Has the Hopper cured the 722's many bad faults?
I've had the 722 for almost two years and to be blunt, it is a very poorly engineered, outright POS of a product, probably the worst designed and implemented consumer electronics product I've ever used. Unquestionably, I would switch back to DirecTV, even though I haven't had the 5-8x/year billing problems with Dish that I had with DirecTV, if my only option was to continue with the 722, but I'm wondering if the new Dish DVR has cured its predecessor's problems.
Specifically, does the Hopper have the following problems that the 722 has:
1) Poorly implemented FF and RW. With every other DVR I've ever used, fastforwarding through the commercials, one hits the play button as soon as one sees the programming beginning and the DVR will stop, automatically rewind maybe 10 seconds or so, and then start playing at the very start of the programming. With the 722, when you see the start of the programming while fastforwarding (either FF or 30-second skip), you press play and then it starts playing immediately at that point, maybe 15 seconds into the programming. So then each and every time you fastforward through commercials, you have to hit play, then rewind and watch the last commercial in order to see the start of the programming. This problem has bugged me each and every single day that I've used my 722.
2) Cannot record an entire program unless programmed to do so from the start. Say you start watching a movie and realize that you want to record the entire movie. It will not let you record it all, only from the point that you hit the record button, even if you are able to rewind to the beginning.
3) Cannot rewind or record the entire program that was playing llive in the background after stopping watching a recorded program - with my old DirecTV DVR, if I was watching a recorded program off the hard drive, if I finished and then realized that the program playing live was interesting, I could rewind up to 90 minutes or hit the record button and record the entire program. the 722 won't allow this.
4) Cannot control live programming while in Guide or List Recorded Programming mode. Live TV plays in a window in the top right corner of the screen during these two modes, but you cannot control it at all without exiting the Guide or List Recorded. With my DirecTV DVR, if I wanted to pause the program (say a violent story came on the news when my young daughter wandered into the room or I get a phone call), the Pause, Stop, FF, RW buttons still worked even the though the programming was in the small window, but with the 722 in Guide or List mode, you have to cancel out of the mode altogether to control the underlying program.
5) No screen saver (in essence). The 722's screen saver does not kick in until at least 4-5 hours has passed, which is a major problem since I have it connected to a plasma TV and by the time the 722 decides to throw up a screen saver, whatever has been paused has burned an image into my plasma screen.
6) The 722 will decide to shut down if, after several hours with no remote input, you fail to click on the "cancel" button when it throws up the "DVR has been inactive" window.
7) Random failure to record scheduled programming. I would say that between 5% and 10 % of the time, a show I've got the 722 programmed to record won't record, even when I have verified that there was no conflict with a higher priority sheduled recording. This was true on both the original 722 I had that had to be replaced because of sound problems, and on the replacement unit.
8) Pressing the RW or FF Skip buttons (i.e. 30sec. commercial skip) repeatedly will sometimes skip to the very beginning or the very end of the programming, instead of maybe 5 or 6 30-second skips ahead.
Any input on these issues would be appreciated. Thanks