# Will the next update fix these - if so when is it coming?



## paulrus (Sep 1, 2004)

Unfortunately due to circumstances beyond my control, I can't get rid of my 921 to get a 942. So I'm curious when these problems might be fixed:

ZSR's - these are becomming a HUGE problem for me. I'm getting at least one per week. Nearly all are with OTA HD broadcasts.

Lack of responsiveness - my 921 will occasionally just stop responding to the remote - the broadcast continues with no problem, the unit just doesn't respond for 30-60 seconds.

Randomly jumping out of the menu back to live TV. I have had this happen several times too - I'll be selecting multiple programs to erase, when suddenly the unit just drops to live TV. I have to go back and reselect all the programs to delete.

Pixelization - occurs daily when watching prerecorded programs.

NBR - when I spoke to the executive office over all of my 921 problems, they assured me that NBR was coming. WHEN??? I'm tired of all sorts of random, unwanted programs being recorded because the network changed their schedule.

Playing the wrong program. Again, this happens several times per week. I select one program from my list and it plays a totally different program. 

Frozen 921 - I've had this happen a couple of times. I walk in to find the screen frozen with the word "OVER" on the screen. I have to do a hard reset to get the unit working again.

I looked in another thread and saw that an update was due in mid April. Any news on this & whether or not it'll solve these problems? 

Paul


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

1. Phase 1 of 2. I haven't had a single ZSR under the new software, so I can say that it goes a long ways towards fixing it.

2. Improved, but not completely fixed.

3. Never seen this happen.

4. Audio dropouts are improved. Still get pixellation occasionally though.

5. Nope, not this time around...won't be for awhile either, if ever.

6. Never seen this happen.

7. Not quite there yet.

Current projection is mid-May.


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## TonyB (Jul 5, 2004)

Mark Lamutt said:


> 1. Phase 1 of 2. I haven't had a single ZSR under the new software, so I can say that it goes a long ways towards fixing it.
> 
> 2. Improved, but not completely fixed.
> 
> ...


Mark,
Any time I see "improved" it says to me that they do not yet understand the problem. With software, it either works or it doesn't. Improved just means that by chance the situations that cause the problem happen less often - the "fix" for when it does is not yet incorporated.

If its understood then a fix would guarantee that the situation is handled properly. I doubt if we will EVER see all of the 921 problems fixed


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Most of the time, I've discovered that "improved" means that several things can cause the effect that you see, and some of those things have been fixed.


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## mwgiii (Jul 19, 2002)

Mark, they said in the Tech Chat last night:

"Keith - When are the older 5xx , 721, 921 getting NBR?

* Dan Minnick, 921, 721 no plans, 510 and 508’s will get later this year."

Do you still have hope for NBR on the 921?

Also, is there any hope for Dish Home Interactive?


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

I don't have much hope that NBR will be coming to the 921, but Dish Home is in the next version.


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## paulrus (Sep 1, 2004)

Mark - why do you feel that way about NBR?

It seems to me that other DISH DVRs have it - DISH owns the code in those units - therefore DISH should be able to tell their employees to share the code between groups. 

I guess I just don't understand why Charlie doesn't just get the various groups that program these things on a conference call and simply tell them "make a UNIFIED front end with a UNIFIED feature set for all of our DVRs or you're fired". And then follow through on it - if the people writing the code are that incompetant they should be let go and more qualified people should take their place.

EDIT: and I understand it's not a simple matter of copying and pasting code - but there MUST be some portability in there somewhere. 

Is there a hardware reason why the 921 can't have NBR? If not, this seems like just p!$$ poor management on the part of DISH.


Paul


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

No, there's no hardware reason. It's purely business - they don't want to expend the resources for it (or at least that's my opinion).


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## invaliduser88 (Apr 23, 2002)

Put it simplely, in there (customer unfriendly) view, why should they spend money to integrate the feature into the 921, when they can push the customer to pay more dollars for a 942.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Paulres,

There are also external elements and different development groups in different parts of the country and world. Heck. Microsoft had WinNT and 95 developers down the hall from each other and they would not share code. It is never as simple as it is. I currently work on a development two location development team and there has been numerous issues created by cultural and location differences.

