# DP on the brink of disaster?



## Guest (Dec 30, 2002)

Greetings to everyone. I'm new to posting anything here but I've been reading the great information on these forums for a pretty good little while. I just want to take the opportunity to thank everyone for the infinitely helpful resources you all post to this site. A brief history of my DBS experience: I began with a short stint with a Magnavox DTV receiver in '97/98 until an unfortunate and untimely termination from Best Buy. (And while I'm on the subject, I implore all of you to avoid purchasing anything from such an evil and unscrupulous corporation as TBYT ["The Big Yellow Tag" as I like to call it to refrain from uttering the name that I so deeply despise] since you can usually price match any item they advertise at Circuit City    or whatever consumer electronics chain is available in your area. If any among you are employees or fans of TBYT, rest assured I have nothing against you. I only fear you may soon learn of the evil I speak in due time.) Anyway, I excitedly purchased my first DP in '00, on the road to recovery from TBYT, and have been fighting bugs and glitches ever since that have been outweighed by my exuberance for the perfection of the intended, superior usability of a potentially awesome product. I now own a pair of DP's on a single D500 dish and have been through warranty and OOW exchanges more times than I care to count. One of my units, the most recent product of a $60 OOW exchange, is performing nearly flawlessly. The other DP, however, is experiencing significant difficulties. It's afflicted with the familiar no-sound/picture-black-outs when skipping through commercials. Fine and good; there will surely be a fix forthcoming that will undoubtedly result in the introduction of brand new bugs. It's also relentlessly getting stuck trying to contact WebTV on initial power up, which I no longer subscribe to, and coming up with a message that the unit needs to be replaced. A bit of contortionist performance to disconnect and reconnect power to the unit behind my massive living room entertainment center results in an exit to this annoying paradox. But the unique issues are particularly disturbing. First, I cannot watch PPV's, despite the fact that the unit is connected to a functional phone jack. Second, and most discouraging, I'm seeing formatting notes within the home page and PTV screens in place of program names and air times. It doesn't really bother me but I'm afraid this may be a sign of a terminal error in the unit. The sum of all these malfunctions indicate that it may once again be time to replace yet another DP. My question is what do you think I should do this time around? Get another refurbished DP or "upgrade" to a different E* DVR reciever? If so, which one would give me upmost quasi-DP satisfaction with minimal cost? Or is it perhaps time to defect back to DTV and investigate their selection of DVR's and programming options? Any advice you can provide would be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys!


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## yuyevon (Dec 30, 2002)

Apparently I failed to log in after registering for and prior to posting this thread. Sorry about that, but I think I got it right this time. Ironically, not an hour after my posting, the DP in question locked up when the HD failed to spin up. This is a first for this unit, although not for my l-o-n-g line of DP's. A quick un/re-plug of power brought the unit back to life. I know from experience that the first HD failure is seldom the last. To clarify, a doomed HD is highly likely to be my problem, but I lack the skill or courage to switch it out with a new one. My already sad situation seems to have become unexpectedly more desperate!...


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## Chris Blount (Jun 22, 2001)

Hi Yuyevon and welcome to DBSTalk! :hi:

Your experience it not a unique one. The DP has been riddled with bugs since day one. I have 2 DP's myself and both now perform well but not flawlessly. 

My advice to you is to upgrade to a 501 or 508. You can do this at minimal cost assuming that you sell your DP's on EBAY. Many here will try to tell you to get a 721 but those cost upwards of $500 and you asked about a cost effective means to upgrade. The 501 is a nice unit and has most of the functions of a DP.


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## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

Yep sell your DP while yu an and get a 508. Its stable which is more than can be said for the DP a bug ridden pile of nice looking trash...

Nice looking? First quality guide and interface...

Too bad E didnt use it as a starting place for design


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## larrydj (Aug 10, 2002)

I've been having DP problems as well. Just switched to a 721. Expensive, but nice. I agree, it sounds like a hard disk problem. It sounds like key portions of the downloaded software have already been corrupted and lost. You could probably get another HD and re-install the software and see how it performs. My HD started to go when it got hot, so I put a fan near it. This only postponed my eventual switch to the 721.


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## kyoo (Apr 4, 2002)

get the extended warranty for a couple of bucks a month and get them to replace it in 30 days..

I just had one of my DP's replaced.. new one arrived today..

Time to sell 'em on ebay!

oh, and the code glitches that you see popping up is happening to everyone.. their latest software update is really really buggy when it comes to string formatting.. just ignore it.


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