The Honeymoon is Over with My 721 Already

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GaryPen

GaryPen

Rich or poor, it's good to have money.
Original poster
Supporting Founder
Mar 2, 2004
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I only lived in California. I'm FROM Brooklyn.
I've been using it for 5 days, and have had to reboot twice already. The first time seems to have cleared up the initial Favorites problems I was having.

However, this morning when I fired the sucker up (and "fired" is appropriate, considering how hot it runs), it was acting strange: blank screen, non-responsive, then error message about no signal on Tuner 1.

I went into "point dish" menu, and there was zero signal for any bird on tuner 1. It wouldn't let me change to tuner 2, so I ran a check switch, and all the tuner 1 fields were blank. (Tuner 2 checked OK.)

I decided to soft-reboot. Afterward, tuner 1 appeared to be working again. Then, I did a check switch, and both tuners checked OK. But, the 721 is acting kind of sluggish now. It was quick as wink, before.

I also now get the "77 unknown" title on the program banner, when I exit out of the guide or menu. That never happened before.

Anything sound familiar to you guys/gals?
 
GaryPen said:
I've been using it for 5 days, and have had to reboot twice already. The first time seems to have cleared up the initial Favorites problems I was having.

However, this morning when I fired the sucker up (and "fired" is appropriate, considering how hot it runs), it was acting strange: blank screen, non-responsive, then error message about no signal on Tuner 1.

I went into "point dish" menu, and there was zero signal for any bird on tuner 1. It wouldn't let me change to tuner 2, so I ran a check switch, and all the tuner 1 fields were blank. (Tuner 2 checked OK.)

I decided to soft-reboot. Afterward, tuner 1 appeared to be working again. Then, I did a check switch, and both tuners checked OK. But, the 721 is acting kind of sluggish now. It was quick as wink, before.

I also now get the "77 unknown" title on the program banner, when I exit out of the guide or menu. That never happened before.

Anything sound familiar to you guys/gals?
Click to expand...

Hi Gary, you it sounds like to me that you are very unlucky as far as the 721 goes. Out of all the problems that you are having I only have one and that is the 77 unknown problem and I never had that until one of the latter updates and now it seems to be with me all of the time. Now it is only on the first minute of the recording and when you get into the actual program it displays the correct channel info.

I wish I could help you but I have had my unit for over a year and I have none of these problems except the one I mentioned. It sounds like it's time to have them replace your unit.

Bob
 
I have had ZERO problems with my 721, which was activated about 1.5 months ago. Never a reboot or frozen screen.
 
Mike and Steve - Thanks for your help. Oh that's right. Your answers were no fuggin help at all. Just small, steaming piles of useless bullship. I meant to thank stratguy, who actually had something useful to say.

Thanks stratguy. I may have it replaced. But, I'll give it a little more time, as I've only had it for less than six days, and have been happy with it until now. But, if it keeps it up, I'll definitely ask for a replacement. I definitely would like to have one as reliable as yours and Gerry's
 
Gary, I just sat down here and thought I'd see how hot my 721 is. All along the left side (from the front) it is very warm. Hot to me is not being able to touch it. I'd say the unit is about 110 degrees. It has been turned off for almost 24 hrs.
 
Gary, I have had my 721 for about 3 months and the only time I have rebooted was for the software upgrade for Sirius. Mine is on 24/7 and I went and checked how hot it is and it is warm, but not as warm as my 6000 and I don't think as hot as you have described yours.
 
GaryPen said:
Mike and Steve - Thanks for your help. Oh that's right. Your answers were no fuggin help at all. Just small, steaming piles of useless bullship. I meant to thank stratguy, who actually had something useful to say.

Thanks stratguy. I may have it replaced. But, I'll give it a little more time, as I've only had it for less than six days, and have been happy with it until now. But, if it keeps it up, I'll definitely ask for a replacement. I definitely would like to have one as reliable as yours and Gerry's
Click to expand...

Hey Gary I guess I was a little hasty in recommending you return the 721, but I thought that might be the end results. How in the heck can there be such a big variance between units it just seems like quality control at E* is on vacation.

Bob
 
No. They're not on vacation. You would need to actually have a quality control dept for them to be able to take vaction. :D

The reason I chose the 721 is because of it's relatively excellent reputation in its current form. (I understand it was just as bad, if not worse, than the 522 and 921 when it was first released.) Even the spouse fell in love with it after about 5 minutes.

If I do continue to have problems, it's probably just a fluke.
 
GaryPen said:
No. They're not on vacation. You would need to actually have a quality control dept for them to be able to take vaction. :D

The reason I chose the 721 is because of it's relatively excellent reputation in its current form. (I understand it was just as bad, if not worse, than the 522 and 921 when it was first released.) Even the spouse fell in love with it after about 5 minutes.

If I do continue to have problems, it's probably just a fluke.
Click to expand...

Well Gary I'm sure you are right about quality control. I am wanting a 921 real bad but with all of the brouhaha here on the forums I'm going to let others do the quality control/beta testing.

