A fantastic device with no subscription fee
Written: Sep 21 '03 (Updated Sep 22 '03)
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Pros: Best quality recorded programming, live shows can be paused and even retroactively recorded as needed.
Cons: Expensive for existing dish customers, setup is rough, sudden power loss causes stability concerns.
The Bottom Line: BUY this unit if you can, the PVR 510 now has a monthly fee. Once you've had it for a while, you'll never want a non-pvr unit again :-)
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| pilchard's Full Review: Dish Network DishPVR 501 System |
My review is of the 501's larger capacity sibling the Dish Network PVR (sometimes called DVR) 508. The series, 501, 505/508 and 510 are a line of compatible products with ever larger hard drives resulting in more storage for more hours of recorded programming. The reason it's reviewed here is it's the only entry on epinions.com for the entire line. There is no opportunity to review the pvr 508 directly here, but this may be a good thing, as there really is a dish pvr line between 501 and 510 and the 508 is a sibling on the line.
The 508 is near the middle of the line and has an 80GB hard drive which permits recording of about 60 hours. By contrast a 501 holds 30 hours and a 510 90 hours on 40 and 120GB hard drives respectively. That a 508 is really a 501 can be verified by a search where you can discover people have changed hard drives and upgraded models without any change BUT a new hard drive.
The 501, 505/508 are not charged a DVR fee by Dish Network, the newer unit in the line the 510 IS billed a variable DVR fee ranging between $0-$10 per unit per month. The fee is determined based on which programming packages you buy. If you buy the Dish Network everything package the fee is waived (thus the $0). That will cost you about $70 a month however. With multiple 510 units, the everything package looks ever better.
PVR 501, 505 and 508 are no longer available from Dish Network and must be purchased via ebay or some other venue. The price has gone up after Dish announced the PVR/DVR fee on newer units.
As to functions, this is a receiver/decoder for Dish Network programming, bundled with a hard drive which can be used to store programming. You require an active account to be able to play recorded files (though if you disconnect your receiver prior to deactivation, and never connect it up to dish while inactive, you can play back anything you've ever recorded).
Storage is rated at about 60 hours, and while not exact, it's pretty darned close to what you get. As a rule of thumb, you get more hours if recording music on Dish Networks music channels, more than the rated 60 hours if recording cartoons, less than 60 hours if recording PPV events.
Dish uses a special 7-9 day program information schedule for these units, which permits seeing up to 7 days (some times up to 9 days) ahead. You can search for a program to record and set a timer for it either by name, by description (the information which Dish Network provides when you click the info button) or by time/channel (the last is called a manual timer). All programming related timers permit recording to start a minute early if desired so you can be sure not to miss the first few seconds.
Searching, and setting timers via search results is easy with the Dish remote. While I have used some very smart learning remotes, and prefer a good 3rd party smart learning remote to most with the PVR you'll have to surrender and use Dish Networks remote as there are just too many functions to be properly emulated by a generic remote. The dish remote is also a UHF remote, and has a decent range. I've read reports elsewhere that this isn't the case, however the units I have direct experience with have decent range in that from anywhere in the room they'll control the set, which is all that I really need. If you experience a conflict with a neighbors UHF remote, see page 21 in the userguide to learn how to program a new address for your remote, there are 16 available.
Aside from 7-9 day scheduling, with searching, you can also record a live show. If your dvr was on the channel from the time the program started you can pause, and even rewind to the start of the program (up to one hour back). If for example you've come in half way after the news is over, just hit rewind and watch it, or hit record and record back to the start of the program, it'll be waiting for you on YOUR schedule. This is a nice feature, pausing a live event is nice if there are things to do, children, pets, whatever. You soon become addicted to not thinking of live events as live, but as constantly recorded and pausable if necessary :-)
The receiver is a typical dish network unit, and operates well with my legacy dish network switches (dish network has legacy and dishpro equipment, the PVR 508 works very well with the legacy 6/4 switch installed on my home). The S-video out is a true S-video out, and isn't a composite signal broken out at the box. This makes the S-video feed the preferred output (from the PVR/DVR) for the TV/Monitor. Any other feed won't present as great a picture, the larger your set the more you may notice this (believe me the composite signal was unacceptable on my Philips 60" set which is reviewed elsewhere on epinions.com, but the S-video is great). Thus plan on at least a decent S-video cable, probably a good idea to buy the gold plated set, but be sure to get a S-video instead of composite cables.
Activation is a bit harder than usual, and the box blacks out for an uncomfortable period of minutes (about 5 minutes in my case). This did cause some concern, but the tech from dish network indicated not to worry, he was correct.
Live and recorded events play equally well. It appears the dish network stream is recorded as is without additional compression/encryption. This means live and recorded events play identically as they are composed of the exact same bit streams. There is no degradation of picture quality for being stored on a hard drive.
There doesn't seem to be a problem with macrovision on these units, backing up via VCR or DVD recorder is possible, though I admit to having gotten lazy. 60 hours really is enough for my own personal needs.
The unit will turn itself off if you permit the default automatic system off to occur. This happens if no input has been received for a 4 hour period and only between the hours of 1-5 am. Off doesn't mean off for these units, it means standby. Standby means time to defrag the hard drive, and time to download software updates (both firmware and new programming information). When you restart in the morning you must hit the select button, the PVR puts a screen saver up to indicate it's entered standby mode.
To safely turn the unit off and remove the plug, it's advised to first power it down at the front of the physical unit (vs via remote) then to remove the smart card (which will cause the hard drive to power down) and wait 60 seconds (for all data cached to uncache and to permit orderly powerdown of the drive). Personally I run mine of a UPS as it appears these devices are a bit sensitive to sudden loss of power.
Many complain about the these units not being equal to Tivo, which they are. However without montly PVR/DVR fee's there wasn't much to complain about. Now that Dish has those fee's, lets hope the software continues to improve.
On playback you can skip 30 seconds forward/back instantly, and by reclicking forward or reverse fast get speeds progressively faster between 1-300 times the speed of normal forward. You can freeze frame (pause) and advance by frame. The PVR has all the controls of a normal vcr.
When setting up to record, the PVR permits activation of recording on a VCR or the PVR. While recording to the PVR is the default, you can record to VCR using the same timers, assuming you've programmed the unit with your VCR's model number. This permits out of box removable (but degraded as it's processed onto a tape) recordings in addition or instead of the default recording to the PVR's hard drive. It's not a feature I've used at this time, but some readers may find it desirable.
The PVR 508 isn't inexpensive as Dish no longer sells it, and it's not bundled with any new subscriber/old subscriber deals. While new subscribers always get the best deals with dish network, in the case of the PVR 501 or 508 dish is no longer dealing :-(.
Dish does have good deals on the PVR 510, as I anticipate a life span of about 5 years for my unit it pays for itself in savings over that time, also I was reluctant to have dish network get cart blanche with my credit card (what Dish calls autopay) and thus had to pay list price for my unit. However someone with less concern and an anticipated faster turnover to a newer product may wish to consider Dish Networks offers on the PVR/DVR 510.
After use over a short period of time, you'll never want a non-pvr decoder again. They're very addictive ;-)
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 299
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