# One common thread to E bugs.



## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

This ISNT TO SLAM E!

I have a theory about E bugs. From the very beginning, and the old 4000 not everyone has troubles. It appears it NEVER EFFECTS every box.

I wonder if the root of the trouble isnt software so much as poor quality control specs on the components?

All equiptement is NEVER exactly the same. Components interreact in wierd ways, even two of anything coming off the assembly line together.

Perhaps the software departments real trouble is this?

Even back in the days of the 4000 blinkouts we were told certain chipsets were prone to cause troubles. 

DPs were a great example of this. I was told they have rooms full of various production runs of receivers they test software on.

Anyhow this might be the cause.....


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## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

Meanwhile, out in the real world, over 9 million DishNetwork 
families enjoy their satellite TV service without giving a 
thought to the little black box that makes it all possible.


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## Neutron (Oct 2, 2003)

Bob Haller said:


> This ISNT TO SLAM E!
> 
> I have a theory about E bugs. From the very beginning, and the old 4000 not everyone has troubles. It appears it NEVER EFFECTS every box.
> 
> ...


Bob, are you sure the problems you're having aren't self-inflicted?

I have a DISH 500, with DP, a 510, and 2 301's, and I've never, EVER had any problems with the equipment, billing, or service.


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## rcwilcox (Jan 20, 2003)

Neutron said:


> Bob, are you sure the problems you're having aren't self-inflicted?
> 
> I have a DISH 500, with DP, a 510, and 2 301's, and I've never, EVER had any problems with the equipment, billing, or service.


In fairness to Bob I had to reboot two days ago as it had locked up and yesterday I could not erase a recording. This is frustrating. Having said that I would buy it again.


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## dbronstein (Oct 21, 2002)

I have a theory about the E* bugs as well - they all hang out at Bob's house.


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## KenIdaho (Dec 4, 2002)

Until I was laid off I worked as a quality engineer for a computer manufacturer. What Bob is saying could be the case. Bt don’t underestimate the possibility that it is software related. There are so many different factors in the software interactions that it could well be software. Also good robust software should take into account minor differences in hardware. The more features they add to units DVR etc the more complicated it is.  

I don’t know if they rewrite the code for each new generation of receiver or if they try to modify the one they have. Both present problems. Having had dish for 3 some odd years and lurking here as time allows I would say that they have a problem in managing there development process. They are always late on projects. The units normally are shipped with out all the features that are promised at least in the first shipments. The units are always buggy to start with. These are all symptoms of poor management of the new product design process. It appears from a long distance they are letting marketing run the process not the engineers that should know what they are doing.  

KenIdaho


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## Bill R (Dec 20, 2002)

Having been involved in many software/hardware projects (as an Engineering Manager) I can tell you that it is much more complex than most people realize. I think that *KenIdaho* put his finger on the problem when he said "These are all symptoms of poor management of the new product design process. It appears from a long distance they are letting marketing run the process not the engineers that should know what they are doing". I have run into that several times and in one very important project (the E911 project in the early 80s) I had to go to upper level management and convince them to let Engineering determine procedures, benchmarks, and roll-out dates (marketing wanted to control all that and they had no understanding on what was involved) and their "proposed dates" were unrealistic. Their roll-out dates were based on their goal to beat the other cities in their 911 roll-out. I made a lot of enemies in the marketing department and I still dislike and don't trust marketing people (I think that shows in some of my posts).

I think that DISH has many of the same problems and they really need to let the engineering department set realistic dates for products.

The problem with software working fine on some receivers and not working well on other receivers has its roots in another area, quality control. When you are dealing with software design that depends a lot on the tolerances of the chips used in those boxes (and ALL software does) there needs to be very tight specs up front and there needs to be tight controls and good testing when changes are made (new run of receivers with updated chip sets). Another problem at Echostar is a GOOD beta test program. WAY too many bugs are being released that should have been caught in Alpha or Beta testing. Some of that could be due to the pressure to get the software out (with known bugs) but if that is the case, that is a management problem too. As Ken would likely agree with, quality control engineers are a very important part of an engineering group. It sure looks like Echostar is not devoting enough resources to that important detail.

