Satellite 129 Issues

[H2Guy]

After coming back from a long vacation last week I noticed I have been having issues with my receivers. Both of my 922's when first turned on for the day show "Starting up" with the earth displayed which is the normal picture when the receiver is unplugged the plugged back in. After a extended period of time one will come back on line, the other sometimes requires me to unplug it and plug it back in.

Once I do that I sometimes get a test screen where it appears to be searching for satellites. I even noticed that the Wally is complaining about missing one of the satellites on the one of the test screens.
If I do a switch test on the 922's it will only find satellites 119 and 110, I think Satellite 129 that was once there is now gone and is really screwing it up.

I made a call to Dish tech support (which by the way was worthless) and was told Dish made some satellite changes about 3 weeks ago is what is affecting my receivers. They said they imagine there MIGHT be a software/firmware available in the near future. Now I am wondering if the 922's will be including in the update.

If not I guess I'm just screwed as I am locked into this hardware (for a number of reasons I don't want to get into). Meanwhile I can look forward into power cycling one of my 922's just to get it back online and having to wait for the other one to figure out it no longer has access to all its original satellites.

What a bunch of crap, why not release the software/firmware upgrade first then make the changes???

It like jumping out of the airplane then thinking perhaps I should have put on my parachute first. No doubt why the industry analyst say Dish network is doomed.

 

[navychop]

129 has been discontinued- at least by Dish.

The 922 is not getting a new buggy whip. Be nice if they decided to upgrade that s/w - but how many are still active?

NEVER bet against Charlie!

 

[charlesrshell]

After coming back from a long vacation last week I noticed I have been having issues with my receivers. Both of my 922's when first turned on for the day show "Starting up" with the earth displayed which is the normal picture when the receiver is unplugged the plugged back in. After a extended period of time one will come back on line, the other sometimes requires me to unplug it and plug it back in.

Once I do that I sometimes get a test screen where it appears to be searching for satellites. I even noticed that the Wally is complaining about missing one of the satellites on the one of the test screens.
If I do a switch test on the 922's it will only find satellites 119 and 110, I think Satellite 129 that was once there is now gone and is really screwing it up.

I made a call to Dish tech support (which by the way was worthless) and was told Dish made some satellite changes about 3 weeks ago is what is affecting my receivers. They said they imagine there MIGHT be a software/firmware available in the near future. Now I am wondering if the 922's will be including in the update.

If not I guess I'm just screwed as I am locked into this hardware (for a number of reasons I don't want to get into). Meanwhile I can look forward into power cycling one of my 922's just to get it back online and having to wait for the other one to figure out it no longer has access to all its original satellites.

What a bunch of crap, why not release the software/firmware upgrade first then make the changes???

It like jumping out of the airplane then thinking perhaps I should have put on my parachute first. No doubt why the industry analyst say Dish network is doomed.

What do you think of swapping your 922s for a Hopper 3? They are awesome.

 

[Josh.M]

After coming back from a long vacation last week I noticed I have been having issues with my receivers. Both of my 922's when first turned on for the day show "Starting up" with the earth displayed which is the normal picture when the receiver is unplugged the plugged back in. After a extended period of time one will come back on line, the other sometimes requires me to unplug it and plug it back in.

Once I do that I sometimes get a test screen where it appears to be searching for satellites. I even noticed that the Wally is complaining about missing one of the satellites on the one of the test screens.
If I do a switch test on the 922's it will only find satellites 119 and 110, I think Satellite 129 that was once there is now gone and is really screwing it up.

I made a call to Dish tech support (which by the way was worthless) and was told Dish made some satellite changes about 3 weeks ago is what is affecting my receivers. They said they imagine there MIGHT be a software/firmware available in the near future. Now I am wondering if the 922's will be including in the update.

If not I guess I'm just screwed as I am locked into this hardware (for a number of reasons I don't want to get into). Meanwhile I can look forward into power cycling one of my 922's just to get it back online and having to wait for the other one to figure out it no longer has access to all its original satellites.

What a bunch of crap, why not release the software/firmware upgrade first then make the changes???

It like jumping out of the airplane then thinking perhaps I should have put on my parachute first. No doubt why the industry analyst say Dish network is doomed.

922 is no longer supported. If your experience becomes unbearable you'll need to replace your receiver with a supported model.

Orb 129 going away won't affect anything on supported receivers at this point. Sorry you had a bad experience calling in, but to be honest there is a lot of turnover in the call centers and you're one of ~1,200 people with a 922 so I don't doubt the agent was confused when trying to help you.

 

[navychop]

“I am locked into this hardware (for a number of reasons I don't want to get into)“

What do you think of swapping your 922s for a Hopper 3? They are awesome.

