PVR shows in hard drive

[TimL]

As I mentioned a while back, I will be switching to Time Warner for awhile. They will be coming tomorrow morning. A question I have, Once I disconnect from Dish Network Late tonight, will any PVRS that are unwatched remain in the hard-drive (Will be keeping Sky Angel) My wife wants to PVR the second half of a movie tomorrow night and wants to watch both parts back to back. Seems to me they should but I want to make sure.

Tim Lones

[JohnL]

As I mentioned a while back, I will be switching to Time Warner for awhile. They will be coming tomorrow morning. A question I have, Once I disconnect from Dish Network Late tonight, will any PVRS that are unwatched remain in the hard-drive (Will be keeping Sky Angel) My wife wants to PVR the second half of a movie tomorrow night and wants to watch both parts back to back. Seems to me they should but I want to make sure.

Tim Lones

Disconnect your receiver from your Dish before you call to cancel. Your receiver will never get the disconnect code from Dish and you can view any PVR'd programs without the receiver getting a bitstream from Dish.

Hope you don't regret going back to cable. My local cable company just announced that our local Regional sports network will be moved to a sports tier with 3 other Regional sports channels complete with Major League Sports Blackouts and the Tennis channel for an extra $4.99 per month (Nice shake down). The best is since these channels will be encrypted you will need a cable box for each TV. Bottomline I hate my local (Time Warner) Cable company. I hope you don't regret your move back. Good Luck.

John

[TomCat]

Are you telling me that DISH will prevent viewing of programs previously recorded once you call them to stop service? I'd be shocked if that were the case. That would be like my ISP sending out a bullet to wipe my hard drive if I changed to DSL or something. I don't even think that's legal, not to mention unethical. After all, TimL was a legal subscriber when the programs were broadcast and recorded, so fair use rights should still prevail. Maybe I'm naive, but I think you must be mistaken.

Early OS versions for the 501 would not allow unconnected playback, but I think that was addressed more than a year ago.

[Big D]

When my 721 had to be replaced, I was able to watch all of the recorded programs on it's HD before sending it back to E* even though it was not hooked up to a Dish. I hooked up the new unit, started recording and watch programming off the old unit. Since I had a number of days before I had to send the old one back, I had enough time to watch everything. In fact, tech support said that recorded programs can always be watched anytime, anywhere, so I took that to mean you could grab your PVR as you are heading out the door for a weekend trip and watch recorded programs on a TV where you get to your destination. Has anyone every tried this?

[dfergie]

I frequently take my 501 with me when I visit friends that live on a ranch. I just quickly push the pvr button.

[Geronimo]

With a Dishplayer no PTV is SUPPOSED to mean no viewing of recorded showas (other than a 10 minute preview). But some say they can view them.

[bills976]

With a Dishplayer no PTV is SUPPOSED to mean no viewing of recorded showas (other than a 10 minute preview). But some say they can view them.

!! That's insane! You paid for the service during the time you recorded the program, which means to me you should be able to see it. Though of course Dish should drop the PTV fee altogether for Dishplayer customers.

[BobaBird]

DISHPlayer PTV really isn't a service, and I agree the fee should be dropped. No subscription is needed to record to the hard drive - what they make you pay for is the playback features. Same applies to Pause, w/o PTV you can't FF to catch up to live TV, only "Go Live."

[TimL]

Turns out it was no problem..since I had 2 receivers both still activated for Sky Angel I still have the $4.99 second receiver fee from Dish. I did'nt actually disconnect any receivers so technically I may still be a sub.Does that mean the $25.00 restart fee would be waived if I were to come back to Dish Network?

Tim Lones

[Jacob S]

I believe you lose your pvr recordings on your 501, 508, and 721 as well if you keep your satellite wire connected to the receiver and have your programming shut off. You will still have your pvr features though for the few channels that would be remaining.

[TimL]

That seems to be true..though I didnt lose the PVR of the first half of the movie my wife wanted to watch (the JonBenet Ramsey story) on CBS 19 in Cleveland. We recorded the 2nd half of this movie on digital cable and both parts came out fine.

[Big D]

I believe you lose your pvr recordings on your 501, 508, and 721 as well if you keep your satellite wire connected to the receiver and have your programming shut off. You will still have your pvr features though for the few channels that would be remaining.

Wrong. As has been explained above, once a program has been recorded on the hard drive, you can watch it anytime and anyplace, no need to be hooked up to the dish. You do not lose your recordings.

[Jacob S]

Big D, that is not what I was saying or was trying to say as you misread and misunderstood what I had said. People have been misunderstanding me so much lately although sometimes thats my fault in how I word things but I worded it well enough above.

If you subscribe to Dish, you get your pvr service, can watch your recordings, and your satellite dish is connected to the receiver. All is fine.

If you call Dish to turn off your programming and you leave the satellite dish wire connected to the receiver, I believe you will lose your recordings on the receiver.

Anytime you disconnect the satellite dish wire from the receiver whether you are subscribed or not you will still have the recordings on the hard drive to view at the pvr events screen. The reason why you still keep the recorded programs when the programming gets shut off even though your satellite dish is still connected is that it does not get the hit code from the satellite to remove the programs from the hard drive. This is good for those that want to travel with the receiver although this is not recommended due to the sensativity of the hard drive and that it cannot be moved while being plugged in.

[mnassour]

I can confirm what Jacob said is right not only for the DishPlayer, but also for the UTV box over at Direct TV. For Microsoft boxes at least, once a kill signal was sent, I had no ability whatsoever to access programs on the hard drive other than the preview.

Once again, the workaround is to disconnect the antenna and power before cancelling the subscription.

[TimL]

I did cancel and never disconnected the receiver and my wife watched the PVR a couple of days later so it DID stay in the Hard Drive..Thanks for all the replies..

[Jacob S]

The Dishplayer (7100, 7200) was the first PVR receiver to come out and it was a Microsoft/Echostar joint project. The receivers were cheaper in consideration of receiving a monthly fee for the pvr services, just as you have to pay for the pvr/ptv functionality on Tivo's. Later Dish came out with the 501, 508, 721, soon to be 522 and 921, in which there is no charge for the pvr functionality but the receivers are more expensive. They were able to do this because they made their own product and those that have pvr's tend to be more satisfied and keep their services on. Now they are giving deals where some say they are getting them anywhere from $99-$199 for a 508 instead of paying the $299 retail price.