The Official AVS Dish DTVPal DVR Topic! - Page 480

Yep, mine just started working again yesterday as well. I'm not sure what the deal is. I did a few scans with nothing identified. I then took the antenna lead out and inserted it part way through another scan and it found channels. I'm pretty sure it had nothing to do with signal availability or strength. Just something quirky with the tuners.

I didn't call, but found TVGOS to be fully populated in the Austin market on Monday.

It wasn't when I checked late last night but seems to be now.

If you reset to factory default, do you lose your saved recorded programs? One of my tuners went out (I could only tune in the one channel I was recording on) and it failed to record programs that I had set up. Right now I have unplugged it, and I'm going to leave it unplugged for the day and see what happens later, but if I do have to try a factory reset, I'm curious if I'll lose my shows.

I really need to get a backup unit, too - I can't live without my pal! Has anyone had success with the reconditioned cm7000's that are out there? I know this is not the 7000 thread, but that's the only replacement I seem to run across, since the dtvpals have mostly disappeared.

No. You lose all your timer events, personal options and settings,
but any recordings on the HDD will be left alone.

Thank you, Chuck! I'll report back later after I see how the unit is doing today.

I have two CM 7000 units. One is two plus years old ( from Channel Master) and the other is about three months old which I bought a reconditioned unit from Antenna Logic http://antennalogic.ecrater.com/p/11595930/channel-master-cm-7000pal-dvr . It comes with a one year warranty and I have had no problems at all. I understand that CM still has some available too. The one I just bought looked like brand new. I have no affiliation with them in case you are wondering.

Hehe, you love these OTA DVRs.

Update: I left my pal off all day, and when I plugged it back in, it worked fine. So I'm going to delay a full factory reset for the time being. Does anybody know if there is a place that will repair or refurbish privately owned pals or 7000's? I'm just wondering in case my unit really breaks, if I have any options to fix it at all.

Thanks for the links to the 7000's, too. I'm going to have to think about this. I think it's a real travesty that free OTA television & DVR's are treated as a niche market in this country. Seems like the cable & satellite companies have got everybody convinced that you have to pay a monthly charge for TV, but those of us who enjoy OTA are stuck with DVR's that are no longer manufactured, and limited choices. Not that I don't love my DTVPal - I'm totally hooked on it. It just bugs me that if something goes wrong, I can't just go to Target or somewhere to replace it. Okay, that's my vent for the day

I find it interesting that the refurbished units that are still being sold by CM and others have a one year warranty. My guess is that the major problem with any of these units is that it is cheaper to make a new unit than to repair a broken one. This begs the question as to how CM is going to handle any warranty problems. I have to think this must mean they have many units in storage somewhere or that Echovision is still producing the units. Even though we all know this unit has some quirks it is still the best OTA when considering all the work arounds and that if you have a decent TVGOS the EPG is way better than PSIP as well as it is free. It now has a fairly long history too. I for one would like to have seen CM stick with this unit rather than the going to the 7400 for OTA. It seems to me that most if not all problems arise from trying to make a DVR that will handle OTA and cable at the same time.

I've had my DTVPalDVR since December 2008, and still love it.

Has anyone found a fix for the "loading... please wait" rebooting problem? I can't even get mine to get past this so I can do a menu reset. Any way to boot it from a USB stick? Anyone repair these? I have two others that operate fine and have even locked up and the antenna disconnect/power cycle does work on them. Just not this one.

Phooey.

Does it have the latest firmware (F208)?

No.

Man, I hope not. I unplugged mine for the summer (nothing to watch and record!) to make it last longer!

I have two spares. Last time I booted them they were fine but who knows . . . I'd rather have a possibly working spare than none at all.

I've had mine unplugged for three years. I just dumped cable last month and decided to put this unit to use. It works great. I connected it to the internet, but forgot to disable automatic updates. While I was sleeping the unit updated itself to F208 (from F201). Should I be concerned with this update? Is there a way that I can change it BACK to F201 if there are problems with F208?

Don't bother with 201. 208 is mostly stable.