 

[H2Guy]

The Hopper is not an option at this point, I have two 922's and a Wally(which I also used in my RV at times) the 922's feed alternate rooms where Joey's won't work and I cant run cables to those rooms and Wifi won't go thru adobe walls very well. I either need to get the 922's to work, or possibly use 3 Wally's and put HDMI splitters with HDMI SDI converters on each of the 2 to feed the other rooms.

Honestly if I can't resolve the issues with the 922's (which by the way Dish will send me a refurb one so they still have them) I might just switch to streaming video over comcast and call it a day.

 

[tjboston5676]

The Hopper is not an option at this point, I have two 922's and a Wally(which I also used in my RV at times) the 922's feed alternate rooms where Joey's won't work and I cant run cables to those rooms and Wifi won't go thru adobe walls very well. I either need to get the 922's to work, or possibly use 3 Wally's and put HDMI splitters with HDMI SDI converters on each of the 2 to feed the other rooms.

Honestly if I can't resolve the issues with the 922's (which by the way Dish will send me a refurb one so they still have them) I might just switch to streaming video over comcast and call it a day.

If the 922 is feeding other tvs then there's some kind of cabling installed so the Joey's absolutely will work. If it's coax from a splitter then Joey will connect at each TV location just fine. If it's av cables like hdmi or rca you can still connect your Joey's where those av cables are as the Joey doesn't actually have to be in the room. The remotes use uhf with up to 200' working distance, so even through walls should still work at over 80-100' away.

 

[H2Guy]

MY neighbor use to be a Dish customer and had almost the same configuration with 722's, a number of years ago he was talked into and switched to a hopper with Joey's. For the next 6 months after that he had dish network in his driveway almost every week because of the Joey's dropping and other issues. He finally gave up and switched to comcast. He had a high power comercial wifi antenna installed in his house (because of the adobe walls) and now streams everything, of course he probably will get cancer from the high emissions.

As far as my configuration there is no direct connection from the 922 to the second tv on each 922 unit. Both run from the 922 to a distribution box/amplifier then to the other TV.

Again, it sucks to re-invent the wheel because Dish went off half cocked and didn't release a software/firmware upgrade before de-comissioning a satellite providing service. Simply stupid on their part and not thinking ahead.... Or it was genius by forcing customers to have to upgrade their owned equipment to a moe expensive platform.... Either way, I'm not buying it.

 

[navychop]

Actually, some s/w updates were sent out.

But the 922 is EOL. You seem to have gotten many good years out of it.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I am surprised you are still using a 922, they were all supposed to be turned off a few years ago.

As far as Hoppers go I would say that any issues your neighbor had we unique to them, as now I believe close to 70% of DISH customers have Hoppers. If there was problems like the one you report trust me we would hear it here. Thats not saying they were not buggy at first release. But they are really good now.

I think you would really like a Hopper 3.... 16 tuners, 4K, no annoyinig red recording light. (I added that last one as a joke to someone)

 

[navychop]

 

[H2Guy]

Honestly, I like the 922 more then I do the Wally and I really don't need anything more, while I am sure I would enjoy the hopper too. I really am satisfied with status quo (that's if it worked like it did before Dish screwed it up). I really have no want to tear my system apart just to have rent the latest product or be tied to another contract. Don't get me wrong I do like new technology but only if there is a major advantage to it for me and it's worth the effort of the upgrade.

So back to the problem: Dish, as we all know a simple firmware/software update could have totally prevented the problems to customers that were perfectly happy with their current hardware. But it's that throw it away mentality that so many companies have, other then a software patch the old receivers cost Dish nothing, they old receivers worked fine and would have continued to do so. They required no new installation no service calls, nothing... And if the old hardware fails and its not available for replacement and no longer in production so be it. Ok so now it really is junk and trashing or recycling it makes good sense.

Someone had mentioned some software has already been sent out, I checked the Wally and so far nothing, still running on W542 and according to the software upgrade menu no new software available. I don't have much hope for the 922. I did perform a switch test and that it complained that saving the configuration would cause a number of channels to be lost. I did it anyway, but maybe it won't lock up coming out of standby. We shall see tomorrow.

 

[HipKat]

922 is no longer supported. If your experience becomes unbearable you'll need to replace your receiver with a supported model.

Orb 129 going away won't affect anything on supported receivers at this point. Sorry you had a bad experience calling in, but to be honest there is a lot of turnover in the call centers and you're one of ~1,200 people with a 922 so I don't doubt the agent was confused when trying to help you.

Breaks my heart a wonderful device like the 922 is obsolete but a piece of garbage, the Super Joey still exists....

 

[H2Guy]

The plot thickens, after doing some digging apparently Dish Network LLC did not renew their lease on their 129 Satellite which expired on Aug 1st.
The end of last month they quickly shifted some content from the 129 to 119 and 110 but as I understand it not everything got moved and if you had a non HD receiver you lost channels plus some of the duplicated SD channels are gone too.

