Wally U810 DVR Timers Issue

[pattykay]

Can't you just tell them it's completely dead and have them ship a replacement?

I am not entirely sure that it is a problem with this specific receiver, but rather a problem with the authorization on my account for some reason. Therefore, I want them to run through their troubleshooting steps, to find out what is going on. I already started the process on Thursday when I called Advanced Tech Support. She submitted a report to the engineers, and said that it may take them a couple of days to look into it and try to find the problem. She set up my account so that I can be connected directly to the same agent the next time I call back. So, I will play their game, and see what they say. If I can get it to work properly on Sunday, great! That means that my show will record. However, if they still cannot get it to work at that point, then I want a replacement.

 

[pattykay]

Update: Dish sent a technician today to replace my Wally. Unfortunately, he was unable to get the DVR functionality working with the new Wally, either. In fact, swapping the Wally actually made things worse! With the old Wally, I still had access to all of my old recordings. It was just that I could not pause, skip forward, fast forward, etc. while the Wally was activated on my account. Now, with the replacement Wally, every recording I have tried so far will not play at all! I only get a brief black screen with the Play or Pause symbol in the lower-right corner of the screen, before it goes to the Playback Complete pop-up. The small consolation prize for all of my trouble was that I got to keep the 52.0 remote that came in the box with the replacement Wally. Unfortunately, if I can't get my DVR recordings to work, I just lost 146 movies that I had recorded.

The one thing I can try (since my existing recordings are toast, anyway) is to hook the hard drive up to my Hopper Duo to reformat it. Then, I can try doing some transfers, to verify that the hard drive still works properly. After that, I will hook it back up to the Wally, and format it again. If the DVR functionality still does not work after that, I will have a nice polite chat with the Loyalty Department, and demand that Dish refund the $40 fee I paid to activate the DVR feature on the Wally.

 

[pattykay]

There is no going back now. I hooked the hard drive up to the Hopper Duo and formatted it. I am transferring some recordings to it now.

Could the "D" be an appendage that notes your Wally has a hard drive connected? Just throwing something up on the wall to see what sticks.

With the hard drive disconnected, the Model listed on the Diagnostics screen still says Wally D. So, there goes that theory.

One other odd thing: on the Main menu of the replacement Wally, it shows a 1 on the icon for Messages, indicating that I have a message there. However, when I click on the icon, all I get is "Inbox Empty. There are no messages currently in your inbox." There are usually never any important messages there anyway. This instance just seems to be one more effect of "Wally D" weirdness. Maybe my account is haunted!

 

[pattykay]

The transfers worked successfully. I was even able to use the Hopper Duo to play them back directly from the external hard drive. So, the hard drive itself is just fine. I then reconnected the hard drive to the Wally and reformatted it. Still, no luck! I now have a nice empty hard drive, and I still cannot pause live TV, skip back, rewind, or record anything. Time for a call to the Loyalty Department!

 

[rvvaquero]

Maybe my account is haunted!

There's no such thing as a "haunted" account. See below.

Sounds like your Wally has a virus.

The D stands for diseased.

 

[pattykay]

There's no such thing as a "haunted" account. See below.

It is not that individual Wally. Any Wally on this account has the same problem. It is a problem with the authorization at the account level.

I just spoke to the Loyalty Department. The best they could do was a one-time $10 credit. They even tried removing the DVR activation code and re-adding it, and that still did not help.

I am getting so frustrated that I feel like throwing the Wally in the river. (And I do not even live anywhere near a river.) Does anyone want a spare remote control or a Wally (as-is of course)? Just cover the cost of shipping, and it is yours.

 

[pattykay]

(Somewhat) Good News! After being transferred to technical support (and they were still unable to get the DVR functionality to work) I had them transfer me back to the Loyalty Department. This time, they were able to credit back the remaining $30, to give me a full refund of the $40 DVR activation fee. CSR roulette for the win!

 

[pattykay]

I thought of that. However, my sister also has a Wally with a hard drive connected on her account with Welcome Pack, and her receiver simply says "Wally" on the Diagnostics screen. ...

