# Tips and Warnings for new 921 owner



## Ben Hodson (Mar 10, 2005)

I have 2 921's and a 811 being installed tomorrow. I am a current dish subscriber with a 6000 and the oldest SD dvr Dish offered. I am swapping out all my existing equipment for the new stuff. I am kind of overwhelmed by the number of issues I see on this forum and I am having a hard time figuring our what are current issues and what are issues that have been fixed. Is there anything that should or should not be done with installation that will help with reliability? Is there a consolidated list of open issues that gets updated regularly or is it the bugs report forum that will show that? I will apologize now for being new just to get that out of the way.

Ben


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

Ben-

First of all, yes there is one very important thing you can do to make sure your 921 does not have some of the problems mentioned in these threads-

You can make sure your satellite and OTA signals are strong and steady. Be sure you have both coax feeds to your Sat A and Sat B input. YES! You MUST have both sat feeds connected unless you use the latest (expensive) DishPro stuff that is specifically designed to allow for a single coax feed via the use of special DishPro combiner / splitter hardware. As for the OTA antenna- Make certain the signals from all stations are strong and steady.

Beyond that you will still have a myriad of issues that plague the 921. It seems that as much as some of us want to believe issues have been fixed, others still report observations of them after the so called bug fix has been downloaded. No logical explanation for this has surfaced. I was one who had very few problems with the 921 than most until I took the L211 version in December. With that software my 921 became unusable. I went without it's use until March 1st when the L212 download fixed those issues. While it is not perfect, it is back to where it was before L211. Unfortunately, that's my story and not everyones. Many are having same issues after the L212 and there is no explanation. Essentially, you have purchased a highly unreliable piece of hardware where your experience may range from no problems at all to so bad that you just can't bear it. I wish I knew the answer but I don't I can only observe the reports and assume that these are not all crazy people making them. I know I had serious fundamental problems with the 921 until the most recent download so I can empathize with anyone experiencing trouble. 
There is one thing you should learn to do if you do start to experience problems,. any problems, and that is learn to do a power cord reboot procedure. That would be to pull the power cord for 3-5 minutes, plug back in and wait for boot up. Sometimes these reboot procedures have to be performed more than once. There are other short cut versions of the reboot but they aren't as complete as the power cord reboot mentioned.
Good luck and I wish you well with your 921s. Remember, its only TV!


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## Ben Hodson (Mar 10, 2005)

Tahnks for the info Don. I was lucky enough to get dish to upgrade all my stuff to the new dish pro stuf so maybe that will help me have agood experience. I am not that hopeful now however.


Ben


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## erasmu (Nov 17, 2003)

Ben,

If you are getting a good deal financially on the 921s, I think you will be pleased. I purchased my 921 right before the prices were slashed (very poor timing) but am generally satisfied. The 921 is honestly not as reliable as my 721. However, most of my recordings come out fine. I have found improvements in operation of my 921 on each software upgrade from L188 to L211 to the current L212. I know others have not seen the same results. I expect L213 (due sometime this month) to make further improvements. Initially I suggest making backup recordings where possible and deleting those when you know the primary one turned out properly. In my case, when important shows are programmed on my 921, I ususally set them up on my 721 as well. Obviously I plan to watch them on the HD if they turn out. I think I have had two occasions (over about five or six months) where I had to fall back on the 721 recording. You will learn the quirks of your 921s after some use. Certain things are more likely to cause problems. Simultaneously and consecutive timers seem to be more likely to cause issues. For me, because the 721 is available and the 921 only has one OTA tuner anyway, I seldom do the simultaneous recordings. That may be a reason I have few problems. I also put my 921 in standby every night to allow the automatic soft reboots. Having an HD DVR to me is worth the quirks I have to deal with. I may buy another 921, if I can get a great price. I hope you will feel the same way. Good luck.


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## Jon Spackman (Feb 7, 2005)

I agree with Don,

Its only TV! It all boils down to expectations. If you expect the 921 to be a bad-ass flawless DVR then you will be very upset. If you expect, like i did, to have a fairly reliable decent HD dvr to play with, then you should be happy as a clam. I knew before i bought mine that it will reboot itself once in a while. it will now always record what its supposed to, so i just except it when it fails to do a task i wanted it to. I wish it was more rock solid, but i also wish i would win the lotto.... :nono: :lol: 

Jon


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## Ben Hodson (Mar 10, 2005)

OK so They sent out a single installer on Firday to change my lnbs and run all the wires fro the new setups. I ended up helping out and ding a lot of the cabling myself. No biggie really but it took all afternoon Friday. Got all three boxes working, set up some favorites lists and set up a timer for Friday night on one of the 921's. Woke up Saturday to find a Blue screen on the box I put the timer and favorites on. Disk Failure. Called Dish and they are 2nd day airing me a new one. I got one form Dish direct and one from a dealer in Texas on Ebay. So far the Ebay one is working fine. We put all our timers on it last night and got all our favotie lists sorted out. So one of the boxes died within 24 hours and the other seems good. 
Only other issue I have had is a few reboots when the DVR stuff would hang. Both thime it has been on a playback of recorded material. Hit start over and nothing happens. It then allows every thing behind the hung screen to work normally but the overlay of the dvr screen won't go away. I could even pull up the guide at one point pick another channel and when it switched back to view the channel it would still have the background from the dvr screen over it.

Ben


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## Ben Hodson (Mar 10, 2005)

New 921 showed up last night as promised. I installed it and had it up in running in a couple hours. Called and activated it and dealt with a HD tech support CSR. I must say the service dish gives from a CSR standpoint and the amount of time it takes to get to a human is first rate. They are by far the best CSR I have dealt with from any major company in quiet some time. After we went over the downloading procedures I asked about returning my old boxes that were part of the dish home plan. She told me that I could do this but it would void my lifetime service warranty that allows me to get free service calls. We went over the differences and found it would save me 15 dollars a month to return the boxes and that a service call would cost me about 49.00 per case. So since I could almost pay for a service call with three months of fees it was an easy decision. They are sending me 2 boxes with pre-paid labels to ship back the old Receivers.
Maybe I was jaded having just spent 25 minutes on the phone prior trying to cancel my Verizon DSL but still. I haver had to call like 3 different major service companies in the last month or so and Dish's service has been head and shoulders above the rest. Even if their hardware is buggy...

Ben


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