Anyone keep a list of 811 flaws, and when they will be corrected?

tomes

SatelliteGuys Family
Original poster
Feb 23, 2004
35
0
This is my List (causing grief with the wife, since I pay 20 USD/month more, and the user friendliness went down the drain..)... In particular order:

1. EPG does not show Info about the program. You have to press the Info button in addition. Would be nice if it could just show the info for the highlighted program, as I often need to see if the series was previously broadcasted, or who channel x is doing a biography on etc. (D* did this..)

2. When setting up the EPG to show the current show in a window, it can take up to several minutes for it to kick in, no idea why!?

3. Local channels over Dish (meaning over satellite) does for some reason seem to only show the next hour or so in EPG (i.e. "No info available", or something to that effect)

4. Local channels (over Satellite) were moved from the DirecTv locations. Granted I understand that channels will be in different locations, but I have hard time explaining to my wife that it is ok to press '9421' rather than '5' (not sure if I got the example straight, I've only had it for a few days..). 4 digits is pretty ridiculous. Any way to re-assign?????

5. Local Channel (over Satellite) names, we have no clue what WXLSDFDDE is, I would rather see NBC.... Rename functionality???

6. I have a widescreen tv, and when watching NON hdtv channels, I get black bars, which I'm worried about, due to burn in.. My current work around is switching to the S-Video input on the tv for those channels, since my tv can only resize non hdtv/progressive material. It's pretty inconvenient though.. The result is that my wife don't know how to see HDTV in it's full glory...

7. Another intersting note is that the s-video output is very dark. So dark, I had to adjust it on my tv, but that results in washed out images.

I guess my ideal answer to 6&7 was a software upgrade that gives you the ability to AUTOMATICALLY zoom/stretch 4:3 material to 16:9. It also goes for HDTV OTA, which sometimes has black bars as well.

8. HDTV OTA is very picky, but in the receivers defense, my table antenna sometimes drops below 50% signal reception. I wish it wouldn' 'lock' the receiver though. You cannot switch to another channel, unless you go into the program guide first!!

9. In reference to 8, I don't understand the reception of OTA much, as it seems that it can stay at 85% for 20 minutes, if I change channel, and the flip back, it can't even show a picture (says 49%). Sounds strange to me...

Thanks

-Tom
 
tomes said:
This is my List (causing grief with the wife, since I pay 20 USD/month more, and the user friendliness went down the drain..)... In particular order:


6. I have a widescreen tv, and when watching NON hdtv channels, I get black bars, which I'm worried about, due to burn in.. My current work around is switching to the S-Video input on the tv for those channels, since my tv can only resize non hdtv/progressive material. It's pretty inconvenient though.. The result is that my wife don't know how to see HDTV in it's full glory...

For # 6 in your list try the (*) ("format button") on the lower left of the remote. The stretch mode doesn't work as well as my Samsung panorama mode but it does get rid of the black bars.

The bad news is: As far as the a lot of the other stuff on your list is concerned there's a bunch of us waiting for fixes. Disk won't commit to a time frame. I called the CEO number about an hour ago and the rep (Chad) admitted that they weren't even sure if the dark video was a software or a hardware issue.

My wife has given up. She complained loudly for the first couple weeks. Now I just get looks of resignation and sometimes a "so what's it doing now?" look. But the "grief" has subsided. :rolleyes:
 
Posted in the 811 PQ Thread as well:
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Should post a quick update , that I managed to use the * button now (probably did something stupid, like choosing another source than sat, previously...). Not only does it work, after setting it up on one HD channel and one SD channel, it seems to understand that SD material should be partially zoomed (which is the one I preferred out of the bunch), while HD material should be shown as Normal. (So I don't have to keep switching every time I go to a HDTV channel after watching a SDTV channel, or vice versa) The PQ isn't half bad (I have a 58" CRT RPTV), and the EPG actually shows up well in both modes as well. I guess I can live with this for now. Longer term plan is to migrate the 510 I have into the livingroom, and use that for all SDTV broadcasts though.
 
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