The Official AVS Dish DTVPal DVR Topic! - Page 103

I get 7 full days info for KATU, KGW, & KPTV.

Roughly 1 day for all others.

Thought everyone might like to know. I ordered an additional DTVPal DVR from Solid Signal last night. The order took. I called today and they said it would ship tomorrow. Just received this email from Solid Signal. Does not look good...

"Greetings from Solid Signal,

We thought you'd like to know the following information regarding your order (# XXXXXXXXXXXX)

Unfortunately we will not be able to process your order for the DTVPalDVR at this time. Due to the exceedingly high percentage of problems and defects people are having with this device, we are no longer offering it to our customers at this time. We dont endorse products that do not offer our customers exceptional quality and value. I apologize for any inconvenience"

This does not sound good!

UPDATE: Just called SolidSignal and they said the DTVPal DVR was discontinued. Not sure if that means through DishNetwork or just SolidSignal. I called earlier today and checked the status and was told they had about 1000, so I am going to send an email telling them I still want it regardless.

And of course DISH keeps denying that there is even an issue... I noticed you can no longer order the DTVpal DVR on the order page, they aren't even taking "pre-orders". Looks like once the units on the shelf are sold out they are gone for good. Perhaps Echostar isn't close to finding firmware answer that will fix the units.

If the DTVpal DVR goes the way of the Dodo bird will the value on eBay be determined by how often the unit reboots?

It could be related to the current court case.

I suspect that once they fix the problems (and I am of the opinion that the problems are hardware related rather than firmware) they will relaunch the product as the Pal DVR Plus, or whatever. The "original" DTVPal DVR name is now so tainted from the negative reports on the Internet that they may feel they need a fresh marketing start. I hope they take care of all you early adopters and not hang you out to dry. I find it pretty inept on their part that they announced a product in Jan and then in the 11 months they had before shipment they could not get it right.

Perhaps we should all adjourn back to the speculation thread and speculate on how long it will take them to release the new model -- and of course, what new features they should add to it.

My DTVPal DVR arrived on January 19 - just over 4 weeks ago. No reboots. Only one freeze (user error). Tonight I recorded 3 shows on two different channels while watching a previously recorded show (lots of fast forward etc.). No problem. I am loving this machine more every day.

"L" series
201 firmware
card removed
updates off
TVGOS (using my zip)
plugged into a UPS

What an interesting turn? I am pleased to have ordered and received a correctly operating one from solidsignal in January. Really, no problems, nothing that wasn't easily corrected and no problems that occur with regularity or frequency. I've got a 'unupdated' F201. Will be awaiting more info on the F203, the much speculated, still planned upgrade? Is the product discontinued, on hold, awaiting advancement? Mine is connected to TV Guide with actual zip, really works well!

Will continue to follow this thread! thanks to all those really knowledgeable contributors!

I inquired with Dish to check on my warranty start date and after speaking with a "supervisor", he said the warranty, in my case, starts on an "activation date" that was only 5 days prior to my receiving it. Not the pre-order date 4 weeks before receiving it, so this is good news.

I read the post saying that we may have a one year warranty for ordering directly from dish. I hope this is also true.

I had my first lockup tonight while recording - the screen went black. I had to unplug/re-plug-in after the recording (which did work ).

On another forum, i saw people reporting their tv's were getting strong signal but get sound drop outs, pixellation, etc.

Maybe something in the data stream is causing the DRV to barf on it.

48 hours in and still not one problem with the new unit they sent me back. I've scheduled several recordings, played them all back fine, and no reboots -- even with the TV Guide data now showing up in my guide. So far so good, and while I'm expecting the worst, but it's a MUCH more stable unit than the earlier unit I had, which crapped out literally seconds after it was first plugged in!

I hope they haven't discontinued this unit because I want new firmware. Or if more people had this box, there might be 3rd party firmware - this rig is capable of so much - being a clear cable tuner, and an mpeg-4 decoder as well as what it's doing now.

Since when did Dish/Echostar ever stop ripping people off without the threat of a lawsuit? Even if it doesn't have anything to do with the TiVo case, I wouldn't be surprised if some law firm has threatened them on the Pal DVR with a class action lawsuit.

1000 units? That sounds like a lot of stuff and it sort of makes sense that they lowered the price to $249, but then why not go ahead ship them? SolidSignal thinks that they will be blamed for the Echostar's failure to make the unit right? Or is that they are getting lots of returns themselves? Sounds like Echostar will end up with lots of inventory.

So, is Echostar about to pull the plug or just putting the unit on pause till some sort of fix comes about? I have a feeling the analog shutdown delay may have contributed to this.

Amusing that you should use that euphemism, since it conjures a vision of them just following the course of action that many of their users need to currently employ.

If they do pull the product line off the market, I'll bet the official reason will be "lack of sales".

I had the same problem with the Radio Shack model 273-069 choke being too small - smashed the ferrite on one with a pair of pliers trying to get it to latch on.

Different subject - anyone know if there is a way to highlight and delete multiple recordings at the same time or do you have to delete them one by one?

