VIP7802 Recordings on receiver - "unable to acquire license"

[yeagerxp]

Had fibe 50 installed on Sat. the 3rd, with 2 receivers

named on receiver Living Room the other Den

can schedule recordings from both receivers

can access recordings from Den receiver, when I try to access recordings from Living Room receiver i get the following "unable to acquire license" and then "can not access content"

called bell support on this, was told they would call back within 48 hours, nothing, called them again yesterday, still nothing

this morning i switched receivers around still the same thing.

I left rogers because their internet kept dropping and the tv went out,

Now i am getting negativity from the family, i don't need it. anybody seen this before?

[BellPatricia]

Hi there @yeagerxp. Thanks for reaching out to the Bell Community.

Glad to hear you've spoken with the Tech team about this. Did they mention that they opened a ticket for you?

Keep the Community posted, we are here to help if you need anything else.

- Patricia

[yeagerxp]

As stated on the forum, no response from bell tech support. On Sat. 10th I got a call from somebody inquiring if I was satisfied with the service. I said NO and explained the situation. He brought somebody on the line to try to resolve the issue, We rebooted the router, rebooted the receiver. Spent 40 minutes on the phone. The issue seemed resolved until we tried to access a recording in the evening from the living room and got the same message "problem obtaining license" and then "unable to access content". My sister has a mobility problem and can't be climbing stairs as well as not being technical at all. I am looking at my options on this. I was stuck at home for 48 hours because the guy who took down my issue said he would be sending the issue for escalation. No call from tech support. Called bell again, and somebody called to ask if I was satisfied, not to work on the problem. I have done my own troubleshooting. The problem is not at my end but at the network

[BellPatricia]

Hey @yeagerxp.

We want to take a closer look, and have sent you a private message. Please check your Messages within your profile avatar in the top right corner.

Unsure how to check or send a private message? See How to send a private message

- Patricia

[EricS]

Ever since I subscribed to Fibe TV back in late October (I've been using Bell's Internet for years), the Receiver *WILL NOT* allow me to watch any of the shows that are recorded (or on rare occasions, it'll work briefly until I fast forward or skip forward). The error message I get is for *ALL* recordings when attempting to watch them is:
"This program is blacked out due to broadcasting restrictions or is temporarily unavailable" (on very few rare occasions, I've seen an error that says "License is missing" or something of the sort.)
The Fibe TV App works flawlessly though (but I lose certain capabilities compared to the TV Receiver, so I'd rather use the TV Receiver instead). I've called support so many times, I've lost count. They all try the same thing (some sort of reset) and after they realize the problem is beyond them, they promise me someone from their advanced support team will look into it and/or contact me (I was told this 4 times, no one ever reached out to me). The TV Receiver was replaced once (so I'm on my second one) which didn't help one iota and I replaced the HDMI cable with the one that comes with the TV Receiver, no dice. I've tried resetting the "Modem" (it's not really a modem, I know) and the TV Receiver, dozens of time (mostly after being asked by support tech). Nothing has worked so far and it's been months. If Videotron would offer better upload speeds, I'd switch to them in a heartbeat but when you're working from home and you're in IT (and need decent upload speed), Bell's Fibe FTTH Internet is pretty much the only game in town.

[AlexS]

Do you know if the IP address is in Canada? And I heard the VLAN or sth. of the dvr  is different from wifi. All I can tell is that it seems my box can detect a different wifi other than BELL###. 

[BellPatricia]

Hi there @EricS, welcome to the Bell Community 🙂
The Community will need a bit more information in order to help.
Which modem and TV receiver(s) are you using, and is affecting all of the receivers in your home? Do you notice any trouble while watching live TV at all?

Is this affecting every show/channel that you try to record, or a specific one? Can you try a test by recording something that you don't normally record? Once the recording is complete please try to watch it and see if the same thing occurs. 

How many recordings are on your receiver (simply press the PVR button on your remote)?
Are you able to share a photo of the different errors that you are getting as well?
Looking forward to your reply.
- Patricia
 

[EricS]

I NEVER got that call from the advanced support team despite being told *on 4 occasions* they'd reach out to me...
Soooo, I spent the good part of Saturday troubleshooting this and finally figured it out.
I tried resetting the Hub 4000 back to factory default and lo and behold the receiver finally started working properly. The root cause was that I don't use the DHCP and DNS functions found in the Bell Hub but rather something called Pi-Hole that runs on a Raspberry Pi (I'm convinced a *LOT* of people are using this, I cannot be the only one, Pi-Hole is just too popular). I've been using Pi-Hole for years, literally, but the TV Receiver is a recent addition to my setup and it couldn't work with Pi-Hole. What I did to resolve this and keep using Pi-Hole, was to setup a static IP on the TV Receiver and use Bell's DNS servers IPs instead of the alternative DNS servers (in my case Quad9's DNS servers) that I use on Pi-Hole, as soon as I did this, the TV Receiver started working like it should. I'm actually surprised the TV Receiver doesn't have preconfigured / hardcoded DNS servers to prevent this.

