What was or is the most stable receiver?

[Tampa8]

My vote goes to DishDave's avatar.
Oh, wait that wasn't the question? Ok, I think it is fair to divide between non- dvr's and dvr's. My 2700 was indistructable. Of course it didn't do much other than tune in stations. For the more complex DVR's, my two 508's have been quite stable, perhaps a little fussy at times, but overall quite reliable.

 

[Mr Tony]

Did you use the 5000 for HD. Mine was fine for SD but very eratic for HD.

I only used mine for SD...never got HD and by the time I thought about it, they nuked all the HD for the 5000

 

[KyDave]

Another vote for the 4000 - had 7 great years from Jan 97 till Dec 03 until I upgraded to an 811.

 

[SaltiDawg]

Did you use the 5000 for HD. Mine was fine for SD but very eratic for HD. ...

not used for HD - just SD.

When my wife got a 942 I used the two 508's connected to my ancient 53" XBR. That worked fine, but I was frequently confused and would record shows twice, etc.

When my wife got a 622 I kept her 942 and retired to the basement my two 508's.

Now remember, I've only had the 942 for a couple of months.

Come to think of it, the first 622 had all kinds of problems and was replaced after 17 days. That said, the second 622 has been rock solid for two+ months.

 

[hzhao]

From my relatively short experience with Dish, I experienced 6000, 811, 721, 921 & 622. The rank from best to worst: 622, 600, 721, 811, 921.

 

[navychop]

I have had a couple of 301s, a 508, a 721 & a ViP622.

I think the 301 was the most stable- in all the years I had it, I only had one need to hard reboot it. Of course, it was also the most limited in features.

After the 301, I'd have to say the 508. Almost completely trouble free, and certainly trouble free today.

Then the ViP622. It's almost completely trouble free for me. I do get an occasional audio drop out. I love it.

The 721 brings up the rear. It's trouble free today, and I am very happy with it. I only rate it last because I was an early adopter, and it had a few quirks early on, and I'm on my 3rd one due to hard drive failures. The features that makes me prefer it greatly over the 508 are the program description with the small video window on the 721 in the EPG. This makes it a whole lot easier to pick what show to tune to.

Salti- If you're not using your 508s, might I suggest you sell them? I believe they are not 8PSK capable, and certainly aren't MPEG-4 capable. In 2 or 3 years, they'll likely be useless as programming shifts over to MPEG-4 & 8PSK. I know, there are doubts about how much SD will go MPEG-4, and how fast- but 8PSK will likely come faster. Anything to recover bandwidth. Their value must be decreasing each month. I use my 508 & 721, as well as the ViP622. I will be very sad when the day comes that the 508 & 721 are phased out.

 

[tripod]

Got my 2800 in 98,still going strong.301 in bdrm-4 years old.

 

[SummitAdvantageRetailer]

I'd have to say that we had the fewest problems/returns on 510's and 50x DVRs. The 921's and 811's have had the most problems in their initial software cycles. But now that the 811's have gotten many software revisions, they are pretty stable now.

 

[SummitAdvantageRetailer]

One bad thing about the 811 is that this receiver loses signal before the 3x1/5xx receivers.

 

[Pepper]

As a rule, the most stable Dish receiver is "the one they don't make anymore, the [insert your favorite discontinued model number here]". For some strange reason the length of time a particular unit is being produced is pretty close to the same as how long it takes the engineers to get the software right.

We early adopters get to have all the fun by continually betting that this trend will change for the better at some point.

 

[wilme2]

my 5000 lasted 5 years....slow as dirt but damn it was a good box. Even had a OTA tuner built in

I am still using a 5000 on an SD TV. Bought it years ago, not even sure of the year. Bulletproof..

 

[Stargazer]

The 322 has given me the least amount of trouble. I could see the 322 being the most reliable receiver seeing that it is a version of the 522/625 series and I have had no hardware issues with the 522/625 and I have seen very little software issues for a while. 721 has bugs but it has advantages over the 522/625 (faster EPG, like the graphics interface, no DVR fee, no additional outlet fee without phoneline).

 

[Tom Bombadil]

I remember having a conversation with a high level Dish engineer at CEDIA a couple years ago and he told me that the biggest release disaster they ever had was the 721. The problems overwhelmed their support desks for months. That it was a case of releasing a receiver before the software was anywhere near production quality.

Eventually they resolved most of the the issues and it is now a reliable box.

It was even worse than the 7100/7200 receivers. Those were a strange case. They were pretty reliable for a while, and then a series of "software updates" made them almost unfunctional. Again eventually E* worked out the bugs and for those who stuck with the 7x00 boxes, they too became reliable.

