Dish recording on my dvr?

[oldcargirl]

A few weeks ago I turned on our office TV and noticed it was on an odd channel, 101.

Later I noticed a 5 minute block of time was recorded from channel 101 the program was Learn About NBA League Pass.

Is DSN recording something now for me? Several days later our inactivity standby had enabled and set to 4 hours. We keep it unabled.

It would be nearly impossible to any neighbor to have a remote that could reach our reciever. Neither side neighbor has sat TV, my house faces the opening of a cul-de-sac and our rear neighbors are far back and 20 feet below our grade.

Any thoughts? I'm not going to get irked quite yet but if they start recording things for me I will be done with DSN.

 

[teachsac]

Dish reserves part of the HD for their use, i.e. promos, sneak peaks, etc (DVR, 3). It has no effect on the amount of space for your personal recordings. Once in a while there while be scheduled recording for something like NBA League Pass or new features. These are very few and far between. If you don't like it, you can simply delete it or if you see the timer in advance set the DVR to skip it. In the 12+ years I've been with Dish, I can probably count them on both my hands.

S~

 

[KAB]

The Dish promo recordings would not have enabled your standby. Someone did it.

 

[navychop]

Only happens once or twice a year, in my experience. I understand other providers, such as Tivo, do this much more often. So moving to someone else could actually be worse.

Dish will never dl a program if it would force one of your recordings to delete itself for lack of space, or stop a recording you have set.

All in all, a minor annoyance.

 

[Hall]

Any thoughts? I'm not going to get irked quite yet but if they start recording things for me I will be done with DSN.

DSN ? DiSh Network ?

Anyway, you told Dish they could do this... Hard to complain about it after the fact now.

 

[oldcargirl]

DSN ? DiSh Network ?

Anyway, you told Dish they could do this... Hard to complain about it after the fact now.

Why do people hang out in forums only to give rude and useless responses? Your reply in not answering my question or useful in anyway. Had you simply mentioned you have seen this and it is in your user agreement that would be useful info.

I signed my ORIGINAL agreement more than a dozen years ago. In this complicated world where service providers of all sorts (banks, ISP, TV, phone, cell phone, insurance, mortgage, utilities) continually change their multiple page agreements I highly doubt most people have memorized them all.

I came here to ask a question which would more than likely be answered accurately and with less bias than calling Dish customer service with which I've never gotten an answer except 'power down your unit' or 'I've never heard that happening before'. I've seen issues addressed here that DSN denies even happening.

Thank-you to the other answers which are helpful. We have had the 625 for right at 4 years and I have never seen anything mysteriously recorded before. Prior to that we have a non DVR reciever so there.

As for changing service, if this was a FREQUENT practice DSN was just starting up, you bet I'll change. There are other things/features about DSN that I personally find annoying which, if added to frequent recording on my DVR would tip the scales to switch to cable TV.

 

[oldcargirl]

The Dish promo recordings would not have enabled your standby. Someone did it.

This one is strange, coincidence I suppose. It would be pretty difficult for someone else to have changed any settings. We've had no visitors in our home for months for more than a few moments and they would not touch the remote. We have no children and my husband couldn't find his way to that menu if you held a gun to his temple.

I keep close track of the inactivity standby for several reasons. First is I sleep with the TV on and can't sleep without it. I have some tinnitus and I can sleep with TV but can't with continual ringing.
Secondly, we are often not home and I like to leave the TV on so it appears as though we are home. At times we leave our dog pack inside and like to leave the TV on for them. So I always have the inactivity disabled.

In fact, the most annoying part od DSN and this 'new' 625 reciever is that it powers down daily to supposedly download program guide information. with our old reciever, I could leave it on and set the TV on a timer when we went out of town. I can't do that anymore. So what if I run out of guide, I can download fresh later.

These are the things that they don't tell you about in contracts. You have to sign up and use the system before you realize if there are quirky things that are significantly different from the previous system. That is what makes forums like this useful.

No lectures about an alarm please-doing that too. I'd rather have a burglar THINK we're home than do a smash and grab and hope the alarm scares them away before they do very much damage.

 

[Hall]

My response isn't rude nor useless. Unless you consider stating facts as "rude", of course... Dish is allowed to do this and they did nothing "wrong" and they spell this out in the agreement between customers and themselves and pointing this out can be considered "useful". Just think, I educated you. What else can Dish do that you don't realize ? As you state, the agreements are multi-page and can change on a daily basis and always in the company's favor. Doesn't hurt to check it every so often.

 

[Bob Haller]

you can turn off the inactivity standby if you want.

get a new 722K and it loads 2 how to run receiver dvr programs. short and useful espically for newbies

 

[Big Dawg 23]

This one is strange, coincidence I suppose. It would be pretty difficult for someone else to have changed any settings. We've had no visitors in our home for months for more than a few moments and they would not touch the remote. We have no children and my husband couldn't find his way to that menu if you held a gun to his temple.

