DishOnline dot BOMBED! - Sunday May 22nd

[TG2]

So.. while documenting dislikes of the DishOnline.com interface.. to send in requesting they fix things ... Something goes even more horribly wrong ...

I press play on a DVR item.. and it takes over the TV1 output, playing the DVR item there ... continuing to test this.. I get the "Sling adapter in use" message on TV2 output.. but TV1 gets switched over to the DVR'd event ... and then after the normal amount of time for the Web player to get fully started up.. the event starts playing on the web TOO!

So now I can't watch anything on TV1 without DishOnline changing the content on me without warning..

I swear that if it were a wet dream... Dish could quite litterally "F" it up.

I know (confirmed by a chat with online Dish Rep Jeremy / ID: ZA6) that its not just me having this problem, and so dish will probably fix it quickly ... but jesus.. does everything they do have to screw up what's already in place?

And of course there aren't currently any options to manually select which TV output the SlingAdapter should mess with.. so what's the deal? Are they really that f-ing incompetent?

 

[CK SatGuy]

Honestly, I'm not that surprised. Dish has always had a history (at least in the last few years) of screwing things up so easily and then it seems to take forever for them to fix the damn problem.

 

[Tampa8]

DISHOnline Beta Login

 

[TG2]

DISHOnline Beta Login

Tampa ... I know what beta stands for. However .. if you would have gone to Dish Remote Access recently ... you should have seen this:



Dish starts to get "proactive" in some places, by at least warning people DRA is down the drain .. but as my rant above will testify.. even now after its been in beta form for more than 6 months.. its still *not* ready.. and still has tons of things that are *EVEN WORSE* than DRA. (ie. DRA you got to see two lines of the guide data while watching something from a sling adapter.. in DishOnline you get *NOTHING* .. you're either watching or you're looking at the guide for whats on... but not both)

Now I dare say.. I wouldn't put it past the idiots at Dish to leave "beta" in the name just so they can back pedal anything they royally f***-up claiming beta status.

And if beta really meant anything to Dish .. they'd have kept DRA under the beta flag too ... since some of the MOST BASIC functionality elements are FUBAR ...

As I've said in other posts.. the idiots that programed the "My DVR" tab in DRA must have never had a DVR in their lives.. because the DVR's we get from dish don't group by default.. and even when they do ... the DATE sort function would sort by date recorded, *not* date the show (tv or movie) originated ..

as a bitter case to point out.. I recorded "2001: A Space Odyssey" about 4 weeks ago ... and instead of being sorted in between items I recorded 5 weeks ago, and 3 weeks ago.. its placed all the way at the bottom of the list in DRA ... because the date DRA sees for sorting is 1968, the year the movie was released, not the day/date it was recorded on the DVR.
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Todays events with DishOnline.. aren't even BETA worthy.. they're ALPHA ... and in reality.. DishOnline was functionally working up until today's events.. I say "functionally working", because again, there's a LOT that is still .. just plain wrong.. with DishOnline.

 

[Tampa8]

I know about the upcoming change, but that doesn't change the fact DRA is still here, and Dish online is still in Beta. If they take away DRA and Dish Online is still in Beta, then I will agree with you. My guess is they are making changes in anticipation of taking down DRA, and that is why the problems.

 

[TG2]

I know about the upcoming change, but that doesn't change the fact DRA is still here, and Dish online is still in Beta. If they take away DRA and Dish Online is still in Beta, then I will agree with you. My guess is they are making changes in anticipation of taking down DRA, and that is why the problems.

Well.. lets contrast that with just about any other TECH company that puts out a beta...

they design.. they go through several internal itterations under Alpha ... then they brand it beta (some that are "releasing" a product might go so far as to make "Release Candidates") but by the time they are ready for a larger cross section of testers .. they aren't creating a bunch of new fucntionality.. they're trying to solidify their release to public version, fixing bugs that occur..

