Dish 921 - Upgrade from DishPlayer 7100

[wyseguy]

Hi all,

Just thought I'd add my impressions of the 921 to the others already posted.

I've been a Dish customer since '99, when I bought the DishPlayer 7100. I really liked the PVR features, but as many of you have either heard or experienced, it was very unreliable. The inside cover of my DishPlayer manual has a list of codes I saved from the many tech support calls I had to make for the first year or so that I had the unit. It finally became reasonably stable after the first year. I upgraded the internal hard drive to a 40GB unit, and that made a huge improvement in recording time. But since I got my Mitsubishi 65" rear projection TV, I've wanted HD.

I read the forums here and was discouraged by the negative reviews of the 921. That, along with the $999 price tag kept me away. When they dropped the price, and the L188 software release came out, I decided to take the plunge.

I tried ordering the 921 from Dish directly, but they wouldn't ship it directly to me - only to a reseller who couldn't install it for another two weeks. I wanted it NOW. I found a place that would sell me the unit without requiring installation, and picked it up yesterday morning.

Installation was pretty easy. I already had a Dish 500 (119 + 110) and a Dish 300 (148) hooked to an SW64 switch, so all I had to do was run a new RG6 line out to the switch for the second tuner.

The 921 came up, and I download and installed L188 (Prior to the update, it had version L055). That took about 40 minutes, and it was up and running.

Things I like:

1. Interface is MUCH, MUCH faster than the DP7100.
2. HD rocks, even if there aren't many channels yet.
3. DVI output from the 921 to the TV looks good for both HD and SD material.
4. Dual tuners are soooo worth it. No more having to listen to the woman of the house complaining about wanting to watch one thing while something else was recording! Got to do that for the first time last night. Fantastic!

Things I don't like:

1. RF-only remote control. What's up with this? Don't they know that most people who spend $$$ on their home theaters probably have a single, intergrated IR remote? Now I'm back to having TWO remotes. Not good.
I tried briefly to program the 921 remote to send the IR codes to my Marantz AV9000 preamp, but (unless I'm doing something wrong), it doesn't work. Grrrr....

2. No wireless keyboard. I really liked that feature of the DP7100. Much faster to type in your search terms than doing the cell-phone thing, or the arrow key "hunt and peck" routine.

3. Program guide has text centered in each block, rather than left-justified. Okay, this sounds like a real minor nit to pick, but it is harder to read than the left-justified version on the DP7100. The woman of the house has a graphic design background, and I caught an earful about this when she first saw it.

4. I haven't rebooted the unit many times yet, but it seems to take a long time. About twice as long as booting the DP7100. As long as I don't have to boot it often, it probably won't matter.

Overall, I'm very happy with it so far. I think with L188, and the price drop to $549, it's a pretty good deal. If it freaks out on me and stops recording my programs, I'm going to be upset. So far, so good.

Now we just need more HD channels. Maybe Dish could have a bake sale to raise money for a new satellite....

Scott

 

[bryan92]

Thanks for posting. Im getting mine tomorrow..hoping for the best.

 

[dfergie]

Welcome to SatelliteGuys Scott... In 2 Days I will have had my 549$ 921 a month, I have only had to reboot it myself about 4 times at the most, am recording the Broncos game in Hd and watching my local news at this time...something I really like as well as the feature of recording one HD program and watching another. I have a 501 that died a few months back, but have been almost exclusivlly using Replay boxes for the last year for Pvr/Dvr's. I don't have the problems with remotes as I would rather use 2 or 3 than rely on one(and lose it and be up the creek). I have found a lot of simularitys between the Replays and the 921(more than from the 501 vs 921) I'm glad you like yours as I love mine...hopefully we will have good troublefree 921's. And with the limited Ava. of Hd channels with the recording capabilitys and the guide we can time shift our Hd...

 

[CU2000]

wyseguy, don'nt get excited about the RF-only remote, thats true of the remote however the receiver responds to IR comands also.

 

[BobaBird]

Responding to your gripes:

1. The remote sends only UHF Pro codes to the 921 and IR to the other 3 devices it can control. I think the 921 is supposed to get the "teach remote" feature the 811 got that will echo the codes from the remote back out the receiver's IR blaster so your remote can learn them. Don't know when it's coming. You could also borrow a 721 remote to teach the commands. A 501/8/10 remote would lack the PIP buttons and any other remote would also lack the DVR keys.

2. Search history is retained, so weekly searches don't have to be retyped (now if only it would delete entries that are no longer needed). Also, you can press * while viewing the guide to fill the search field with a single touch of the remote.

4. Get used to it. If I don't at least every other day, timers start to fail.

 

[SimpleSimon]

"Also, you can press * while viewing the guide to fill the search field with a single touch of the remote."

I know you meant to say the # key.

 

[BobaBird]

You know me so well.... thanks for the catch.

 

[wyseguy]

Thanks for the info.

With the L211 upgrade that came down today, I was able to use the "teach remote" feature to program my Marantz RC2000 MkII remote. Of course, I *just* purchased a Dish 6.0 remote off of eBay last night to use for that purpose. Oh, well, $15 for a spare remote. Not too bad, I suppose.

One thing about being one of the first DishPlayer customers is that I have very low expectations of a new product. So far, the 921 is so much better, it isn't even funny.

;-)