I keep close track of the inactivity standby for several reasons. First is I sleep with the TV on and can't sleep without it. I have some tinnitus and I can sleep with TV but can't with continual ringing.
Secondly, we are often not home and I like to leave the TV on so it appears as though we are home. At times we leave our dog pack inside and like to leave the TV on for them. So I always have the inactivity disabled.

In fact, the most annoying part od DSN and this 'new' 625 reciever is that it powers down daily to supposedly download program guide information. with our old reciever, I could leave it on and set the TV on a timer when we went out of town. I can't do that anymore. So what if I run out of guide, I can download fresh later.

These are the things that they don't tell you about in contracts. You have to sign up and use the system before you realize if there are quirky things that are significantly different from the previous system. That is what makes forums like this useful.

No lectures about an alarm please-doing that too. I'd rather have a burglar THINK we're home than do a smash and grab and hope the alarm scares them away before they do very much damage.

When I had Dishnetwork promo happened about every other month. It has been numerous years since I was with Dish. When I was with them I had both a 501 and 510 DVR. I usually deleted them without watching them. It is unlike they adjusted your settings. Maybe by chance the reciever rebooted and the setting changed because of software glitch.

 

[JohnL]

The Dish promo recordings would not have enabled your standby. Someone did it.

KAB,

I Believe the OP. I have 1 722k, 2 522's and 2 625's. Over the last 2 weeks all of the SD DVR's were switched to enable the Inactivity timer. I have no neighbors within 1000 feet of me and all have unique remote addresses.

I'd guess this happened on the last firmware download.

John

 

[oldcargirl]

KAB,

I Believe the OP. I have 1 722k, 2 522's and 2 625's. Over the last 2 weeks all of the SD DVR's were switched to enable the Inactivity timer. I have no neighbors within 1000 feet of me and all have unique remote addresses.

I'd guess this happened on the last firmware download.

John

Interesting.

A few months back I had the daily updates disabled and when I manually did an update, it reset itself to auto update, as the day after I'd come home and the black scrolling message screen was on. After about 10 phone calls to DSN a senior tech finally told me they are taking away the customers ability to disable the daily automatic update/download program guide, even though it the menu may say you've disabled it.

 

[oldcargirl]

you can turn off the inactivity standby if you want.

get a new 722K and it loads 2 how to run receiver dvr programs. short and useful espically for newbies

Thanks Bob but I don't really want or need a new DVR. I am sure the tutorial is informative, although I am far from a newbie.

The response I just made to another answer applied to this however, as I had the daily updates disabled and suddenly they became enabled. Seriously, I made at least 10 phone calls over a couple of weeks and one senior tech finally told me they are taking away my choice to disable the daily program guide updates. I suppose I believe him because I can't disable it any longer.

What I find irritating is that the update menu itself says 'program guide information' yet the techs keep insisting it simply must check for important software updates every day, not so much the program guide because it stores several days worth of guide info.

 

[R0ss]

Why do people hang out in forums only to give rude and useless responses? Your reply in not answering my question or useful in anyway. Had you simply mentioned you have seen this and it is in your user agreement that would be useful info.

I signed my ORIGINAL agreement more than a dozen years ago. In this complicated world where service providers of all sorts (banks, ISP, TV, phone, cell phone, insurance, mortgage, utilities) continually change their multiple page agreements I highly doubt most people have memorized them all.

I came here to ask a question which would more than likely be answered accurately and with less bias than calling Dish customer service with which I've never gotten an answer except 'power down your unit' or 'I've never heard that happening before'. I've seen issues addressed here that DSN denies even happening.

Thank-you to the other answers which are helpful. We have had the 625 for right at 4 years and I have never seen anything mysteriously recorded before. Prior to that we have a non DVR reciever so there.

As for changing service, if this was a FREQUENT practice DSN was just starting up, you bet I'll change. There are other things/features about DSN that I personally find annoying which, if added to frequent recording on my DVR would tip the scales to switch to cable TV.

First of all I agree with you folks should not post unless they have something constructive to add to the conversation. Now to your question. We have had a dish DVR for about 3 years. I do not recall ever having this happen, however a month or so ago our 722 bit the dust and dish sent us a replacement. As soon as I got the replacement hooked up and authorized the dvr began recording a segment from Channel 101 on how to use the dvr. Had never had this happen before. Couldn't stop it but did delete it once it was over. Hasn't happened again and had never happened before. What does happen, on occasion, is a program that we did not program to record will record or we will catch that something is scheduled to record that we didn't schedule. I figure that it must be some fault in the guide. Thus far it is just a minor annoyance and doesn't happen often. I certainly can understand that several minor annoyances can add up to switching to cable but, in my case to get the same package from cable would require a bailout from congress and I know that won't happen! Honestly the worst thing that happens is weather related and while it is frustrating it's not that bad....

