I just swapped out my 4900 for a 311k under this program. The 311k has an annoying known issue with the initial software download from satellite that causes it to either turn off or change the channel of the TV1 RF modulator. The phone tech (who was quite competent and knew what he was doing) said it usually changes TV1 modulator to channel 4, but in my case it seemed like it turned the modulator completely off. I got tired to trying to debug it and didn't want to move the receiver to another TV, so what I did was finally upgrade the TV near the receiver. I took out the 19" CRT that was really getting long in the tooth (and only had an F connector RF input, no other inputs) and set up a 20 inch analog 4:3 flat panel TV (yes they exist; Black Friday special several years ago). The new TV has S-Video and component, but I am just using regular "yellow cable" video at the moment, because I wanted to get it working. I am hunting down some S-Video cables. I am an existing Western Arc (Dish 500) + 61.5 customer in a Western Arc market out of contract. I did notice the 311k had a "G4" smart card in it, so perhaps that is another reason Dish is upgrading (the 4900 had a G3). With how little SD content of interest remains at 61.5, I am seriously considering taking down that Dish 300 and putting up an OTA antenna, as the subchannels would be more useful for me than what is on 61.5 these days.
So I now have 311k > Analog DVD recorder (no tuner) > TV. And it all works well so far. I'm setting timers on the 311k and recording them on DVD.
Something I noticed was that a lot of the interactive channels had disappeared from the 4900 but they are all back now on the 311k. I really like the current Weather Channel app, it's not bad. I wish there was a proper news app, but I guess the CNN one was retired?
Also - here is the biggest thing for me about the upgrade. The guide is so much better! It's like night and day.The 4900 used to load its guide quickly back in the day, but admittedly there were fewer channels. It got to where you couldn't even go beyond the 90 minutes of guide shown on screen (into the future) because there was never any data. With the nightly downloads of guide data, the 311k seems much easier.
