Exclusive: Scott Reviews the Dish Player 921!

[Scott Greczkowski]

Welcome Shot-On-Goal to SatelliteGuys!

As far as your question goes it's really hard to answer as the 921 was setup in the middle of a convention center, not a small room like you would use it in at home. Plus there were over a 1,000 people walking around so it was not a quiet atmosphere.

I would venture to say that the shound should be no more noiser then a 721 or 521.

Again welcome to the site, enjoy yourself!

 

[jcrash]

when are they going to figure out we dont need 5 inch high letters on our high definition televisions to read something.

If they'd switch to a smaller font, imagine how much guide information could be presented at once.

Keep in mind that Dish has to appease the increasingly older generation of consumers all voicing their repeated concerns over remotes being too difficult to use and text being too small to see so they have to go with something of a compromise for everyone for the most part rightly or wrongly.

The problem is that it takes almost nothing to support scalable fonts and have the interface adjust the listing accordingly. The large font could be on by default and a menu option could allow you to change this setting. This is basic software coding and would greatly improve moving through a guide with hundreds of channels.

My point exactly. This is GUI Design 101 - not advanced interface design.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Did they show any OTA Baltimore stations via the 811 or 921?

No there did not have the OTA hooked up on the 921 or the 811. So I can't comment on that. I did ask about it and was told that tuning is improved on Digital Channels over the 6000.

Again guide information for OTA Digital will be fed by Dish Network and will not be read from the OTA PSIP guide information, which most stations do not use or don't program it correctly)

 

[markusian]

Scott,

While it's not very exciting to see that the new 921 interface is similar to the 721, I guess we can expect a more stable software since it was reused from an existing systems.

I would have been very nervous if the whole thing was written from scratch.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

The system I was playing with was still on beta software, however with that said it worked very smooth and was also very stable.

 

[Ken_F]

Scott,

How was the responsiveness of the unit in dealing with HD? Was there any noticeable slowdown in working with the unit, or when using the PVR functions on HD, as compared to the 721?

 

[BCH]

Scott,

Will the 921 ship with a DVI Cable? If so what is the length?

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Scott,

How was the responsiveness of the unit in dealing with HD? Was there any noticeable slowdown in working with the unit, or when using the PVR functions on HD, as compared to the 721?

I would say that the speed was about the same as the 721. Very nice unit (wish it had the 522 menus) but still a very good system.

 

[Stargazer]

Perhaps they should make it possible to allow us to choose which look and feel of the EPG and menu we want (Linux of 322/522).

They seem to have different look and feel menu's in the different type of receivers such as OpenTV software for the 3900/301/501/508 (single tuner), Linux for the 721/921 (dual tuner Linux), and then this new OpenTV look in the 322 and 522 (dual tuner OpenTV - nonLinux).

 

[Tahoerob]

I did ask about it and was told that tuning is improved on Digital Channels over the 6000.

Again guide information for OTA Digital will be fed by Dish Network and will not be read from the OTA PSIP guide information, which most stations do not use or don't program it correctly)

Great info still.

I am glad to see that Dish will provide guide info since the OTA channels in DC do not bother to use the PSIP!

Robert

 

[Cyclone]

I wonder if those Local Guide info is only available to channels that are in your DMA? I get both Baltimore and DC via OTA, but only DC locals via Dish.

Also considing that Dish only supports locals in about 50-70 DMAs currently. I wonder if they'll expand their locals guide beyond that.

 

[Tahoerob]

I wonder if those Local Guide info is only available to channels that are in your DMA? I get both Baltimore and DC via OTA, but only DC locals via Dish.

Also considing that Dish only supports locals in about 50-70 DMAs currently. I wonder if they'll expand their locals guide beyond that.

True. I bet you will only see DC channels that we get now. However, they seem to be planning to add Baltimore soon. I wonder if they will let you have 2 DMAs then??

Robert

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I wonder if those Local Guide info is only available to channels that are in your DMA? I get both Baltimore and DC via OTA, but only DC locals via Dish.

Also considing that Dish only supports locals in about 50-70 DMAs currently. I wonder if they'll expand their locals guide beyond that.

From what I understand is when you program in your Digital Off Air Channels you assign them your local call letters, this is how it pulls the info for that channel, if you receive signals from 2 DMA's this should not be a problem, as I don't believe the 921 will check your DMA at all.

 

[rbird]

Will there be guide support for small DMA digital locals? How about "movers"? Can I get guide info for actual local stations when my receiver thinks I'm somewhere else?

Bob

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

The box does not know where you are, you could put the call letters WCBS in for your local CBS station's digital signal, and WCBS's listings would be displayed.

 

[WeeJavaDude]

The problem is that it takes almost nothing to support scalable fonts and have the interface adjust the listing accordingly. The large font could be on by default and a menu option could allow you to change this setting. This is basic software coding and would greatly improve moving through a guide with hundreds of channels.

Not advanced design, but depending on the toolkits available this might not be as easy as it seems. It would be nice if they provided a few scaling options, but in the embedded world this is not what I would consider basic software coding. Yes it is one of the goals of a good Human Factor design, but at lower levels it is not a no brainer and if the toolkits that Dish are using are premitive it would be a big effort to acheive this flexability.
As for the Linux 721, I am sure that a small subset of Linux is included in their distribution (embedded Linux per say).

So they dont have alll the nifty tools and UI frameworks that a Desktop would have.

Since I am not part of the Dish Development team I can't say what the technical issues are, however, some things are not as simple as they look in software development.[/quote]

 

[Innova]

Scott, any idea if we could just open up the 921, and slap in a bigger hard drive? If you pull out the 250GB drive and put in a 320GB drive, you can get 32 hours of HD instead of 25......

 

[mike123abc]

The box does not know where you are, you could put the call letters WCBS in for your local CBS station's digital signal, and WCBS's listings would be displayed.

I do not know if this would work. The 6000 actually grabs the station call letters off the digital signal. I bet the 921 would do the same thing.

On the 6000 it asks you for the call letters of the digital station, but then ignores what you type in and just uses what it gets from OTA.

 

[A_Noland]

Scott, do you know if they have plans to do the same type feature with the 6000?

Also, was the 921 software basically the 721 beta software you were running? (with the HD stuff added)

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I am not 100% sure, but I believe the answer is yes.

Let's hope Mark Jackson can talk about this on the tech chat.