 

[MikeD-C05]

I had 3 of the 721 receivers a few years back before hd and I remember it took about 18 months to get it stable. Then I traded them in for the 921 which was a big piece of crap . It wasn't as bad as the 7100/7200 series of the origional dishplayer/ webtv receiver, but it sure was a headache.

My 622 receivers are now pretty stable and I am just waiting on the new features like the extra hard drive and video demand over internet to finish this receiver. The 942 ,which the 622 was based on, seemed to me the best receiver I have ever had out of the box, that worked like it was supposed to , except the initial problem with one tuner not working in dolby digital sound. This was fixed pretty fast and the 942 worked well for me till I traded them in on the 622. The 942 receiver I had less than 10 months and I have to say out of all the receivers I have had in almost 10 years with Dish , was the most stable the quickest.

 

[kvhollis]

The 721 is still a fine unit and is fine most of the time.

I do love both of my 721's. . . except for the painfully SLOW reboots. Kids fool around with the remote too much = another slow reboot.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

I used a 7100 up to June of 2005. From around the Spring of 2003 until I retired it, it was rock stable. I had to reboot it about once every three months. Much more stable than my current 942, when I switched to the 942, my problems increased by more than an order of magnitude.

But the 18 months before the Spring of 2003, the 7100 was a bugfest.

 

[Kirk Strong]

I have a model 2700 and a model 5000 for standard definition TV's that have worked great ever since I purchased them back in October 1999. These two units have been absolutely flawless and rock solid year after year!

I currently have a leased the 811 receiver which is a piece of junk. After six months of constant failures, reboots, loss of programming, and Dish support unwilling to pony up to the fact that it was a badly designed receiver (and the one that I had was also defective), and that I needed to pay >>even more money<< to get the leased receiver under a repair contract to get a replacement, I was on the verge of leaving dish by paying the remainder of the contract fee just to be rid of it and Dish....The 811 receiver's reliability really made me upset and threw away almost 5 years worth of customer satisfaction in a few short months.

When I told dish I would rather pay the contract exit fee then deal with them and the flawed 811, Dish "negociated" with me (and I agreed) to go on a six month program where I only pay $5 month (maintenance package) until my remaining six months are up on the contract as they wanted to try and keep me as a customer and get me to upgrade now that the 622 is available. They also said they would upgrade my outside equipment (dishes and switch) if I didn't cancel and reactivated my regular service.

In the meantime I was so angry with the 811 and Dish's lack of responsibility to this receiver I have been on a promotional COMCAST program for six months (until the Dish 811 contract is expired) at which time I have been reevaluate the value of going back to Dish.

As a side note, the COMCAST service is pretty good in the greater Denver area, but HD programming has frequent pixelization....I never had that with Dish, even with the garbage 811....but in Comcast's favor, I've never had to wipe snow off of the cable either.

So in summary, stay away from the 811.

As a side note, I will probably return back to dish for their superior picture quality over Comcast and Dish's superior HD content, and I will likly go with a Dish DVR unit (I got used to that feature while with Comcast)...but if I have any problems with the Dish 622 that is anything remote to the 811, I will go straight to the top to get it all removed......fighting with video and receiver problems is just not worth the time and effort.....for the amount of dough that a person spends each month on the video service, it had just better work.

 

[Stargazer]

I have read LOTS of complaints on the boards of the 811. Personally all receivers I try to get anymore are SD DVR's (522/625 mainly) as you can get them cheap, have dual tuners, UHF PRO functionality, name based recording, and are pretty stable. It seems to have a good equilibrium and I do not hear that many complaints about it. If only the 721 had NBR and a few bugs fixed it would be very close to perfect. HD DVR's are still too expensive but is now starting to drop closer to an acceptable level. That level would be $350 or lower. That should happen within the next year or two. This is for your own receiver not leased one.

I remember when the 7100/7200 was extremely buggy. I thought I would never see anybody say that it is a rock solid unit.

 

[Hall]

It's not really fair to compare a DVR receiver to a plain receiver, is it ?? They're really completely different animals. The DVRs are stripped-down PCs whereas a regular receiver is not much more than a "decoder", is it not ?? I mean, how many times do people have to "reboot" their TVs when they act up ??

That said, it seems that the 522/625 receivers have improved greatly based on comments in this thread. I joined Dish when they first released that box and it wasn't unusable by any means, but it did have numerous annoying little glitches. Check the forums here from back in 2004 or so... I think this receiver had it's *own* sub-forum back then in fact !

 

[hobojoe]

good way to look at the dvr's are a small basic computer with a regular hard drive. i really ha vent had a problem with a particular receiver. but i am thinking of putting my dvr's on a timer to power down every night. I'm shire they will still update and screw there phone lines!!!