522 Comprehensive Bug List and Feature Wish List

[maximum]

The problem with an Internet event scheduling service is how would you be notified of timer conflicts, confirmations or errors since the satellite stream is one way? It would be like you just send the command and hope it worked since there is no way for your receiver to easily respond. It could dial up a response but that would be impractical.

A minor bug for your list:
On the recorded programs list the column for the date is too narrow. When there are two-digit months the date is cut off.

 

[rhollinger]

The problem with an Internet event scheduling service is how would you be notified of timer conflicts, confirmations or errors since the satellite stream is one way? It would be like you just send the command and hope it worked since there is no way for your receiver to easily respond. It could dial up a response but that would be impractical.

Keep in mind what started this idea was a USB wireless or wired network adapter so the idea would be that this feature would only work over broadband. They might be able to make it work for both while giving up the status report if you don't have broadband but that might not be worth the extra effort.

Another feature (that Dish could charge extra for) that would be cool would be something similar to a product I heard about on the radio the other day that lets you interface with your home entertainment center over a broadband connection using a small device w/ LCD screen. It literally lets you watch whats on your T.V from anywhere. I don't know what kind of patents are pending (if any) but that would be pretty cool, to be able to not only pull up your receivers guide and menus but also to watch from a tuner or recorded event at a remote computer.

 

[maximum]

Another feature (that Dish could charge extra for) that would be cool would be something similar to a product I heard about on the radio the other day that lets you interface with your home entertainment center over a broadband connection using a small device w/ LCD screen. It literally lets you watch whats on your T.V from anywhere. I don't know what kind of patents are pending (if any) but that would be pretty cool, to be able to not only pull up your receivers guide and menus but also to watch from a tuner or recorded event at a remote computer.

That would be cool. I wonder if the movie industry is going to freak about this technology. Will there be copyright infringement issues that always seem to crop up when people are able to have broader access to media?

 

[normen]

Keep in mind what started this idea was a USB wireless or wired network adapter ... Another feature (that Dish could charge extra for) that would be cool would be something similar to a product I heard about on the radio the other day that lets you interface with your home entertainment center over a broadband connection using a small device w/ LCD screen. It literally lets you watch whats on your T.V from anywhere. I don't know what kind of patents are pending (if any) but that would be pretty cool, to be able to not only pull up your receivers guide and menus but also to watch from a tuner or recorded event at a remote computer.

We would have an interface via a wireless home network. No need for the extra device...
If the software would provide for it, we could also copy recorded shows from the 522's HD to another computer, and that is exactly the reason why I don't believe that they will provide this feature.

 

[rhollinger]

We would have an interface via a wireless home network. No need for the extra device...
If the software would provide for it, we could also copy recorded shows from the 522's HD to another computer, and that is exactly the reason why I don't believe that they will provide this feature.

Ahh, but the difference is that presumably the quality of the stream coming from the device onto broadband and into your viewer on your laptop (or whatever) wouldn't be high enough quality to care about if you copied it or not. This is a huge difference between copying the files off the hard drive and viewing this remote stream. Of course Tivo is also doing something similar except they are allowing you to copy the file from the hard drive onto another device for remote viewing. If they are able to pull this off (I know it is encrypted, protected, whatever) then certainly this feature should be obtainable legally speaking anyway.

 

[CygnusTM]

A minor bug for your list:
On the recorded programs list the column for the date is too narrow. When there are two-digit months the date is cut off.

I think you mean the timers list.

 

[Stargazer]

The way timer conflicts could be handled is this way... lets say that the receiver already has a show coming on at that time, they could program the online EPG to make you enter whether you would want to overide an existing timer that is already on your DVR or you could have the receiver automatically overide all timers by default or automatically not overide all the timers.

One could also force the receiver to dialup the information to the website (if they have the capability to do this) and then you could access it there.

 

[Pepper]

I think you mean the timers list.

Whichever it is, the idea I already listed of moving the buttons to the right further to increase the available area would probably take care of it. And a slightly smaller font could only help.

