# 942 Bricked



## edub52 (Mar 27, 2005)

It started Friday night. The 942 we kept as a SD receiver in our bedroom after the forced upgrade to the 622 showed all channels in green. Called Dish the next morning and learned they've cut off support for the 942. While they haven't fully migrated over to MPEG4, with some older receivers still function, the 942 (at least ours and apparently 4000 others according to the supervisor I spoke to) is dead.

A few things infuriate me about this. First, there was no notice. One could argue we saw it coming, but Dish handled this in a very cavalier manner--as if they don't have competition. I can guarantee you that if the company that hauls their network traffic to their satellite uplink sites had arbitrarily decided to do work outside a planned and advised maintenance window, or make a change that materially affected them without notice, some VP at Dish would be screaming bloody murder to some VP at said telecom. There would be threats of cancellation and demands for service credit. Yes, there are issues of scale, but Dish is still a customer and by no means the largest customer, so there's a certain hypocrisy to all this that irks me. Then there's the fact that many of us bought 942s because there were so few to rent early on, and now that equity is lost, with the added insult that we can either buy or rent another receiver to replace what was a perfectly functional unit. You would think Dish would attempt to retain good will by offering to waive rental fees for a year or two, which is probably the equivalent of what they net on the sale of a receiver, but no. Way to go, Dish.


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## peano (Feb 1, 2004)

I guess you didn't read the letter they sent you?


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## edub52 (Mar 27, 2005)

Nope, never got a letter.


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## BattleZone (Nov 13, 2007)

The free upgrade to the (much better) 622 was supposed to remove the 942 from circulation. It's been known for nearly a year that a number of receivers would no longer be supported, including the infringing-on-TiVo-Patent receivers. You should have been told when you decided to keep the 942 active that it was only going to be servicable until early 2009. The letters that were sent to you to upgrade your 942 spelled that out as well. Obviously you got those because you got your upgrade.

Also, you pay exactly the same monthly fee on a leased receiver vs. an owned receiver, even if the fee is labeled differently. Dish recognized that you paid a lot for that receiver, and that it was being obsoleted, which is why they gave you the free upgrade. That met their obligation to you pretty thoroughly IMO. Sorry if you feel otherwise, but expecting them to do any more isn't really reasonable.


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## Michael P (Oct 27, 2004)

I briefly had a 942 last year as a replacement for a long line of 921's. When I activated this 942 it had the previous user's locals (for Providence, RI) in the EPG in red. Nothing the techs could do could remove these Providence stations out of my guide. They offered another replacement but I declined. I said I'd just use the "all sub" mode of the EPG.

A few days later a 622 showed up on my doorstep. No letter, just the 622 with instructions on how to set it up. Initially I was leery to activate it, as I did not want to incur the HD enabling fee. It turned out they waived the HD enabling fee so all is well.

The point in all this is I did not get a letter either. I believe I own this 622, as all the previous receivers going back to my original 921 were mine. There were no commitments made regarding the upgrade and I never had an installer out to my house (I already had a 61.5 dish for Sky Angel which went away just before all this happened).

I believe this was all driven by the TiVO case. Both the 921 and 942 were infringing models so they had to get it "off the street".


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