[Guest]

Just got upgraded to p135 and now have a 9 day guide! Was able to scroll out through next Friday the 30th! It lists a date on the upper left corner of the guide, letting you know what day you're on. Also, the fonts are different in the menus. I'll post more as I see it.

 

[Guest]

The guide can now be accessed while recording!

 

[Guest]

Features I hope they've added (or will add)
I may schedule to record, say, a 2 hour movie. I come home about an hour into it and start watching it from the recording while the rest is still being recorded. Fine. But when the two hours are up, I'm suddenly jerked out of my viewing back to the live feed. I then have no way to get back to where I was. (TIVO doesn't do this!!) Surely we can just be allowed to complete the viewing of the recording...
If one is watching a movie and decides to record, one can do two things. One can press record, and the 501 will just record until it runs out of space. OK. But if I go to the guide screen and press record in the listing of that show, 501 will STILL keep recording until it runs out of space. Shouldn't it know to stop when the show stops?
Has anybody figured out what's causing the cricket-like noises emanating from the 501's when the box is on (but not when it's off, though the hard drives are still running...) Is THAT software fixable?

 

[Guest]

I can answer one of your three questions here...

I don't know if the "kick back to live" bug is still there or not. It doesn't always happen to me.

If you go into the guide while watching something, highlight what you are watching in the guide and hit record, the 501 now creates a timer to record until the end of that event, so it will now stop recording at the end of the show. If you decide you want to record from the beginning of what you are watching, rewind the buffer to the beginning of your show, press pause, go into the guide, select your show, hit record and a timer will be created to record until the end of the show. But, it will start recording from the point you paused in the buffer. Also, you can now edit timers that are currently recording, so you can go through the above steps and then edit the new timer to end the recording a couple of minutes after the top of the hour (for example).

If you just hit record while watching a show, however, it will still continue to record until you run out of space.

Never heard any cricket like noises coming out of my 501. Maybe your hard drive is failing?

 

[Guest]

I sent back my 501 once for the cricket noises. The replacement was just as bad, with an even louder deep moaning from the drive. I sent it back and kept the original...But it doesn't sound healthy....

 

[Guest]

If I were you, I'd try the RMA process again. My 501 is almost silent except when the fan comes on. I know that Dish is now using seagate drives instead of the maxtor drives that they used for the first 501s. Maybe the seagates are just louder.