To an outsider, it appears that Charlie is running his engineering department too lean. He needs to hire some really good people and pay them well. I do know that turnover has been somewhat of a problem at Echostar and that need to change too. DISH is a big company now and they are still running parts of it like they did 5 years ago. When DBS was new people would put up with bugs (DirecTV had them too) but now the pubic is not willing to tolerate poor software and will vote with their wallets.

Bob Haller,

Good subject and an interesting thread. I sure hope that someone at DISH reads it.


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## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

Thanks bill.


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## KenIdaho (Dec 4, 2002)

I agree with the comments that Bill R made. 

Kenidaho


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## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

As many of us are techies, we tend to extrapolate the isolated "bug" incidents reported here and elsewhere so that we, the vast minority of E* subs think that everyone else is having similar problems.

It just ain't so!

If a majority of E* subs _were_ afflicted by these problems, DishNetwork would crash and burn like one of their birds in a deteriorating orbit.

I must confess that lately I have been secretly snickering at recent reports of the 721 having problems.

Why, you might ask?

Because I have two of the much-maligned DishPlayers that have been performing almost flawlessly for over three years. So believe me when I say that the majority of Dish subs would have no knowledge of the problems you are talking about.


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## boba (May 23, 2003)

Nick as a dealer I disagree with you problems are more prevalent than DISH lets on, DISH also denies to the customer they are having problems. Last spring DISH finally admitted to dealers that they were having problems with DISH PRO TWINS. All customers who have a Dish Pro Twin with the number CCS9601 are eligible for replacement no 90 day time limit. These were supposed to fail with high temperatures they would lose channels but have good signal strengths. Well I have replaced 3 in the last two days with temperatures in the 60s DISH Techs have told the customers something is broken at your Dish call your dealer. They know what the problem is but won't tell the customer. This is a perfect example of quality control where some component was changed that affected the longterm life of the product. These were installed between sept.2002 and probably June to July of this year.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

As a software developer that works on embedded systems i am all too familar with what Bill mentioned. Contrary to what a lot of people believe, major companies do not have the software practices in place that can result in less than optimal products. 

My feeling here is there is some of what Nick said and a lot of what Bill said going on. Also, the one thing that hardware companies tend to forget is the software aspect of things both in terms of diagnostics and testing. My experience has been that automated testing is not done very commonly and test tools are an afterthought that is not put into the schedule. If I was to make guess it is a combination of a number of things that E needs to look at. 

1) The engineering process. is it as tight as it should be. 
2) Component qualification. 
3) Testing. 
4) Product Planning. 

Based on the lateness of the 921, I strongly feel that they are not properly planning a project and most likely are light on resources like a lot of companies currently are. Lots of companies have scaled down and as a result people are doing a lot of task switching and corners are being cut. 

Like I said before in a thread, I think problems are heightened here because of the nature of these types of forums and they don't fully reflect reality. 

Also, this is the third thread I have commented on recently about software quality and Dish. Thought I find them interesting, I feel there is a another motive for these threads and its not just curiosity.


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## dbronstein (Oct 21, 2002)

Nick said:


> As many of us are techies, we tend to extrapolate the isolated "bug" incidents reported here and elsewhere so that we, the vast minority of E* subs think that everyone else is having similar problems.
> 
> It just ain't so!
> 
> ...


I totally agree. If the problems were as people here make them out to be, customers would be leaving Dish in droves. It seems that everyone here seems to lose sight that the vast majority of Dish's customers don't know the first thing about any of the stuff people talk about here and even if they do, they don't care. Heck, I've been a sub for 3.5 years now and I never even heard of a Dishplayer until I started coming here, let alone know that there were problems with them.

