Social Feed

I did my part to keep our economy running, what with Black Friday and Cyber Monday and all. I took Dishstore up on their Thanksgiving Day special and ordered a ViP211 to replace my 811. I like the new GUI on the 942 and going back to the 811 made me jones for the 3-hour guide w/video and descriptions liek the 942. The extra 10% was the extra push I needed.

I came home tonight to find that UPS had delivered the ViP211,, so I knew what I'd be doing tonight! It took all of ten minutes to disconnect the 811 and plug in the 211. It would have gone faster, but Dish moved the connectors around a bit between the two, and I added the CAT5 Ethernet cable (even though it isn't doing anything yet) for the future. Since my set in the bedroom doesn't have HDMI and to minimize the chance that pushing the receiver around might stress the HDMI connector, I left that off for now (awaiting a new HDMI-equipped flat panel some day?)

After a last minute check (hmmm, only one set of analog audio outputs, so I need to find my RCA "Y" cables) that everything is plugged into the right jacks, I do the smoke test and the ViP211 springs to life. I get to aim my dish (w-w-w-way ahead of you, buddy) and run a switch test to introduce it to my DP34. ViP does its 3 tests, finds the right satellites, and gets to downloading the latest firmware.

Reboot, and I'm looking at a screen that says "You haven't activated your receiver yet" so I call 1-800-333-DISH and hope for a good technical CSR. Bingo, he understands that I'm swapping out my 811 for the ViP211, gets the R# and S#, and even makes it my primary receiver (thinking ahead to the ViP622). No change is necessary to my legacy HD Pack + Voom originals, he says, unless I want to go the metal DishHD? No, thanks, I say, I just want to swap the receivers.

Bingo, a quick ten minutes of being on hold and my receiver is now restarting. After it comes back up, he walks me through some screens to make sure that is well, but my HD channels are red. Wait for 30-45 minutes, he says, and call back if it hasn't changed. I thank him for his time and hang up.

(now we come to the part of the story where it goes to heck in the proverbial handbasket)

45 minutes later and I still do not have HD And, in addition, my OTA ATSC channels that I scanned in and verified nice, strong signals on, do not appear in the guide and cannot be tuned in no matter what I try. Hmmmm, sounds like I don't have an HD-enabled ViP211. Well, I can watch the fish swim around in HD on 9443, but that's it. If I try to watch HDNet or any other HD Pack or Voom Original channel, I get:


I'm sorry, but it is NOT OK. So, I call Dish again, and get a very nice woman who doesn't have the ViP211, but does have an HD set and seems very familiar with HD in general. I could continue to bore you with the details, but after spending an hour and twelve minutes on the phone with her, Dish was unable to get my ViP211 to believe that it was allowed to receive my HD channels.

Here's my question to those of you with ViP211s: When you look at the System Info screen, how is your ViP211 identified? Mine says "ViP211 - SD", and I think the "SD" means that it is not HD-Enabled. The CSR says that my receiver has been sent the "HD-Enable" signal, so either the receiver is defective, or I just need to wait to see if maybe my receiver picks up the right bits...