Bob
 
Gary: I assume you're done the full-monty of power-cord reboot / Switch Matrix reset?

You've seen the details often enough over in the 921 forums, or reply and I'll post it again.
 
Sounds like the luck I have been having with my 721. I forgot to mention that it locked up on me while doing some DVR function with it the other day and it rebooted two times in a row.

Also there IS a bug with the 721 I have discovered. When you are playing back the audio channel you will notice that the song information is given ahead of time. If you pause when it says the next song information even though it was playing on the previous one then unpause it, the receiver will start playing the next song skipping the end of the previous song.
 
Stargazer said:
Sounds like the luck I have been having with my 721. I forgot to mention that it locked up on me while doing some DVR function with it the other day and it rebooted two times in a row.

Also there IS a bug with the 721 I have discovered. When you are playing back the audio channel you will notice that the song information is given ahead of time. If you pause when it says the next song information even though it was playing on the previous one then unpause it, the receiver will start playing the next song skipping the end of the previous song.
Click to expand...

Gary I do have another bug that I forgot about it's the audio dropout while rewinding or fast forwarding. It's been there since the beginning and they tell me that it is a software problem and they are aware of it. I didn't want somebody finding that old post and thinking I was crazy.

Now it's not nearly as bad as it use to be. It use to happen probably 70% of the time now I would say it's down to 5% of the time. It's almost berable now. :D

Bob
 
I have had my 721 for a week or two with no problems at all (knock on wood).
None of the bugs that have been described have happened to me at all.
I got mine directly from E*, could that be an issue, where you got the 721 from?
It runs warm, but no warmer than my 7200/7100.
I haven't tried the audio bug yet, so I will check that out.
I would start calling E* with your problems becuase when they replaced my 7200, it took several days of calling in problems before they agreed to swap it with a reman. unit.
You shouldn't have to put up with any of those problems.
Good luck.
 
Bob - I've also noticed that sometimes after a "skip ahead", there is no audio. A "skip back", or pause/play will restore sound. Actually, I don't find it too bothersome. It'll be nice if they can fix it.

One thing I don't like is that it seems to skip a second when going from FF to Play. My 510 didn't do that. I like to FF in between pitches of a ball game, and I have to press "play" a little earlier now, or it skips past the swing.

rsebolt - I think I'll give it another week, and see how it behaves, before asking for a replacement.

When it's working correctly, which is most of the time. It's a very nice product. I know it took them a year or two to get it to this level, which is a shame. This is the minimum functionality with which I would expect a product to be released, with only a few minor bugs.
 
I have had my 721 for over a year now and it is a much improved box from what it was. We really have fallen in love with it and I don't know what I would do if I had to give it up. I would advise you to give it a few more days to stabilize. Ours was buggy for a few days while it setup updates and whatever else. After that, it has run pretty good.

We do have some issues, and although minor, they can be annoying. Right now we have the same audio stops after skip issue (a pause then play usually sets it right) and we have gotten used to this (but it would be nice to have it fixed). This problem is a lot worse if the source material is in DD5.1 - then it hesitates and drops audio anytime you skip forward or back (I just use the fast forward/reverse for those shows now and it seems to work fine). I am getting concerned too about my tuners as we are seeing a lot more "this channel is unavailable...check switch..." errors lately. Seems to be on both tuners. Switch check always good as is signal strength. Not too worried, I got the equipment warranty ($2/month) so if it dies, I get it fixed, but again, it would be nice if it didn't do this.

Overall though, I think the 721 is a great unit and Dish is doing ok keeping us updated (we can't wait until name based recording comes our way...)
 
I almost converted a Comcast sales rep who called me to switch the other day.

They had the same old speech about switching to cable, blah blah blah.. and I cut her off. "Do you have a digital recorder which can pause live TV, playback shows recorded overnight and fast forward through commercials with the push of a button?"

She said they're becoming available in my area soon.

"You said that about cable modems. it was going to be available in 2-3 months for about 2 solid years. Also, can your DVR record two shows at the same time while I watch what I already have recorded?"

"You can do that?"


Anyway.. I love my 721.. but channel surfing annoys me.. the channels don't come up on screen fast enough. I think it's because of the low signal. After I installed my own cables, the signal dropped to 75-85 on all transponders, both tuners.

Anyone else have that channel chaning problem?

I had about 4 hours before my better half got home from work, and I watched all my recorded shows, that i wouldn't have been able to watch because she can't stand them, instead of killing time watching crap on TV i didn't want to watch. I'm still overly amazed at the potential of DVR's, after owning one for over a year.
 
The 721 being slow to tune a channel is universal. It's not that slow, it's just slower than any other E* receiver I've had.
 
It takes me on the average , about 3 seconds for the 721 or the 921 to change channels. A small annoyance but no big deal . I watch mostly recorded shows anyway . Channel flipping is really like channel surfing and is so last century. My dad had his 510 slow down to 7 seconds and had to have his replaced. He still likes channel flipping and rarely uses the built in guide. Even though I have it divided into locals, movies, news/sports , and variety channels. I guess I should be glad I could talk him into satellite tv at all.
 
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