What software version is on that Wally?

It's in the thread title. U810

Oh, I see. You meant my sister's Wally. It has the same software version as mine.

As of today, both my Wally and my sister's Wally have the new software U811. ...

My sister's Wally (which has continued to work just fine through all of these software versions) just got U812. However, my defective Wally is still on U811. When I go to its Diagnostics > Tools > Upgrade Software option, it tells me that my receiver already has the latest software installed, U811. Typical Dish. The one that probably needs a software update is the one that didn't get it, and can't get it yet.

 

[pattykay]

My sister's Wally (which has continued to work just fine through all of these software versions) just got U812. However, my defective Wally is still on U811. When I go to its Diagnostics > Tools > Upgrade Software option, it tells me that my receiver already has the latest software installed, U811. Typical Dish. The one that probably needs a software update is the one that didn't get it, and can't get it yet.

The Upgrade Software tool is finally letting me update my Wally today. I see that there are also new software versions for the Hopper 3 (thanks to a thread here) and the Hopper Duo (thanks to my deactivated Hopper Duo). So, hopefully there is some kind of major update today that will actually fix my Wally problems. Fingers crossed!

 

[pattykay]

The Upgrade Software tool is finally letting me update my Wally today. I see that there are also new software versions for the Hopper 3 (thanks to a thread here) and the Hopper Duo (thanks to my deactivated Hopper Duo). So, hopefully there is some kind of major update today that will actually fix my Wally problems. Fingers crossed!

After the update, my Wally now finally has U812, the same version that my sister got awhile back. So far, so good. The update finally got rid of that phantom Message indicator that I mentioned in post number 23. I am not planning to activate this Wally again until Sunday, so I will test it then. Disney XD is finally going to show episode 2 of season 3 of Marvel's Spider-Man: Maximum Venom (the series that alerted me to this DVR recording issue, and caused me to start this thread in the first place) and it is on at the same time as the season finale of Supergirl. So, it would be nice to have the DVR functionality back by then.

 

[pattykay]

After the update, my Wally now finally has U812, the same version that my sister got awhile back. So far, so good. The update finally got rid of that phantom Message indicator that I mentioned in post number 23. I am not planning to activate this Wally again until Sunday, so I will test it then. Disney XD is finally going to show episode 2 of season 3 of Marvel's Spider-Man: Maximum Venom (the series that alerted me to this DVR recording issue, and caused me to start this thread in the first place) and it is on at the same time as the season finale of Supergirl. So, it would be nice to have the DVR functionality back by then.

No such luck. It is Sunday, and I still do not have DVR functionality on my activated Wally with U812.

 

[pattykay]

Update: my sister's Wally has U815, and has had it since late last month, according to the date shown on her Diagnostics screen. My Wally is still telling me that U814 is the most current version.

With U815, my sister has had problems with the skip back functionality. It is literally an instant replay, only going back maybe a second or two instead of the usual 10 seconds. Then, when she tries to rewind instead, it overshoots where she wanted to go, resuming play farther back than she wanted. Some of her recordings were non-playable. She got the same black screen (immediately followed by the Playback Complete pop-up) that I got on every recording that I tried to play on my Wally, while I still had any recordings left.

So, it seems like Dish may have been working on the DVR functionality, and made some software changes. Unfortunately, those changes were for the worse on the Wally that had been working properly. Even that functionality would be an improvement for my Wally, but I cannot even get the new software at all.

 

[pattykay]

Update: I activated my Wally again today (which still says that U814 is the most recent software version) and this time when I turned the receiver on, I got the "Congratulations! The DVR feature has now been activated" pop-up. It had not been doing that before. (Although, if I would turn on the Wally while it was deactivated, I would still get the pop-up about an external hard drive being detected.) However, when I tried using the DVR features on Live TV (such as Pause, Skip Back, Rewind, etc.) I still got the same results as before: a pop-up in the lower-right corner saying that feature is "unavailable for this program." I tried resetting the Wally through Diagnostics > Tools, but that did not fix the issue, either.

