Very happy with my 522!

[Haggar67]

I had my 2-tv setup with the Dish 522 installed last week through a local installer. I must admit I had reservations about getting the 522 after hearing so many negative comments on these forums. Well, I went ahead and had it installed. I am very glad that I did. This is an awesome system!! Other than the occasional slight, momentary pixel distortion on playback, I have had nothing go wrong so far.
Kudo's to the Dish people.
After being a Direct, former Primestar customer, for over 7 years, I know from experience that the Dish beats the Direct hands down.
Direct system was slow and unresponsive. It was so frustrating trying to scroll through the menu and nothing would happen!! The menu on Dish is 100% better than Direct, it is large and everything is VERY user friendly. Not only that but way cheaper as well. Another thing that I have noticed is my picture is alot clearer on Dish. Some of you may disagree, but all of my family has commented on the clearer picture.
On the registration process I also asked whether or not I had to shut the receiver off at night, even though I had auto updates activated. Dish told me this is absolutely a MUST! Just wanted to pass that info on.
I hope this info is helpful for anyone trying to make a decision whether or not to go to Dish. In my opinion, this system rocks!!

 

[ShadowEKU]

Jsut something of note. when your hard drive starts getting programs on it a weekly or bi-weekly reboot is a must as well.

 

[Haggar67]

Would that be a soft or hard reset? I know what a soft reset is but am unsure how to go about a hard reset. Thanks for the info.

 

[ShadowEKU]

Soft... jsut holding power button. hard is unplug wait plug

 

[boba]

Please post back with your satisfaction in about six months. I bet you have a different attitude. 7 year old Directv equipment would definitely have poorer picture quality and be much slower, 7 year old DISH equipment is barely working. Look for posts on DISH 2000,3000 & 4000 receivers.

 

[Haggar67]

I had been "upgraded" several times during the 7 years. Each time was a decrease in quality untill I finally canned Direct and went without TV for several months. Each upgrade on Direct got progressively worse. I can live with minor glitches if I don't have to deal with Direct junk.

 

[chingon]

I got mine on 8/25 and agree with you haggar67. I record daily and have had hardly any problems at all.

I also went to direct for a very short time before that (after being with dish since 98) and did not like direct at all.

 

[J3ff]

I was just like you...now 5 months later, I am with the rest of them. Not sure why but problems are just getting worse and worse...

 

[Stargazer]

I noticed a friend's 522 that I installed had a glitch in the EPG. It would say no data once I went ahead about 6 or 7 days and acted like it was 20 or so days out. What a glitch, it did it more than once. She said that it did that to her the other day as well. We also had an issue with the Caller ID working at times but before I left I got it to work two or three times in a row. It does seem glitchy compared to my 721 and 510 but I remember when they were not perfect either. Still the 522 is very nice.

 

[jrfuda]

Guys, I've had a 522 since June and - other than having to get it replaced once (for free) due to a bad switch, it has worked perfectly. We record at least 2 shows every day (There's usually about 40 hours of programming on the HDD at any given time). We use it in dual mode, and it works equally well in both rooms.

Though this may be old news for y'all, we recently learned how to "send" a paused program from one room to another and are very happy with the results... (You're watching a show on TV1 that you have, for various reasons, paused a few times, so you're about 10 minutes from "live tv" - hit the record button while it's paused, turn off the TV, go to the other room(TV2), access the DVR function, select the program you were watching in the other room, and you'll start viewing from where you had paused before) We use this trick at bedtime all the time. We've even done it when TV2 was recording something else (so we're simultaneously recording TV1, recording TV2 and watching what is currently being recorded [a few minutes behind]on TV1 on TV2). No problems.

Now, if Dish would only stop compressing everything so darn much!

 

[Stargazer]

The reason why that works is due to the fact that all the DVR Events from both tuners can be accessed in both rooms. For example, all of TV2 Room's Events can be seen in TV1 Room and all of TV1 Room's Events can be seen in TV2 Room and by pressing record you are sending it to the DVR Events screen therefore you can access that event on either tuner, maybe accessing the same show at the same time.

 

[video62]

I had been "upgraded" several times during the 7 years. Each time was a decrease in quality untill I finally canned Direct and went without TV for several months. Each upgrade on Direct got progressively worse. I can live with minor glitches if I don't have to deal with Direct junk.

Just curious - what DirectTV gear did you have? Exactly what is/was each "upgrade"? Software? A different receiver? I have two DirecTivos and they're very, very stable and usable. The DirecTivo guide even allows me to show "only movies", "only movies-adventure" or only "auto racing", so that really cuts down on guide scrolling time.

It's hard to describe a Tivo-style guide, but they are much superior than the traditional D* or E* receiver guide 'matrix' - you can scroll ahead easily for just a particular channel and get a list of the next 8 shows, not just the next 8 hours.

Re: Direct junk- Are you comparing apples to apples? I'll let you have my old Dish model 2000 receiver and you can tell me what you think of that one... the guide was OK for a few hours out, but if you tried to scroll into what was on the next day you had to wait, wait, wait forever - maybe it would take 5 minutes to eventually see what was going to be on 24 or 36 hours later - the receiver had no buffer space to hold much guide data at all, so you had to wait for the satellite to send down the data for that portion of the guide.

The fastest way to see what was going to be on 36 hrs. later was to enter "36" and then a RIGHT ARROW to make it jump ahead in the guide 36 hours (most Dish receivers probably can still do that trick but I'm not sure how many people know about it).

The newer Dish receivers have enough memory to hold lots of guide data and are quick to page through.

For "best basic guide design" though I still think the original Dishplayer 7100/7200 had them all beat.

 

[maximum]

I noticed a friend's 522 that I installed had a glitch in the EPG. It would say no data once I went ahead about 6 or 7 days and acted like it was 20 or so days out. What a glitch, it did it more than once. She said that it did that to her the other day as well.

I had this same problem last week. When going through the guide, when it hit a certain time slot the guide would go haywire and jump a couple of weeks into the future where there was no guide info. It also had wrong program information and trying to set a timer from the guide was almost impossible. It seems to have been fixed so I figure it was due to corrupt data in the guide that got fixed on one of the updates.

 

[rhollinger]

I've noticed lots of problems with the guide when you change filters and then try to use the guide so I try to change filters, cancel, and then reopen the guide and I've rarely had any problems.

 

[stratguy]

Please post back with your satisfaction in about six months. I bet you have a different attitude. 7 year old Directv equipment would definitely have poorer picture quality and be much slower, 7 year old DISH equipment is barely working. Look for posts on DISH 2000,3000 & 4000 receivers.

Hi boba, everyone has a different experience with Dish Network. I've been with them for several years now and I have to say that over all it's been a pleasent experience. I've had some problems with my 721 but they are all just a distant memory as of now.

Dish got me a new unit when I asked for one. My picture quality is very good most of the time. Once in a while I get a little pixelation but I expect that.

I know there is plenty of room for improvement but hopefully they will start making some improvements like more HD channels and even more options on their exixting receivers.

Bob