Dish Anywhere, new version

[chubafelix]

Well peggyrh, the two viewes can be both true. I agree with you that in general, browser players should move to HTML5. But at same time, Dish could have planned this transition better by at least notifying users to this change and at least make the Chat Support URL work. It would have been also more profetional to review the higly used functions and include them as appose to release what ever worked at the time.

So, I agree with your view but that does not change the point of my view.

Regards, Felix

[peggyrh]

Not disagreeing with you at all, everyone is entitled to their opinion - especially since we all use our electronics differently.  DISH has never warned me in advance of software changes & upgrades though, I've always had to find out about new features & software by researching online, same with Android, iOS/Apple, & Windows. 

There's no excuse for Dish not having support aware & able to answer questions. 

I agree that some kind of explanation/announcement would make it easier for us as consumers, but in my experience it rarely seems to happen from any of the major companies - they just release updates & we learn to use it. 

[Jordanpaul]

This update is just awful! On my Dish box it shows 20 episodes recorded but on the PC, I can't watch any of them. This is one of the reasons I have Dish was the DishAnywhere feature and now it is amost worthless!

[AztekAl]

I am also unhappy about the missing live tv button and DVR recording list view, but I am now having a more series issue (at least for me) that the OTT comment in the post above may explain:

When I now use dishanywher.com to try to watch live TV on my home network, the stream seems to be routed out to the internet and then back, instead of staying within my local network.

Previously I had high quality, HD stream flowing over my local netwok direct to the dishanywhere player.

Although I needed to be connected to the internet to access the dishanywhere.com interface and begin the streaming to the player, after it started I could disconnect the internet cable and still have the stream playing to the player.

Now I am seeing a low quality stream in the built-in web player, and when I disconnect the internet cable, the transmission ends.

If it is true that my stream is now going out and back, then this would completely kill my usage of it because of my low bandwith and data cap from my satellite internet provider.

Anyone else experiencing this?

Thanks,

- Al

[snissen]

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@AztekAl wrote:

I am also unhappy about the missing live tv button and DVR recording list view, but I am now having a more series issue (at least for me) that the OTT comment in the post above may explain:

When I now use dishanywher.com to try to watch live TV on my home network, the stream seems to be routed out to the internet and then back, instead of staying within my local network.

Previously I had high quality, HD stream flowing over my local netwok direct to the dishanywhere player.

Although I needed to be connected to the internet to access the dishanywhere.com interface and begin the streaming to the player, after it started I could disconnect the internet cable and still have the stream playing to the player.

Now I am seeing a low quality stream in the built-in web player, and when I disconnect the internet cable, the transmission ends.

If it is true that my stream is now going out and back, then this would completely kill my usage of it because of my low bandwith and data cap from my satellite internet provider.

Anyone else experiencing this?

Thanks,

- Al

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Oh my! This would explain why I'm seeing so many disruptions in the stream (pauses, pixellations, disconnects, "another viewer has this stream", etc.). I get maybe 5 minutes of live viewing now before something goes wrong. Al, how did you determine this out-and-back was what is happening?

I have a low speed broadband connection to the Internet, but a high-speed router/switch in my home. This made DISHanywhere.com work great between rooms in my home, which is all I need; I don't care about accessing DISHanywhere from anywhere else.

I don't just like DISHanwhere, I depend on it. I have health issues that keep me in a room other than my living room, where my Hopper 3 is installed. So I use DISHanywhere in alternate rooms all the time, to watch recordings and live TV. (I don't care about On Demand.) I don't know what I'll do if DISHanywhere.com doesn't return to its previous reliable service.

To echo the other posters here, the changes I hate most are:

• loss of reliable, fast, in-home connections;
• loss of streaming speed counter (from the upper right corner),
  which showed when connection speed was impacted by something else on my LAN;
• loss of Watch Live button;
• loss of Recall button, and the little channel number input box next to it; 
• loss of text-based lists to choose programs;
• loss of descriptive text, not just pictures, throughout; 
• loss of separate, resizeable watching window.

The more I use this new version of DISHanywhere.com, the more functionality I miss from the previous version.

Do I have to purchase an Amazon FIre HD tablet to get a better experience? (Faster Internet is not an option where I live.) Don't even mention an iPad; I'm not an Apple person. (Function over form every time, for me.)

I sure hope the right people at DISH are reading this thread/topic. "Breaking" DISHanywhere.com like this is just the thing to "break" my loyalty to DISH.

[AztekAl]

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@snissen wrote:

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Oh my! This would explain why I'm seeing so many disruptions in the stream (pauses, pixellations, disconnects, "another viewer has this stream", etc.). I get maybe 5 minutes of live viewing now before something goes wrong. Al, how did you determine this out-and-back was what is happening?

I have a low speed broadband connection to the Internet, but a high-speed router/switch in my home. This made DISHanywhere.com work great between rooms in my home, which is all I need; I don't care about accessing DISHanywhere from anywhere else.

I don't just like DISHanwhere, I depend on it. I have health issues that keep me in a room other than my living room, where my Hopper 3 is installed. So I use DISHanywhere in alternate rooms all the time, to watch recordings and live TV. (I don't care about On Demand.) I don't know what I'll do if DISHanywhere.com doesn't return to its previous reliable service.