As to NBR on 921, I personally don't think it will ever happen. Here is my logic why if I was in charge I would not. (Assumption here is you will move your 921 people to the MPEG-4 world at little to no cost).

1) MPEG-4 is around the corner and you will need to move those 921 users to an MPEG-4 DVR. 
2) The porting effort is not as simple as it was with the 942 code base. Remember the 942 is based on the 522. 921 was based on the 721. 
3) The 921 user base is relative small compared to other product lines. 
4) my guess is that the cost to benefit ratio is rather small given the effort to port this technology, the size of customer base, and its limited life span on the 921. 
5) You get more bang for your buck using these resources on getting a MPEG-4 box ready and if you give a sweet deal to the 921 people that have endured a lot of customer pain you will go a long way to mending some rather deep wounds.

Well that is my take and is the why I felt NBR went south on the 921 when the MPEG-4 direction was decided upon. I Hope Dish is listening.

<< The above is all based on my opinion and no substantial evidencd >>


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## Allen Noland (Apr 23, 2002)

paulrus said:


> Randomly jumping out of the menu back to live TV. I have had this happen several times too - I'll be selecting multiple programs to erase, when suddenly the unit just drops to live TV. I have to go back and reselect all the programs to delete.
> 
> Playing the wrong program. Again, this happens several times per week. I select one program from my list and it plays a totally different program.


These 2 problem sound like remote control conflicts with your neighbors. Have you tried changing your remote ID's?


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## GravelChan (Jan 30, 2005)

Ron Barry said:


> Paulres,
> 
> As to NBR on 921, I personally don't think it will ever happen. Here is my logic why if I was in charge I would not. (Assumption here is you will move your 921 people to the MPEG-4 world at little to no cost).
> 
> ...


I agree, for a good deal on an MPEG-4 upgrade I can wait for NBR. I'll bet quite a few other people feel the same way.


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## FarNorth (Nov 27, 2003)

Like others here, my 921 is getting 'tired.' Audio dropouts, won't respond to the remote, screen position won't change, occasional zero time recordings. I can live with it for a while, especially in summer, but should I go to a 942? Will this get me the path to MPEG 4?


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## cleblanc (Dec 18, 2003)

FarNorth said:


> Like others here, my 921 is getting 'tired.' Audio dropouts, won't respond to the remote, screen position won't change, occasional zero time recordings. I can live with it for a while, especially in summer, but should I go to a 942? Will this get me the path to MPEG 4?


I also have the problem with the remote. I had thought it was batteries but it's not. The 921 is very unresponsive to the Dish remote. The good news is that I switched to an MX500 universal remote and that works great. So I don't know if the problem is with the Dish remote, the 921 or the software.


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## JM Anthony (Nov 16, 2003)

TonyB said:


> . . . with software, it either works or it doesn't.


Horsepucky. If that were the case, thousands of application development programmers would be out of business.


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## TonyB (Jul 5, 2004)

JM Anthony said:


> Horsepucky. If that were the case, thousands of application development programmers would be out of business.


One definition of insanity is running software over and over again expecting a different result. Software just implements designed code into a situation - if the situation is understood then it is easy to ensure the same result EVERY time. If you get different results then there is obviously some situation that has not been accounted for.


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## KKlare (Sep 24, 2004)

cleblanc said:


> I also have the problem with the remote. I had thought it was batteries but it's not. The 921 is very unresponsive to the Dish remote. The good news is that I switched to an MX500 universal remote and that works great. So I don't know if the problem is with the Dish remote, the 921 or the software.


Could it be that the UHF section is weak (transmitter or receiver) but the IR is more reliable?
-Ken


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

TonyB said:


> One definition of insanity is running software over and over again expecting a different result. Software just implements designed code into a situation - if the situation is understood then it is easy to ensure the same result EVERY time. If you get different results then there is obviously some situation that has not been accounted for.


Tony, ever do much software development? Perhaps on a very high level it either works or it does not, but there is a lot of cases where software will work given certain circumstances and fail under what apparently seems to be the same circumstance.