I guess it was a Hail Marry move perhaps a move to save some bucks for them. In hindsight proper planning did not prevail and the customers with older equipment got the shaft. Great job Dish! Your living up to the industry experts prediction about your future.

 

[NYDutch]

The plot thickens, after doing some digging apparently Dish Network LLC did not renew their lease on their 129 Satellite which expired on Aug 1st.
The end of last month they quickly shifted some content from the 129 to 119 and 110 but as I understand it not everything got moved and if you had a non HD receiver you lost channels plus some of the duplicated SD channels are gone too.

I guess it was a Hail Marry move perhaps a move to save some bucks for them. In hindsight proper planning did not prevail and the customers with older equipment got the shaft. Great job Dish! Your living up to the industry experts prediction about your future.

Dish was shifting programming from 129 to 110 and 119 for quite awhile before the 129 shutdown as the lease expired and Ciel2 was reaching its end of service life. Yes, in order to accommodate all the HD channels on 110 and 119 some SD channels were dropped. Those older MPEG2 SD only receivers weren't compatible with the transition to all MPEG4 anyway, and would not survive the transition as Dish had been warning for months.

 

[telstar_1]

If a rx will do a checkswitch and finds sats (110/119), it should be happy to let you lock those in and not demand it find something more (129), right?

I went to do a checkswitch on my 722k just to be sure it was good on the transition, and it indicated being programmed just on 110 and 119. So they must have done some command to simply remove 129 from the saved matrix.

Yeah, that 922- what was the purpose of that again? If I remember, it was like the first HD DVR rx. Didn't like them. Why not get 722s?

 

[H2Guy]

Telstar_1 there is some disagreement in the ranks of Dish experts, some say the 922 was a newer version, and some say the 722 was. Either way the 722 is a dinosaur in functional comparison to the 922. I can say this first hand as I have had both.

The 922 menu system, guide and interface is similar to the newer receivers, see for yourself:

Plus the way it records into specific folders rather then just putting everything in one menu also makes it much easier to record and file your favorites.

I did read somewhere that Echostar and Dish was sued by TiVo over the interface used in the 922 and simply abandon the platform keeping the 722 as the premier DVR. Honestly after having a 922 I could never go back to the 722k. And to me its better then the Wally as it does not have all the Dish advertisement crap on it either. I imagine the Hopper is probably the same way or very similar to the wally.

 

[tjboston5676]

MY neighbor use to be a Dish customer and had almost the same configuration with 722's, a number of years ago he was talked into and switched to a hopper with Joey's. For the next 6 months after that he had dish network in his driveway almost every week because of the Joey's dropping and other issues. He finally gave up and switched to comcast. He had a high power comercial wifi antenna installed in his house (because of the adobe walls) and now streams everything, of course he probably will get cancer from the high emissions.

As far as my configuration there is no direct connection from the 922 to the second tv on each 922 unit. Both run from the 922 to a distribution box/amplifier then to the other TV.

Again, it sucks to re-invent the wheel because Dish went off half cocked and didn't release a software/firmware upgrade before de-comissioning a satellite providing service. Simply stupid on their part and not thinking ahead.... Or it was genius by forcing customers to have to upgrade their owned equipment to a moe expensive platform.... Either way, I'm not buying it.

I'm still failing to understand why you say there's no direct connection then say there's a distribution box feeding the tvs. Sounds like the back feed from 922 is feeding into the distribution box then to the other tvs, which would be over coax. Unless the cabling exceeds 200ft between where the 922 is and any of the other tvs then you would just install a hub where your distribution box is and get rid of the amplifiers.

 

[tjboston5676]

Ther

The plot thickens, after doing some digging apparently Dish Network LLC did not renew their lease on their 129 Satellite which expired on Aug 1st.
The end of last month they quickly shifted some content from the 129 to 119 and 110 but as I understand it not everything got moved and if you had a non HD receiver you lost channels plus some of the duplicated SD channels are gone too.

I guess it was a Hail Marry move perhaps a move to save some bucks for them. In hindsight proper planning did not prevail and the customers with older equipment got the shaft. Great job Dish! Your living up to the industry experts prediction about your future.

theres multiple post about this thought this forum. It wasn't just a quick thing, it's been in the works for over a year maybe even two years. No channels have been lost, just moved to a different satellite.
While your 922 technically shouldn't of been affected by the changes, there has been reports of receivers acting up since the change. But as mentioned it's no longer supported and it hasn't been for many years. I haven't even seen one in over 5 years. You can't expect a company to keep up support for everything that was put out in the past. That's like getting mad at Microsoft for ending windows xp support. It just doesn't financially make sense to spend money on something outdated and only a few ppl still have.

 

[navychop]

Actually, I miss 3.11 ……