Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Wow. I am really trying to like Dish Network. I recently switched from DirecTV after being a DirecTV subscriber since the mid 90's. When told it would take almost 6 weeks for a DirecTV service person to come out and replace my dish, I looked into Dish Network, liked what I saw and switched. They were able to have someone out the next day. The price was a lot less for more programming than I was getting from DirecTV. The HD content is wonderful. Their installation guy was hard working and professional and their customer service people were excellent. The only DVR they had was the VIP722. I had TIVO's with DirecTV. Long story short, My first VIP722 died after about 3 weeks. I went through the disconnect, reconnect routine a number of times. I tried plugging it directly into the wall instead of a surge protector or battery backup. Noting seemed to help. To Dish's credit, they were quick to replace it by 2nd day shipping the replacement. I've now had the replacement connected for almost a week and am now getting weird video/audio syncing issues, random reboots, freezes, fast forward stuttering followed by more freezes. In other words, annoying reliability/quality issues. I thought my first unit might have had a cooling issue so with this one, I made sure there was extra ventilation and placed a usb powered external fan on the back/left side to help pull heat out. Off topic but I purchased this along with another external fan for my Onkyo 806 to solve a heat issue with that. If you have an Onkyo unit that gets extremely hot, the fan did the trick. Back to the VIP722: If this one complete fails like the first, I'll give it a go with a third. If that fails, I'll have to cancel my Dish subscription and either go back to DirecTV or cable. Fios isn't available in my area unfortunately. The VIP isn't in the same league as Tivo in many respects, quality and reliability being just two. Regardless and in spite of a relatively non-intuitive interface and a lack of a 'it just works' TIVO record, I was willing to make the change. Boy do I miss my TIVO's. Dish really needs to work this out. Losing subscriptions over a loser of a DVR/receiver would be a shame because in every other respect, Dish is a great service.
UPDATE, 05/08/2009: I'm on my third 722 but this one works flawlessly. No video syncing issues, stuttering video, freezing or constant reboots. The only thing I did differently was to NOT connect this to the internet. This is wild speculation but I feel like the unreliability I experienced with the other two might have been related to software updates via the ethernet connection. Now that I have one that works reliably, I'd give it a 4 star review if Amazon's system allowed for a rating change. TIVO is still the benchmark but once you get used to the 722's interface, everything works well.
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