New 921 owner with questions

[orpheus]

Just got my 921 for a week, overall like its HD picture quality.
But I have couple questions/comments here:
1. The disk drive noise is very annoying, and does not spin down even turned off. any suggestion to cut it down?
2. It does pick up local diagital channels very well, but I can't enter a local digital channel like "4-1" to access it directly! did I miss something? I never have a digital TV tuner before.
3. Connect my VCR to 921's "video/audio" input, and happy to be able to view tape through 921's component output, but it has a TERRIBLE video noise at the bottom of the screen when viewed through 921's "SD" ouputs(S-video, or Composite), is this a defect of mine, or a known 921's feature?
4. I can't make the Closed Caption feature to work, although it seems to have this nice menu for customization!

Thanks in advance for any comments/advise.

 

[liljoe]

been there

dish does put out some great receivers, when you get a good one. The disk drive should not make a noise but for just a few seconds. I have installed a few of these and half of them were sent back for this same reason. As for the locals in digital, again some of these HD receivers will not allow you to directly punch in the local channels. I'm sure that you have explored all of your entire channel guide options, sometimes it gives you two sets of local channels to load. All said and done I would raise a little you know what with dish and whomever sold this receiver to you and demand a new one that will not keep you up all night. lil joe.

 

[erasmu]

You can tune directly to local stations, but must enter the number in a complete format. For channel 4, my 921 will accept 004 or 00401. Both will result in channel 4-1. If you want 4-2, then you need to enter 00402. I seldom use other subchannels so three digits normally takes care of most of my channels just fine.

 

[KKlare]

1. The disk does not stop, it is annoying but is probably no more wear.
2. You need to enter leading zeroes 004 or 013 and the subchannel 1 or 01, if you have the analog or satellite channels mapped. The default 004 will be 00400 but with neither mapped you get 00401. When editing a timer channel you must use 9999 and go down by lines or pages to the 00's.
3. If your TV has enough inputs then use them. If not you gets what you gets.
4. Closed captioning for HD must be turned on menu-4-6-left-click-right-click.
The Done is required.
To see it sooner after that press cancel.
There are no captions while any banner or menu is up.
HDNet and HDNet Movies do not output captions; Discovery HD seldom.
720p channels (ABC ESPN and Fox) do not work well, if at all.

I prefer yellow or cyan on solid background. I would like translucent but it is transparent and you need some contrast. The edge should be black. Lots of menus.
The 811 just added translucent and transparent to the menus but they don't work. It has a nicer small font.

 

[orpheus]

Thanks for the replies, and more info. to share

Thanks for the tutorial about using digital TV tuner! I do have local analog channels mapped, that's why I ran into difficulty.

I found out that the Caption does work, but it takes about 10 seconds to show up on the screen after I hit the Done button! Maybe there are lots of processings to be done to get all those customerized Caption displayed?!

Now, my biggest problem with this 921 is(to be honest, I am quite happy with the picture quality using 720P mode, at least it is a big step-up from my old 501 on SDTV):
Once in a while, the unit seems to be "hung", did not respond to remote control, and suddenly it waked up and tried to follow all buttons I just entered! And, from then on, it became very "sluggish" in responging to remote control, until I unpluged and rebooted it, then it's normal again! I also checked and confirmed there is NO newer software upgrade available for it.

Since I bought this directly from Dishnetwork($549), I wonder whether this is a unique defect of mine, and should I go through the trouble of asking for a replacement? Or, is it a common known problem that I just need to live with?

Thanks again in advance...

 

[Mark_AR]

I've had mine for 15 or 16 months and it hangs every now and again. Remote stops responding or may take 30 seconds to wake back up. I've seen it hang mostly in the DVR menu.

Guess we all just have to live with it.