# Don't listen the 921 bashers



## gsartori (Jul 13, 2004)

If you are in the market for a DVR and if you are a DISH subscriber there is no reason to avoid the 921. The 921 has only one major problem with the OTA channels but with the satellite is working perfectly, now why OTA? Well because it is out of their control. Many OTA stations don't have PSIP info and please do some reading before bashing:
http://www.nab.org/scitech/psip/default.asp
Customers have different antennas, the digital signal can be strong but it doesn't mean that it is clean or standard.

I'm not a DISH cheerleader, do some search on the usenet on me and you will see my critiques to DISH as far as 4/5 years ago. I've been a DISH subscriber since early 1996 (we were very few) and at one point I was so fed-up with Charlie that I switched all my channels (excluding ethnical) to DTV. Was my RCA DTC-100 much better? Not a bit, problems never fixed with the panasonic TV signaling, and the same problems with OTA. OTA are a difficult beast, the US DTV standard is crap, but it is what we got and DISH is struggling with the situation of anarchy where any station does pretty much what they want and any customer put up an antenna thinking that is done.

I personally bought the 921 against my will. I rather have digital cable with HDTV DVR now that is available. The DC boxes though have bugs as well, they are a better deal since you don't have to pay $1000 upfront but here in San Diego they don't have the programs from my country and from my wife country like DISH has. The $1000 for us was a tax we paid in order to have our Countries TV. If you already have DISH though you have to know that is possible to have a great DVR and it does the job if you buy the 921. With the 186 SW I don't have any problem at all using it as a satellite DVR, not a glitch, nothing. About the OTA I will let you know but there is very little to do if stations broadcast in a non standard manner. I know, some receiver receive these stations anyway but if I was DISH I would do everything by the books, fixing the SW using standards only before venturing in unpredictible territories.

Gabriele


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## kmcnamara (Jan 30, 2004)

I would agree that, with the exception of the occasional missed timer (which they are currently trying to remedy with a nightly reboot hack), the sat stuff works pretty well finally.

The OTA is a different story. There are still way too many people having way too many problems with OTA after 7 months to think it's acceptable. If other OTA receivers can handle the signal, varied though they may be, the 921 should be able to also after 7 months. If you need reliable OTA reception, think twice about the 921. If you don't care about OTA, the 921 is becoming a pretty good device. 

This isn't a bash, it's an opinion.


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## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

I don't know about the whole premise of this thread, i.e. "the 921 is rock-solid other than the OTA". I think some folks just don't use many of the features and don't notice when some of the minor features don't work correctly (or at all). The 921 has a lot of bugs, some minor, a few not-so-minor.

If you want to see specific things which are wrong and not working correctly, just read over in the 921 forum, or we can post specific examples here. There are certainly things which still do not work correctly above and beyond just OTA. Some of them are just irritating and you learn to live with them, while others make one ask "Why can't this work correctly??".


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## sampatterson (Aug 27, 2002)

I agree, I am very happy with my 921 and have had only really one problem with a bad update that messed up my guide. Otherwise I love both of mine.


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## John Walsh (Apr 22, 2002)

sampatterson said:


> I agree, I am very happy with my 921 and have had only really one problem with a bad update that messed up my guide. Otherwise I love both of mine.


Did the guide get fixed or is it in the same messed up state?


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

It appears to be fixed.


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## gsartori (Jul 13, 2004)

Slordak said:


> I think some folks just don't use many of the features and don't notice when some of the minor features don't work correctly (or at all).
> If you want to see specific things which are wrong and not working correctly, just read over in the 921 forum, or we can post specific examples here. /QUOTE]
> 
> This is so typical: "You don't have big problems hence you are not a power user"
> ...


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## kmcnamara (Jan 30, 2004)

Gabriele,

Slordak wasn't attacking you personally. You appear to be more tolerant of bugs than a lot of us are. Nothing wrong with that.


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## garypen (Feb 1, 2004)

Yea. Do not listeneth to the 921 Bashers, for they are wicked heathens, possesed by demons, and no not of what they speaketh. For their blasphemy, they shall surely perish and spend an eternity in Hell's own flames of pain and despair for their non-belief in God's own DVR. 
Pray for them brothers and sisters, that they may know Charlie, who has chatted for our sins!


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## rokstar66 (Jan 21, 2004)

There is one other small problem... Nobody can buy one!

I ended up defecting to D* and am loving my HD Tivo. I even record OTA without any hickups, which is fortunate because at least 75% of the HD material I watch is OTA.


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## Jerry G (Jul 12, 2003)

garypen said:


> Yea. Do not listeneth to the 921 Bashers, for they are wicked heathens, possesed by demons, and no not of what they speaketh. For their blasphemy, they shall surely perish and spend an eternity in Hell's own flames of pain and despair for their non-belief in God's own DVR.
> Pray for them brothers and sisters, that they may know Charlie, who has chatted for our sins!


