static on the phone lines. 

The vizio tech did tell me to turn off the amibient light sensor and adaptive lumina settings, but I haven't gone back to the HDMI cable to see if that made any difference.

Just frustrating that we can't get all the technology on the same page so it all plays happily together.

Thanks for the info!

Frustrated smiley face indeed, maybe that'll go away.  I surprised that Visio would tell a customer to disable those features 'cause Adaptive brightness and lumina settings sometimes cause remote control interference.  

Try going back to HDMI if you dare... I think that the software part loses sync and drops HDCP authentication lapsing into an overflow of some kind, maybe a thread collision. As for the system on a chip, I'm not sure...

Ones - appreciate the post.

This is probably going to sound a bit ridiculous but started looking more into the electromagnetic interference that was referenced. I'm on my third VIP2250 so had to start trying other things. I was getting reboots every 30 minutes or so while watching live tv. Obviously frustrating. I have a Panasonic 65 Plasma with my STB about 16" under the right half of the televison in an enclosed stand. I moved the DVR to a lower shelf about 12" down. It seemed this at least delayed the reboot to every 2-3 hours. I'm feeling like some sort of progress is being made. I then went off the deep end I guess and lined the top of the shelf immediately above the DVR with aluminum foil. Might have just been something else but now it seemed to be about once a day during a session of 5-6 hours of time. Still not good enough I guess. Then with the DVR still in the same location on the bottom shelf and jacked one of my wifes silver serving trays on 12/26 and threw it on top of it. Realizing this would cause this thing to burn up in quick fashion I made some spacers to sit it up a bit off of it. I haven't had a reboot since. I plan to fab something as soon as my wife notices the tray missing. As you can tell from my post I'm probably not the most tech sav person but would love to here some theories on this. 

You Sir are awesome!

Well, I've posted in another thread that the old VIP12xx series doesn't have much if any shielding inside the plastic case, and even though the VIP2250 has a steel case (similar to that used for PC's), at least one chip is covered with a shield to reduce interference. The shields used are steel or aluminum and solder to an isolated pad or a pad that is connected to a ground.

Plasma TV's cells are like thousands of fluorescent lights, and those can wipe out or warp signals. Your taking the action of moving the dvr away form you TV reduced that radiation, lining the shelf above created a weak deflector (was it a wide flat lining, a flat rectangle, or u shaped lining?)

Aluminum is paramagnetic metal and despite not being able to attract foil with a refrigerator magnet, you could get it to react with a neodymium magnet (those really expensive most powerful enough to cause great harm to our fingertips when we aren't careful.)

And the most awesome use of a silver serving tray ever seems to have blocked the radiation, silver is a diamagnetic metal, which is to say that, silver will create an opposing magnetic field in the presence of another canceling it out. Noise Cancellation!!!!

If this holds you may have to find another silver serving tray for yourself, or move the VIP2250 completely away from the plasma TV; And also this could be the most expensive DVR fix ever made.

Could it be that electromagnetic interference is causing signal jitter that disrupts certain HDMI operations?

PS, Anybody know where to get copper-silver alloy Ethernet cables?

Your observation is far from ridiculous! Susceptability is one of the more challenging aspects when addressing EMC - Electromagnetic Compatibility. It can be much more straightforward to reduce radiated emissions in some assemblies than to protect them from external noise. About 15 years ago, we sprayed a conductive nickel coating on the inside of a plastic trim cover, then used conductive gaskets to ground the cover to the metal chassis. It was pretty crude, but it worked wonders when compared to a 'bare' assembly, and with a few other simple changes we were able to certify the device.

It's a very clever solution to make your own shield. For those pressed for space, or those without access to a silver serving platter, I wonder if a piece of metal screen, properly grounded, could also serve as an adequate shield. Alternately, run a copper ground wire from the (metal) DVR chassis to a reliable ground.

I noticed that the 2250 has only the DC power cord going to it, so it's anyone's guess how any stray noise is getting to ground once the DVR is 'hit'. An interesting experiment might be to carefully route the signal (coax or Cat5), power, and video cables away from any other sources of noise, then coil any excess cable and clamp on a split ferrite to try and arrest any signals coming in from the cords. 

You may be onto the potential root cause of this widespread problem! Thanks for sharing!

Ref: the similar saga with our DVR

Thanks pedaler, I'll look for a spare spilt ferrite choke. Seeing as manufacturers been placing them on just about everything - I could try it for myself. The Ethernet cable is looped once over take up slack, the rest have to be straight.

Yup, yours situation is "textbook".

My own observation from a few months ago was that there could be something in the software in conflict with the hard drive itself. Those discussions centered around the AF drives, and a conflict that was happening when those were being used. What would be interesting to try, as these 500GB DVRs are supposedly built with different chips and processors, is to downsize the drive to a 250GB or 320GB, and see if there's any change to the behavior. And why this could be important: With the Motorola 1216 (160GB) and 1225 (250GB), it has been confirmed in the field that a hard drive upgrade to 500GB can be accomplished with success. Those older models have no problem coping with a larger than OEM drive, presumably because they are basically the same model. In an ideal situation, the new chips/processors should have no problem with a smaller drive.

If the hard drive is somehow "overheating", or can't spin at the proper speed, there may be something in the software that shuts it down. If you switch to a smaller drive, maybe that would solve the problem.

jbdet313, I missed that thread and yeah I forgot that some systems have compatibility problems with advanced format hard drives. Yes, It would be a nice experiment, but I don't have the spare drive and I do like to keep the service.

Do you know if any of the 'hackers' used an advanced format PATA drive in the VIP 1216 & 1225 boxes?

These boxes do not support a disk diagnostics function outside of disaster recovery, it's just essential Windows CE & Media room (stripped down media center)  Many of us would like to see the temperature of the drive and other stats, it could work for AT&T's benefit too.

The VIP2250 I'm using is hot on the bottom and the drive is working as it should, the dvr that was returned survived two FDR administrations and no odd noises were heard.