New Model of the 501/508 coming out?

[Scott Greczkowski]

I have been hearing from the grapevine that in order to blow out the 50x line of receivers Dish will be upgrading many in the inventory with 120 GB Hard drives for 80 hours recording time, this new model is rumored to be called the 510.

Sounds like a smart move to me. :)

[Mark Holtz]

It's about time. The drives are cheap enough.

[Randy_B]

Is 50x production at an end and this is to clear the warehouse? Only 522's in the future?

It would be great if they would let 501 owners ship back the unit and pay a reasonable fee $75-$99) to get a 120GB HD upgrade.

Otherwise, people with extended warranties might "encounter" some "unexpected" failures!

[Chris Freeland]

I have been hearing from the grapevine that in order to blow out the 50x line of receivers Dish will be upgrading many in the inventory with 120 GB Hard drives for 80 hours recording time, this new model is rumored to be called the 510.

Sounds like a smart move to me. :)

If E* does this, which does make since, would it not make more since and fit their new naming scheme better to call it the PVR511 rather then 510. 5 series, one tuner, one output :) . I would expect a price reduction too if they are phasing this receiver out, it would make since to have two tuners with all PVR's in the future. It has ben posted here that the 721 is out of production, and if the one tuner PVR's are being phased out, could their be a 521 coming with two tuners and one output to sell for less then 522 but more then 322? And possibly a 922 with 2 tuners and 2 outputs? En-quiring minds want to know. ;)

[Jacob S]

I have been wondering when they were going to do this. What about the 721? End of production run or a bigger hard drive for this receiver? If the 510 is going to have 80 hours of recording time with the 120 GB hard drive then two of these may be better than the 522 after all in a way in that two 510's would have more hard drive space than a 522 with two tuners.

Darn, right after I get a special deal on two 508's and ordered them. I wonder if they are going to have the special pvr deal for customers that have already purchases pvr product? Probably not. I also wonder if they are going to offer a pvr deal for any customers whatsoever like they are doing now with the 508.

I am also wondering if thes 510's would be getting the 200 ft range UHF remote just like the 522 is supposed to get.

[Mark Holtz]

Hmmmmm..... decisions decisions...... wait for the 510/511/512, or wait for the 522, or get a DirecTivo and upgrade the hard drive....

I still don't get Dish's math:
501 - 40gb HD, ~35 hours claimed storage, ~30 hours actual storage.
508 - 80gb HD, ~60 hours claimed storage
5xx - 120gb HD, ~80 hours claimed storage :confused:

How much is Dish reserving for it's own use? It would be interesting for the PVR to download "Dish Promos"/"New Features"/"Customer Requested Training Video" in the reserved space, or use some of that space as a cache for the Dish Interactive applications.

[Jacob S]

It looks like its been 30 hours per 40 GB but I see that the 120 GB hard drive has only 80 hours of video, not 90 hours, where did the other 10 hours go? If Dish does have all these hours available in the future on these receivers there would be no need for upgrading the hard drive.

[jimcx]

Well, maybe Dish heard the complaints from 721 owners about the 2 hour live buffer, and increased it by reserving more disk space...

[snagel]

Yeah I know what you mean Jacob, I just ordered two of them on 7/21/03 and installed them on 7/25/03. Oh well, they would have probably charged me more than $149 for each one too though. Both receivers are working very well, the hard drives are very quiet... I hope they stay that way. This now makes 3 ea. 508's that I now have and have not had any problems with my first 508 that I got 1 year ago.....

[Scott Greczkowski]

Well this one was TRUE. :)

Unfortunately even thought its the same as a 501 / 508 with a hard drive this unit will have a $9.99 month DVR fee if you have AT 50, $4.98 DVR fee if you have another Dish package, or Free if you have Americas Everything Pack :(

This is a dumb move in my book.

[csschrot]

I do agree that a monthly fee is not the smart thing to do. However they are doing it to lower the upfront cost of the receiver. For exapmle when a new customer would come n to sign up for the Free Dish Promo and they wanted a 508 receiver it would cost $200. With the Free Dish Promo and the 510 with the monthly charges no $200 upfront.

Personally I would rather pay the upfront cost and not the $4.98 per month fee. I subscribe to the top 150.

[Randy_B]

If the hardware is completely free, this might be easier to take for a new subscriber. However, how are they going to handle 501 and 508s that were bought at full price if they break under the extended warranty? Maybe they will keep a bunch of 50x in the warehouse?

[pjmrt]

I hope Dish seriously rethinks this - this makes their business management dept look in complete chaos. Dishplayers had a pvr fee, except some who took advantage of "lifetime" promotion which expired this year and may or may not be charged $10/mo regardless of programming, while 501/508 have free pvr regardless of programming but now a 508 with a larger harddrive will have a fee from $0 - $10/mo depending on what level of programming subscribed to. Its a nightmare just waiting to happen. I don't know if Dish has noticed, but they still have competition. Forget D* for just a moment. Good ole cable has been busy lately expanding channel selection and our local time warner is rolling out their own pvr capabilities (fee based, but then you don't have to shell our several hundred dollars in equipment).

Any chance this is just a "trial balloon" some dish executive floated up to see what the reaction would be?