 

[pattykay]

Update: my sister's Wally has U815, and has had it since late last month, according to the date shown on her Diagnostics screen. My Wally is still telling me that U814 is the most current version.

With U815, my sister has had problems with the skip back functionality. It is literally an instant replay, only going back maybe a second or two instead of the usual 10 seconds. Then, when she tries to rewind instead, it overshoots where she wanted to go, resuming play farther back than she wanted. Some of her recordings were non-playable. She got the same black screen (immediately followed by the Playback Complete pop-up) that I got on every recording that I tried to play on my Wally, while I still had any recordings left.

So, it seems like Dish may have been working on the DVR functionality, and made some software changes. Unfortunately, those changes were for the worse on the Wally that had been working properly. Even that functionality would be an improvement for my Wally, but I cannot even get the new software at all.

I have been detailing the issues with my sister's Wally in this thread: Wally U815 DVR Recording Issue
I tried switching her to a different Wally with U814. That did not fix her issues, at least not right away. Some of her problems seemed to fix themselves later, but it is still not 100% fixed.

I then tried activating her old Wally (which still has U815) on my account, to see if U815 would help with my issues. Unfortunately, I still have the same issues on this Wally that I have been reporting in this thread for my other Wally with other recent software versions.

 

[pattykay]

I sold my last remaining Wally, so I am done using that model of receiver.

I dug out an old ViP211k, and hooked it up and activated it. Then, I took the hard drive that I had been using with the Wally, and connected it to the ViP211k. Of course, the ViP receiver had to reformat the hard drive. (On a side note, it seemed to take a lot longer for the ViP receiver to format the hard drive than it normally takes for a Wally or Hopper to format it.) Once that was done, the receiver rebooted, reacquired the satellite signal, and downloaded the program guide, all of which seemed to take longer than the Wally would normally take to do the same thing. I then tested the DVR functionality. Success!!! I finally have working DVR functionality on a receiver (on this account) that requires an external hard drive for DVR. I'm so happy!!!

I still have no idea why the DVR functionality stopped working for any Wally that I tried on this account. I may have fewer tuners now, but at least I have something that actually works. I should have tried this months ago. I wanted to stick it out and continue using Wally receivers, but the lack of DVR functions was the breaking point for me.

As for the problems that my sister's Wally has been having (that I have been detailing in the other thread) she found other channels that show the same series that she had been trying to record. They do not air anywhere near as often on those channels as they air on Ion Plus (WDLI channel 17 in the Cleveland, Ohio market) but at least she has recordings that actually work. So, we are both happy campers!

 

[pattykay]

It has been awhile since I updated this thread. Unfortunately, there is even more bad news, this time regarding my Hopper Duo. I activated my Hopper Duo today, and the Model listed on the Diagnostics screen changed to "Hopper Duo D." I was immediately filled with dread, thinking "Uh-oh, here we go again!" Sure enough, when I checked DVR functionality (Pause, skip back, skip forward, rewind, fast forward) I am now having the same problem with the Hopper Duo that I previously had with all of my Wally receivers. The function does not work, with a pop-up in the lower-right corner of the screen saying that function is "unavailable for this program." This happens on both Live TV and existing DVR recordings. Existing recordings will still play (thank goodness) but there is no way to do "trick play" while the Hopper Duo is activated. Just like on my first Wally (before I tried switching to a different Wally) full DVR functionality works on those same recordings while the Hopper Duo is deactivated. This is happening with Hopper Duo software version U648.

The other weird thing is that when I activate the Hopper Duo, the My Programming section on mydish does not list any DVR fee. It only adds the $14 fee for having my ViP222k on the same account. So, it is treating the Hopper Duo as the primary receiver, but with no DVR fee. At least Dish's billing system seems to already be aware that DVR functionality will not work properly with this account, but that still does not explain why it is not working.