Hmmm. I thought that with my 921's inability to deal with OTA and all the rest of the problems, I already was in Hell.


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

Mine works fine with ota now. I have all 3 digital stations locked in with a 88-95 signal and I have a couple of timers set daily that fire fine. Using a terk 44 clip on atenna and am less than 25 miles from the station atennas. 

I don't like the way I have to access the other tuner though. I wish there was a way to hit swap without the pip and make the tuner switch to the other one. If you are in ota mode it won't even allow the pip to work. I have to go into the dvr menu and play a show then access the guide just to get to the other tuner. This is stupid. Now if I am on a satellite sd channel on both tuners it will do pip fine even in hd mode. I tried it last night and it worked but it might have been on 480p mode. 

This happens every time I have to do a reboot: it will reset itself to 480p. I also don't like the fact that if I hit cancel on a show and hit it again on a program recording on the ota tuner it will stop the recording. 

Would like ota guide information and I really don't want to wait till next year to get it. I have a suspicion that Dish will add this info when they finish all the locals in the rest of the country. Then they will just add the ota guide info from the satellite channels from your area. 

Over all the dvr works like my 721 with some work arounds and some minor annoyances . I think the majority of the ota tuner issues are related to the individual stations and how there is no standard to digital ota broadcasting. I also think that there are many variables to the individual antennas that everyone uses. If they were all the same kind and everyone lived within say 25 miles of the station towers ,then we could isolate the problems to the individual stations themselves and work with them to fix the individual problems. 

Maybe the only way to get consistent hd networks is to get digital cable when they add hd networks and then connect them to the ota tuner in the 921. Then you would have consistent signal without very much problems.


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## BurgEnder (Aug 15, 2003)

I definitely feel your pain with trying to receive OTA in the San Diego area. Our television xmitters are in 3 different locations-our UPN and WB are in Tijuana for goodness sake. And the hilly terrain doesn't help matters either.Having said that, I still receive every local OTA channel except CBS using an 811 & a very old piece of junk external antenna, which is strange considering the CBS xmitter is right next to the ABC one on Mt.Soledad which I receive just fine.


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## brennt (Sep 18, 2003)

rokstar66 said:


> There is one other small problem... Nobody can buy one!


Mine was purchased last Thursday and should arrive on Monday.



Jerry G said:


> Hmmm. I thought that with my 921's inability to deal with OTA and all the rest of the problems, I already was in Hell.


I'm hoping it will be Heaven for me. Time will tell. In the mean time, I'm making sure my ebay sellers account is active, just in case.


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## larrystotler (Jun 6, 2004)

I think the thing that a lot of people are missing out on is that Dish didn't have to put the OTA tuner in the HD boxes. The main reason they did was because you really can't get any HD locals over the sat yet. IN my case the OTA would be fairly useless since I live 70 miles from DC on the other side of a mountain(of course, I don't have an HD TV, much less an HD receiever) I agree with Charlie about the fact that there really isn't enough compelling content to make it worth it for ME to buy an HD set and get an HD receiver. I would have to get the 921 since I have all DVRs, and she would KILL me if I wasted that kind of money for TV right now. She has finnally quit complaining about the $249 I paid to upgrade to the 721, so I don't wanna push it if you know what I mean.

Also, just how much of the OTA locals are actually TRUE HD? I've been wondering about that.


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## sampatterson (Aug 27, 2002)

John Walsh said:


> Did the guide get fixed or is it in the same messed up state?


The guide is fixed after the update. Must have just been corruption as was speculated.


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## jsa_usenet (Oct 7, 2003)

Bug or no bugs, I just got my 2nd 921. I guess that says something.


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## garypen (Feb 1, 2004)

Yeah. It says that you apparently had $2000 burning a hole in your pocket.


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## SpenceJT (Dec 27, 2002)

Well after receiving 921 #3 I have no complaints!

921 #1 - DOA
921 #2 - Defective 8VSB Module rendering it incapable of receiving OTA programming
921 #3 - So far so good! All OTA (ATV & DTV) locked and loaded.

...now I'm afraid to reboot it for fear of something else failing!


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## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

Overall, the 921 has some definite capabilities that make it a nice unit. A large HD, digital OTA tuning, two tuners, etc. I enjoy my unit and I have to say that these capabilities make it nice, but there are a lot of bugs and they really can start to get irritating if one doesn't know about them (or know about the work-arounds).

Gsartori, I didn't mean to indicate that you weren't using it correctly or weren't observant in some way, just that I want to give my two cents and say that there are some noticeable bugs. Depending on how a given person uses the unit, these bugs may or may not interfere with proper enjoyment of it.