There are numerious reason why this may occur and in the embedded space with an 3rd party external feed (OTA) the reason could run the gamit. Could be slight difference in timing, could be a chip change, could be anything. In my career I have ran into numerious reported bugs that happens once or twice and cannot be reproduced.

You are correct that the situation is completely understood and you have test suite that covers all cases of that situation to test against that you can make software behave exactly as anticipated and behave exactly the same way evertime. However, In the worlds I have worked in this is a rariety and the external environment at which I develop in changes over time.

I am not sure I even understand your definition of software. Are you meaning software is the implemenation of a design that is based on a set of design specifications that are derived from a set of use cases and functional requirements? Well personally I have 15 years of development experiences and have yet to see a set of perfect uses cases and design specifications that correctly defines a situation.

Perhaps you work in a better development environment than I have.


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## michaelL (Nov 30, 2004)

Ron Barry said:


> Tony, ever do much software development? Perhaps on a very high level it either works or it does not, but there is a lot of cases where software will work given certain circumstances and fail under what apparently seems to be the same circumstance.
> 
> There are numerious reason why this may occur and in the embedded space with an 3rd party external feed (OTA) the reason could run the gamit. Could be slight difference in timing, could be a chip change, could be anything. In my career I have ran into numerious reported bugs that happens once or twice and cannot be reproduced.
> 
> ...


Plus the 921 (like many modern programs) is multi-threaded. With multi-threaded you often run into something that is called a "race-condition". Race conditions are errors that occur because two or more threads of execution interact with each other (usually using shared memory). Running each thread's code by itself does not produce the error. But running the two or more threads together, errors intermittently occur.

I have spent months tracking down race conditions. Sometimes I never find them. Instead changes in the code / extra debugging just make the race conditions go away. It is very sad, but true.


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## BobMurdoch (Apr 24, 2002)

Paulrus,

to dodge the dump from delete menu to picture problem........

Make sure you are doing your "housecleaning" while watching a live show and not a recorded show. When I try deleting a set of recordings while watching another recorded show I run into this condition. Ditto for trying to delete a show you just watched when two other timers are active. It gives you a menu that wants you to stop one of the active timers instead of giving you the option of just changing the channel to one of the active recordings like it used to be able to do. (This was a lousy "improvement" from one of the software updates earlier this year....)


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## astrotrf (Apr 5, 2004)

Ron Barry said:


> It is never as simple as it is.


Ron,

I kinow what you _meant_ to say, of course, and I'm not picking on you, but I have to say that this is an aphorism worthy of Yogi Berra himself. I'm keeping it permanently on file!

Terry (astrotrf)


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

I actually had to look up aphorism. Maybe I should add this to my Signature.


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## Tomos (Jan 16, 2005)

I can get by untill they hopfully give us some kind of upgrade to MPEG4 and like Bob said in not so many words, don't expect to much out of this beast at any one time and it shouldn't bite us back so much. I can get along as well with the audio and video drops and they seem to be the worse for me, my remote works fine and never had any trouble with ZS R's but I do not do allot of multi tasking with this machine either. My wife wanted to pause the show we were recording and watching at the same time last evening and I'm like, nooooo way on that one. :nono2:


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## conner65 (Jan 26, 2004)

Mark,

What about the bug saying a program is blacked out in your area? My 921 missed 5 recordings last night and I did not know it until I was watching a recored show and got the message. I went in the guide and realized what I had missed.


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## BobMurdoch (Apr 24, 2002)

That's a new one on me... I haven't run into the blackout message (except the first week of the baseball season when the free preview caused the 921s to choke on the Extra Innings channels)


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

I don't know, conner65. I know that there was a lot of work done on the blackouts problem.


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## RocketNJ (Jul 29, 2003)

What about the 921 freezing on an OTA HD channel when the signal isn't transmitting?

broadcasters in my area sometimes have the HD transmitters down as they are still "tweaking" the transmitters. Also another broadcaster only transmits HD OTA during certain hours. 

If I happen to switch to one of those channels it takes FOREVER to get off there and back to normal channels. The 921 appears to lock up and become very unresponsive.

I've had the 921 for 4 months now and while it is nice to record HD (including OTA) I'm very disappointed in the product.


