# Questions about 942



## rolodoc (Dec 2, 2005)

I am about to order Dish with 942 and have a few questions:

1. Can 942 delete programs intelligently, such as episodes more than 1 week old, or programs recorded but not watched for more than a month?
2. Can TV2 be connected through the house's cable system and ouput via coax wall outlet?
3. Can 942 send HD to TV2?
4. What is a diplexor?


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## kspeters (Aug 12, 2003)

1) Don't know for sure but you can set how many episodes to keep.
2) Yes
3) No, just SD
4) "Special" splitter to allow one cable run into the house. You use one on the outside by the dish to combine the cables from the lnb and then another inside to split the cable to go intot he 942 which has two cable inputs.


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## Mike D-CO5 (Mar 12, 2003)

You can limit how many of each episodes to keep and then it will record over the oldest one of that show. Under options menu you can set it to start early , end late , or how many to keep 1 - 25 . 

You can see hd on the tv 2 output but it will be down converted to sd for you second tv. 

I use a diplexor on my sat dish with a terk ota antenna. It splits the single cable into both ota signal into and sat signal. I can use one cable into the house , diplex it into ota for my antenna port on my 942 and the other side of the diplexor into satellite . I then use a dish seperator on the sat cable and split it into two cables for my two satellite inputs on my 942. Pretty cool huh?


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## Bichon (Jun 5, 2003)

kspeters said:


> 4) "Special" splitter to allow one cable run into the house. You use one on the outside by the dish to combine the cables from the lnb and then another inside to split the cable to go intot he 942 which has two cable inputs.


This is wrong. A pair of diplexors combines and splits an antenna signal with a satellite signal so that both run on the same cable.

To do what kspeters describes, using a single cable for both satellite inputs, you'd need either a DishPro Plus switch (DPP-44) or a DishPro Plus LNB (DPP-Twin), and a DishPro Plus separator at the back of the 942.


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## dboreham (Nov 26, 2005)

rolodoc said:


> I am about to order Dish with 942 and have a few questions:
> 
> 1. Can 942 delete programs intelligently, such as episodes more than 1 week old, or programs recorded but not watched for more than a month?
> 2. Can TV2 be connected through the house's cable system and ouput via coax wall outlet?
> ...


Don't buy a 942. The software is flakey. Mine reboots constantly.
And Dish support is worthless.


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## Jon Spackman (Feb 7, 2005)

dboredham-

You are in the minority. Get a new 942. Mine has NEVER rebooted! Do you have it powered through a UPS? Maybe its not the software that is flakey, but the power to your home. If the 942 software were "flakey" there would be a lot more posts of 942's rebooting.


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## lakebum431 (Jun 30, 2005)

dboredham is in the minority for sure! Mine works great. Go for it!


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## Jerry 42 (Feb 25, 2003)

dboreham - sorry you are having problems with 942 but my 2- 942s work fine, not prefect but better than most DVRs today. Dish does updates monthly.
Previously has 2 TiVos and they also have various small problems some as a result of their twice yearly software updates, and it took an other 6 months to get new/fixed software update from TiVo.


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## dboreham (Nov 26, 2005)

j5races said:


> dboredham-
> 
> You are in the minority. Get a new 942. Mine has NEVER rebooted! Do you have it powered through a UPS? Maybe its not the software that is flakey, but the power to your home. If the 942 software were "flakey" there would be a lot more posts of 942's rebooting.


Nope. It's on a UPS. And a real ups too.

I'm a software developer. The software is lame. I know it when I see it.
It fails to reset the
OS watchdog timer which causes the receiver to reboot after a few
seconds.

And Dish support is lame to. I've spent countless hours trying to debug
this receiver, calling them, going through pointless switch checks etc.
Eventually they decided to escalate the ticket, and told me that someone
would call me within 48 hours. That was a week ago.

Lame, lame, lame.


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## dboreham (Nov 26, 2005)

BTW, obviously not everyone's 942 reboots constantly. If they did then 
I'd be reading about it in the WSJ. But clearly there's potential for it to get
into a state from which it can't recover. Also search these fora for 
'sponteneous reboot' and you will see quite a few posts. 

What irks me more is Echostar's complete disreagard for customer
support. That they sent my ticket to /dev/null is astonishing to me.


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## JM Anthony (Nov 16, 2003)

dboreham must be a shill for comcast or D*. :lol: While my 942 isn't perfect, it's pretty trouble free and I don't have spontaneous reboots. I've been with E* for a long time and I think their customer service and tech support are good to work with. My 921 went south just before the Final Four and they overnighted me a new unit so I wouldn't miss anything. Pretty cool!

John


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## Mike D-CO5 (Mar 12, 2003)

I had spontaneous reboots for a while before the lastest software update. Now it works pretty much like it is supposed to . I still will get a reboot if I hit locals option. For some reason this almost always triggers a reboot. Some have mentioned hooking up a ups to it. Supposedly it keeps the power supply constant to the 942 so it won't be interrupted triggering a reboot. I don't know for sure since I don't have a ups.


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## Jon Spackman (Feb 7, 2005)

Mike D-
What is locals option??
Why dont you have a UPS they are cheap insurance


Dboredham-
What makes you know that "It fails to reset the
OS watchdog timer which causes the receiver to reboot after a few
seconds."

