501 PVR Software Upgrade
staffondler
Woke up this AM [Sunday, 1/12/03] and found that my
PVR was off. TV shows all snow so I tried to turn it
on - nothing doing. Soon find out that the PVR is
repeatedly turning itself off and on and while in "Off"
mode, I see all snow and the LEDs on the front of the
box are out. When in "On" mode, the green Power LED
comes on and I see message# 15 on the screen - "Acquiring
Signal - Please Wait". And this cycle of Off-On-Off-On
keeps on going.
So, I call Dish's customer support and they claim
that I'm being upgraded to the new software. Very good,
I think, though being somewhat technical I'm perplexed
as to how a download can occur when a box keeps turning
itself off and on.
So, I then check the Software Download instructions on
Dish's web-site and the symptoms and on-screen messages
bear no relation to the activity I'm experiencing.
So, is my box really downloading, or are they full of
shit and, in the process of attempting to give me the
upgrade, they busted my beloved 501?
Cheers,
Staffie
Joe V
power light coming on for about 3 seconds and then going off for about 3
seconds. This went on for about 10 minutes and when I turned it on, I
had the upgrade. No problems yet.
John Lodge
Yepper, but if you do interrupt the software upgrade process at the most
inopportune time you can turn that receiver into a nifty doorstop.
John
Bishoop
<mcdu...@xactcom.net> wrote in message
news:01c32v4d8nlp1su3s...@4ax.com...
> On Sun, 12 Jan 2003 16:23:24 GMT, Joe V <kv...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> > My 501 was off yesterday morning while I read the paper. I noticed the
> > power light coming on for about 3 seconds and then going off for about 3
> > seconds. This went on for about 10 minutes and when I turned it on, I
> > had the upgrade. No problems yet.
>
is
> the signal that it is download the new software. Interrupting it at the
> wrong point will render the receiver a paperweight.
>
> gm
> --
> There is no x in my ISPs domain name.
Isn't that curious. I just RMAed a 501, for the 5th time, and the latest
incarnation came with a red label attached to the top of unit touting the
advantages of the UHF remote and how you could move the receiver out of
sight it the HDD/ fan noise was bothersome.
Now if the receiver is out of sight and you inadvertently activate it with
the remote and interrupt some software download process that will render the
unit a door stop that's really the pits. (How's that for a run-on
sentence?)
staffondler
> Joe,
>
> Yepper, but if you do interrupt the software upgrade process at the most
> inopportune time you can turn that receiver into a nifty doorstop.
Ahhh - timing must not have been on my side as it is well and
truly busted. Oh well, a new 501 is in the mail and on the
way.
Staffie
Randy
> incarnation came with a red label attached to the top of unit touting the
> advantages of the UHF remote and how you could move the receiver out of
> sight it the HDD/ fan noise was bothersome.
----------
Hmmm...your experience sounds a lot like my first year with Dish. Did
I miss the part of my contract that said a hardware upgrade every
three months or so is normal? I've had the on/off cycling problem
mentioned in this thread, plus NUMEROUS instances of recorded
programming being lost, paused programs being corrupted, etc. Are
DVRs in general just pieces of shit (and thus I should shut up and RMA
units) or is the 501 in particular a piece of shit (in which case I'll
look seriously at switching providers)?
Randy...
randyXX...@yahoo.com (remove the four X's to e-mail me)
David E. Bath
I have two 501s, one was one of the original shipments when it was
first released, the other 6 months later. With the exception of very
early software around P118 deleting some recordings and a very rare
missed recording, I have had no problems with my units. I still have
one recording from 1/27/2002 on one of the units just to show I
haven't lost anything since before that time.
I enjoy using my 501s and wouldn't get never get rid of them.
Fred Viles
news:m3c32vgrmv7vdqefm...@4ax.com:
>...
> I've often wondered what provision there is for those who can't
> see their receivers.
What provision there *is*, I can't say. What provision there could
and should be is simple: the unit can just ignore the remote and
power button while going through this process. Then the only way for
the user to screw it up would be to physically unplug the unit and/or
pull the smartcard. Some will inevitably do this, of course, but it
eliminates the out-of-sight receiver problem.
Daniel Prince
If I designed the units, I would make them so that even if the user
pulled the smart card or the power plug the receiver could still
download the software when it was plugged back in. My super 7
motherboard is designed so that even if a BIOS upgrade fails it can
still boot from a floppy and do a BIOS upgrade.
It seems to me that the additional cost to make the 501 and 508 so
that they can survive an interruption in the software download process
would be MUCH less than the cost of replacing damaged units or having
a technician come out to install each unit.
Having someone come out must cost at least $50 and replacing a unit is
probably more. I doubt it would have raised the cost of each unit
more than $1.00 to make them able to recover from an interrupted
download.
--
My cat really loves me. When it is cold at night he lies right
up against me in the bed to help keep me warm.
Fred Viles
news:olm82vosk8ltligtf...@4ax.com:
>...
> If I designed the units, I would make them so that even if the
> user pulled the smart card or the power plug the receiver could
> still download the software when it was plugged back in.
Agreed, that wouldn't be hard. And I expect they do that already.
The problem is not an interrupted download, it's an interrupted
flash write. Quite possibly pulling the smartcard could be ignored
during the flash update, but pulling the power cord is hard to
ignore...
> My
> super 7 motherboard is designed so that even if a BIOS upgrade
> fails it can still boot from a floppy and do a BIOS upgrade.
That's easy. The amount of code it takes to support that is tiny,
no problem to protect it in a "boot sector" that doesn't get erased
during the update. The amount of code it takes to run enough
receiver functionality to download from the sat is very large by
comparison.
> It seems to me that the additional cost to make the 501 and 508
> so that they can survive an interruption in the software
> download process would be MUCH less than the cost of replacing
> damaged units or having a technician come out to install each
> unit.
Maybe, maybe not. They'd likely need a second flash chip, and not
a small one. Could easily work out to millions of dollars over the
life of a popular receiver, that would pay for quite a few
exchanges.
And if they have taken the easy precautions, the actual window of
vulnerability is quite small.
> Having someone come out must cost at least $50 and replacing a
> unit is probably more.
They just do the replacement, it's far cheaper than a truck roll.
> I doubt it would have raised the cost of
> each unit more than $1.00 to make them able to recover from an
> interrupted download.
I think it would be closer to $10 than $1, but even at $1 I doubt
it would pay.
Russ Silbiger
on its own. No interruption.
That is one the the hazards. I back up my PC regularly. I suppose I
could run tapes every time I record a program, but that isn't quite
the same thing. Imagine how bad it could be when you have a 120 GB
drive full of programs disappear on you. We get more and more
dependent on Dish not screwing up our PVR's, or for that matter adding
features that could restrict how we watch programming.
Russ
Fred Viles <fv+a...@nospam.epitools.com> wrote in message news:<Xns9303E19...@66.150.105.46>...