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## JM Anthony (Nov 16, 2003)

RocketNJ said:


> . . . I've had the 921 for 4 months now and while it is nice to record HD (including OTA) I'm very disappointed in the product.


Well, what the hell were you reading before you bought it??? It's not like there's been a dearth of posts in this forum and others about the problems the 921 had.


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## jergenf (Mar 31, 2005)

FarNorth said:


> I can live with it (*921*) for a while, especially in summer, but should I go to a 942? Will this get me the path to MPEG 4?


I'm waiting for the next generation of receivers with the new MPEG4 chip. It would be a waste of money to get the 942 at this point.


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## paulrus (Sep 1, 2004)

Just experienced another fun bug last night. 

I was watching OTA HD and had paused the show. While jumping forward over some commercials, I eventually hit the "live" portion - the unit immediately froze up and wouldn't respond anymore without a complete reboot.

It also, at one point, had the signal drop for a second and so the unit kept cycling a 10 second loop of the last video before the drop, then "aquiring signal" over and over and over and over. It eventually worked itself out after about 45-60 seconds of this.

Paul


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

paulrus said:


> Just experienced another fun bug last night.
> 
> I was watching OTA HD and had paused the show. While jumping forward over some commercials, I eventually hit the "live" portion - the unit immediately froze up and wouldn't respond anymore without a complete reboot.
> 
> ...


I had a similar experience around 5:00 pm PDST. I saw that my signal strengths had dropped to about 50 on the affected satellite channels and and a drop to 65 from 100 for terrestrial channels. It lasted for about 15 minutes. We were experiencing heavy rain during that period. Having listed to the news this morning I also learned that there is a severe solar storm in progress.


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## MAWG (May 20, 2005)

And so it goes. The 921 simply does not work as advertised.

Back in February Dish told me the 921 would display, record, and replay satellite television programs. It does not. It often fails to play all of the program, dropping chunks of audio. It repeatedly fails, in a random and unpredictable way, to record when requested. When it does record, it sometimes doesn’t record all of the content. It randomly fails to respond to pause and rewind commands, requiring at least 5 minutes of program loss during a reboot. And it makes a loud noise all the time.

The 921 currently disturbing the peace in my living room is simply and obviously not a product of merchantable quality. I ordered one in good faith, based on the claims made to me by Dish. I was never warned by them that a. it might not work, or b. it would make a lot of noise while it tried to work. I intend to request that my 921, which was sold to me for $549 on February 24 of this year, be replaced by a 942. If it is not, Dish will loose, permanently, a customer who has been with them for 4 years and who has brought them over $5,000 in revenue.

Anyone who thinks that Dish should be allowed to get away with claims that the 921 they sold me is acceptable does not understand how business, or the law, works. Comparisons to computers and Microsoft are totally irrelevant. This is sold as a plug-and-play consumer product and should work as advertised. Buyers of this product should not have to scour the Internet for fixes and workarounds. And the idea that consumers are REQUIRED to scout out Internet support forums before buying a piece of television equipment, or somehow share the blame when the equipment malfunctions, is patently ridiculous.

Products that do not work as advertised, like my 921, should be fixed or replaced. If Dish does not make good on its promises, I have no doubt that 921 buyers will be ripe for a class action suit. 

I would also note that the Federal Trade Commission is always on the lookout for companies suspected of luring customers away from their competitors with false promises. How many people switched from some other service to Dish in order to get the benefits promised by the 921 product literature, then failed, like me, to get those benefits?

Respectfully,

Stephen


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

MAWG said:


> And so it goes. The 921 simply does not work as advertised.
> 
> I intend to request that my 921, which was sold to me for $549 on February 24 of this year, be replaced by a 942. If it is not, Dish will loose, permanently, a customer who has been with them for 4 years and who has brought them over $5,000 in revenue.
> 
> ...


Welcome aboard. You have valid concerns. Hopefully L214 will make life better for us. I like many others have experienced meltdown over the operation of the 921. If you can't stand it anymore then it may be worth your while to take your course of action.

