I see that I now have 217. The telling sign that something had happened over night is that my Hopper was unresponsive this morning. It would not react to RC commands, and the red record LED was lit. (Although, it wasn't actually recording anything. In fact, it borked its 10am timer.)
I do not notice any changes from 213 in regard to menu, guide, dvr, or on-demand options. I don't think there are any new apps either. I never had 215 or 216, so I don't know if they added anything or took away. But, 217 looks an awful lot like 213. It even has the system lockup "feature".
I wish they would add the ability to choose a default guide, already! Or, at least default to last-used. I'm still hating nested channels for our ONE international channel and TWO sports nets. It would be nice to be able to disable that useless feature, as well.
It's so good to see that nothing has changed with Dish in regard to product engineering. Deja vu to the days of the 921, 941, and 800. Oh, it's good to be back.