 

[Tvland1]

It has been awhile since I updated this thread. Unfortunately, there is even more bad news, this time regarding my Hopper Duo. I activated my Hopper Duo today, and the Model listed on the Diagnostics screen changed to "Hopper Duo D." I was immediately filled with dread, thinking "Uh-oh, here we go again!" Sure enough, when I checked DVR functionality (Pause, skip back, skip forward, rewind, fast forward) I am now having the same problem with the Hopper Duo that I previously had with all of my Wally receivers. The function does not work, with a pop-up in the lower-right corner of the screen saying that function is "unavailable for this program." This happens on both Live TV and existing DVR recordings. Existing recordings will still play (thank goodness) but there is no way to do "trick play" while the Hopper Duo is activated. Just like on my first Wally (before I tried switching to a different Wally) full DVR functionality works on those same recordings while the Hopper Duo is deactivated. This is happening with Hopper Duo software version U648.

The other weird thing is that when I activate the Hopper Duo, the My Programming section on mydish does not list any DVR fee. It only adds the $14 fee for having my ViP222k on the same account. So, it is treating the Hopper Duo as the primary receiver, but with no DVR fee. At least Dish's billing system seems to already be aware that DVR functionality will not work properly with this account, but that still does not explain why it is not working.

It has been awhile since I updated this thread. Unfortunately, there is even more bad news, this time regarding my Hopper Duo. I activated my Hopper Duo today, and the Model listed on the Diagnostics screen changed to "Hopper Duo D." I was immediately filled with dread, thinking "Uh-oh, here we go again!" Sure enough, when I checked DVR functionality (Pause, skip back, skip forward, rewind, fast forward) I am now having the same problem with the Hopper Duo that I previously had with all of my Wally receivers. The function does not work, with a pop-up in the lower-right corner of the screen saying that function is "unavailable for this program." This happens on both Live TV and existing DVR recordings. Existing recordings will still play (thank goodness) but there is no way to do "trick play" while the Hopper Duo is activated. Just like on my first Wally (before I tried switching to a different Wally) full DVR functionality works on those same recordings while the Hopper Duo is deactivated. This is happening with Hopper Duo software version U648.

The other weird thing is that when I activate the Hopper Duo, the My Programming section on mydish does not list any DVR fee. It only adds the $14 fee for having my ViP222k on the same account. So, it is treating the Hopper Duo as the primary receiver, but with no DVR fee. At least Dish's billing system seems to already be aware that DVR functionality will not work properly with this account, but that still does not explain why it is not working.

I just activated my Wally a few days ago and the DVR function is all working like it's suppose to.I have a 2t external power hard drive..Software version U822.. Problem I have is there's not enough USB ports on the Wally..OTA adapter and hard drive but no place to hook up wifi adapter

 

[pattykay]

I just activated my Wally a few days ago and the DVR function is all working like it's suppose to.I have a 2t external power hard drive..Software version U822..

Yeah, my sister's Wally is also working properly as a DVR on her account with software version U822. As I said earlier in this thread, my issue with any Wally (and as I just found out, any Hopper Duo) on my account seems to be something weird with my account's specific authorization. I think it is due to having a non-standard combination of programming packages. (International Basic + Portuguese: RTPI + Latino Bonus Pack) The non-standard combination of equipment (having a ViP222k on the account) could also be a contributing factor.

.. Problem I have is there's not enough USB ports on the Wally..OTA adapter and hard drive but no place to hook up wifi adapter

I had the exact same problem. Adding a USB hub to either port on the Wally will solve that issue. Any cheap non-powered USB hub will do. I recommend hooking your external hard drive directly to one of the Wally's USB ports, and hook everything else up through the USB hub.

 

[pattykay]

I think my solution would be cheaper, though.

 

[Tvland1]

I think my solution would be cheaper, though.

I really don't need the wifi since I have a few android boxes..I think I have the same account as yourself..RV pay as you go..but I have flex pack with a 222k and two 211k's along with the wally.. About a week after hooking up the hard drive to a 211k the receiver started acting up like it burned up the power supply so I didn't want to chance it with another one.. only have a few 211's left. That's when I bought the wally..Cheap price..new with the 54.0 remote $51