Michael P said:
BTW: getting a 77 UKD is not necessarially a reason to get a replacement. A power cord or front panel reboot usually fixes the problem.
I've tried all manner of resets including the much feared "card yank". When the CSR caught up to me in the script, she went right into the RA phase.
Note that I had heard a couple of hard drive "strokes" along the way where the hard drive head is reset.
In the interest of making people aware of the warning signs, I'll give a synopsis of what happened:
1. Tuesday, OTA disappeared from the guide but were restored by going to the locals screen and saving. I did not have to re-scan. Boston Legal recorded.
2. Wednesday, when playing back Boston Legal, the playback would occasionally halt. If I jumped, I might be able to get going again. If I waited or tried to fast forward, it would restart from the beginning of the recording. I found that if I watched carefully, I could back up to just after the bad spot and continue on. Maybe there is a use for having the progress banner up all of the time?
3. Thursday night I turned the receiver on and the OTA were gone again. I could not restore them because you can't tinker with with OTA when something is recording on the OTA tuner. I went to the DVR list and it displayed only my weekly timers. I left the DVR list and came back, everything was gone and I had 158 hours of SD and 22 hours of HD space available. The current recording was still going.
4. Friday night I turn the receiver on and it rebooted. When it came back, it was tuned to channel 77. If I changed channels it would alternate between 77 and 102 with no picture on either. The guide data was all there except for the OTA. I went to the locals screen and it was empty. I went through the process to add 23 channels and when it completed, the list was empty. Called Customer Service and went through the automated script for about 10 minutes and finally got to a living, breathing.
I would suggest that Dish add a decision to the automated script that provides for choosing between an RF connected receiver and a line level connected receiver for customers who know the difference.