DISH CINEMA

[freeman543]

I just hooked up wirelessly and have been trying to use the on demand. The first half hour program I tried loaded right away and it buffered as I watched it. after that I tried some movies and it would not do anything ( it said I could watch the movie in 6hrs or so, that’s been 24 hrs ago ), in my " my rental box “ it either shows nothing or queue position with one movie title and saying queue position 3 of 5 for example . This seems to change from hour to hour. sometimes it says you have no titles, so I go to load a movie , then it says another movie ( the first one I tried to load YESTERDAY ) is being loaded. That's the only time I see the first movie title is when I try to load another. Is all this normal? I have yet to watch or even see the choices I have made other than the first 1/2 hrs show. Can I clear everything and start over? I have rebooted the receiver many times, unhooked and re-hooked the wireless adapter. Its like this thing has took over. I am wondering if this thing is downloading in the background. wouldn't it show the progress of a download? or at least show you the movie or movies you’ve chosen? Can someone tell me what normal is on this? thank you.......by the way Dish has no clue about how this system works according to a manager I spoke to. I'd like to reset and start again choosing only one movie and wait til it loads ( some movies said the loading time was 6 hrs, is that normal?
I have a good internet connection and 10 megs. I have had no internet connection problems.

thanks for the help.

 

[freeman543]

Right after I posted I checked it and a 1/2 hour program I tried to load an hour ago was there, I played and fast forwarded through it and deleted it. then I loaded a new movie (SD) and now it shows the movie and the progress, watch in 18 minutes, them 38 mins. .....is this an SD vs. HD issue I may be having? The movies i tried yesterday were all HD movies.

 

[jayiw]

Dish On Demand sucks basically. I have a 25meg internet connection and just a regular HD Movie (Daybreakers) which doesn't even have a dolby 5:1 track and it was not in 1080p too around 4 hours to buffer and around 5 hours to complete the download. I have used my PS3 to rent movies through Vudu and buffering takes around 10 seconds and then it's streamed and this is with a dolby 5:1 track and in 1080p which looks very close to blu-ray. When I first used Dish On Demand to rent Daybreakers after around an hour of buffering the receiver froze then I had to reset and it would not let me do anything via On Demand, nothing showed in My Rentals, could not rent something else, nada. I noticed my router lights were still going so it was downloading. Tech support knew no solution (escalated to the top tier tech as well). They were supposed to call me back the following day but of course never did. It seemed ok after it finished downloading the following day but never went into My Rentals. Had to download it again and 4 hours later I could watch it. Dish on Demand it certainly not ready for prime time. It uses a ton of bandwidth and for those of us who used a capped internet connection beware. Comcast Internet has a 250 gig cap. I can only imagine how big a 1080p Dish On Demand movie is. If it's something that takes a 25 gig connection several hours to dowload it's huge.

Jay

 

[freeman543]

jayiw , Ya after I posted here, my receiver rebooted on its own ( 6th time in 24 hrs ) I noticed all the hidden downloadings were finally all gone so it was free of all movies so I downloaded a SD and it showed and worked fine ( haven’t watched it yet ) then before leaving the house I set up a download on an HD movie and it showed both movies and the download process going on the 2nd movie so maybe its working now. I may of overloaded it on the first day. I will only load a new movie when the last one is already loaded. I still haven’t tried a 1080P but I am, I am a glutton for punishment.
Do you know in what memory are these movies going? They don’t show up on my regular dvr recordings but I noticed on my online account they show up in with my regular recordings. Also if I have a recording or movie downloading do I have to leave the receiver on if I leave the house, in other words will it still download when receiver is off like a regular recording does? I don’t mind leaving the receiver on but I always turn them off , because it’s a force of habit for me.
I recently bought a LG 1080P with wireless internet hook up and basically they give you some aps, one being netflix, it was easy to set up and the movies take 20 - 30 seconds to load. I guess with a ps3 you can even stream 1080P’s. I just hooked this dish thing up just because it was available for free, I think its working fine now but like you said the speed is nowhere to be found. Net flix is the way to go. I haven’t tried VUDU yet, but there is an ap on my new TV to do so. Thanks for the response, I thought I was the only one with this dish problem, but it sounds like yours was doing the same things.

 

[TonyT@DISH Network]

As far as leaving the receiver on you should be able to shut it off. Just pay attention because you may get a message saying otherwise. Also, from personal experience, if you have anything else streaming (for those of you with XBOX Live accounts) keeping that from the internet can speed things up. I tried to order a movie like that while the housemates kid was on XBOX Live and 24 hours later I was able to watch the movie. Also, don't play the movie until it says its done with the download. There is a little screen that pops up when you are on the event (if you stay on it a minute) that gives you the "Estimated Time to Download". It took me a while to actually find that.

 

[jayiw]

As far as leaving the receiver on you should be able to shut it off. Just pay attention because you may get a message saying otherwise. Also, from personal experience, if you have anything else streaming (for those of you with XBOX Live accounts) keeping that from the internet can speed things up. I tried to order a movie like that while the housemates kid was on XBOX Live and 24 hours later I was able to watch the movie. Also, don't play the movie until it says its done with the download. There is a little screen that pops up when you are on the event (if you stay on it a minute) that gives you the "Estimated Time to Download". It took me a while to actually find that.

Nothing else was using the connection at the time. It's either that the Dish OD servers cannot handle the load or the movie files that are used are huge and not well compressed or possibly the code or the 722k itself cannot handle pumping out the stream (or maybe a combo if all of that). I'd love the know the average Dish OD movie file size on each form of res such as SD, HD, and 1080p.

Jay

 

[JM42]

It's not your internet connection - DoD throughput sucks. I've said before calling it "on demand" is at best false advertising. The last thing I downloaded was 10+ hours (an HDNet movie) on a 24mbs connection.

 

[freeman543]

It does load when the receiver is off. The problem I see now is if you are watching a regular dvr recording and try to search for an on demand movie the screen freezes up very easy. I find you can only search for a movie if you are on a live channel and even then it will freeze up and it reboots it self. since I installed the wireless adapter my system has re-booted about 15 times ( 24 hour period ). But I am messing with the on demand when this happens. Last night was my last night of 3 months free HD platinum and I noticed now a lot of on demand movies I previously had available have reduced. Over all it is what it is, slow , unpredictable, and aggravating at times.........kinda like some of the people at customers service. No offence Anthony, I appreciate your feed back.