4th (or 5th?) 721 dies

[navychop]

I ordered a 721 soon after introduced (2003?). Love it. Always have. Unfortunately, they do tend to drop dead. I last replaced one in early August 2006. Yep, 2 months ago. This was the third replacement, so it was the 4th 721 in the house. It at first seemed defective, getting 110 or 119, but not both. Reported it, they sent another one. Meanwhile, after 2-3 days, ole #4 self-corrected. Never a problem since. And #5 arrived in a damaged, ripped open box. So I returned "#5" and kept on with #4.

The 721's "Urgency of Need Detector" is working fine. The 721 is in our bedroom. My wife took sick yesterday and stayed in bed all day today. No prob- she can watch TV all day. Of course, first thing in the morning I discovered the 721 had died overnight. Tech thinks it might be a bad power supply rather than the HD, but they're not sure. At least this time I only lost about 30 hours of recordings and no PPVs. And yes, it's in a fairly open shelf unit.

I must say the CSR was wonderful, did not waste too much of my time (had me redo most of the steps I'd already tried)- and answered IMMEDIATELY after I got thru all the recordings (press this, press that, if you really insist on a human press...). I've always had good CSRs.

So, I have another 721 coming. I sure hope it'll last the 3 years or so until they stop using MPEG-2. But probably not. This time, though, I'll have to dump to DVR anything I consider important, rather than waiting to see it "later." Most stuff goes on the ViP622 anyway. Maybe I'll just duplicate every 721 recording on the 508.

No questions, just reporting. And I still like the 721, but I won't rely on it so much.

 

[skyviewmark]

Went through more 721's than I care to mention. Great Idea. Bad Product. I finally had to give up and dump it. Not sure if Dish ever had any real support for it. It seemed like it was always the last receiver to get upgraded software and even when they did upgrade it, it was always buggy. Got even more buggy after it was upgraded to Dish Pro Plus. Too bad too.. Cause when it worked it was a very good product

 

[Bob Haller]

I dumped the 721 unreliable extremely long reboot time, with 522s which were very happy with

 

[navychop]

Long reboot time- yep.
Buggy? Well, nothing major for me.
No DVR fee- well, not priceless, but nice.

My only problem is their sudden catastrophic failures. Otherwise, I like the 721 so much! I moved up to it from a 301. And the interface, for the guide, especially, is so much better than the 508.

But if this one fails, maybe I'll have to throw in the towel and consider an upgrade offer. Not to a 625, but maybe to an HD DVR.

I considered trying to copy the HD to possibly recover the recordings later- not sure how hard that is or if it's worth it. Maybe I'll do a search later.

 

[Bob Haller]

I think the stuff on the hard drive is encrypted but not certain. not into archiving stuff........

What I did to make a box crash less painful is buy a SPARE receiver for fast swap out when one dies.

going to do the same thing so I have a spare cell phone.

heck I have a entire spare dish 500 with quad prewired. this after a connecyor failure during a blizzard

I just swap the black coax ( the ONLY black coax in the house) to the recivers. instant fast diagnosis from the comfort of indoors

I fix machines for a living and must JUMP when customers call.

When my stuff breaks I want to do it at MY convenience, and with dish stuff not outdoors in rain or snow.

since going to redundancy my life is less stressful.

heck I have older vehicles, have 2 vans primarily for redundancy

since one is full of work stuff its nice o have a empty one for hauling.........

 

[FWGMills]

I am an *upset monkey*

I've owned a 721 for over 5 years. I have had to replace it once several years ago when it started continuously rebooting in the days of the "too many timers" bug. I've been very happy with it until recently. It started right around the time they pushed TV Guide adjustments and DishHome software to the receiver. It's been wonky ever since. Since this last software push where they shut off the screensavers it now takes forever to boot, and acquire the satellite signal, sometimes up to 10 minutes. I have good signal strength so the box must be retarded.

Now I come home from work and it's not recording timers at 8. When I powered it on it was stuck at the "Acquiring satellite signal" screen. My other receivers (508, 311) were working perfectly. I had to reboot the 721 which took 6 1/2 minutes to start receiving a signal...I timed it. So I missed 35 minutes of House (was a rerun) and the season premier of Lost. Now that pissed me off majorly.

I'm ready to pull the trigger and buy a Samsung 61" DLP HDTV and when I do, I'll upgrade my service to HD and get a vip622. I'm waiting on either my 721 to piss me off again and blow more timers, the TV to go on sale, or my bedroom TV to zoink out (it's circling the drain).

Anyone have a happy history with the vip622 they care to share?

 

[navychop]

Thanks for the replies.

I guess I have a backup in the form of a 508 & ViP622. And a spare dish, not installed. I used to have 3 old vehicles, so that almost always at least 2 were working.

Ah, the "703" screen. Mine failed there, cycling between that and the testing hard drive screen.

I love my ViP622. I hook up my 61" JVC DiLA (LCoS) screen to it via HDMI. I use the optical connector for audio to my sound system. No sync issues between audio and video. I use it in single mode. No complaints. I would like for the system to pass on PSIP data, but I can live without it.