 

[GunnerJoe]

Here's very minor bug:

Sometimes during a commercial break I will swap tuners to a SIRIUS channel and put the original channel in PIP so I can see when the show comes back on. The song info banner that moves around the screen travels over the PIP window, blocking it from view. It would make more sense for the PIP window to overlay the banner instead.

 

[Pepper]

Whoa Nellie!

I think it might be a good idea at this point to wait till the NBR release is out, then verify the buglist against it to see if anything is fixed. Once I get it, I will try to reproduce each and every one of them and update the list accordingly.

I appreciate everyone who has contributed so far. Once I have a more or less complete list I am going to submit it to my contact at E* who has promised to pass it on to the appropriate area.

 

[Pablo_New]

Wow. I feel like I've joined a support group for 522s! I'm a semi-regular poster over at dbsforums.com and just found this place by accident. So I guess I'll jump right in:

I've had the 522/322 setup since July 2004. By far the most annoying and troublesome bug is the audio lip synch issue. I've found it more common on live playback rather than playback of older recordings, but it is equally annoying. I've got two PPV movies I want to record to VCR, but I can't because of this issue. Has anybody determined if it's related to the number of hours recorded, that is, more hours recorded = more of a playback problem?

 

[Shadowtester]

With the new name based recording software and its event schedule list sorted by days I dont think you will need the timer sort as much. The timers seem to be sorted by priority by default which seems to work for me. As for the Audio drop outs and synch problems I also think it gets worse as the hard drive gets filled. I rarely watch Live TV so I am not sure if its worse than pre-recorded events.

 

[Stargazer]

Reminds me of those that complained about the 7100/7200 DishPlayers doing that then the 501's and 721's which later got fixed. It takes a while to work the bugs out.

 

[BobaBird]

The problem with an Internet event scheduling service is how would you be notified of timer conflicts, confirmations or errors since the satellite stream is one way? It would be like you just send the command and hope it worked since there is no way for your receiver to easily respond. It could dial up a response but that would be impractical.

You wouldn't be notified of conflicts but the internet scheduler could be set to always ask whether to keep a previously set timer or use the new one at the subscriber's risk. With the new 522 NBR forcing the new timer (assuming both tuners are in use) would just be a matter of raising its priority. It's a little more complicated at the receiver end for the 721 and 921 where a previously set recurring timer could be set to "skip once" but a 1-time would have to be deleted. The 50x would have to delete the previous timer.

 

[Pepper]

I finally got L232 this morning, noticed that they fixed the bug where there wasn't enough room for the DP21/DP44 cascade on the switch test screen.

I will be going thru the list tonight to see what else has been fixed or added.

 

[TuxCoder]

Thanks for keeping that list and actively checking. Since they won't give us release notes, we can give ourselves release notes!

 

[Pepper]

Usually there are release notes, I thought... seems like I saw someone saying that the release notes person at E* is on vacation this week.

 

[uroberto]

I finally got L232 this morning, noticed that they fixed the bug where there wasn't enough room for the DP21/DP44 cascade on the switch test screen.

I will be going thru the list tonight to see what else has been fixed or added.

I got L232 this morning too.

 

[Stargazer]

I wish in the browse function that since it has the ability to go forward several shows out, perhaps even days out like the EPG does, then they should allow you to press a number and forward/backward (if possible) to get that many hours forwards or backwards or skip ahead and skip back in particular to go a day at a time ahead of time.

 

[CygnusTM]

DVR playback: lots of audio dropouts, some audio sync problems, "peep", occasional pixelization
Everyone probably agrees that this is the most critical bug and must be fixed as soon as possible even if it means other fixes and features are delayed.

Very definitely still in L232. There were a couple of dropouts in the instruction video it downloaded.

Search results: unsubscribed channels are included in the results. Needs at least the ability to cycle between favorites lists so you only see the results you can actually use. Or the ability to lock out channels and have them not displayed (Thanks CygnusTM).

L232 has that feature now.

Caller ID: Under certain circumstances (I don't know exactly why) caller ID quits working.

Still in L232.

Here's a new one for the wish list for NBR. It would be nice to have more editing options for NBR timers. Once you set it to "All" or "New" there is no way to change it to the other. (Unless I've completely missed it.) You have to delete the timer and create it again.