Dish DVR question.

[Disney loving Iowan]

Hi everyone. We have Dish DVR which we just love. We have had our current service box for about 2 years. In the past 2 months we have started to have problems with it freezing if we record something or pause what we are watching. This is very frustrating. Sometimes it will only freeze for a few seconds but sometimes it will freeze to the point that we have to hit the restart. We can't even use it anymore because of how bad it has gotten. The old shows that we have recorded don't work perfect but they are okay to watch. Has anyone else had this problem? We are figuring that we may end up having to get a new box but there is where the problem is. We really don't want to lose the stuff we have recorded. We have some things on there that are irreplaceable. Like stuff from the Olympics and the Phillies winning the World Series. It would really hurt to lose this stuff!!!!!!!!!! My DH had asked a service tech before if the box could be connected to a vcr so we could record the stuff but we were told no. Does anyone have any advice for us on what we could do? Is there a way the box can be fixed without losing the recordings? Do we have any other options?
Thank You!

 

[iheartdisney]

You were definately misinformed. We have the Dish DVR reciever, and we have a DVD recorder hooked up to it. (my best friend is stationed in Spain right now, so I record her favorite shows to mail over.) I also record Phineas and Ferb on DVD for the kids to watch on the DVD player in the living room.
It hooks up the same as a vcr, with the yellow, red and white cords.
Ours also has a USB plug on the front of it, so you can hook an external hard drive up to it. Dish charges a one-time fee for it, and you have to format the hard drive to the reciever. Make sure it is a compatible one though, my DH was messing around and tried a flash drive, and it wiped out everything that we had recorded.

 

[mrsbornkuntry]

DH is a Dish tech, he told me to ask what model you have. If you have a certain model you may be able to transfer your stuff to an external hard drive.

 

[mrsbornkuntry]

If you have a vcr or dvd recorder you could hook the dvr up to that and record it that way, but it's kind of tedious because you would have to watch every show that you want to record in order to record it.

 

[r&kmommy]

Listen to pp's advice and back up (if possible w/ your model) before you lose it. Ours acted the same way last year and then one day BAM the box was dead and everything was lost. Stanley cup final, 6 episodes of 24 (that I hadn't watched yet, mid season, due to work and school conflicts LOL! I had to catch up online which stunk!) and a ton of other shows...

Good luck!

 

[Disney loving Iowan]

DH is a Dish tech, he told me to ask what model you have. If you have a certain model you may be able to transfer your stuff to an external hard drive.

It says VIP722.


Thank you everyone for giving me hope!!!

 

[mrsbornkuntry]

DH is at work now, but I'll tell him the model when he gets home tonight and see what he says.

 

[Disney loving Iowan]

DH is at work now, but I'll tell him the model when he gets home tonight and see what he says.

Thank You!!!

 

[mrsbornkuntry]

He said since you have one of the newer ones, if you have an external hard drive you can hook it up to the usb port on the back. Then go to "my media" on the dvr menu and from there transfer them to the hard drive.

Other than that or recording the shows like I mentioned before they can't be transferred to another dvr box if your receiver needs to be replaced.

 

[iheartdisney]

We looked into the external hard drive, and decided against it. mrsbornkuntry, you can correct me if I am mistaken. But with the external hard drive,
1. It has to be a dish approved (no biggie)
2. Is a $40 one time fee (again, no biggie)
3. (and this was the biggie...) The hard drive is formatted to that specific reciever. Meaning you can't plug it into your computer to watch your favorite shows, you can't plug it into your friend's dish reciever to watch it. Only that specific reciever.
That is why we bought a DVD recorder, a VCR would do the same job. But as one poster stated, it is not a click and drag, you have to play the shows to record them, just like in the old days of VCRs.

 

[Disney loving Iowan]

We looked into the external hard drive, and decided against it. mrsbornkuntry, you can correct me if I am mistaken. But with the external hard drive,
1. It has to be a dish approved (no biggie)
2. Is a $40 one time fee (again, no biggie)
3. (and this was the biggie...) The hard drive is formatted to that specific reciever. Meaning you can't plug it into your computer to watch your favorite shows, you can't plug it into your friend's dish reciever to watch it. Only that specific reciever.
That is why we bought a DVD recorder, a VCR would do the same job. But as one poster stated, it is not a click and drag, you have to play the shows to record them, just like in the old days of VCRs.

