We just got dish network and, seeing as how we've never had any kind of cable or dish before, i love it. However, I cannot find any good step-by-step instructions on how to work the dvr. The manual that comes with the dish tells you all the things you can do but not how to do them. Again, first time with anything outside of local channels with a crappy antenna.
We have the dish network dvr 625 dual tuner. I have no problem with recording in real time, but cannot for the life of me figure out how to set the thing to tape a show on a regular basis. I guess it is using the timers function but again, terrible instruction manual.
Does anyone know of a website/forum/old fashioned book that could provide easy, step-by-step instructions for the technically impaired? I would really appreciate it. Especially since the show I want to schedule for regular recording starts on Monday!!!!
Thanks!
I'm sure we could probably give you some pointers on setting up the DVR to record shows in advance.
First, bring up the channel guide. Select a show in sometime in the future (you cannot select a show that's playing right now), and press the select or record button.
You should see something like this:
To record to your DVR, make sure the DVR type is selected. In the frequency box, tell the box when you want to record the show. Once will only be this one time, weekly will be every week, and so on. The Dish DVR will then recored the show, and future shows if selected, at the appropriate time.
On the right you'll see an option called "Set Priority". This is how the DVR will resolve conflicts if multiple shows you want to record happen to be on at the same time. There you tell the DVR which of the shows you have schduled are most important. If a conflice occurs, the show with the higher priority will be recorded.
Under the "Options" tab, you can further specify how you want your recording to happen. Do you want it to start a minute early? How many episodes should be preserved until old ones are automatically discarded? Etc.
If you have follow up questions, feel free to post them. And now if someone else asks this question here on TechLore, or another Dish DVR 625 question you can answer, you might be able to be their hero!
Does the DVR 625 Blend antenna or cable source channels with the ones that are coming in over the satelite?, I noticed the back panel has a jack for plugging an antenna or other tuner into it.
Correct, most satellite boxes have an extra input for an aerial antenna (not cable) to pick up local broadcasting (kind of a leftover from the days you couldn't get local channels via satellite). The receiver probably won't have program guide information for those channels, but it will make local channels accessible via the guide after you set it up.
So if its for an antenna then it must have a seperate OTA tuner so it could work with non digital cable too?... i ask because the way my cable company is in order to keep my modem i need to also at least get local channels form them as well.
A friend of mine wrote:
1) You can't record dish locals unless they are in the programming guide.I'm not quite sure how the 625 works, but I think it would be similar to my 525. I never tried an OTA antenna with it. My hi-def receiver vip622 has a sparate OTA tuner. I use OTA antenna for local HD and it records them fine. Bottom line - If they show up in guide with OTA tuner then you can record.
My Next question: So when you say OTA's show in the guide do they have all the full descriptions and correct show times and everything?
It does have an OTA tuner, but that doesn't mean it will work with analog cable. Cable and OTA signals share the same frequencies up to channel 13, but then OTA signals switch to UHF, and cable continues up the VHF band. In other words, you'll only get the first 13 cable channels.
Once you add the antenna, the antenna stations should appear in the program guide as a selectable channel. It doubt it will have the descriptions and show times (at least it didn't the last time I set this up on a Dish receiver, though I'll admit that was going on a few years now), but will instead say "local program" or something similar repeatedly.
Can you record? I don't see why you couldn't set up a manual recording by time, but I've never tried to record OTA signals on a Dish box. Hook up a set of rabbit ears and try it out. Then you could tell us. :-)