Faithful 501 passed away

[mrush99]

Lurked here for a while and picked up tons of great info about the goings on in the sat world and finally have something interesting to post!

I have had and been quite satisfied with the 501 for 8 months. Learned to deal with the single tuner and the 35 hours or space....but now the beast has given up on me.

Thing is it doesnt appear to be a drive failure. I suspected that this would be the first component to die on this guy but it looks like it is the reciever. Started by getting lots of digital break up and then a constant looking for sat screen. The help at customer service asked I plug in my 301 to check wire/switch but it works fine. I am also able to watch the recorded shows on the drive just fine.

Question: is this a common failure on the pvr or has something wonky happened here. I have the unit plugged into a surge protector. They are bringing out a new one on sunday (come on 508! please!) so I dont have to watch too much live tv! Anyway, just bad luck or is this something I could have prevented?

[Scott Greczkowski]

Welcome mrush99 :hi:

Probably just bad luck. The good news is they are replacing it for you! And the better news is since 501's are scarce you have a good chance of getting a 508. :)

Again welcome!

[mrush99]

Thanks Scott! Yeah I am holding out for the 508...I can get a couple of seasons worth on that bad boy!

[Jacob S]

It IS a common problem with the 501 as many here on this and other boards have had signal issues and bad hard drives with the 501. I hear the 508 may be better, if you get another 501, then it may go bad as well? Especially if they replace it with a refurbished receiver and when they do replace a receiver they are more than likely to replace it with a 501 than a 508 because they do not like upgrading you to a higher receiver up even if it was an improved one.

I know that I had three receivers go bad and they still did not want to give me a new one and I had to talk to the executive vice president on the phone to get it. I had to make countless phone calls and they just dont care. They charge you $14.99 everytime for the advanced exchange although they waived it for me that last time. They just dont care. I sold the receiver when I got it for a pretty cheap price just to rid of it because I did not want to go through that again plus they had a 508 out which had twice the record time available in it being they put hard drives twice as large in them.

I know the 721 has some signal issues with them but it is not happening with people all of the time but off and on so that may just simply be a software issue. The dishplayers never had hardware problems, just software issues in which they may have fixed next month. I never had a dishplayer go bad in which I have sold nor any complaints.

I know that some have had no problems with the 501 receivers, and I do not know if these problems have been fixed with the 508 receivers or not, it may be the shipping to certain locations and I think the problems should be traced back to see if it is common just in certain regions.

The $1.99/mo. extended warranty that covers all of the equipment on your account is a must when have a pvr unit from Dish.

[mrush99]

I am on the lease plan right now. They didnt say anything about a fee to swap this guy out. Is this a suprise I should be looking for? Also, how iwll I be able to tell if the replacement is a refurb...should I just assume it is if it turns out to be a 501?

[boba]

Refurbs serial numbers don't start with an R usually they start off with a "W". My 508 just crashed and was replaced with a refurb it has worked for 1 day so far. Under the Digital Home Plan you have a service contract so no cost to you.

[mrush99]

Well installers came by last night with a brand new 508 and replaced the dead 501 in no time...HELLO 60hrs!!!

[Guest]

I have a new 508 Dish 500 sys since mid Dec. 2002. It cost $68 with 12 mos commitment, and since I installed the system, I will receive $100 .
Reading about 501/508 failures on this forum, bothers me, anyone know
where I stand. As I recall when I posed this question to the dealer , he told me he would replace a failed unit for a 30 day period, after that the unit would be covered by E*..........I hope my 508 doesn't cause any problems, but if it does, I want to have all my ducks in a row, any help would be appreciated .

[jacksg35c]

8 months on a 501 is not good but i can beat that with a 508! got 508 about 2 months ago. the rep brings it out and can't get the optical out to work. the little plastic "protector" that was plugged in is broken off in the port. so i go down and get a new one carefully checking the optical port and it is ok. i install it and in 3 weeks the hard drive fries. i go to get another 508 and this time after i install it i can't get the local channels or some stations on 110 sat. after many calls to dish tech support i give up and get another 508. this time i have the retailer check to see if the new one will pick up all channels. she tries 1 more new one before finding one that works on all channels. i put it in and now it is working fine. i think dish has a problem in bad 508s. be sure to check it out closely when installing. the on site installers should check these units out to see they are working before coming to your house. i almost gave up on dish but i love a correctly working 508. by the way it records about 44 hours of normal tv not 60-65 hours as advertised.

[Jacob S]

It will record less hours if there is more movement in the video such as sports.

501 was not so faithful after all was it?

I do not know if the 508's are having as many issues with the hard drives and loss of signal issues or not like the 501's did.

[mike1002]

This is beginning to sound like what my story is turning into. I have had my 508 since last October. It worked like a champ up until the beginning of February. It started having the intermittant freezing picture and audio drop outs. I have now started seeing the Acquiring Satellite message. The funny thing is that I seem to only see the freezing picture when I'm watching a recorded show. I'm wondering if it is the hard drive going out? I was under the impression (perhaps mistaken) that everything that was received went through the hard drive. So what I watch,even in live mode, is really coming from the drive. If so why don't I see the picture freezes in live mode? The problem I have is that it doesn't just flat out fail. It will work for several days before I get a rash of the freezes or audio dropouts. I went inside the case to see if I had a loose cable and so I guess I have now voided the warranty. Guess I'll just ride it out and see where it leads me. I am rather gunshy of these PVRs now. With all the problems have with them it makes you wonder why they are so popular given the seeming 'flakiness'.

Mike

[Jacob S]

I dont think Dish knows how to make a reliable PVR product. The hardware and software has too many issues with it especially when it costs this much to buy. If they charged a monthly fee for the service it would not fly.

[jacksg35c]

i have always gone to the retailer who sold me the 508 ($199 by the way for me an existing dish customer!) to resolve the problems and got great help. now i am wondering about the length of the warranty the retailer will honor ( 90days or 1 year?) what does the $1.99/month warranty from dish buy you? i am convinced the 508 technology either in software or hardware is no good. if i could get 18 months of trouble free service out of the 508 i would toss it when it fails and maybe buy a 921 assuming they are better than a 508 which seems doubtful since the 921 will be much more complex. the retailer says the 508's are failing frequently!! i am keeping my fingers crossed as last nite in playback mode it slowed down to a crawl but came on OK after a reboot. this says things are still not working perfectly to me.

[cabobb]

I'm on my 4th 501 in two years. I got the first one when dish introduced it. It worked fine for about 3 months, but the hard drive got really noisy. Dish replaced it and the second was ok but the cooling fan would run all the time, even when the unit was off. Dish replaced it. #3 worked fine for about a year, but the hard drive froze, no replay, channel quide, only live TV. Dish replaced that one and I'm with the current unit now for about 6 month with no problem, yet :confused:

[Jacob S]

After seeing Dish's reliablity issues with the PVR products I would be afraid to sell any to my customers or buy another one for myself or someone I know. I am thinking another company's like Replay or Tivo one of their standalones will be a better choice unless you want to get the $1.99 warranty and put up with shipping the unit back every so many months for a new one. You may get stuck for the shipping too, and by the time you pay that every so often you might as well pay the extra cost of a Tivo or Replay monthly or for the lifetime service.