My 211 DVR function is activated

Very happy with my VIP211 EHD

I had set up my EHD VIP211 to record the Detroit wings game the other day.
When I went out I turned off my TV and in the process I turned off the VIP211, at least I turned off the green light in the front of the box.
So when I got home twenty mins after the game began I thought that i had missed the start of the game but to my surprise the VIP211 had in fact recorded the game from the start.
 
There is no instruction "book" for the DVR functionality on the ViP211.

The feature was just added and no instruction has been given.

One warning, don't unplug the EHD while the 211 is out of standby. I did the first night and like to have never got the drive back up and running (had to set up another drive and reformat the first one with windows and the 211.
 
I don't plan on unplugging my EHD anymore, but I'll keep that in mind if I do.

EHD activity seems to vary based on the channel being watched. OTA 1080i stations seem to hit the drive the most (at least twice a second). Before Dish moved everything over to MPEG-4 you could tell the difference between ESPN-HD and Universal-HD, say, by how often the activity LED flashed on the drive. Tune in an SD channel and my drive blinks maybe once every four seconds. The music channels drop that to once every five seconds or so.

That data rate also seems to determine how the Pause works and how close you can get to real-time before the 211 jumps back to Live TV.
 
So, here we are, about a month after the 211 DVR function was released, and I have had a few incidents during watching programs that I'm recording. The playback freezes, and eventually, when it recovers, the spot in the recording the corresponds to the time of the freeze is corrupted. When this is happening, the drive light doesn't show any activity.

The drive has been solid in playing back previously recorded events. Also, it hasn't done this while "trick" playing, only while watching an event that's actually being recorded. Has anybody else observed this behavior?
 
The exception to this is, if you receiver a smart card for a 211 after you activated the EH feature, you may have to call again to get another 'hit'.
This happened to me. Apparently the smart card was built before I had activated the 211s so it did not have the necessary permissions encoded on it.
That was another call with two transfers to finally get someone who knew what to do. (Dang, I hate to have to call Dish for anything):rolleyes:

So will this cause your EHD to reformat, thus loosing all your recordings? Or do they just reauthorize the EHD and your EHD appears as before, with all the shows you previously had on it before the new smart card?
 
First, thanks to all who have provided a ton of useful information about their activation experiences.

I have ordered a WD 500GB MyBook and plan to activate in a few days. Two questions:
1. Has anyone had any luck using the automated phone activation, or do you still need to go through a CSR?
2. I live in an area where there are power outages (usually short) every few months. While the drive won't be unplugged from the 211, I'm wondering if this will cause problems with DVR function once the power comes back on the 211 re-boots.
 
So will this cause your EHD to reformat, thus loosing all your recordings? Or do they just reauthorize the EHD and your EHD appears as before, with all the shows you previously had on it before the new smart card?
If the drive was already formatted and you had recordings on it they will still be there, no problem.
I did one more thing after all that had settled down. I have two 211s with an EHD on each one so I wondered if I could swap them between 211s. I first pulled my smaller homebrew EHD off 211 number 2 and moved it to number 1. Didn't lose anything. Next I moved the one from number 1 to 211 number 2 and again all was fine.
The one problem with this exchange was that I had to wait for the 211s to reboot after pulling the EHD and also after reinstalling the other EHD. This takes a bit of time since it includes finding the satellite steps 1 through 5 and then downloading the guide again. I chose not to interrupt any of these steps for fear of causing a problem in the swap. As it was, all is well.
BTW, I primarily wanted an EHD on these 211s for the improved guide and the trick play features. I also have two DVRs and am so used to being able to watch one channel while recording another that I am annoyed that I can't do this on the 211s with EHDs. Oh well!:)
 
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Does the external drive allow you to pause live TV?
I searched through this thread and didn't see mention of it since early in the thread when everyone was still speculating.

What's the verdict from people who actually have external HD on a 221 activated?

Edit - never mind - searched the dish network website and found that it does indeed allow pausing live TV
 
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BTW, I primarily wanted an EHD on these 211s for the improved guide and the trick play features. I also have two DVRs and am so used to being able to watch one channel while recording another that I am annoyed that I can't do this on the 211s with EHDs. Oh well!:)

Can't you record a satellite channel while watching an OTA channel and vice versa?
 
"Two input stream and one output" -- I have had varying success with this since I hooked up my "permanent" drive. It's a LaCie Porsche Design with a 500GB Samsung drive inside. It was flawless on my ViP 622, but I'm wondering if the continuous activity via the USB with this enclosure exceeds it's capabilities.

One possibility I just thought of might be my USB cable. It may not be a USB 2.0 cable (the USB 2.0 cable that came with the LaCie is about 18" long, which isn't long enough to connect the drive to the 211 inside my TV stand.) I'm not sure where I got this cable, but it might be from a USB 1.1 Hub. Is there a way to tell by looking at the cable whether it's 1.x or 2.0?
 
Can't you record a satellite channel while watching an OTA channel and vice versa?
Shucks, maybe some or a lot of people can but I am in the boonies for San Francisco locals being 50 miles north of Sutro tower where the transmitting antennas are and there is a mountain in between. I'm hoping that when the cutover happens in Feb. that I will be able to get better OTA, but I can't now.:mad:
So the answer, for me, is NO.
 

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