When did Dish first implement a daily reboot ?

[kstuart]

I just set my 622 to "update" in 2 minutes, and witnessed that it does indeed reboot as part of the daily update process.

When did Dish first implement this daily reboot - which receiver was the first to included this feature ?

( I used to do a front-panel-power-button-reboot on my 501s every night before going to bed, and I'm curious as to when they started to do this automatically. )

 

[highspeed57]

This was started with the implementation of the dual tuner recievers.

 

[n0qcu]

I believe it started with the 921.

 

[KKlare]

And the 921 needed the reboot. It had a fixed time to reboot, IIRC. Without reboots it would last up to 1.5 day or so and then get flakey. Even with the nightly it would/will get flakey if you push a lot of buttons or go to menus inside menus or use OTA too much or....
-Ken

 

[JIGGIEFLY]

The VIP 211 i had use to need to be rebooted about every 2 days or it just wouldnt work right

 

[MikeD-C05]

And the 921 needed the reboot. It had a fixed time to reboot, IIRC. Without reboots it would last up to 1.5 day or so and then get flakey. Even with the nightly it would/will get flakey if you push a lot of buttons or go to menus inside menus or use OTA too much or....
-Ken

BINGO! We have a winner. This one receiver was a daily nightmare that I suffered through and towards the end, after babysitting it every day, it got to be pretty good as digital vcrs go. I was so glad to be able to upgrade to the 942 and then the 622/722 receivers. The difference was night and day.

 

[iwc5893]

Why do the newer receivers require a daily reboot? It seems awfully inconvenient to me.

 

[havana]

I kinda miss the little private and personal moments I spent every evening with my 921 during our daily manual rebooting sessions...my 921 taught me patience, to not take anything for granted and to take life one day at a time.

 

[MikeD-C05]

Why do the newer receivers require a daily reboot? It seems awfully inconvenient to me.

IT is done when the sat receiver actually downloads the guide and looks for any new updates on software. You can set the update to occur in the early morning hours when you are sleep making the inconvience minimal . A good reboot prevents problems later in the day when you are actually watching tv. Consider the sat receiver just like a computer that requires reboots also sometimes.

 

[MikeD-C05]

I kinda miss the little private and personal moments I spent every evening with my 921 during our daily manual rebooting sessions...my 921 taught me patience, to not take anything for granted and to take life one day at a time.

Sounds like a religious experience or conversion there. I know that I learned a lot more profanity during those special times . I think DISH seems to have learned how to build a dvr now or they really did canabilize a tivo to learn how to do it right. Either way the older dvrs like the 500 series and the 721/921, are like 20th century technology compared to the newer 522/625/622/722 series of dvrs. They are like 21st century technology.

 

[TuxCoder]

Consider the sat receiver just like a computer that requires reboots also sometimes.

A Windows computer, that is...

I have many Linux and Mac OS X systems that I generally leave running for weeks to months at a time (or sometimes over a year in the case of my server) with no reboots, and all are pretty heavily used. No problems, no memory/resource leaks, no strange phantom tasks that cannot be killed, etc.

 

[47HO]

I'm glad you mentioned that , Tux, as that has been my experience also.
It is my understanding that the 622 receiver is coded in Linux, which leads to the question: Why so many reboots?

 

[Pepper]

no matter how good the underlying hardware or os, bad programs can mess things up.

 

[TuxCoder]

Precisely.

 

[DefDude]

dvr timer and reboots

here's a question---- What happens if you have a scheduled recording at the same time as the nightly reboot does it skip the reboot till the next night or delay it? I have recorded alot of movies latley but have not had time to watch them, some are recorded during the wee hours. they all seem to be there as 1 recording not like 2 if you have a reboot while recording.

 

[LER]

the box is smart enough to at least delay the reboot.

LER

 

[dishrich]

I think DISH seems to have learned how to build a dvr now or they really did canabilize a tivo to learn how to do it right.

Hardly, since the Tivos do NOT need to have a daily reboot to work properly...

 

[oljim]

the old dishplayers 7100/7200 did

 

[DishSubLA]

This feature is a diagnostic check of the hard drive and the system, and it will download and launch any new software should is be available, but the download of the guide at this time is NOT critical. The guide will download a few times throughout the day if the STB is in standby. The 322 will download the guide throughout the day using the unused tuner even if the other tuner is in use. The reboot is a necessary step after the diagnostic routines, but has the added benefit of "refreshing" the system.

Back in the Legacy days, Dish used to be swamped with calls form subs complaining about their boxes acting strangely. It was discovered that legions of subs were not getting software downloads because they NEVER EVER turned off the STB's (old software versions were conformed by CSR's who had subs display System Check). Some subs were MONTHS behind in software downloads. I personally knew of several people in this situation.

Dish CSR's had to tell those folks to turn off ther STB's for up to a half-hour to allow the download, or walk them through a forced download, And yes, this would solve the problems. STB's being left on at all times was more the norm for the Legacy boxes as installers were telling subs to do this back in those years, and subs seemed to prefer it as some of the Legacy boxes took several seconds before displaying a picture when taken out of stand by.

Beginning With the 322/522 generation this diagnostic routine was built in that provides much more information to CRS's or techs (at Dish) should they need to troubleshoot your system. It is also supposed to ensure that all subs (with the more recent equipment) get the latest software update as soon as it is available for them, thus reducing unnecessary calls to CSR's.

The "Daily Update" feature can be disabled, but as someone who did this for quite some time, I found that that box became buggy. Then I enabled the Daily Update feature and I have had none of those problems since.

If you are going to have a recording every day at the same time (say BBC World News at 3AM Pacific) that is the same time as the Daily Update, then you had best change the Update time to one when you will have no timer recordings, as the box will never go into the diagnostic mode, and you will have problems. Not having Daily Updates run on occasion is not a problem.