new 721 user

[sifuhall]

Hello all. I'm new to the DVR world and this seems to be the place to be.

I had a 5(08 I think) for 2 months and decided to upgrade to the 721.

After the installer finished I was extremely pleased with it.

However after a few hours the picture quality had deteriority noticable (seemed to get more and more blury).

Even later the picture became darker and darker until eventually there was no picture at all.

On Monday morning I called my dish dealer and they sent a repair guy to fix it. He was convinced it was a problem with the HD, but because the sound was perfect I wasn't so sure (the sound goes through the HD, too, right?).

Anyway after a few hours he couldn't get anything out of it and took it back to the shop where they couldn't get a picture either.

The shop ordered a new unit and a couple of days later it is installed and I am once again enjoing the 721.

After reading many posts here it seems many people have had problems with the 721 (although I didn't read where anyone had my specific problem).

Is this a common problem?

I had my 5xx (not sure if it is 508 or 510) for two months with absolutely no trouble at all (and loved it), am I wrong to expect the 721 to behave the same? Or was my experience unique and (hopefully) my new 721 will work great?

[sifuhall]

Update, I just noticed my 721 came in very different boxes. The first was very a black box and very colorful. My new one came in a brown box that only had blue logo and text.

Maybe my first was an older model?

[Chris Blount]

Hi Sifuhall and welcome to DBSTalk! :welcome_s

What you experienced is not really a common problem and I would suspect you shouldn't see it again. The 721 recently had a software upgrade which added a few features and a few bugs but for the most part, you should enjoy having it.

According the poll that was taken in this thread:

http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=19970

Most people like their 721 so have fun!

[sifuhall]

Thanks for the reply.

Its been a few days and the 721 is good as gold. I'm very happy with it and want to tell everyone if you are considering the 721 it is terrific.

[pjmrt]

welcome to the DVR community. I too think the problem you encountered is rare and you should have no more problem. There does seem to be a little more quality problems with the dish hardware (maybe with Direct TV hardware too, don't know - I don't own any). My 721 had a drive failure last summer - but has otherwise been working well. My drive failure actually did not impact the tuner though - just lost the DVR content stored on the drive. (a bad drive) Anyway, I too like the 721 - No complaints. And the features on the 721 are great.