You will find some SD will not look so good on 61 inches. That 4x3 image will be the equivalent of a 50" analog TV set. But size has it's own PQ.

We mostly read of complaints, but the vast majority are quite happy with their ViP622s. Just be gentle with the HDMI connector.

 

[DougE]

I think the stuff on the hard drive is encrypted but not certain. not into archiving stuff........

What I did to make a box crash less painful is buy a SPARE receiver for fast swap out when one dies.

going to do the same thing so I have a spare cell phone.

heck I have a entire spare dish 500 with quad prewired. this after a connecyor failure during a blizzard

I just swap the black coax ( the ONLY black coax in the house) to the recivers. instant fast diagnosis from the comfort of indoors

I fix machines for a living and must JUMP when customers call.

When my stuff breaks I want to do it at MY convenience, and with dish stuff not outdoors in rain or snow.

since going to redundancy my life is less stressful.

heck I have older vehicles, have 2 vans primarily for redundancy

since one is full of work stuff its nice o have a empty one for hauling.........

Question Bob: I just acquired another 721 for backup as you suggested. Do you keep both authorized at the same time, or have to call and have the alternate authorized when the other one fails. I am wondering how quickly one can get a receiver authorized given the sorry state of CSR's these days.

Doug

 

[DishSubLA]

I'll just add that we are on our 3rd 721. Like you, we got about 6 months after release (avoiding the huge headaches of the first 6 mos.) The 721 has always been a weird bird. All posted observations by others are true and confirmed. I don't think Dish would go for replacing a dead 721 with a 625, would they?

 

[navychop]

I'm beginning to think they would- especially since they would then get you out of a grandfathered DVR to one where you'd have to start paying the DVR fee. Plus, have the wonderful ( ) option of VOD.

I'm inclined to try to hang on until DISH makes the final move (2009/2010?) to MPEG-4 & 8PSK and the 721 simply won't work anymore. But if they keep dying every 2-3 months, I won't be able to put up with that. Still, I'd rather get a deal to up to an HD DVR- maybe one with 2 sat tuners, 1 ATSC OTA tuner but only supports one TV. Maybe in another year or so.

Back to the 721 #6 saga. It would not authorize the night I called. The CSR said probably another 8 minutes, and we ended the call. 90 minutes later, still trying to authorize. Overcast skies, but the ViP622 & 508 were working fine. Trying to go to menu or do any other function would not work, it just stayed at the authorize - do not disturb screen. So I disturbed it by unplugging it. Still no dice, just went back to authorizing. Left to eat supper. Eventually it stopped trying to authorize and let me enter the menu. Sometimes check switch would give me all greens on the tuners (if I check switched from 119), but would often give red Xs on tuner/sat 1 (if I started check switch from 110). Left it overnight. Next day, #6 was behaving like #4- could get 110 or 119 but not both. Guide would only show some channels (e.g.- either 120 or 121, but not both- diff sats). Finally called Dish again, went thru the usual (which I had already done, except for checking 61.5), was told the thing would trundle for another 20 mins or so, and work fine. If not, try unplugging and if that doesn't work, call back.

After 20-30 minutes, the 721 appeared to finally show all channels in the guide, and worked fine- perhaps a tad slower than I recall. Later I tried to create a favorites list. Everything worked fine, except no list was in fact created. After repeated tries, with a limited number of channels selected, it finally "took." but renaming it "fav 1" just left it at "list1fav1" or some such. Adding channels did not work. I figure I'll try again tonight- maybe the 721 just needs a day or 3 to "compose" itself and work properly. I'm also testing to see if it records properly from the guide. BTW, "The Stepford Wives" on the free ShowTime preview is the new one, not the old one- don't bother wasting electrons recording it.

So tonight I'll play some more, before I return the old 721. Might have to call in and have even this one replaced. Or see if it gives me 2 months service like the last one. At some point, if the failures continue, either Dish or I will get tired of it and propose another solution. Maybe I'll just shift my ViP622 to dual mode and feed the master bedroom TV from there.

All the CSRs I dealt with were wonderful and capable. Especially the last one, who realized I could just be told to run a check switch and did not insist upon reading every little step.

 

[navychop]

Latest bill tried to charge me $49.99 for the receiver, even though I had insurance. I called and they dropped it.

So far, #6 seems to be working ok. I can even add to my favorites list and rename it without quirks.

 

[sluggo]

My three year old 721 expired over a month ago and it is now working perfectly! Knowing it was out of warranty, I went into Dr. Frankenstein mode and opened her up. I removed the IDE ribbon cable, hooked everything back up and hit the power button. When it put the hard drive has failed message on the screen I powered it off, unhooked everything and put the ribbon cable back in place. Hooked it up and powered it back on, it went through a tedious process of re-initializing the hard drive, lights flashing in sequence and reboots, but has worked perfectly for over a month now. Best of all, I didn't have to remove the hard drive and mess up that pretty yellow sticker!

 

[navychop]

The sticker on mine is silver. If I have another HD failure, I'll try your method. This time, it seems it's the power supply that has failed.