Hello all. I'm new to this forum, but I've been using Dish Network and their DVR service for about a year now, and I must say that the service has been less than satisfactory. Specifically, my experience with the 522 DVR, which has been nothing short of a nightmare. I'm going to give a rundown of all the problems I've had with this pitiful piece of machinery, and I'll try and keep it as short as I can.
The first in the whole saga of problems happened last summer. I had amassed a huge collection of recorded events that I was hoping to eventually transfer to VHS tapes when I had the time. Well, one day I casually turned the unit on and went to the list of recorded events only to find that they had all vanished before my eyes. All 97 hours of them. Heck, I even considered sending the unit to a data-recovery center to see if they could recover any of my lost recordings, but after finding out how much it would cost, I quickly gave up on the idea. To this day, I still don't know what caused this to happen.
After this, I continued to get Dish's service, but it wasn't until about two months later that I was willing to give the DVR another chance. Once I started using it again, it seemed to work fine. Aside from the occasional "guide of death" and sudden reboot, there were no major problems, and my recordings were remaining intact. Eventually, I built up enough confidence that I again started using it regularly to record my shows. All was fine until December, when the L232(?) software update was released. I started noticing the infamous beeps, pops, and a/v sync issues in my recordings that many people on this site have mentioned. But at that time, they were happening very infrequently, I'd guess maybe once every 30 minutes or so, and I was able to live with it. It wasn't until February that the a/v glitches became very frequent, and very aggravating. It was getting to the point where I had to keep the remote in hand at all times just so I could rw/ff to re-sync the audio. The blips and glitches were now occurring at a rate of about 5 in every 30 minutes of recording, and some shows were almost unwatchable. Copying shows to VHS was becoming a huge pain, since I had to constantly go back and redo sections of the recordings where the audio went out of sync.
That was about two weeks ago. Now I'm getting so many a/v glitches that it's almost laughable. I've been getting as many as 1-2 a MINUTE in some cases, and the recorded shows aren't even worth watching anymore. I've had to resort to watching most of my shows live just to be able to understand the dialogue and know what's happening in the show.
I am at my last straw with this DVR, and am thinking about sending it back to Dish and getting an entirely different model. After all, what's the point of even having DVR capabilities if the recorded events are unwatchable? It's my understanding that every 522 has these same problems to some extent, so I would like to know what your guys' opinions are on the other DVR models, such as the 921, 510, etc. Are any of these known to have a/v dropouts or lost recordings? Surely they can't be as bad as my 522 has been. I'm open to suggestions.
I appreciate your time.
The first in the whole saga of problems happened last summer. I had amassed a huge collection of recorded events that I was hoping to eventually transfer to VHS tapes when I had the time. Well, one day I casually turned the unit on and went to the list of recorded events only to find that they had all vanished before my eyes. All 97 hours of them. Heck, I even considered sending the unit to a data-recovery center to see if they could recover any of my lost recordings, but after finding out how much it would cost, I quickly gave up on the idea. To this day, I still don't know what caused this to happen.
After this, I continued to get Dish's service, but it wasn't until about two months later that I was willing to give the DVR another chance. Once I started using it again, it seemed to work fine. Aside from the occasional "guide of death" and sudden reboot, there were no major problems, and my recordings were remaining intact. Eventually, I built up enough confidence that I again started using it regularly to record my shows. All was fine until December, when the L232(?) software update was released. I started noticing the infamous beeps, pops, and a/v sync issues in my recordings that many people on this site have mentioned. But at that time, they were happening very infrequently, I'd guess maybe once every 30 minutes or so, and I was able to live with it. It wasn't until February that the a/v glitches became very frequent, and very aggravating. It was getting to the point where I had to keep the remote in hand at all times just so I could rw/ff to re-sync the audio. The blips and glitches were now occurring at a rate of about 5 in every 30 minutes of recording, and some shows were almost unwatchable. Copying shows to VHS was becoming a huge pain, since I had to constantly go back and redo sections of the recordings where the audio went out of sync.
That was about two weeks ago. Now I'm getting so many a/v glitches that it's almost laughable. I've been getting as many as 1-2 a MINUTE in some cases, and the recorded shows aren't even worth watching anymore. I've had to resort to watching most of my shows live just to be able to understand the dialogue and know what's happening in the show.
I am at my last straw with this DVR, and am thinking about sending it back to Dish and getting an entirely different model. After all, what's the point of even having DVR capabilities if the recorded events are unwatchable? It's my understanding that every 522 has these same problems to some extent, so I would like to know what your guys' opinions are on the other DVR models, such as the 921, 510, etc. Are any of these known to have a/v dropouts or lost recordings? Surely they can't be as bad as my 522 has been. I'm open to suggestions.
I appreciate your time.
.
