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Scott Greczkowski

Scott Greczkowski

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Cutting Edge
Sep 7, 2003
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Newington, CT
Ok this is for you folks who have gotten your hands on a 921.

Now that you have had a chance to play with your 921 what features do you wish the 921 had?

I will start with a small list of things, I would love to hear your requests to make the 921 a better product too!

1) The Ability to manually name Digital OTA Recordings.

2) OTA Channel Listings, or the ability to remap Satellite LIL listings to OTA Digital Channels.

3) Get rid of the greyed out Internet option from the menu since Dish has stated the 921 will never have Internet on it.

This is just a starting list, lets hear yours
 
Comming from a TiVo background I think the DVR could stand to have many improvements, however some of these probably are not possible without breaking some TiVo patent.

1) Better FF/REW controls. On TiVo, if I FF the video and then hit play when I see the scene I want to start playing from, it automatically invokes a skipback feature (more skipback for higher FF speeds) that makes it play the video a second before the image I wanted. This is great, saves me a ton of time as I only need 2 buttons. With pratice you really get attached to this. The 921 can't do this and I waste alot of time pressing FF, REW, PLAY to queue up the exact spot I wanted.

2) This may violate TiVo patents, but the Season Pass and Wish List features from TiVo, I REALLY MISS THESE! License them from TiVo if you have too, is Dish that cheap? I'm willing to pay a monthly fee just to have this enabled on my 921! The 921 drives like a clunky old VHS VCR in its current state with its timers. It's really annoying, and I allready missed a few shows because of schedule changes that TiVo caught and the 921 couldn't handle. I will have to buy a HD TiVo and a plain Dish HD receiver in the future for the HD TiVo box if Dish never plans on implementing these two things. They are key features IMHO for a DVR to have. If it wasn't because I wanted HD recording now, I would have never downgraded from my trusty TiVo/4900 receiver combo.

3) A mode for external scaler uses like myself called native out. As it is now, I have to use the 921's scaler to upscale everything to 720p. I'd rather have a mode that outputs from the DVI-D port 480i/480p/540p/720p/1080i totally dependent on the source video's format and let my more expensive scaler (cost more than the 921) handle converting everything to my projector's 720p native rate.

That's all I can think of right now, I'm sure I forgot something and will add it later.
 
I agree on the ability to map satellite channels to ATSC channels for purposes of guide; this should work great for those who have satellite locals in our area, and be better than nothing for dealing with some of the other networks. Hopefully the Search function would bring up the ATSC channels as options for the timers as well.

Ability to have more aspect ration control; I specifically want SD to appear unmodified (equivalent of 4x3#1, 480i) even if I have a 16x9 TV in the HD mode. (My other TVs are 4x3, connected via RF).

Also, make the 480p on DVI/Component and 480i on Svid etc. AT THE SAME TIME a fully supported display mode, not just an emergency special case. Saves having to change the main TV input and use two cables to the main TV if the wife wants to watch SD stuff in the kitchen. Allowing 480i on all ports at once would also be a good solution.

It would be nice if you could specify the output mode (1080i, 720p, 480p, 480i) for each source resolution with a fixed map that need not be modified by hand when the source resolution changes. It appears that the de-interlacer/scaler in the TV does a better job than the one in the 921; the aspect ratios are certainly more friendly.

When highlighting a timer in the Guide screen and selecting it, go directly to the specific timer edit/delete screen, not make me find and highlight it again.

A way to put only the selected ATSC channels in the Favorites list, not all of them.

A discrete code or menu item for setting aspect ratios (for advanced remotes and automation systems)

Make the Pageup/dn keys work in the timer edit screen for jumping faster through the channels.
 
Of all things that I would like to have.......


IS ANOTHER ONE, BUT BELOW RETAIL COST !!!! :)

Dave
 
Scott Greczkowski said:
Ok this is for you folks who have gotten your hands on a 921.
1) The Ability to manually name Digital OTA Recordings.

2) OTA Channel Listings, AND

the ability to remap Satellite LIL listings to OTA Digital Channels.
Click to expand...

Of course I agree on 1 & 2.

I changed #2 to AND!!! I hate 8000 range locals!

Most of all FIX THE OTA BUG & GIVE US THE UPDATE.
 
>> some of these probably are not possible without breaking some TiVo patent.

That apparently hasn't been a concern for Dish..
 
1: NAME BASED RECORDING
2: GUIDE WITH PREVIEW for OTA in upper right corner (Not hiding behind listings)
3: LOCKABLE FAVORITE LISTS - All units(522,811,921 included)
4: SEARCH BY RATING
5: Better text displays on Music Channels. They are plain, drab and ugly. The 522 at least has color! Its a LINUX box, it has power! Even D* RCA SD units have raindrops, puppy prints, etc.
6:QUIETER FAN or go to a different method of heat dissipation.
7: OSD/guide color options. What if I don't like the cruddy colors that Tux the penguin and Charlie the pig likes?
8: Better OTA tuner. My RPTV has a better pic before it goes thru the 921 to the DVI out.
9: Better aspect control as stated in another post.
10: This is the big one: E-P-A-N-D-A-B-I-L-I-T-Y Dishwire/USB for saving off PVR to an external storage device. Allow media card reader I/O for digital camera pics and/or to record to PVR or display as a screen saver slideshow when playing audio channels.