I have checked E* HD Receiver page and see that the 921 is no longer listed. So maybe replacements will have to be something else. http://www.dishnetwork.com/content/products/receivers/HD/index.shtml


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## Jerry G (Jul 12, 2003)

jergenf said:


> I'm waiting for the next generation of receivers with the new MPEG4 chip. It would be a waste of money to get the 942 at this point.


Agreed. However, the 921, and the eternal wait for a fix for all the most recently introduced bugs that have made the 921 largely useless, especially in having confidence that a planned recording will actually occur, has made me lose all confidence in Dish's ability to produce a reliable DVR. I no longer care if the 942 has glowing reviews. I'm just waiting for DirecTV to come out with an MPEG4 DVR and add additional HD channels. At that time, I'll switch to DirecTV. Until then, I'll suffer along with the 921 and plan on drinking heavily when I set up two simultaneous recordings. Can I sue Charlie if the 921 forces me to become an alcoholic?

The best part about switching to DirecTV is that there will no involvement by Eldon or Dish in their equipment.


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

Jerry G said:


> I'll suffer along with the 921 and plan on drinking heavily when I set up two simultaneous recordings. Can I sue Charlie if the 921 forces me to become an alcoholic?


Now I know the reason why I have increased my alcohol consumption.


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## paulrus (Sep 1, 2004)

MAWG said:


> Products that do not work as advertised, like my 921, should be fixed or replaced. If Dish does not make good on its promises, I have no doubt that 921 buyers will be ripe for a class action suit.
> 
> I would also note that the Federal Trade Commission is always on the lookout for companies suspected of luring customers away from their competitors with false promises. How many people switched from some other service to Dish in order to get the benefits promised by the 921 product literature, then failed, like me, to get those benefits?


Actually, as much as I dislike lawyers, I would consider joining a class action suit against Dish. If anyone knows a lawyer looking to make some news by taking on a big satellite corp, they should post their contact info here and get the ball rolling.

My 921 is becoming more unstable each day. This morning after watching a program, I hit the skip forward button to view the preview of the next episode. The unit froze - I powered it down and the frozen image remained on the screen even after powering down. I booted it back up and I got about 1/2 of the DVR menu back with a frozen image in the background. The unit became totally unresponsive. It took another hard reset to get anything to happen and now it's just trying to reboot.

As I stated in a previous thread, I spoke to E*'s corporate office after sending a complaint to the CEO. They blew me off stating the 921 works as advertised and essentially told me to take it up with my local dealer if I had a problem. I have personally had it and wouldn't really be interested so much in suing for cash - I just want a unit that works the way I was told the 921 would work. I am more than willing to sign an affidavit explaining everything that happened when I tried to deal with DISH.

Paul


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## michaelL (Nov 30, 2004)

paulrus said:


> Actually, as much as I dislike lawyers, I would consider joining a class action suit against Dish. If anyone knows a lawyer looking to make some news by taking on a big satellite corp, they should post their contact info here and get the ball rolling.
> 
> Paul


The 921 reminds me of the 7200 (the old dishplayer). Did not work well. Always missed recordings. Every once in a while it will erase all your saved recordings. Very unstable.

If it is worth anything, after 3 or so years Dish finally got the 7200 working well.

Also, there was a class action suit against Dish for the 7200. All I got was 5 pay per view coupons (woo hoo!!! what a great settlement).

Mike


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## cebbigh (Feb 27, 2005)

Does anyone know if there was a software fix on the 921 either 5/20 or 5/21? It seems to me that suddenly I am having better results setting up multiple recordings and that the delete process is taking a lot less time.
edit ... Last night failed to fire on an ota timer, back to it's old buggy ways.


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## Jerry G (Jul 12, 2003)

cebbigh said:


> Does anyone know if there was a software fix on the 921 either 5/20 or 5/21? It seems to me that suddenly I am having better results setting up multiple recordings and that the delete process is taking a lot less time.


If Dish had sent out the new software, you'd see at least 4 threads indicating such. No such threads exist. Check your SysInfo screen to see what your current software is. I doubt it's changed in the last few days.


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## SummitAdvantageRetailer (Feb 20, 2005)

Bump. When is it coming? It's the 25th now...


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