Dish 942 with external hard Disk

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dodge said:
I am looking into getting a 942
anyone have one with an external usb 2.0 hard drive connected for extra storage?
How well does this work
any known issues so far with a 942?
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No worky yet maybe later. You never know with Charlie
 
Dodge,

You might want to edit your post to add a question mark to to change it to: "942 with external hard disk?" to avoid being flamed. This way people know you are asking a question and not telling us that it is possible.

To answer your question, it's been said on a Tech Chat that the USB port would be made available to hook up a USB camera or storage device to upload your pictures or music to the hard-drive for your listening or viewing pleasure. They also mentioned they are looking into an external hard-drive solution, but just because it was mentioned, it doesn't mean that we will definitely see it. For now you have to go on the assumption that an external hard-drive will not be made available and make your purchase decision on that. Hopefully, they won't repeat the Dishwire fiasco and mention something that later gets scrapped.

As far as issues with the 942 there are some, but not nearly as many as I had on my 921. I still don't have my OTA guide data for one of my OTA channels, which could be due to the way that station handles its PSIP info. Also the guide gets cut off on the bottom of my TV screen. This is because of my TV's over-scan and the fact that the 921 doesn't have an adjustment to the size or location of the image. If you read more or do a search, you will find some more problems, but the 942 has been fairly stable and very reliable for me. Good luck.
 
Dodge: I am very pleased with my 942! Yes, it does have a few "situations," for SD such as the lack of S-video outputs, the HD to SD conversion results in a "horizontal squish" instead of a letter box format - but these are far from "deal breakers" for me. Overall, I really like this thing!

da Doug
 
DVDDAD said:
I still don't have my OTA guide data for one of my OTA channels, which could be due to the way that station handles its PSIP info.
Click to expand...

The 942 doesn't use the PSIP information. It gets the programming guide data from Dish Network. They only provide the information for the channels that they also carry, so if you have local channels which aren't available as LIL channels from Dish, then you won't get the program guide data. Also, Dish has MAJOR problems with getting the local programming guide data into the guide. In my market, of my 7 local stations, only CBS gets programming guide data, none of the others do. This REALLY pisses me off because it makes it where I can't use my 942 DVR which I paid a $250.00 upgrade fee for to work on my local channels.
 
Sean...I know what you mean about being pissed off. My local PBS station digitial carries the PBS HD channel 24/7 but the guide data shows it with the analog TV schedule. I have to check the PBS HD website and then set manual timers unless there is a simulcast which is few and far between.
 
dish 942

Dont care much about the psip info over the air because my market chicago has been hit or miss, and I have put up with an 811 for months now.
250 gig is not ig enought for me,I have a 721 thats 90hrs and it is still not big enough!!!!!

Thats why i was wondering if anyone with a 942 had an external hard disk, if not capable I will go with a 921 and see what happens
 
dodge said:
Dont care much about the psip info over the air because my market chicago has been hit or miss, and I have put up with an 811 for months now.
250 gig is not ig enought for me,I have a 721 thats 90hrs and it is still not big enough!!!!!

Thats why i was wondering if anyone with a 942 had an external hard disk, if not capable I will go with a 921 and see what happens
Click to expand...

You'll be sorry....Don't say we didn't warn you. If you do decide to buy a 921, make sure you get it from Costco or somewhere that has a return policy so you can get your money back.

Don't confuse the 921 with the 721. Although they are similar and may have been built on the same platform, the 921 has alot more problems and in my opinion is not nearly as stable as the 721.

Also one more thing, the 942 has the exact same hard drive size as the 921. The 921 will never be hard drive expandable. DISH has stated that the 942 eventually will, supposedly by mid to end of summer. The 942 also has Name Based Recording now and the 921 never will, at least if you believe what most folks are saying. Don't underestimate the joy of NBR if you have never had the opportunity to use it.

I have both a 942 and a 921 and there is almost no comparrison between the two.
 
is it possible to replace the harddrive in the 942 with something larger?

I think I've seen transparent RAID adapters out there that connect to an IDE interface... this would provide expandability, would it not?
 
GaryPen said:
But, RAID adds duplicate space, not additional space. (The "R" in RAID stands for "redundant".)
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not entirely true, there are different RAID modes, RAID 1 mirrors data, RAID 0 stripes data across multiple physical drives, resulting in one larger virtual drive (which is also twice as fast). I was referring to using a RAID 0 array, but alas, i went searching, and all i can find for inline RAID adapters is by arco ( www.arcoide.com ) and all they have is RAID 1 support. Guess i gotta keep looking.. hehe
 
CraziFuzzy said:
is it possible to replace the harddrive in the 942 with something larger?

I think I've seen transparent RAID adapters out there that connect to an IDE interface... this would provide expandability, would it not?
Click to expand...

I don't post often, but I follow this ond other boards closely. People have been able to swap harddrives in their 942's to an identical sized HD. No one has successfully swapped HD's and have gotten any more recording time. It looks like the USB added external HD option will be the best way to get any extra storage time, but it isn't available or supported yet.
 
By the time Dish Network may get an external hard drive along with the other USB devices and capability active/available, a new MPEG-4 HD receiver will probably be out.
 
Anyone hear of any update on when an external hard drive capability will be available for the 942? There was mention of by the end of summer and seeing as Autumn starts in about 2 weeks, we are getting close!

With the new season now started more than 25 hrs of HD recording would really be great. I have two external Usb 2.0 cases just waiting for a HD and getting attached to my 942's.

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