Hows that for a start?
 
Mark,

How about this...

#11 - A DVD Recorder in that lonely empty front slot that will record directly or archive from the hard drive AND also play back any DVD or CD !!!

IF they did this or even offered it, I would buy 2 more 921s... TODAY !!!
 
As I have been harping on with the 721, give us stickie menus. Example: when I set the sort selection in the DVR menu to alphabetical, leave it sorted that way for my next visit to the menu, do not default it back to 'by date'. There are other places where stickie menu options need to be involked.
 
My preference would be a 2nd hard drive in the front bay and my Blue-Ray (HD) DVD recorder connected via firewire.

I'd also accept dumping to a firewire hard drive as an alternative (it doesn't have to merge space with the internal drive, just dump to and play back).

A mode where 4:3 source is ALWAYS displayed 4:3 (no matter the TV). I hate distorting the image.

Sure, I'd like named based recording, but considering that TiVo is sueing over the use of a hard drive to stream and playback video, I can only imagine what would happen with named-based-recording.
 
I'd like to see the same recording editor capabiity I have on my Panasonic HD/DVD DVR (DMR-HS2). We should be able to edit the recordings before dumping them via firewire.

--- WCS
 
1. 1394 active!
2. OTA bugs fixed.
3. LIL listings mapped to OTA channels.

Hey WCS -
What bird do you get from 97?
 
My wish list...

A few ideas:
1) As always...Bug fixes...
a) Random reboots, seemingly related to "guide"
b) Recording stopping when I press "stop", or do something else I haven't quite proven repeatable, when checking on proper recording and then switching away, only to have the recording stop the moment I switch away.
2) An option to ***NOT*** have the current channel PIP-ed in the Upper RH corner while in guide mode (like the 6000). I have 3 small children, and I now lack a way to efficiently turn off questionnable content when they enter the room. With the 6000, I could simply switch to the guide, and they were protected from vulgar / inappropriate material that I might want to watch, or that flashed by on the nightly news (like say pictures of local murders...). Now, I have to try to switch to a different channel, because even the DVR pause button simply holds the picture of the offending content on the screen.
I'm not saying the Guide should ONLY work as the 6000, with no audio or video of the current channel...just that it would be nice if it was an option to NOT display the current channel PIP-ed while in Guide mode.
3) Being a newbie to DVR, I always believed that it allowed you to record only the program WITHOUT THE COMMERCIALS!!! While I appreciate the 30-second skip-ahead button, I'd much rather not waste the HD 25-hour fixed-limit disk space on 17-20 minutes of commercials per hour of content, and save myself the hassle of having to skip over them.
4) Better OTA support, in general...especially OTA guide info.
5) Second disk / D-VHS support via Firewire
6) HD PIP -- I don't understand...if I can press "Guide", and it will PIP the HD signal into the upper RH corner, why can't I get PIP when either of the items I want to watch is HD? Even if there is only enough processing power to allow 1 of the 2 sources be HD, that would be better than no HD PIP at all.
7) Internal 2nd Disk or DVD-RW drive support.

I realize that some of these repeat other messages, but I was hoping that my reinforcing and prioritizing the list would add just that much more customer weight to getting Dish Network to address these issues.

P.S. if anyone viewing this can explain the lack of PIP support for any situation other than Guide, or why there is no auto-skip-commercials option, I would love the direct feedback.
 
- Dishwire On
- No more blue light specials, i.e. reboots with split recordings & lost content.
- Dishwire On
 
nicholassjenkins said:
[...] Being a newbie to DVR, I always believed that it allowed you to record only the program WITHOUT THE COMMERCIALS!!! While I appreciate the 30-second skip-ahead button, I'd much rather not waste the HD 25-hour fixed-limit disk space on 17-20 minutes of commercials per hour of content, and save myself the hassle of having to skip over them.
Click to expand...
Sorry, but this is one you'll never see. Even when ReplayTV had the "commercial skip" function (which I think they've since dropped), it recorded everything & auto-skipped commercials on playback.

The main reason you'll never see this is because no DVR maker will risk the lawsuits sure to follow when they edit the money-making component out of a program provider's content. The second reason you wouldn't really want it to work this way is that the detection algorithms aren't perfect. The first time some key portion of a show wasn't recorded, you'd wish it were all on disk so you could avoid the skip.

That said, I'd LOVE a 921 which auto-skipped commercials on playback! :D
 
peterd said:
1. 1394 active!
2. OTA bugs fixed.
3. LIL listings mapped to OTA channels.
Click to expand...

ditto but swap the priority of 1. and 2.

That's for the short term, within the next 2 months.


Long term- I want the ability to add hard drive capacity.
Options-
Swappable primary drive; additional second drive; FW drive support for Dishwire. Any would be OK in my view.
 
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