Dennis


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## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

WeeJavaDude said:


> .
> 
> Also, this is the third thread I have commented on recently about software quality and Dish. Thought I find them interesting, I feel there is a another motive for these threads and its not just curiosity.


Honestly my motive for causing such a fuss is the HOPE that SOMEONE AT E NOTICES AND FIXES THE PROBLEM!

Did you know if you call and report a lost tuner 2 E advanced tech will tell you its not a known problem on the 721. While we all know its quite common.

My ONLY motive is to get this fixed.................


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Bob, 

Well I fully understand the frustration about a bug having seen more than my share in the past. However, creating separate threads addressing the same topic in a slightly different way tends to dilute the power of the original thought. It comes across as a smear tatic and does not hold as much weight. Just my opinion.


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## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

WeeJavaDude said:


> Bob,
> 
> Well I fully understand the frustration about a bug having seen more than my share in the past. However, creating separate threads addressing the same topic in a slightly different way tends to dilute the power of the original thought. It comes across as a smear tatic and does not hold as much weight. Just my opinion.


 Well said.

Something about crying wolf comes to mind...


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## Randy_B (Apr 23, 2002)

I don't think I could disagree more Nick.

Boba has hit it. Dish's philosophy has ALWAYS been to minimalize an issue a consumer has with their box. I personally know of more than a dozen Dish subscribers that have all called in about the same issue and EACH time the CSR sez "Huh, first time that has been reported. Have you rebooted your systems recently." I also know this from speaking with a VP about the DP. His first response to me was, (direct quote that I wrote down to save because it struck me as sooo funny) "I am sorry YOUR Dishplayer SEEMS to be having a problem." It took nearly 30 minutes on the phone with this guy before he even acknowledged the DishPlayer was cauing them "some difficulties." 

Dish's base response is to get you to reboot which buys them time. People seem to be willing to accept 80% reliability. As long as their box eventually comes back, they move on.

That is why I was particularly struck by Dave's note on the 6000 problem. That is the very first time in the 7 yrs I have been with Dish that I can remember them publically acknowledging an issue. Good first step.

Bob's question is also one I have thought about in the past. I had 2 DP, exact same boxes, bought within 6 months of each other (so probably close in manuf dates as well) and except for some periods where a corrupted guide was causing issues, those 2 boxes never exhibited the same problems. I have 2 of the same model Dells, and they both behave very similar. We will never the answer, but on this one question, I think Bob has asked a good question.


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## dbronstein (Oct 21, 2002)

Not to mention if you want to call Dish's attention to a problem, you're probably better off contacting them directly instead of just posting it on a message board.

Dennis


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## Randy_B (Apr 23, 2002)

dbronstein said:


> Not to mention if you want to call Dish's attention to a problem, you're probably better off contacting them directly instead of just posting it on a message board.
> 
> Dennis


Absolutely. Everyone tends to equate discussing a bug here (or elsewhere) with reporting it to tech support. That is a bad philosophy. As Nick said above, consumers need tio "burn" up the lines. E* has no obligation to read or heed the threads on the boards.


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## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

I've been some what quite lately on this but problems but of my 508s are having, lets see

Remote freezes, Loss of video, Loss of audio, Menus load in black, periodic random rebooting, skipping on playback.

And the stupid things didn't even adjust for the time change a few weeks ago. That's three times in a row for my 508 and twice for my moms. IMO, that is unacceptable, for a DVR, just like a VCR I had to manually update my timers. I can't even imagine dealing with the 501 when it first came out. And no way in hell would I ever pay Dish $5 a month for the 'privilege' to use one of their DVRs. Sure Dish may have some good things going, but they need to start writing decent software. I'm not saying Replay and TiVo are flawless, but if those two companies can write decent feature rich software, why can't Echostar do that, and maybe I'd stop referring to my 508 as a DishVCR.


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

But they do read these message boards daily. In fact I talked to one of them in the field engineering department and he said he personally reads them everyday for info about problems, opinions, and ideas for future promos etc.

