USDTV set-top box sound cutoff

Archived from groups: alt.video.digital-tv (More info?)

Has anyone here tried out the USDTV set-top box for receiving digital
TV? Does anyone else have problems with the sound cutting out after
a few hours of operation? It's not the TV. It's not any particular
digital channel. Powering the box off with the remote control
doesn't fix the problem. Unplugging it briefly does. I unplug it
briefly enough that I don't think it's a heat issue.

I'd like to be able to do timed recordings to my DVR (yes, S/Video
only does 480i, but it's better than the analog picture my VHF/UHF
antenna pulls in) even though I haven't figured out how to control
the channel with an IR blaster (any hints on whether it's like
another manufacturer's box as far as IR blaster codes?). But
manually setting the channel and leaving for work won't work if the
sound cuts out frequently.

I get 11 channels from 8 unique stations in the Dallas-Fort Worth
area. One is weak enough (in the current cloudy weather) to have
serious interference. There are allegedly 5 more channels but which
I haven't seen on the air, including Channel 68 KXPD-DT which has
4 subchannels, all of them off the air. Asking it to scan for
channels seems to hang until you tell it to stop the scan. I
consider getting 2/3 of the way through according to its progress
bar in under 5 minutes, then not moving for 2 hours, to be "hanging".

This thing has a card slot which appears to be for some sort of
access card. However, it claims you can sign up over the phone,
to get access right away, so what's the access card for? I'm not
in the current coverage area, and if you try to pull up its guide,
it refers you to http://www.usdtv.com/future to see when it's due
to arrive in your area, which gets a HTTP 404 error. Nice planning,
guys.

Gordon L. Burditt