Forget getting good technical service with Dish TV
Back in the old days when the V722 receiver worked errorlessly as did older ones, Dish couldn't be beat -- a solit 5-Star company. I am now on my 25th year with them, but when I had to replace the V722 with a Hopper and an OTA adapter the bottom fell out. Constant problems which woudn't be a problem except the technicians can't even follow the script in front of them let alone fix anything!
I'll just comment on the last 10+ issues since October 1, 2022. Now, I say 10+ issues, but multiple that by 2-3 times and 15x for the current bugger and you'll see that I have been ever in firefighting mode.
Memory Corruption Issues: The first Hopper needed an OTA adapter to pull in Antenna channels. It also offfered for the first time the capability to use the Prime Video (Amazon) APP via the Dish receiver. Those, along with the use of TV live streaming and DVR recording, tripped over each other. What I saw on large computer operating systems resurfaces here with corruption of another tasks memory. We even had to create a randome task to "garbege collect" the fragments of memory use never properly deleted and freed up for anothers use.
Well, Dish has no clue what I'm talking about. In ma case every time I used the Prime Video APP it took less than 3-4 days before some catastrophic behavior occurred causing a reboot of the receiver. So, instead of using the APP I switched my input mode to TV and went to the FireTV directly to use Prime Video. Bingo, problems reduced instantly by 70-80%! Dish technicians can't understand this and the probelm still exists. This problem began for me on FIRST Hopper back in 2020.
Anyway, at least 20% of the problems still existed thanks now to either the OTA (unknown where its driver was written), or the DVR or both running together, DVR memory will get clobbered OR OTA menory will get clobbered. Example are: 1) black screen on playback of recording freezes everything->need to reboot, 2) random 2-5 second scrambling on recording (OTA channel OR satellite cchannel), 3) automatically and randomly reboots itself, 4) double recordings of programs (fist for a minute, then a second for actual program), 5) recording a active program sometimes stops the recording itself, 6) sometimes you get the "recording" indicator only to find out nothing recorded, 7) sometimes when a active program is recording and you try to stop it you can't and you can't delete it. It hangs around in DVR list forever until reboot, 8)while watching a program recorded from OTA channel and "Guide or Troubleshoot" buttons flash up, 9) same message pops up more frequebtly as time passes when you try to get to an OTA channel (stays for about 5-7 seconds before it realizes the channel is at 100% and then connects (this causes some of the previous problems)
I've been through 3 Hopper replacements so far to this point.
Add 2 more for folowing that I diagnosed as a Software Issue, but after 15+ calls to technicians, 3 to supervisors, and one local technician visit, only the local technician could understand that it had to be a software issue too! Here's what I can expect each each day until the Dish Softwher Engineers come up with a solution for problems 10 & 11 (Started around Septemper 2020):
10) Hopper powers off by itself and screen saver screen appears. This happens both when watch a live program OR playback of a DVR recording
11) Same issue as 9, but it then begins to download the TV Guide
12) No recordings can be played. Each oneplayed gives you a black screen...reboot required. This is same problem as previous hoppers
13. Tried to do Check Status under Diagnostics and it looped. COuld not get out of it, nor send status. Also could not call using the phone number in my profile while in thes state. Could call Dish with my cell phone though. Issue # 10 has ocurred 15 times since 12/23 (now 1/6) and each phone agent gave me a different "solution" that didn't work. My entire settings have been changed multiple times, at least 15 reboots dodne, plus two omre Hoppers replaced previous ones. btw, I am finally on a NEW Hopper, nont a remanfactured one like the previous one.
Where do I stand? The supervior I talked to last evening gave me the line that they already know about this problem and their software engineers are working on it. Should I applause? I TOLD THEM THE ISSUE back in October 2022 and the cause (Software)! Out of characters for this review shortly. Bottom line, do NOT go with DISH until they turn around. Look at reviews since Hoppers came out!!!!! And, they are getting WORSE!
Issues 12 & 13 have not been addressed by them, but they have been notified.
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