The ideas posted on these boards do get to the top dogs at Dish and the smear tactics usually get dismissed as what they are: a disgrunteled minority of customers who are looking for something for nothing.

Just like in the real world of face to face contact , you would not spew the kind of venom that some post here unless they are looking for people to either tune out or stand up and fight. Either way this is not the way to conduct your business. If you want to make your point , be polite concise and professional . Rambeling on and on about all your problems just makes those in power tune out after a while. No body likes a crybaby .

E-mail them at feedback @echostar.com or [email protected]. Life is to short to be so bitter and agry about your situation. Do something positive to change it or switch to the competition. The pity party is really getting old.


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## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

I call and report my problems. They told me 721 lost tuner 2 isnt a known bug.. yeah sure.

Mine is NOT a smear campaign. I post the new bugs I find to help others, and lately in the hopes getting the bugs some attention, its getting worse.

Since were heavy users we tend to discover these problems first. But in all cases but one others can reproduce them at will.

The ONLY problem I had that no one else had with replacement 721s getting the same lost tuner. Tonight it looks like someone else found it. I feel bad for them but now its a known bug. E advanced tech support admitted it occurs to dishpro users, great signal strength lost tuner two, caused by software issues.


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## dbronstein (Oct 21, 2002)

Bob Haller said:


> Mine is NOT a smear campaign. I post the new bugs I find to help others, and lately in the hopes getting the bugs some attention, its getting worse.


Riiiggghht. Posts like "Dish is in crisis!!" are just about reporting bugs. Please.


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## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

No they are in the hopes ANYONE at E cares enough to look atr things.

Remember posters here agree the old 721 software was better that is less buggy and prefered.


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

Actually I found that all the initial bugs I saw at first are now gone. The frame by frame is working again . The way to do timers changed but I now know how that works to . In fact the only problems I still have is that I occasionaly loose my caller id just like before , and my inactivity mode doesnt work like on the 508/510 model. I think it would have been good if Dish would put out an instructional video to all 721 dvrs to explain these changes and how they work, but I adapted and am now satisified with the new changes. I would like the inactivity mode to work as I think that is a good feature to save the hard drive and I would love it if my caller id option worked all the time but, I just reboot if I see it's not working and it comes back. 

Bob lets not turn these postings into another original dishplayer attack. The 721 is not like the original dishplayer 7100/7200 series receivers. Does it have some minor problems that can be worked out in the future? Yes . But I think they will come in time.

As far as your personal setup , why don't you call or write Charlie Ergan and see if they can send someone from Dish to come out to your house and set you up with all new wiring cables and new 721 and all the switches you need to fix your situation. It would be worth this if it fixes your problems. 

Keep ranting in these postings and trying to bad mouth Dish is going to get you no where . People will tune you out on this board as well as Dish. Dish wants you to be happy I'm sure , give them another chance to fix your problems. I hope it works so you can go on and focus on something else other than the 721. Please don't buy a 921 since it is based on this same software. I really don't want to hear all the problems that you are having with this receiver unless you have gone the extra mile to get Charlie and Dish a chance to fix them. 

If they do fix them please write the positive results. Lets give equal time for the good a company does as well as the wrong. No one company or person is perfect.


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## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

My 508s run fine, presently all the bugs my 721 have are software related that came with the latest download. These have been minimized by my rebooting my 721 every morning. Jen commented yesterday hey its working better. These are the SAME bugs others are reporting here.

My cables were all replaced twice, both twin LNBs are new, the dp34 switch is new too. Theres nothing left to replace. Even the grounding blocks were replaced. I swapped the UPS with the other one just oin the off chance it was causing some wierd issues/

I had a friend of mine look at everything he installs sats part time and said everything looks good. He recommended I get D Tivos.....

At this point theres nothing to be gained by futher efforts. but thanks for trying to help.


