Another newbie wants 921 but hesitates

[LindaT]

I have been with Dish for two years now and have been extremely happy with the 721 unit. Now that the 921 is being offered I am looking at it seriously but after reading some of the posts ......

Here is my hesitation - I have a 721 on my main TV and two additional units. One of my two units has a two-tuner TV, which I would like to migrate the 721 to. Yesterday, I called Dish tech support andgave them an overview of my environment and was told all I needed was a second line installed to get the 721 up and running on the second TV. The 921 and the 721 along with the third unit will all work in harmony and I will be very happy.

This just seems to easy to me. Is the second line all that I need to get both DVRs and the third TV working? :confused:

[Mark Lamutt]

We're going to need a bit more information about your current setup before that can be answered, Linda.

What dish(es) do you currently have, are your LNB's DishPro or legacy, you currently have 2 lines running to the 721, plus 2 other lines running to other locations for the other 2 receivers, right? What switches (if any) do you currently have?

If you want to keep the other 2 receivers in addition to the 721, you will need a total of 5 satellite lines running, and it sounds like you currently have 4 lines.

Depending on what you have now, and what you want to do with one of your single tuner receivers, they may be correct. Or, you may need to add/upgrade other equipment as well.

[BobaBird]

Also, the 721 will offer no additional benefit by being hooked up to a 2-tuner TV. Like the 921 it can only output 1 channel at a time. Both can do PIP internally (the 921 only if neither channel is HD or OTA digital) but you don't need a PIP TV for that.

[TonyB]

You also never seem to mention HD. What TV's do you have, HD or what? To me the main feature of the 921 is 2 HD tuners for satellite PLUS HD OTA tuner, all of course with DVR capability.

Please provide more detail on your equipment and capability desired.

regards,

[LindaT]

Thanks Mark.

From what I can tell I currently have one Dish 500 with the 721 and two 301 slaves with a DP34 switch.

There are two lines going to the 721 and one each to the 301's. I was planning on retiring the 301 unit and using the 921/721/301 in the environment.

[LindaT]

My Main TV is a Mitsubishi 65" HD-ready which is where I would like to put the 921.
It is also 2-tuner.

The second TV is a Toshiba 35" 2-tuner where the 721 is intended to be relocated.

[Mark Lamutt]

Linda,

OK, that makes things clear. You have 2 options for the upgrade, then, with neither one of them being just an additional line run.

Option #1: Because you will need 5 satellite lines in your final configuration, and you only have 4 outputs from your DP34 switch, you will need to add a 2nd DP34 switch, cascaded off the the first one to add that 5th satellite line. And, you will need the additional line run to the new 721 location.

Option #2: You can replace the DP34 switch with a DPP44 switch. Then, you will need 1 or 2 Dishpro separators to connect at the ends of the 721 and 921 - one line with separator from the switch to the 921, one or two line(s) to the 721, one line to the 301.

[Bismarck]

Linda:

Installing the DPP44 switch and seprators is no problem. The real hassle comes afterward: living day-to-day with the 921. I installed mine in September and my wife is still laughing at me (when she's not yelling about a missed show!) over how much time I spend fiddling around with the darn thing.

Frankly, the idea of the 921 is a whole lot better than the 921 itself. As you can see from many other threads, besides all of the bugs -- and there are a lot! -- there are many problems with the 921. One of the biggies, of course, is the fact that you get no OTA guide data without a locals subscription (and we only just got OTA data as it is!). The bugs are legion and very annoying, the blue line being one of the worst offenders. It operates like a beta product in nearly every respect. For some whacky reason, they made the unit silver and very oddly shaped (it doesn't incorporate well into any HT setup I've ever seen). Last, but not least, the fan (which never shuts off even when the unit is powered down) is loud as hell.

Knowing what I know now, I would think long and hard before spending the $549 for a 921 (most of us paid $999!). Dish's HD offering isn't that good anyway and most of the good HD programming (without the glaring exception of Discovery HD Theater) comes OTA in the big markets. Time shifting a few HD programs here and there (when the timers work) is barely worth it for all the problems that come with it.

So, I ask all those that already own a 921: would you really buy it again?

[bbriggs]

Short answer, yes, I'm glad I bought it. It does most of what I need and a couple of things the TIVO doesn't that are important to me. Yes, the idea (particularly last fall) is better than the actual unit. One thing that is critical to me is trick play, and I want to be able to do that on what little HD material is available. If Eldon can get this unit more stable, the only real sticking point for me is the OTA guide. Stopgap for now is temporary free locals from DISH, works for me at the moment for everything but PBS. If they can get that resolved I hope to ride things out until we see what shakes out with MPEG-4 and all the new satellites by D* and E*. I don't have blue line or jitters, and if I did I might sing a different tune.