Vip211's lousy usability typical?

[Bosco390]

As a relative novice to HD and Dish, I wanted to ask if the features, or more aptly the lack thereof, with these HD receivers is typical? I had DirecTV for a decade and the last SD receivers we used were Hughes... don't recall model numbers... they they did EVERYTHING... maintined caller ID in memory, loaded almost 5 days worth of guide... allowed channel peeking on other channels in the guide while keeping tuned to a program on another channel... they were awesome.
Now, we have two Vip211's to feed our HD sets and switched to Dish just for the HD (got sick of waiting for DirecTV promising)... both have no more than one day's worth of a guide, no retaining of Caller ID history... no peeking... our general opinion is that they suck at being user-friendly. Is this typical of HD receivers?... no features to enable them to handle the HD signal? Is DirecTV better than these? If so, we may wish to change back when the contract is over, just to regain some of the features we liked.

 

[TulsaCoker]

I'm sure they do. You just need to go into the setup menu and look.

 

[mdonnelly]

Nope, the 211 doesn't seem to have much memory. The caller-id history is only for the current day, AFAIK. The EPG never goes out past 48 hours.

The HD DVRs keep the EPG data on the hard disk, and they have a 9-day guide. When the DVR kit for the 211 is released, then it should be able to keep the 9-day EPG too.

There is an option to keep a program in a window in the EPG. I think it's under Preferences or Guide in the Menu.

Your installer should have given you a walkthrough on the features of the 211. Either he didn't know or he was in a hurry to leave.

 

[Ronnie-]

May I ask when you switched?

 

[BuddyBoy]

For those of us who started out with 6000s, the 211 is a huge improvement! With a 6000, if you watched OTA for an hour of so and then tried to change to a sat channel, you'd get stuck at the "acquiring satellite signal" message for a few minutes.

 

[TulsaCoker]

He must have switched before September. If the 211 does not have more the one day guide data boy am i going to have fun with the E* subs that think all E* hardware is great. One day guide data is a joke.

 

[BuddyBoy]

One day guide data is a joke.

The 6000 only held guide data for three hours. I'm not kidding.

 

[Bosco390]

May I ask when you switched?

We switched a little over a year ago.... why, did we switch too soon??

I don't recall what our contract was for... perhaps 18 mos? And don't get me wrong... the brief 3-day guide data is just part of it... I recall the old SD Hughes receiver allowing the user to change colors of the menus, adjust the transparency of the displays, several different modes of guide display, EXTREMELY easy programming of upcoming events (in contrast to the ridiculous system in the Vip211, which defaults on click to programming for record to vcr...ugh!), sort guides this way and that, click left in the guide to see a full channel description... just a myriad of features.... none earth-shaking alone, but I will admit, they were features we got used to being there... then we switched and to be frank, were disappointed in the terrible lack of features... the HD looks awesome... features suck.

Are all HD receivers (DirecTV or Dish) this bare bones?... what happened to programming them to be user friendly??

 

[Ronnie-]

We switched a little over a year ago.... why, did we switch too soon??

Well if you were waiting on all of the HD, yes.

As to your other questions, the 622/722 if I am not mistaken are much more feature rich, as are the HR-20/21 from Directv.

 

[Bosco390]

Well if you were waiting on all of the HD, yes.

As to your other questions, the 622/722 if I am not mistaken are much more feature rich, as are the HR-20/21 from Directv.

At the time, it looked as if DirecTV had very little HD to offer (just kept talking about all the coming channels, but it just seemed like talk), but Dish offered the VOOM line up, plus others. So, we switched.

No real interest in recording at the time... we just wanted to watch HD TV... so we went with the 211's.... I guess hindsight's 20-20... will look to make some changes when the contract is up... maybe buying my own of that auction site, so I don't have to contract again?.... just a thought.