No. Just the opposite. Anything before F208 is subject to the "Loading, Please Wait" crash. No, you cannot go back, but F208 should not give you any problems.

These last few posts make me regret having bought only one when I could.

You can still buy a CM 7000 and it is the exact same unit with the upgraded software! They are called refurbished but I suspect there are many new units and they still have the original warranty. Take a look back to my earlier post a few days ago for a link to one site or call CM and get one while they are still available. This is a no brainer!

CM also has new CM7000s for sale, just not all the time, that's why they say call.

With all the discussion of the discontiued variants of the TR-50 being the only OTA DVR option, it bears remembering that TiVO is still an option. Channel Master wants $340 for the CM-7000 (most recent name for the TR-50). For comparison, you can get a TiVo for between $90 (Costco) and $150 (direct from TiVo). If you subscribe monthly at $15/mo, you're money ahead for almost 12 - 17 months. Go with the lifetime subscription at $500 and you're out-of-pocket between $590 and $650, but for that extra $ you get a more robust unit that is still in production with full customer support and some nice additional features:
- no flaky clock issues that require end-user engineering community to resolve
- much more detailed guide
- smarter name-based recording
- 2X larger hard drive
- external USB drive support
- network streaming (IN) support (like Netflix)
- network streaming (OUT) support (DVR content to other TiVo or maybe even PC)
- remote programming support

For the record, I don't own any TiVO units, don't particularly care for them (primarily due to what used to be an even higher price differential compared to the TR-50). I just think that with the shrinking price differential and the discontinued, unsupported, still somewhat buggy behavior of the TR-50/ROVI combination, it makes sense to remember the benchmark alternative...

John

I've got both...The TiVo is head-over-heals better than the Pal. Although, I really can't complain about my Pal DVR. The free guide, with all it's short comings, is the Pal's best feature.

If they offered lifetime warranties on the TIVO hardware, along with the lifetime subscriptions, that might change my mind. Because it seems to me that any DVR won't last forever, so you'd be paying $249 for the unit (direct price from the manufacturer), plus $499 for lifetime subscription, so you're out $748. (The lower priced TIVO at $90 - $150 does not allow a lifetime subscription, so you have to buy the TIVO Premiere XL if you want lifetime.) I've also read that the TIVO doesn't account for time-overages (where programs run 1-6 minutes over.) At least with the DTVPal, you can just manually program those in yourself. This is a real conundrum, though, because if I buy a backup 7000 for, say, $300 bucks, and add it to what I've already paid for my first unit, $225, I'm getting kind of close to the TIVO price.

That's pretty unrealistic, what consumer electronics in this category offers anything close to a lifetime warranty. Your other information is not correct. You can purchase lifetime with the current $150 TiVo Premier for a total price of $650 if direct from TiVo. While the residual stock lasts, you can also purchase one of the previous TiVo Premiers with the smaller HDD for $99 from retailers like Best Buy and get lifetime guide service by calling TiVo. The guide in the CM-7000/Pal DVR is not "free", you have paid for it upfront, buried in the cost of the unit. The guide in the $400 CM-7400 is not free as it requires a yearly $50 subscription -- there is no option to buy a CM-7400 with pre-paid guide service. It is silly to pick apart TiVo pricing just because they break out the costs for hardware and guide service. A complete first TiVo costs $650 with no additional fees (subsequent TiVo's on your account get a $100 discount). Yes, TiVo costs more than any CM offering and it is too costly for many, but you get what you pay for -- especially true when compared to a $400 CM-7400.
Edited by Kelson - 7/13/12 at 7:15am

I don't know about the TIVO Premiere XL, I have an S3 with a self upgraded 1TB drive. The Tivo S3 has the ability to pad the start and stop point. Also, if a program is 'live' it will offer to extend the record a selectable amount of time to be sure you catch it all.
Edited by ccrider2 - 7/14/12 at 3:15am

Don't know, can't get past the rebooting to the menu. Certainly there has to be a fix... I hate to think this thing is bricked. You'd think you could boot it from the USB drive.