Does the 721 work without service?

[dbronstein]

If the viacom dispute isn't resolved quickly, I am going to switch to D*. But my concern is we have about 60 hours of shows on our 721 - can I still watch the recorded shows without service, or do I need to have service for the 721 to work?

Dennis

[P Smith]

no service required for play recordings; may be just keep coax for ch 101 ;)

[Bob Haller]

Justr disconnect the sat line BEFORE cancelling service. This way you can watch all your already recorded shows.

[Roger Tee]

Have you tried it, it's easy enough to test, pull both sat feeds and see.

[dbronstein]

I know I can try it, I'm just always afraid to do something like that know how flaky these things can be sometimes.

[rjenkins]

I lost service for a couple days due to a super-heavy snow storm a couple months ago, and I can attest that the 721 can act very strangely if it can't get a satellite signal after a reboot. It's fine if you lose signal while it's on, but if you also lose power and then it can't re-aquire after a reboot, it just sits on the the aquiring signal screen. At least this was my experience during that heavy snow-storm.

So, if the 721 can't see any satellites after you switch to directTV, you might have trouble viewing those programs on the 721. You shouldn't need to be subscribed to anything from Dish, but the 721 definitely needs to be able to aquire the satellite during boot-up.

[Bob Haller]

Geez thats news to me. When you have had 7 721s replaced you become experts at watching stuff before returning to RMA.

[Dish Notwork]

I'm not sure about dish, but the DTV tivo's work fine without signal, in fact I've taken it to other people's houses to watch stuff on it before.

[Mike Richardson]

If the viacom dispute isn't resolved quickly, I am going to switch to D*. But my concern is we have about 60 hours of shows on our 721 - can I still watch the recorded shows without service, or do I need to have service for the 721 to work?

Dennis

Good news, the Viacom channels are back.

[dbronstein]

Yes, I saw this morning. Now I don't need to swtich until the summer, unless by some miracle Dish actually comes through with name-based recording by then. But I'm not holding my breath on it.

[Bill D]

I ordered a 100 hr and 35 hr tivo the other day. I was switching mainly to get the YES network, after dragging my feet for a few weeks getting pricing on equipment, the viacom thing made me upset enough to get it done that day. So I figured I'd watch what I want, delete it all, wrap it up and sell it..