In final beta stages.. you would solicite people to come to your site, use your beta product ... and even report back problems, etc.. none of *THAT* was done in the past 5 months that I've seen. There's been no push requesting users to test and provide feedback, far from it.. they don't even point out the Feedback option at the bottom of the screen, nor do they have any special notice when you click said feedback option ... in the dialog that comes up "remember we're in beta" or "because we're in beta we need as much help as possible to explain the problem ... etc..

If dish were some curmudgeonly old fart .. one might just dismiss it as "that's just his way" ... but that's *NOT* what dish is.. its supposed to be a business.. and on the sides and in the back offices.. Dish really screws the pooch... Marketing sure has its crap in gear ... selling "DISH" to the people.. but when it comes to supporting what they promise.. crickets.

(And that's nothing to do with Dish IRT either, they're the Diamond in the rough)

Edit: hell.. look at HBOGO as a PRIME example.. an email was sent out to SELECT individuals to try it out.. and someone shared that special link to get connected.. when you went to "HBOGO.COM" without that link... you couldn't log in and it wouldn't even show DISH Network as a "cable company" in its login field.. now its being pushed pretty heavily and a user can login without special urls'.. anything like that from Dish for DishOnline? Nope.. oh wait.. I hear crickets.. yeah..

 

[TheKrell]

I press play on a DVR item.. and it takes over the TV1 output, playing the DVR item there ... continuing to test this.. I get the "Sling adapter in use" message on TV2 output.. but TV1 gets switched over to the DVR'd event ... and then after the normal amount of time for the Web player to get fully started up.. the event starts playing on the web TOO!

I bought my Sling Adapter on the day of release, and with one exception, that is exactly how DRA behaved for me for a couple of weeks (don't remember exactly) until they fixed it. The one exception: the recorded video never started playing on the Sling stream. I imagine the DRA folks and the DO folks are two separate groups of people who don't talk to one another, because the DO folks are making the same mistakes all over again.

I wouldn't actually mind at all if Dish returned DRA to the way it used to be without Sling functionality, and built this into DO instead with a separate password. It sure would be nice if finding programs and playing them back via Sling weren't so laggy, too.

 

[TG2]

I imagine the DRA folks and the DO folks are two separate groups of people who don't talk to one another, because the DO folks are making the same mistakes all over again.
It sure would be nice if finding programs and playing them back via Sling weren't so laggy, too.

but that begs the question.. why now? .. Why now does DishOnline go backwards? .. I've been intermittently going into D.O. here and there for the past two or three months, and until today.. never did I have this kind of problem.

As to laggy.. yeah.. that's what you get when the command channel has to report actions back to momma before baby 722k acts on the request..

I had played around with Sling's stand alone Sling Player (on my other pc not this one) and found all sorts of neat stuff going on.. like this behavior.. internally the Sling Adapter sees three "Inputs" but because the adapter was never fully supported, it only lists them as "Unknown" At one point I saw the configuration updater refer to Composite with one of the "Inputs".

One of the neat things about the stand alone app ... was that you could turn on "Control" mode.. which made the connection *much more* responsive... but then, at least for me, it also made the video jittery/laggy

All of this also points back to the whole "Dish / Sling" merger.. and that it seems dish still hasn't "dished out" responsibilities.. for a time there, D.O. was redirecting back to Dish Network.com to bring up tech chat.. but this last time.. it opened right there... no redirection... and it seems like I didn't go to a first level tech either..

 

[Nominal]

DISHOnline Beta Login

As TG2 has said in many more words , you would think they would want to wait until DISH Online was more stable and functional before announcing a forced migration from DRA.

As it is, it's not even close and I don't exactly have a lot of confidence that they'll be able to fix all the functionality and interface issues before pulling such a ham-fisted move.

Hope I'm wrong, but DO is going to have to get a whole lot better real quickly before I'm comfortable with pulling the plug on DRA.