dalehileman
01-09-08, 03:40 PM
I had two Dish UHF Remotes on hand and gained a third one, an updated model, gratis, when they replaced my old receiver. Hope your participants having experiences similar to mine find the following helpful
First of all I have to give Dish credit for the ease of use and extremely economical battery consumption. These advantages are somewhat outweighed, however, by the troubleshooting time entailed (1) a regular maintenance requirement that the typical Dish customer shouldn’t have to be bothered with and (2) an evident deficiency in the programming of the later model of the remote
(1) As this former problem in my older two units escalates, upon depressing a button it must be held longer and longer for the desired action to occur, or with greater and greater force against the button. Caused by a buildup of some sort on the stationary contacts of the circuit board, at ordinary pressure this deposit eventually becomes so bad that you have to hold the button down for an entire minute before the resultant action is obtained. Literally, no exaggeration, I timed it. Otherwise you have to press so hard you will be in danger of damaging the works by cracking the board
I speculate that the accretion owes to natural emissions of the human body, especially of course the user’s hand. Eventually no amount of force will cause the button to actuate the required function. To correct the condition it’s now necessary to disassemble the remote in order to gain access to the circuit board, then scrub the contacts with alcohol or contact cleaner. While it’s the board contacts that seem to be at fault, disassembling and assembling the unit is so tricky and tedious that you might as well clean the button contacts while you’re at it.
During some 60 years working in the field of electronics I have never before encountered such stubborn contamination, and so I would suggest to Dish engineers that they look into the problem, perhaps in future incarnations of the device changing the materials of which the contacts are made or better sealing the innards of the unit against vapours from the outside
(2) The newer remote apparently can’t be successfully used with an older TV set. Indeed, the manual so states, though in somewhat equivocal language. Still if I’m wrong I would be much indebted to learn a way to make my new Dish Remote control my old TV set’s volume as well as on-off and channel-change functions. However, some background–
Believe it or not, if you don’t know what accessory address to use for your TV, the manual provides “Doing the Remote Control Device Code Scan,” in which you enter every possible code from 001 to 999, one at a time in a 5-step procedure, until you find the one that works. Once you have become adept at it, a single step requires only a minute. However, if you spend more than 20 seconds reading the succeeding step, Dish resets your effort, requiring you to return to Step 1. Therefore if you make no mistakes whatever and your TV’s remote address happened to be 1000, you will have spent 999 minutes searching for it. Thank you God, for setting the address of my TV as 008. However why did You let them time out between steps? a most frustrating feature of hundreds if not thousands of other computer programs and one that drives an ordinary slob (me) to distraction
Below an excerpt from an email to Dish that nonetheless elicited no reply nor action of any sort whatever:
After a Herculean effort on my part I was able to make the new remote work fine with the receiver but it couldn’t be made to control my TV set. Thereupon using the: “Device Code Scan” with this new remote I tediously attempted about 50 other addresses, with no luck. Finally in desperation I tried one that I knew from the manual was acceptable to some newer Panasonics. As the address was 697 how grateful was I that I didn’t have to first wade through the first 696. I was elated to find that now I was able using this new remote to turn the TV set on and off and to change channels. However, I was crushed to find that its volume control didn’t work right: Instead of the green volume scale I got the “ON TIME...” message complete with colons, hyphens, etc, in several cheerful colors. Dish, thank you for that but it’s not the one I wanted
Conclusion. Although it’s arguable whether the second problem I described revolves around faulty programming, I’m sure you will agree both kinds of malfunction ought to be addressed by somebody, somewhere, somehow. In any case, I’d be pleased to hear from anyone who might have some insights; so I am dalehileman@verizon.net
First of all I have to give Dish credit for the ease of use and extremely economical battery consumption. These advantages are somewhat outweighed, however, by the troubleshooting time entailed (1) a regular maintenance requirement that the typical Dish customer shouldn’t have to be bothered with and (2) an evident deficiency in the programming of the later model of the remote
(1) As this former problem in my older two units escalates, upon depressing a button it must be held longer and longer for the desired action to occur, or with greater and greater force against the button. Caused by a buildup of some sort on the stationary contacts of the circuit board, at ordinary pressure this deposit eventually becomes so bad that you have to hold the button down for an entire minute before the resultant action is obtained. Literally, no exaggeration, I timed it. Otherwise you have to press so hard you will be in danger of damaging the works by cracking the board
I speculate that the accretion owes to natural emissions of the human body, especially of course the user’s hand. Eventually no amount of force will cause the button to actuate the required function. To correct the condition it’s now necessary to disassemble the remote in order to gain access to the circuit board, then scrub the contacts with alcohol or contact cleaner. While it’s the board contacts that seem to be at fault, disassembling and assembling the unit is so tricky and tedious that you might as well clean the button contacts while you’re at it.
During some 60 years working in the field of electronics I have never before encountered such stubborn contamination, and so I would suggest to Dish engineers that they look into the problem, perhaps in future incarnations of the device changing the materials of which the contacts are made or better sealing the innards of the unit against vapours from the outside
(2) The newer remote apparently can’t be successfully used with an older TV set. Indeed, the manual so states, though in somewhat equivocal language. Still if I’m wrong I would be much indebted to learn a way to make my new Dish Remote control my old TV set’s volume as well as on-off and channel-change functions. However, some background–
Believe it or not, if you don’t know what accessory address to use for your TV, the manual provides “Doing the Remote Control Device Code Scan,” in which you enter every possible code from 001 to 999, one at a time in a 5-step procedure, until you find the one that works. Once you have become adept at it, a single step requires only a minute. However, if you spend more than 20 seconds reading the succeeding step, Dish resets your effort, requiring you to return to Step 1. Therefore if you make no mistakes whatever and your TV’s remote address happened to be 1000, you will have spent 999 minutes searching for it. Thank you God, for setting the address of my TV as 008. However why did You let them time out between steps? a most frustrating feature of hundreds if not thousands of other computer programs and one that drives an ordinary slob (me) to distraction
Below an excerpt from an email to Dish that nonetheless elicited no reply nor action of any sort whatever:
After a Herculean effort on my part I was able to make the new remote work fine with the receiver but it couldn’t be made to control my TV set. Thereupon using the: “Device Code Scan” with this new remote I tediously attempted about 50 other addresses, with no luck. Finally in desperation I tried one that I knew from the manual was acceptable to some newer Panasonics. As the address was 697 how grateful was I that I didn’t have to first wade through the first 696. I was elated to find that now I was able using this new remote to turn the TV set on and off and to change channels. However, I was crushed to find that its volume control didn’t work right: Instead of the green volume scale I got the “ON TIME...” message complete with colons, hyphens, etc, in several cheerful colors. Dish, thank you for that but it’s not the one I wanted
Conclusion. Although it’s arguable whether the second problem I described revolves around faulty programming, I’m sure you will agree both kinds of malfunction ought to be addressed by somebody, somewhere, somehow. In any case, I’d be pleased to hear from anyone who might have some insights; so I am dalehileman@verizon.net