Ross

 

[oldcargirl]

Thanks for that info Ross and indeed interesting. My 'guess' is that Dish Network is changing their software so they have more control and we have less control-not unlike many things these days. We'll see just how far people will let themselves be pushed-once they finally understand what is happening. For some folks letting some corporate service make choices on their behalf, for me I know what works best for my needs.

Although we get some severe weather at times we rarely have any loss of service and then it is never for very long (few minutes).

I would not have upgraded to the 625 unit except that is all they had at the time. It was appealing to be able to watch 2 different programs at the same time, although it is extremely rare that we do. It is very convenient to have all my upstairs TV's on one feed and change all the stations with one click on the remote just as we did with the older reciever.

 

[Haysoos]

First of all I agree with you folks should not post unless they have something constructive to add to the conversation. Now to your question. We have had a dish DVR for about 3 years. I do not recall ever having this happen, however a month or so ago our 722 bit the dust and dish sent us a replacement. As soon as I got the replacement hooked up and authorized the dvr began recording a segment from Channel 101 on how to use the dvr. Had never had this happen before. Couldn't stop it but did delete it once it was over. Hasn't happened again and had never happened before.

This is done anytime a DVR receiver is activated. I suppose they assume that most DVR's that get activated are for new customers, so a couple of 5 min programs that might keep them from calling in is a benefit. If it's not for a new custy then maybe they'll watch and learn something.


As for the disabling the toggle of auto updates, it seems more likely they included it in their software because tons of phone calls and truck rolls are created because someones program didn't get recorded because their guide info is out of date. I really don't see it as a big brother move or just something to do to piss you off.

 

[KKlare]

I see the daily/nightly update as a way to force a cleanup of the memory. Some operating systems can go for a long time without memory "leaks" like my Mac (Unix-based) but others just get flakey without a periodic reboot. I have found my 722s can go a couple of days without a reboot by moving the reboot time around. Occasionally one will reboot without asking, usually after a lot of file moving to/from an external drive and/or multiple simultaneous recordings.

You could add a short daily timer, say 15 minutes after the reboot (menu-8-4) time so the house/dogs will have their sound. Better would be the tune-to option with no recording.
-Ken

 

[oldcargirl]

Haysoos, I suppose you made my point in a nutshell. Although being able to disable the auto updates serves a purpose for my needs and doesn't create calls to CSR, the sheeple can't figure it out and the company therefore will do their thinking for them. Disabling updates may very well may have generated an overwhelming number of calls for help. I don't wear a tinfoil hat and don't believe they would or could do that just to piss me off. The more technology advances and companies can use it to benefit themselves why wouldn't they? 'Features' upgrades and new equipment is what sells, even if many people can't or don't understand them-or even use most of them (which generates more calls for help ironically).

I am quite capable of negotiating the most complicated systems. (I have decades of technical experience from TV production work, computing, electronics repair, system set-ups, doing it not just ridng a desk). Some of us simply don't have the time and just need a few features to work and not constantly change. I work 12+ hours a day and my husband about the same running our own business. There are challenges that are simply more important that fighting through work-arounds with my TV sat system.

My comment could have been better stated that if Dish Network continues to make these changes and not allow me to control much except the station I watch, then it may be time for a change. There is much that I like about DN and I'd rather NOT change service.

At least I can set a simple lamp timer and that still works out, for now.

K Klare when I did manual updating of the program guide about every two weeks I never had any memory or other problems for nearly four years. The senior tech who advised me you can no longer disable the auto updates made the same suggestions you have. I set a short ongoing record timer about 15 min after the reboot which worked for a couple weeks but then stopped working. It still recorded to the DVR but the black screen with message stayed on, meaning it didn't show the program while it was recording. The auto-tune behaved exactly the same way, we tried that and at first it displayed the program. A couple of weeks later nothing, still set to auto-tune but it did not initiate the program to be visible.

 

[R0ss]

This is done anytime a DVR receiver is activated. I suppose they assume that most DVR's that get activated are for new customers, so a couple of 5 min programs that might keep them from calling in is a benefit. If it's not for a new custy then maybe they'll watch and learn something.

I think the overwhelming issue is that it is something relatively new and unexpected. This did not happen when we first upgraded to a DVR (VIP622) 2+ years ago. It also did not happen a year later when the 622 bit the dust and DIsh sent a 722 in it's place. But it did happen when dish recently replaced my 722 with a dead HD.
Maybe this should be a new Thread but it would be nice if there was someway for customers to know when an update includes a feature that we can access or changes a feature that we could access but no longer can.

 

[oldcargirl]

Well, now that you mention it Dish Network does have a way to let the customers know about changes and updates-they could record a message on the DVR for us

Yes, maybe the auto update topic would be better on a new thread. We've veered haven't we?