If number 3 is the case what is the sense in even doing it then? If you can only watch it on that specific receiver and have to get a new one it won't do you any good right? Also are you saying that we could just get a dvd recorder, watch the shows we already have saved and record them while watching them? If so how?

 

[mrsbornkuntry]

We looked into the external hard drive, and decided against it. mrsbornkuntry, you can correct me if I am mistaken. But with the external hard drive,
1. It has to be a dish approved (no biggie)
2. Is a $40 one time fee (again, no biggie)
3. (and this was the biggie...) The hard drive is formatted to that specific reciever. Meaning you can't plug it into your computer to watch your favorite shows, you can't plug it into your friend's dish reciever to watch it. Only that specific reciever.
That is why we bought a DVD recorder, a VCR would do the same job. But as one poster stated, it is not a click and drag, you have to play the shows to record them, just like in the old days of VCRs.

DH is at work again so I'll have to check with him about the specifics on the hard drive to see if that's correct when he gets home.

But yes, you can just plug your reciever into the vcr or dvd recorder and play the shows and record it that way, too.

 

[iheartdisney]

If number 3 is the case what is the sense in even doing it then? If you can only watch it on that specific receiver and have to get a new one it won't do you any good right? Also are you saying that we could just get a dvd recorder, watch the shows we already have saved and record them while watching them? If so how?

Basically, the point would be to store more than the capacity of the DVR unit. We wanted to get a hard drive, thinking DH could plug it into his computer while he was deployed to watch what we had recorded, but found out that not possible.
To set it up...
the AV wires (the yellow, red and white ones) coming out of the reciever (are probably plugged into your TV), go into the "input" AV plugs on the DVD recorder or VCR. Then another set of AV wires come out of the "output" AV plugs on the back of the DVD recorder/ VCR and go into your TV.
Make sure your TV and DVD recorder or VCR are on the right "input". When you push play on the DVR, push record on the dvd recorder, and you are in business. You might want run a trial, record about 5 minutes, than stop it and watch, just to make sure it is working.

 

[Disney loving Iowan]

Basically, the point would be to store more than the capacity of the DVR unit. We wanted to get a hard drive, thinking DH could plug it into his computer while he was deployed to watch what we had recorded, but found out that not possible.
To set it up...
the AV wires (the yellow, red and white ones) coming out of the reciever (are probably plugged into your TV), go into the "input" AV plugs on the DVD recorder or VCR. Then another set of AV wires come out of the "output" AV plugs on the back of the DVD recorder/ VCR and go into your TV.
Make sure your TV and DVD recorder or VCR are on the right "input". When you push play on the DVR, push record on the dvd recorder, and you are in business. You might want run a trial, record about 5 minutes, than stop it and watch, just to make sure it is working.

Thank you! I really appreciate everyones advice. I think we will go with the dvd recorder but we will need to get one first!
Again thank you everyone!!!!!!

 

[mamaLori05]

yes, you will end up getting a new one. We moved last Nov and had to resign up for the dish. The first DVR box we got did the same thing you are describing. We couldn't even use the DVR, because it frooze so much. If we were recording a show, then started it while it was still recording it would also freeze. then we'd have to restart the dish and we'd miss everything from the beg of the show. Anyway, we called and they brought us out a new box the next day. This one did the same exact thing. We called back and told them we wanted a different model DVR because this was our 2nd one with the same problem. They did give us a different model, which happend to be an upgrade, for no charge since we had soo many problems with the other 2.

I have no idea on how to back it up though. Sorry, can't help with that part.

 

[Disney loving Iowan]

Just wanted to give you all an update. So I thought we were going to just use a dvd recorder but instead my husband got the external hard drive. He hooked it up and transferred all the shows to it. Tonight he hooked up the new receiver and it works and we are able to watch the shows on it from the hard drive. Thank you all so much for your advice!