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## KenIdaho (Dec 4, 2002)

I think some of you are missing my point about dish have product development problems. I don’t have enough information to say weather it is software hard ware or a combination of both (which is probably the case). I also agree that the testing is probably not robust enough. This not only from a beta type test but also production testing. 

My point was that the process is not well managed. I was not referring to the minor bugs what I was referring to is the overall problem. Take the 921 for example. I’m doing this from memory so please don’t jump on me if some of the dates are off by a little time. The 921 was announced almost a year ago. It Won awards at I believe the CES show. I think the first ship date was in July. They are not shipping. The units were to have fire wire. They will not have this until several months after the first shipment. I will believe the dates when they ship and are working. If I remember correctly there is another main feature that was going to be on the 921 that will not be shipped. I would be willing to bet that the 921 will not all work correctly. If you look at al the Dish DVR products other than the 508- 510 which was just a larger hard drive then the 501 there have been similar problems. These when they are all classic signs when they occur that the process is not being managed. My master’s final paper is on the new design process and how to manage it. From the out side I can only speculate to what the specific problems are. I still feel that it is too much of a drive from marketing. But that is a very high level to get to the nuts and bolts of the problem they would need some one to come in and take a close look at the problem and make some changes.

KenIdaho


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## DishDude1 (Apr 13, 2002)

how about the internet access the 721 was supposed to have? :lol:


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## valand_krisban (Oct 23, 2003)

From the results seen so far, the issues show nearly complete Marketing control of the process.

A theoretical process (that I have personally been a part of, for other companies; not fact for E* AFAIK):

Marketing says: we need a box to do a,b, and c, and we're sure to sell tons of them because that's what we think people want.

Manufacturing Engineering says: ok, that will take us x amount of time to build up the tooling and setup the production line.

Hardware Development says: ok that will take us x amount of time to design the boards and get the parts procured.

Then Marketing tells Software Development and QA: We have to ship the unit after Manufacturing and Hardware Eng are done in order to meet a certain go-to-market date so we beet out the competition.

Software Dev says: We need twice that time to complete the software, get it QAd, and resolve most of the bugs that show up.

Marketing says: It still has to ship on that date.

Software Dev says: ok, but we won't be able to QA it well, and it will have issues.

Maketing says: As long as it mostly works, and we meet the date, sounds good.

The customers are then used for QA, thus saving the company the precious time, and the need for the appropriate amount of resources (a cost savings side benefit as well).

The only thing that can stop this is for consumers to remove the company's incentives for operating in such a fashion...don't continue to buy into it, and the decreased revenue will eventually drive the changes needed, hopefully. If not, then the consumer will still benefit from the decrease in stress and the increase in free time that was once spent providing free QA.

There are those consumers that like to perfom the QA free of charge, I don't mind it when I decide to spend time doing it, but not all consumers want to provide that service. I don't like providing that service when it is imposed upon me, not of my own free will.

EORant


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## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

Sure appears to fit what we know. Its sad the 921 delaY has been so long the chipset doesnt support both high def and rf output at the same time. Theres serios issues when stuff becomes obsolete before its even released. 

Not slamming them just a observation.....


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Bob Haller said:


> Sure appears to fit what we know. Its sad the 921 delaY has been so long the chipset doesnt support both high def and rf output at the same time. Theres serios issues when stuff becomes obsolete before its even released.
> 
> Not slamming them just a observation.....


921 obsolete or the chipset? Has the chipset been end of lifed or the fact that it does not support both RF and high Def make it obsolete in your eyes? No not slamming at all and as for the 921 release.. If I recall there was rumors of it shipping in February then July, but I never saw anything official from Dish until recently.


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## Randy_B (Apr 23, 2002)

*KenIdaho* said


> My point was that the process is not well managed.


*valand_krisban* said


> From the results seen so far, the issues show nearly complete Marketing control of the process.


 After 7 yrs of observation as a Dish customer, I think you both hit the significant problem. E* could turn that around, question is do they have the willingness?


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