New cable

No luck in swapping the included cable nor an after market cable. Still getting ongoing pictures like above

I have disconnected the unit, no problems before or since so it is definitely not a satellite issue, although yes it does look exactly like an occasional thunderstorm, but happened with two separate external 2 tb units. Main difference between the effect and weather is it happens like a pulse, you could probably count the number of seconds between pixelation, whereas with weather the problem is random and usually minimal, not a complete meltdown.

Am considering migrating 1 tb hds internally, if that's possible, for some reason the external won't work in my setting.

Migrated the two 1tb drives into an hr-21 and hr-22, respectively, everything works perfectly.

This rules out: 1) bad drives, and 2) bad receivers; it must be something about the external storage setup that doesn't work in my setting.

Perhaps there is a bad circuit board in the external RAID array box? Doesn't seem too likely, it appears the whole unit was replaced when I sent it in, the repair order simply states, "Swapped both drives, case, and new esata cable".

Perhaps there is some electronic signal interference in my particular setting, most people from what I've read on various forums have no trouble with external storage, so it's pretty hard to imagine what the issue could be.

At the moment I'm happy to have 2 hd dvrs installed which gives me 4 tuners so I can watch whatever I want whenever I want, we'll see if 2 terabytes will be sufficient, I suspect it will be.

Glad to hear it's working. We do generally prefer the internal drives, but this certainly isn't a normal occurrence.

My guess is that there is some type of external interference with the eSATA cable, but it's hard to know for sure.

Hey Michael thanks for your input, that's how it seems to me too about the source of interference, it's funny since I never had any HDTV equipment until September 2008 so everything is new and nothing cheap where you might expect interference due to lack of shielding, must be a fluke?, however I'm endlessly curious about electronics so I have to wonder, could it be the separate high current power amp it was next to (I have a big room and decided to go with a separate amp)?

It all seems moot now that 2 tb drives are available making external storage more or less unnecessary. BTW do the HR21-22-23 drives have to be formatted or can you just pop in a replacement, it was sort of time consuming to install the first drive internally as you need a tamper proof torx 10 screw driver but once I made my way to Ace Hardware and obtained the correct tool, installing the second drive was a snap (although not necessarily for the faint of heart, I hate messing with proprietary designs).

I doubt I'll need to step up to 2 tb drives until after the new Directv Tivo drives come out, so just an idle question I suppose, I just found out about DirecTV VOD which would press the issue except I can't get decent high speed internet out here in the suburbs unless I break down and sign up with UVERSE, a leap I'm not prepared to make.

A big issue for me in wanting more storage is the PIXAR move (according to DirecTV) that made PPV Downloads expire after 24 hours, which we learned about while watching our second installment of Benjamin Button (a 3 hour movie) and found out we would have to pay twice to see the end, my wife and daughter caught the end but I was never able to.

This is sort of a ridiculous situation that defeats the whole purpose of a DVR, which is to allow you to watch what you want when you want, especially with children in the household so that your ability to watch an R rated movie is extremely constrained by available time within a 24 hour period, especially with only one living room TV.

My current thought has been to subscribe to all the movie channels and then record everything relevant on HBO Showtime Starz and Cinemax with the standard delay to release to cable so that I can retain the freedom to watch what I want when I want.

In that regard it's shocking to me to see seriously old movies (National Treasure??) offered for 2.99 on DirecTV VOD with a 24 hour expiration, I realize that's the Hollywood copyright freaks, cousins I suppose to the control freaks that shut down Creedence back in the day with recording contract gotchas, but pretty outrageous just the same. More to the point unsustainable I would suggest from the consumer point of view, maybe the business model works but I certainly can't afford it, despite being a fool who's willing to pay too much for entertainment.

Well you'll be kind enough to excuse the rant perhaps, things are going well for a change and I found myself in the mood to babble.

Cheers,
Sat Kartar

Yup - I agree that the 24 hour limit is pretty pathetic. I've actually posted about it here:

http://www.wkblog.com/tivo/2008/03/d...xpire-on-dvrs/

and here:

http://www.wkblog.com/tivo/2008/06/2...ome-attention/

I do think that needs to be reworked.