For example, the bugs with Rewind/Fast Forward/Pause often irk me. There is a set of several bugs having to do with these features. First is the "30 Second Skip" which doesn't actually skip 30 seconds on material which is in 720p or 1080i. Second is the green progress bar area not being filled in at some points in time during usage of these functions, usually when pausing. Third is how one can sometimes get the slow motion rewind or slow motion fast forward to mess up and act improperly. Are these deal breakers? Probably not, but they can be irritating.


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## Kagato (Jul 1, 2002)

The 921 misses about half my timers. Rock solid Indeed! Even more irrating, the red light comes on making you think it's recording, but it reality it's not. The 921 is a "wait and see" at best.


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## FarNorth (Nov 27, 2003)

No OTA stations here so that whole side of the discussion doesn't matter. As for the rest, my 921 is 98-99% reliable and getting better all the time. If I had to, I'd buy another tomorrow.


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## Cholly (Mar 22, 2004)

larrystotler said:


> Also, just how much of the OTA locals are actually TRUE HD? I've been wondering about that.


It depends upon the local network affiliates. In my area, the CBS affiliate has the major market share and doesn't broadcast ANY HD. The only HD OTA locals here are ABC and PBS. Both are operating under temporary authorizations, and not at full power. To get an idea of what OTA HD content is available in your area, go to Titantv.com -- select the digital tab, and select All Hi-Def (HD) from the category box.


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## larrystotler (Jun 6, 2004)

Cholly said:


> It depends upon the local network affiliates. In my area, the CBS affiliate has the major market share and doesn't broadcast ANY HD. The only HD OTA locals here are ABC and PBS. Both are operating under temporary authorizations, and not at full power. To get an idea of what OTA HD content is available in your area, go to Titantv.com -- select the digital tab, and select All Hi-Def (HD) from the category box.


Like I said, that's a compelling reason to have HD, isn't it?


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## Cholly (Mar 22, 2004)

larrystotler said:


> Like I said, that's a compelling reason to have HD, isn't it?


My point was "it depends on the local area". In some of the major markets, there's plenty of prime time HDTV programming from ABC and CBS, and PBS also provides a fair amount. In those areas, you might have a compelling reason. If I were in your situation, I'd be inclined to have a "wait and see" attitude. If the 921 were available at half the price, I'd go for it in a heartbeat. Instead, I'm waiting for a 721 to be delivered and installed. Now, I'm looking forward to the 942, hoping that the production version will have two OTA tuners rather than the one shown in the prototype.


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## sleepy hollow (Aug 25, 2003)

garypen said:


> Yea. Do not listeneth to the 921 Bashers, for they are wicked heathens, possesed by demons, and no not of what they speaketh. For their blasphemy, they shall surely perish and spend an eternity in Hell's own flames of pain and despair for their non-belief in God's own DVR.
> Pray for them brothers and sisters, that they may know Charlie, who has chatted for our sins!


My, my, aren't we touchy? Ok to bash the great evil Charlie, but no one should dare question your right to whine up a storm.

Well, I've had my 921 since Feb and I like it a whole lot. I do not happen to believe everything the whiners say about the 921, just because they have deigned to condescend to offer their profundities to the great unwashed amongst us. I happen to be glad many of you are only Internet acquaintances of mine. Anything more would likely be most insufferable as your behavior is rather disagreeable at best.

I find it ironic that we all are such experts on what should constitute the standard of behavior for Charlie, but for some reason cannot seem to hold ourselves to any standard of behavior at all. Why just because Charlie has taken $1000 of our precious treasure, we have license to say whatever we want about him, personally and professionally. But if anyone speaks words that might cast doubt on the veracity of our claims to righteousness, we mock and deride and strut our insulting stuff for all to see.

Most unfortunate, if you ask me, but then who am I? I like my 921.


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## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

I have a chance to buy a 921 from a friend. he claims it works fine but needs the $. We are contemplating this presently. Worst that could happen is cancel serivice and sell it off at a small profit.

what do you think?


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Bob Haller said:


> I have a chance to buy a 921 from a friend. he claims it works fine but needs the $. We are contemplating this presently. Worst that could happen is cancel serivice and sell it off at a small profit.
> 
> what do you think?


With your luck on equipment Bob, I would suggest that you don't do it. It would be interesting to see what happens to a known working box as it gets placed into a environment where Dish receivers go to die, but then I would hate unleash your pain on an already battered beta group. 

<tongue and check.. but i would still suggest that you don't make the jump >


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## sleepy hollow (Aug 25, 2003)

Bob Haller said:


> I have a chance to buy a 921 from a friend. he claims it works fine but needs the $. We are contemplating this presently. Worst that could happen is cancel serivice and sell it off at a small profit.
> 
> what do you think?


