I was at a bar that had D* today and was very impressed with the PQ of the SD channels (so was my wife!!). If Dish is cancelled can you still use the receiver to view DVR material including things saved on the ext. HD?
DVR and External HD Question
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I cannot answer this question 100%, but I believe the answer is "No, you cannot." Also, do you own the equipment, or are you leasing it? If not, they will send you a box to ship it back to them if you are only leasing.
One last thing, (aimed at your Slaton avatar), LET'S GO MOUNTAINEERS! (I'm from WV)
One last thing, (aimed at your Slaton avatar), LET'S GO MOUNTAINEERS! (I'm from WV)
The answer is not definitely no! It's been said on here many times you can watch your DVR recordings even with no longer having dish service. A matter of fact whenever I switched DVR receivers (before we had external HD recording), I disconnected the satellite feeds of the old receiver, hooked them up to the new receiver, leaving both receivers hooked up through the TV. I would then just simply toggle through the TV's inputs to watch either the the old disconnected receiver or the new connected receiver. I'm just not sure about the external HD however.
However, you can easily experiment by disconnecting your satellite feeds and phone line from your receiver and trying to watch all your DVR programs. What you cannot do is watch OTA programming if your Dish receiver is not hooked up and seeing the birds in the sky (although as long as it can see the birds you don't need to subscribe). I haven't tried watching the DVR programs from a disconnected receiver in a while, so I could be wrong. There could have been a recent change to the software that no longer permits this, that I have missed reading about. My wife's old 942 is on it's last legs and I was going to upgrade her to a 722 next week, so I'll know myself soon enough if I'm right.
However, you can easily experiment by disconnecting your satellite feeds and phone line from your receiver and trying to watch all your DVR programs. What you cannot do is watch OTA programming if your Dish receiver is not hooked up and seeing the birds in the sky (although as long as it can see the birds you don't need to subscribe). I haven't tried watching the DVR programs from a disconnected receiver in a while, so I could be wrong. There could have been a recent change to the software that no longer permits this, that I have missed reading about. My wife's old 942 is on it's last legs and I was going to upgrade her to a 722 next week, so I'll know myself soon enough if I'm right.
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As I read the original question, is would a Dish-oriented external drive work on another system ( D*)? And that answer is definitely not.
Seeing about 95% of receivers over the last 5 years are leased, it will be hard to watch DVR events when the DVR is in DISH's warehouse. Leased equipment has to be returned and external hard drives only work on the receiver they are mated to.
I obtained a used 625 about 6 months ago, I hooked it up to my tv, and was able to watch all the recorded stuff.
I'd be careful about basing any provider decision on what you see on a screen in a bar. It's very possible that the SD images are being externally upconverted and scaled by an expensive outboard scaler before they are distributed.
To answer your question, I know my old 921 worked fine for viewing recorded programs after being disconnected from the sat feeds. No reason to think any other DVR would be any different. When you turn it on, it will come up with the "Searching for Satellite Signal" screen, but just hit "DVR" and you're in business.
Brad
