Why Update S329 is Needed...NOW

[david_jr]

Tron great post! And great discussion also! I know Dish has made great strides with customer service with the DIRT team here and at the "other site". But I was thinking it would be great if Dish would have maybe one person from their software team signed up here at Satellite Guys as a user so they could "openly" monitor customer feedback and maybe reply to some of these topics once in a while. They could have an account with no PM or email (think Mark Cuban) so no one could bug them. Maybe they already do. But I sense a lot of frustration in the forums because sometimes even though we are told by Scott that they are monitoring, and they probably are, but because they never reply it feels like they're not and the same issue continues to be a problem forever and the only answer is "they know about it and they're working on a fix". Having a DIRT member (love the DIRT Team!!) say "I will submit your issue to the team" is not the same as having someone reply and say "We tried doing that but it caused more problems so we couldn't do it." Just a thought.

 

[sparc]

I have to say I was really looking forward to the new S328 update, but it was more than a little let down. Was hoping DISH would have added a few things to enhance / fix the Hopper experience, but they missed the mark again. I truly don’t think they do any sort of user acceptance testing and design things from their paying customer’s perspective. I realize that no one can please everyone all the time, but if you look at my feedback objectively you’ll see the improvements really do benefit all their customers by making a more “designed around you”, simplified product.

We posted hundreds of suggestions when Hopper first came out about the poor user interface of the Hopper. Not much was done with it. They've largely concentrated on new features or bug fixing since launch.

I wouldn't expect any changes any time soon as updates have become less frequent. IMO, the stellar Hopper hardware has always far outperformed the software and probably always will.

 

[Hall]

...and the only answer is "they know about it and they're working on a fix".

They'd be extremely limited and cautious in any responses they gave though... And every time they answer with the above, it will be followed by "when ?" and they'll never answer that until it's fully implemented and going out in an update !

 

[gilroykilroysg]

My wife and I couldn't believe that they did in this update . We agree with 100% of the OP's issues. I think their UX/interaction people don't have a clue (that is being polite.) My wife thinks Dish is trying to make is very inconvenient for people to watch "free" shows (that we pay them well over $100/mo for) and wants to get On Demand $$$.

If there was a better alternative we would switch in a heartbeat (I would argue taking away crucial features we bought the product for would null and void any two year agreement when we updated to the Hopper.) We have been Dish customers for almost 20 years (and sadly have come to expect this kind of low quality stuff out of them.)

 

[Scherrman]

My wife and I couldn't believe that they did in this update . We agree with 100% of the OP's issues. I think their UX/interaction people don't have a clue (that is being polite.) My wife thinks Dish is trying to make is very inconvenient for people to watch "free" shows (that we pay them well over $100/mo for) and wants to get On Demand $$$.

If there was a better alternative we would switch in a heartbeat (I would argue taking away crucial features we bought the product for would null and void any two year agreement when we updated to the Hopper.) We have been Dish customers for almost 20 years (and sadly have come to expect this kind of low quality stuff out of them.)

You wouldn't have any luck arguing about your contract. If you read it you'll see they have the right to do about anything.

 

[Brucegrr]

I can't imagine not having Favorites Lists. We watch a handful of channels. I have my List and SWMBO has hers. We watch NO sports or dramas, few movies or sitcoms, and see no reason to have to scroll thru everything when the vast majority of it is of no interest to us. Sent from my iPhone using SatelliteGuys

Same here, except I am a big sports fan so I have a favorites list for only the sports channels. I use three favorites lists.

 

[Jim S.]

You wouldn't have any luck arguing about your contract. If you read it you'll see they have the right to do about anything.

Contract language like that should be outlawed. The government interferes in private contracts all the time. You can't, for example, refuse to sell your house to a minority. And don't say "that's because they're a protected class", because it's not the government selling the house, it's a private individual.

 

[Gobucks]

Same here, except I am a big sports fan so I have a favorites list for only the sports channels. I use three favorites lists.