2 things I would do:

(1) Visit his home and see the 921 working. Be from Missouri on this one so you know for sure it is working. 
(2) Call dish and discuss what you are planning to do. Make sure they will stand behind both the receiver as a second-hand purchase and the warranty. It should still be in effect. Also, you should get some satisfaction assurance on the programming charge. For example, if not happy with service in 30 days you can cancel without penalty.

If those 2 things check out, then I would be fairly confident in taking the plunge. No guarantees, of course, but then what things in life are? The 921 works. Don't let the curmudgeons bother you. It is not perfect, but it is a very useful and enjoyable machine despite some things that do not work as advertised. I have to say I would have paid $1000 for it if they had only promised what it currently does deliver (which is about 90% of what was promised IMHO).


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## garypen (Feb 1, 2004)

sleepy hollow said:


> My, my, aren't we touchy? Ok to bash the great evil Charlie, but no one should dare question your right to whine up a storm.
> 
> Well, I've had my 921 since Feb and I like it a whole lot. I do not happen to believe everything the whiners say about the 921, just because they have deigned to condescend to offer their profundities to the great unwashed amongst us. I happen to be glad many of you are only Internet acquaintances of mine. Anything more would likely be most insufferable as your behavior is rather disagreeable at best.
> 
> ...


Um...you might want to stop at the Wal-Mart on the way home tonight, and pick up a sense of humor. They're on sale.


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## sleepy hollow (Aug 25, 2003)

garypen said:


> Um...you might want to stop at the Wal-Mart on the way home tonight, and pick up a sense of humor. They're on sale.


Fair enough, ol' chap, but I have to say that insults are easy, kind of like potty humor and Hollywood. You'd think they would be able to think up better things than wee-wee jokes and ten different words to use for the hindquarters to make people laugh. Good humor is subtle and clever. Oh, yes, and edifying. Edifying is a concept that is out of fashion I guess. Instead we all want to look and sound like we are retarded - which is an insult to retarded people, or in a circus sideshow - which is denegrating to the hard working circus sideshow people.

Perhaps I do have a sense of humor after all.


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## garypen (Feb 1, 2004)

Perhaps not.


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## sleepy hollow (Aug 25, 2003)

garypen said:


> Perhaps not.


I'm done.
:soapbox:


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## Throwbot (Dec 24, 2003)

garypen said:


> Um...you might want to stop at the Wal-Mart on the way home tonight, and pick up a sense of humor. They're on sale.


I stopped in Walmart on my way home, out of stock, Oh well it is America! On the subject of edifying. You might want to check out the following from your local library.
"21 self edifying things you can do while simultaneously rebooting your 921, and wondering why the woman you married now seems to have sprouted an Adam's apple that makes her look as if she's constantly trying to swallow a ballcock, all without leaving the comfort of your couch."


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## balanceok (Jul 22, 2004)

In spite of what I've read on these boards, I was anxious to test the HDTV capability of our new 50" Panasonic LCD Projection TV. 

On Tuesday of last week, I called around local Dish vendors here in the Tulsa, OK area and found only one store with the 921, and he only had one left. The installer was at my home by Thursday afternoon and the system is up and running. I haven't had any problems at all.

The HDTV channels look great and I've never watched so much Discovery channel in my life. It will still be great when Dish offers even more channels. Will I be able to get any football games in HDTV?

I confess, I am not a techno-wiz, so there may be some things I'm missing that I'm not even aware of. Are there any features that I should test to make sure everything is working right besides the record features?


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

Welcome aboard, balanceok!

I'd say just start using the thing - but NOT for OTA. OTA is where almost all the trouble is.


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## David_Levin (Apr 22, 2002)

Over-The-Air success (or lack of), is very dependant on the specifics of your particular local broadcasters. You can give it a try, just don't be surprised if it has "issues".

If things get too weird, delete the OTA stations and reboot the box.


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## guruka (Dec 27, 2003)

SimpleSimon said:


> I'd say just start using the thing - but NOT for OTA. OTA is where almost all the trouble is.


Just gotta chime in that I'm getting all the OTA DT locals (and I'm over 60 miles away from the xmitters) and they all record fine and never miss a timer. No problems at all on the current software rev.

.....G


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## JM Anthony (Nov 16, 2003)

SimpleSimon said:


> Welcome aboard, balanceok!
> 
> I'd say just start using the thing - but NOT for OTA. OTA is where almost all the trouble is.


I've had my 921 for a couple of months now and have had zero problems with OTA programming.


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## balanceok (Jul 22, 2004)

SimpleSimon said:


> I'd say just start using the thing - but NOT for OTA. OTA is where almost all the trouble is.


I guess I should have pointed out that we still get our local channels through an antenna in the attic rather than through Dish. Since we live up high the picture quality is great.

We do however get the Denver channels over Dish. We haven't seen any problems with watching these channels, but I haven't tried to record them yet. I'm assuming that "OTA" is a reference to local channel broadcasts.

So far, so good.


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