What the hell is that, and how do you that it has one, and it isnt reseting? (I'm not saying your wrong, i just dont know what it is and how you know what dish is or is not doing)


Jon


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

dboreham said:


> What irks me more is Echostar's complete disreagard for customer support. That they sent my ticket to /dev/null is astonishing to me.


What irks me is someone that does not follow the forum rules. The 942 support forum does not allow bashing. Please take the bashing to the general forums in the future as long as it is done in a constructive and professional manner.

As to the watchdog timer, it is my understanding that it is something that allows the hardward to trigger an event in case of a lock up. Problem is if you supported a watch dog timer and it fired during a long operation that just had not completed you could possible pull the rug out from under it.

As to how does one know. From my experience you don't unless you have access to the debug logs or access to some area where some debug info was dumped because a watchdog timer triggered. Not all system have watchdog timers and some teams from my experience only utilize this feature during initial stages of development.

Though I have done some low level embeeded development, I am mainly a middler tear UI developer so I am sure Simon or some of the other more low level member will correct my understanding if I am wrong.


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## SaltiDawg (Aug 30, 2004)

dboreham said:


> ...
> Lame, lame, lame.


I'm not sure what you are trying to accomplish with your posts.

You obviously don't feel that you need any help from this forum and the fact that many of do not experience *any* of the problems that you claim to have and that you can't get Dish to accept your diagnosis of the cause seems make you feel the need to ratchet up the rhetoric.

Most people that are 100% happy with their machine I suspect do not need to post that fact. Those that experience problems I suspect, on the other hand, *do*feel the need to post in order to either get help and support or simply to air their frustration. I think I see where you fit in this ....


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## dboreham (Nov 26, 2005)

Ron Barry said:


> As to the watchdog timer, it is my understanding that it is something that allows the hardward to trigger an event in case of a lock up. Problem is if you supported a watch dog timer and it fired during a long operation that just had not completed you could possible pull the rug out from under it.


Indeed this is one of the pitfalls of watchdog timers.
I suspect that in my 942 the software has become partially hung up,
such that the timer expires, causing a reboot. It doesn't take any
special long-running operation to get it to do so: one only has
to press a button on the remote (any one will do it).
So in fact the WD timer is doing its job, but it seems that the application software
is consistently broken such that I always see a reboot.
I guess the other possibiity is that the WD timer _hardware_ is broken
on my 942. However it did work correctly without rebooting prior
to the first time I viewed an HD channel. Also, the receiver will stay up
indefinitely as long as its disconnected from the sat feed (and 
hence not decoding and displaying an image).



Ron Barry said:


> As to how does one know. From my experience you don't unless you have access to the debug logs or access to some area where some debug info was dumped because a watchdog timer triggered. Not all system have watchdog timers and some teams from my experience only utilize this feature during initial stages of development.


My information about watchdog timers comes from the 942's 'counters' page.
It tells me that the OS watchdog timer expired, and it has a code for the
reason for the last reboot. I forget the exact text, I'm not in front of the
942 at present. I've reported all this to E* support. But they felt it 
appropriate to not bother calling me back. If this is 'bashing' then go ahead
and delete my account here.


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## dboreham (Nov 26, 2005)

SaltiDawg said:


> I'm not sure what you are trying to accomplish with your posts.


This is what I'm trying to accomplish:

1. Prevent anyone else from wasting a week of their time like I have
trying to get a 942 to work.
2. If someone from e* management is reading this and wants to go fix their
a) poor* customer support and b) poor QA*, then so much the better.

--
*disclaimer: this opinion is mine derived from a very small sample
size of one receiver, two dishes, five or six phone calls to tech
support and one e-mail. Everyone else is 100% happy with the
942 and Echostar customer support.


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## Mike D-CO5 (Mar 12, 2003)

The locals option is in the menu where you can add ota digtial or analog local channels from an outside antenna. This for some reason will trigger a lock up an then a reboot. I have been adding some analog locals lately and I have been using it more often.


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## SaltiDawg (Aug 30, 2004)

dboreham said:


> This is what I'm trying to accomplish:
> 
> ...


*I don't think so.  *


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## dathead2 (May 17, 2005)

i agree with the guy complaining, i have had nothing but trouble with
this unit too - don't get me wrong, i still love it, but it is a typical love/hate
relationship.

all anybody has to do is read the last 3 months of posts on this forum and
you will see all the problems lots of people have had *PLUS* you have to
remember people on this forum are a small minority of customers - most
just have to take the lumps and pray CS will do something for them.

here is a short list of the ones i can recall:

1) having to run check switch twice a day for over a month just to get the
942 to work (this was eventually solved) this was back in summer i think,
or late spring maybe

2) major pixelization issues with version 28x (x=1 was it?), particularly on OTA

3) spontaneous reboots (while recording only - CS had me clear off the HD,
which i did, but not completely, but got rid of everything i had recorded from
around the time the prob started until the current time and this has as far
as i can tell cleared that one up) this was a november nightmare for me and
did not start until right after 282

4) timers saying they fired, but no program on HDD (this still occurs sometimes,
although luckily fairly rarely, it has occured ever since i got the unit in jan 2005)

5) programs coming up with Error code 01, 04, and 07 and being unplayable,
this did not start until 282 either

there are probably 2-3 more i've chosen to forget

i would still rather have the unit than not have it though i will admit, but
it seems to still be 6-12 months away from being solid (and that is just
a guess obviously)


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