***Just a suggestion, maybe tech support personnel should ask questions to their customers if they made modifications to the default settings of their Hub. Also, when you tell people your advanced support team will them, THEY SHOULD ACTUALLY CALL THEM!!!***

[PleaseHelp]

Hi Bell Patricia, were you able to done YeagerXP's issues with recordings? I'm having the same issues. Got Fibe recently. Recordings worked well for awhile but now they other stop playback partway through our I get error messages like "unable to acquire license" or "blackout" or "internet unavailable". I've rebooted the fibe receiver but it hasn't helped. The Internet is working fine btw and there's a ton of space for recordings. Please let me know what else can be done. Thanks! 

[yeagerxp]

Hello

After doing so many troubleshooting steps, back and forth and almost going crazy with the problem,Patricia got me in a conference call with several Bell engineers, we spent almost an hour going over this and that, they even came into my TV through the remote access portal on the Fibe 50 receiver and monitored the data traffic between the equipment and they concluded that the issue was the interface between the fibe receiver and my TV. A very modern RCA TV at that. Apparently the manufacturer of the fibe receiver did not do a good job for RCA tv's. I have an RCA and a Panasonic tv. No issues whatsoever with the Panasonic, the RCA is still the problem. I was given a procedure to use to play the recordings on the RCA tv but the RCA tv is used by my sister, who is not technically literate. All my sister wanted to do was to record a scheduled daily religious program and play it anytime she wanted without my help, I created a google account for her and got her subscribed to the religious program on Youtube. All she does now is click on Google assistant on the remote says YOUTUBE goes to YouTube and has the program right there. I don't know what type of TV you have, but Patricia may have to get somebody other than regular Technical Support involved, this issue is beyond them.

[PleaseHelp]

YeaherXP,

Thank you so much for the detailed reply!

Because of your information, I was able to try a few other options.

For instance, I tested my TV upstairs (Phillips). It works fine, which is good to know.

Therefore, my pvr recording issue is just a problem on my Samsung TV.  I found a workaround by casting the recording from the fibetv app, so I probably won't go through all the hassle you had to go through with tech services.

It's still disappointing that there's an issue with multiple brands of popular TV's. Hopefully, they opened a ticket when they discovered the interface issue and will test on other TVs as well to get an overall fix to the interface.

Thank you again for your reply! I really appreciate it and am sorry you had to go through all that technical support. 

[yeagerxp]

Hello PleaseHelp

LOL I used to be with Rogers, had internet TV no issues with receivers or TVs but I had a big problem with their internet disconnecting everyday about 5 t o 6 times. The Bell service with the exception of this glitch is top notch, no internet drops, no other issues. Tell them you want a discount until they fix the problem 🤣🤣. Get in touch with the customer retention group and tell them what is happening. If enough people do that then maybe something will be done. If Rogers can provide universal receivers, than MA Bell should be able to do the same.

Good luck.

[BellPatricia · Accepted solution]

Hey there @PleaseHelp. Thanks for your post and welcome to the Bell Community.

I wanted to jump in here and share the steps for a temporary solution.

• Step 1. Try and play your recording. If it fails proceed to step 2, if not, enjoy your recording.
• Step 2. Push channel up.
• Step 3. Attempt to play your recording again

We appreciate everyone's patience while we continue to work on this, and will post new updates as they become available.

Don't hesitate to reach out to the Community if you have any other questions.

- Patricia

[Thepez]

We have the new vip7802 receiver and a giga hub with fibe500 for 5 months. Just had same problem. Living room tv(Roku smart TV) is connected via HDMI to receiver. Other TV is 10 year old Sony and is using a Fire Stik to watch Fibe TV. No problems with it on recordings. The wife asked politely (with fry pan in her hand) to fix the living room TV as she couldn't watch her recordings. Had the issue can't acquire licence. My fix was to unplug the receiver and the HDMI cable. Waited 60 sec. Plugged back in and everything was fine. Never had this problem with our old boxes. Appears that it is a problem with Bell equipment

[yeagerxp]

🤣I am not laughing at you but at the fact that you were threatened with a frying pan. You have two options and involves your wife's approval (doesn't it always 🤣) switch TVs and the other is use google cast through google chrome.