Same here! We have a guide for sports, movies and channels like Discovery,ID and History. I makes looking things up so easy. I have no idea why anyone would want to take that feature away from people.

 

[david_jr]

Contract language like that should be outlawed. The government interferes in private contracts all the time. You can't, for example, refuse to sell your house to a minority. And don't say "that's because they're a protected class", because it's not the government selling the house, it's a private individual.

no it's not the government selling the house, it's the government telling you what you can do with your property. Try to stop them. The government only interferes in private contracts after suit has been brought and contract is shown to violate some law. Refusing sale to a minority violates a law.

Sent from my iPhone 5 using SatelliteGuys

 

[dare2be]

I have no idea why anyone would want to take that feature away from people.

Who is wanting to take the feature away?

 

[Gobucks]

Who is wanting to take the feature away?

I remember reading something Hall said about it. He said something about hardly anyone using that feature. Dish should be working on other features and not that.

Hell I don't remember. I got family here and not enough time to go back and check. I'm not trying to piss anyone off.

Sent from my Galaxy S4

 

[odbrv]

Please Dish change the theme search results back to sorted by "time on" as it use to be. At least add an option to select that sort type. This alphabetic sort result has no use for me. I am looking for the games to watch today. Even if I change availability to watch now and next the results are not time ordered and I do not get all channels for each game. You have options in the DVR view to do a-z or DVR date. In App Game Finder you can look by day. Let themes at least look by day.

 

[oceanshell]

Has anyone had issues with the Joeys freezing up since this update??

 

[rjruby]

I agree with Hall that the number of people who use favorites list is 'problably' a lot smaller than you think. I hate favorites lists, I don't like limiting what I see in the guide because I don't have a set list of channels I watch. I watch whatever catches my eye or looks interesting. Other people don't take the time to set them up because they have a handful of channels they watch and they know the numbers for those channels. I think favorites lists are more of a power user feature than a normal consumer feature.

I created a favorites list for my granddchildren. They have DirecTV at their home so they are not familiar with the channel numbers on Dish for their favorite channels.

I also created a favorites list for the international channels for my wife and her family.

 

[barryaz1]

Where WAS this percent watched that everyone keeps telling about? The only time I have ever seen it was if I pressed the info button on a recording tile.

This had been reported as a problem, but still seems to be there. If you have more than one episode of a program recorded, when that program is selected from My Recordings, each episode show as a separate line with its "%Watched." But contrary to previous reports here, that still does appear.

 

[satjrh]

I have some experience in software usability and I must say Tron2012 is right on! Reducing the number of clicks, keeping screen content simple and not removing established features are all traits of good user interface design and as he suggested some end user testing (say from folks on this forum) would have pointed out these things. I hope dish is really listening!

 

[voripteth]

I was struggling with the program search feature earlier this morning. I use it to see what new movies I may want to record. Since there isn't a way to see what is new, I end up scrolling through a huge list of titles. Why is there so much wasted space between program icons? I thought it may be for long titles but even those were truncated to a single line and and ellipsis... When selecting a program on that screen the description box at the top of the screen only has the title. I click into the program to see individual events to see the description. Once at that point, however, there isn't a "Back" button to return you to the list where you left off. I can click the Cancel button but that returns me to the beginning of the list, not so much fun when I'm scrolling through 500 items.

Dish, please either hire someone to do user experience design or have a large beta program to get feedback on these items!

 

[rglore]

Have you tried pressing the info button instead of selecting?

 

[gilroykilroysg]

This had been reported as a problem, but still seems to be there. If you have more than one episode of a program recorded, when that program is selected from My Recordings, each episode show as a separate line with its "%Watched." But contrary to previous reports here, that still does appear.

When you have custom folders each show appears separately and not "stacked" as in the other folder views. The % watched use to appear on each separate icon in this view; it no longer does. It basically renders what it does present as useless since you cannot tell what show(s) you may be in the middle of.

It is a removed feature that at least my family heavily used and is very disappointed in its removal.

 

[navychop]

I hope they've stopped the rollout.

I favor a roll back to the previous software.