It seems a shame that Dish might discontinue the unit. Both of mine (first one and replacement) have had issues but on the other hand 80-90% of the time they work fine. I have mine sitting on top of my Phillips 3575H which records in SD (upconverts to HD) and which I use as a backup. From what I understand the Phillips/Magnavox units are no longer available. Seems like once in a while a manufacturer will try a product like this and then give up after a while because of poor sales and in Dish's case technical problems. Then I walk into electronics stores and see lots of combination DVD player / VCR units on sale for $175 - $200. It makes no sense - why would someone be willing to pay that kind of money and have to be constantly juggling media (DVD's, tapes) which only hold 2-3 hours of programming, as opposed to paying a little bit more for a unit with a hard drive in it and chase play / pause live TV capability and ability to record 30-50 hours of HD. Then at the upper end of the market you have people paying $600 for a Tivo HD or a similar sum to buy or build a HTPC. You would think there would be a market for a reliable well built $250 - $350 OTA DVR. If Phillips upgraded their 3575H / 3576H to HD I would gladly buy one at that price point.

2nd, I had one those to, worked fine. I returned it because of the dark picture and held out for the Dish box with the guide. Kind wish I would have kept that box!

Jay

It is a nice box. Mine has given me reliable, trouble-free service since June 2007. One nice feature is it has a clock display which shows you how many minutes/ seconds you are into the recording as it records or plays back, and it displays the time when the unit is in standby. Only thing is once you get used to watching HD recordings it's hard to go back to SD, even SD that upconverts.

DISH/ECHO; don't you dare discontinue the PAL DVR! This thing is wonderful, a true disruptive solution. Have an engineer take a look at the line filtering and maybe tweak the firmware a little and then get back in business. I am going to want a second, backup box in case lightning strikes or the dam breaks.

I had a chat with Dish support last night asking about the status of my replacement unit. The person I talked to said he was informed that they we stopping shipping units to new customers for the time being and that they still had some on hand that they would be using for replacements.

That response (and the one above from SolidSignal) leads me to believe that the DVRs are not simply out of stock, that they have been purposely head for some reason (I suspect due to the problems rather than the lawsuit). I personally can't imagine that if it was a simple firmware problem that they would hold off on all sales, so that leads me to believe they either don't know what the problem is yet, or it is a hardware/manufacturing issue, in which case they don't want to ship any more defective hardware until it is fixed.

I cannot imagine they would simply discontinue the product for what should be a correctable problem...though yes, I wouldn't be surprised it is released until a different name.

Also, I think this has been mentioned before, but the reboots seem to always happen during playback. I average one reboot per hour or two and I have never had it reboot while it was background recording only. I believe there have been a few people that have claimed that this has happened to them once or twice, but is it possible they left the device on and simply turned off the TV. For those of you who experience consistent reboots, can you try setting up a couple recordings for a several hour block and leave the device turned off during that time and see if any of your recordings have been interrupted. If that turns out to be a case, then that implies the problem is with the devices decoding hardware/software and would probably discredit many of the signal/power theories.

I get the same as you. Only 24 hours on Koin and OPB. Thought it is kind of ironic since Koin is supposed to be the station broadcasting the TVGOS.

Mine has rebooted with it off and while recording a few times. I can tell because a recording will be broken up into 2 parts and I was not home. And it also reboots when watching programs and recordings. And it will reboot when just playing.

Over the last couple weeks, I have recording several hours of programing with the unit on standby. Some but not all recordings end up in 3 sections which tells me that there are at least 2 reboots during those programs. So in my case, I get reboots when it's on and when it's off.

Exactly.

Six days and counting with no problems whatsoever. I was averaging three/day until one day I had six in a row. Alarmed, I plugged the line into a different socket and that was the end of that. Smooth sailing. I have ferrites on order as spring is coming and we get lightning storms that will blow your mind. I hope that the snap ons will allow the line to run off an isolator. If that does not work out the inductors should provide a margin for lightning generated rfi even if the line is plugged into a wall receptacle.

BTW, those little Radio Shack ferrites may be too tight to fit power cords and coax but they really work on noisy phone lines.

Dogs love trucks and Charlie Ergen loves lawsuits.

Charlie never met a lawsuit he didn't like... even the Tivo lawsuit and look what that cost him.

When you do business the way Dish Network does, lawsuits are, apparently, part of the model.

This is what I've found on my unit also. However I haven't had ANY reboots since 2/17.

Maybe the name of this thread should be changed from "It's Here - Dish DTVPal DVR" to "Oh NO! It's Gone - Dish DTVPal DVR"

Ken M.

I thought some of you may be interested in this reply I got back from an Engineer at the local CBS station I use. This is a pretty small market in a city of under 250K in population.

His reply after asking why they aren't broadcasting the TVGOS service:

"CBS made the deal with TV Guide without consulting the affiliate
stations on whose stations it would be carried. After looking closely
at the service, we determined that it was something we would not offer
at this time. If TV Guide changes the structure of the service, we will
reconsider, but at this time it isn't a good business model for us."

So it sounds TV Guide charges these stations to do this. What do they have to gain from it or than probably some customers being happier? They are helping out the other stations but what kick back do they get back from the other stations?

Anyone have some further insight into their reasoning here?