[Chris Blount]

Well, yesterday I received a 501 and had a good chance to play around with it. (Neil sold me his, thanks Neil! )

The one thing that I immediately was impressed with was the speed navigating the menu system. Very quick as compared to the DP. It's also very intuitive and easy to follow. Without even reading the instruction book, I had the receiver setup and ready to go before calling Dish for activiation.

I like the idea of a timer based system. The Dishplayer works with a name based system which would constantly screw up because their were differences in the names of shows between the 7-day guide and the 48 hour guide. With the 501, since everything works on a timed basis, it doen't matter what the name of the show is.

As far as the guide, I heard lots of stories about how it doesn't look at good as the guide in the DP. I think the 501's guide looks fine and is much more quickly navigated. I wouldn't say one looks worse than the other. They are just different. Also, when I first fired up the unit, it immediately downloaded an 8 day guide in 2 minutes. Wow! No that's pretty cool. With the DP, you would have to wait until the following morning.

Another thing I noticed is how the 501 functionality is very similar to the Dish 6000 receiver. Many of the commands and setups are exactly like the 6000. I was even able to setup the remote and receiver using the 6000 instruction book. Very interesting.

One thing that I do miss with the 501 as compared to the DP is the ability to jump to any given day in the guide. It seems that with the 501 you have to scroll through 1 day at a time...or maybe there is a way and I just haven't found it yet.

So far my experience with the 501 is favorable. It seems to work well and the caller ID function is definitely a plus (although it's also on the 6000). Guess I might be selling one of my DP's soon.

 

[Neil Derryberry]

I'm glad it works well for you! it served me very well...

 

[Maniacal1]

Chris, with the 501, you can jump ahead in the guide by entering the number of hours you want to jump ahead and hitting the right arrow key. This will work with any number of hours fewer than 100. So not only can you jump ahead in the guide by a day, you can jump by up to 4 days.

Enjoy your new toy!

 

[Adam Richey]

I have heard about how you can jump to a specific day in the guide, but I forget how to do it. I'll try to find out and post it on here for you.

 

[Tony S]

Chris, when the guide is being displayed, you can use the 30 sec skip ahead button to go forward one day at a time. The 9 sec skip back button goes back one whole day at a time. This makes skipping ahead to a certain day pretty easy.

 

[Chris Blount]

Wow! Thanks for the tips guys. What a difference that makes. Much easier to jump around in the guide.

Another question. If I set a timer and decide to watch some of the show while it's recording, does the receiver still automatically turn off at the end of the timer even though I have scanned and paused the program? With the DP, once you push any buttons on the remote during a recording event, the receiver stays on after.

Thanks for the help! Yes, I'm having fun with my new toy.

 

[Mark Holtz]

Originally posted by Chris Blount
Another question. If I set a timer and decide to watch some of the show while it's recording, does the receiver still automatically turn off at the end of the timer even though I have scanned and paused the program?

Nope. If the receiver is in the "off" state when a timer goes on, and then you start using the 501, then the receiver stays on.

 

[Kenster]

Originally posted by Tony S
Chris, when the guide is being displayed, you can use the 30 sec skip ahead button to go forward one day at a time. The 9 sec skip back button goes back one whole day at a time. This makes skipping ahead to a certain day pretty easy.

Wow, that's cool! I know it's the wrong forum, but does anyone know if this also works on Ultimate TV?

 

[Dmitriy]

Chris, you forgot about my favorite future. If you start watching a show and after 10 minutes you decide to record it, with 501 you can rewind and press record. That's very neat. I know all of the futures of 501, if you have anymore questions I'll be happy to answer them for you.
I got my 501 1 month ago and I'm happy with it. Since I got it, my dishplayer is on vacation.

 

[kstuart]

Tips for 501 newbies:

- If you have problems, press the power panel on the front panel of the
receiver (NOT the remote) and hold it pressed for 5 seconds. This will
do a "reset", which is like rebooting a computer. If you do this
once a day (I do it when I am done viewing for the evening), the
receiver will have fewer (or no) problems.

- Turning the receiver off once a day allows it to download the new
Guide listings, and will update the software, if there is a new software
update available. 15 minutes of off time should be enough for both of
these, but many people just turn it off at night.

- Pressing the bottom right button on the remote, marked "search", goes
directly to a screen that allows you to search the entire 8 days of
listings for whatever keyword you want, eg "soccer" or "Presley" or
"Buffy".

- To go to the list of timers, press the "PTV" button (which gives you
the list of recordings you've made) and then down arrow to "Timers" and
then "select".

- When you are in the Guide, pressing the 30 second skip ahead button,
actually goes one day forward in the Guide. When you are in the Guide,
pressing the 10 second skip back button actually goes one day back in
the Guide.

- When you are playing back a recording, pressing the "cancel" button
will give you a transparent display that lists the time remaining in the
recording at that point.

- If you want to record something that you have just watched, rewind to
the beginning of the segment, and press "record", then press view to go
back to "live" and press "stop" when you want the recording to stop
(press stop immediately if the segment has already concluded).

- AND, if you want to record something that you have watched PART of,
but won't finish until later, and you don't want to watch now, then
rewind to the start of the segment, the press "Browse" (ie right arrow)
and then press "record". This will create a timer that will stop the
recording at the end of the program that is described in the Guide
listings. You can then edit that timer and add time to the end if it
is a sporting event that might run over...

 

[Jacob S]

Lets say that you had a program A on in the middle of it then program B came on and you wanted to just record program B. Is there any shortcut I can use to just record program B to the end without recording the part of program A? If I rewind back to the beginning of program B but not all the way back to program A will it just record program B only? Maybe I should add this to my website for another feature I would want.

 

[Tony S]

Originally posted by Jacob S
If I rewind back to the beginning of program B but not all the way back to program A will it just record program B only?

Yes, that is how this feature works... Rewind to the start of program B, press Pause, then start the recording. Of course, this only works if you do not change the channel. When you change the channel, the buffer gets cleared out.

 

[Bob Haller]

What are used 501s selling for these days?

 

[kstuart]

I don't think that a used hard drive is a good idea ...

 

[kstuart]

In order to record Program B, but not A:

- Rewind to the beginning of Program B and press pause, but be sure that you are not in the time slot for Program A.

- Press Browse (aka right arrow) and you should see the name of Program B.

- Press the record button.

- If you want to change the ending time (for channels that tend to run a little late, for example), you can edit the timer that is created by this process.