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Hi snissen,

At first it was just a hunch based on the performance, but today I check the internet (WAN) traffic through my router and saw exactly what I was afraid of.  When I started to stream live tv, both my send and receive rates shot up dramatically and stayed there.  When I paused the live TV, the rates came back down.  UnPause and the rates went back up again.  I would say with high confidence that my live TV stream is indeed going out over the internet and back again.

I also attempted to watch a DVR recording of a show of which that I had multiple episodes.  I could select the GIANT show icon on the main DVR screen, and then was taken to a mess of a screen with multiple seasons, actor information, etc.

Nowhere on this screen could I find a list of the individual episode that are actually on my DVR.

I tried going through the season selector and episode number, but that started the On Demand version of the series, which I definitely did not want to do.

Dish Gods, please give me back live TV and DVR playback over my local network, without the need for high bandwidth / volume internet data. Thanks!

[chubafelix]

Hi Folks, the reason I started this thread is to point out how little Dish cares about their customers. All these unexpected and significantly limitting issues with Dish Anywhare are easily defended by Dish contract agreement (in small print), where it says you they can change the service anytime they feel like it. There are some who will say that Dish Anywhere is a freeby so you should not complain about something you are getting for free. And yes, other broadcastesr (Comcast, DirecTV) do the same thing. However, I feel that Dish is especially agreeges. It comes down directly from their CEO, who is a micro managing maglomaniac. To work at Dish you have to use a punch in/out card from the direction of CEO to know exaftly who can in at what time and duck their pay. More over, he has a bettery of lawyer who actualy go aver employees who leave to get a better job else where. No Broadcaster in the world does that. 

There is nothing you can do about Dish moving to HTML5/Bitmovin player, it was a strategic direction. The issue is how they did it. The best thing you can do is vote with your feet. Internet MSOs like Hulu, Amazon and others are significanly gaining on the capabilities like Dish. Get a tood internet connection if you can and get your content from those companies who are actually working hard to improve their streaming products every day. Dish is not one of them.

[josephwit]

Couldn't agree more - extremely annoying!

I watch TV on my PC upstairs and my laptop downstairs while doing other work. The computers constantly get logged out of my account.

If they don't get logged out, they get errors - my profile does not show, the guide does not work, even though it says I am logged in - so I have to log out and log back in.

Then it tells me another computer is using DishAnywhere - do I want to take over the stream?

I agree totally that lack of a one-click "Live TV" button is really bad.

There is no way to move the video to a separate, resizable window with no borders - the way I always watched it.

And - stuttering video! Starts and stops. I have a super fast internet connection, and this was never a problem before. Worst on Mac Safari, with no extensions except a password manager.

I really hope Dish is listening - I can't believe there isn't more protest (I posted a link the day the switch happened). DishAnywhere was actually what I felt was the best thing about Dish, and was the main reason I recommended it to people who asked me.

Dish, talk to us!

Joe

[Jordanpaul]

chubafelix, Excellent review of all the significant problems with this new interface. 

Here a couple of additional problems with the new interface:

1. Every time I attempt to record a TV show or movie using the PC interface, I get an error that says “Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.”
2. It also seems to take much more time to “hop” past commercials and to get back the show after you have clicked further down on the timeline than before. When you look at the “Guide” you no longer can see if a program is set to record like you used to and can still do on the TV interface.
3. You can only see what is scheduled to be recorded by going to a separate section called “Timers”. The timer section does not tell you if one of the scheduled timers is in fact recording so you can’t be sure because the listing may only include previously recorded episodes.
4. Each TV or News episode has on average 20 minutes of commercials in the 1-hour episode (as a side note, in the 1960's and 1970's, only 15 minutes of commercials were in each episode). If I want to watch the episode when it starts recording and is live, I often will begin to watch the show 20 minutes after the show has started. Then I “Hop” over all the commercials and get closer and closer to the live program and catch up right when the show is finished. If you watched only two episodes per night five times per week, this would free up 175 hours of time that you could use to be more productive.

With the old interface, the timeline at the bottom of each show represents 60 minutes. If the show has completed recording and I later begin to watch it, the entire timeline is yellow, and the yellow part turns black on the left side of the timeline proportionately as the show airs. If a show is halfway done, only ½ of the timeline that is right of center is yellow and the timeline to the left is black. When the show is still recording when you start to watch it, the timeline still represents 60 minutes but any time that is remaining past “live” is black and represents the amount of time left in the show. When I start a recorded show 20 minutes after it has started, I would not use the 30 second “hop” button by pressing it 7 times or so to “hop” past the commercials but instead simply click on the timeline to the point in the episode where I believe the commercials for that segment would be over.

With the new interface, instead of having the timeline being the same size and represent 60 minutes, the timeline now only represents the amount of time the show has played. In other words, if the show has only played 30 minutes when you start recording, the timeline which has always represented 60 minutes suddenly only represents 30 minutes. This works fine if the show has completed but if the show is still recording when you start, this makes it much more difficult to judge when to click on the timeline to the point where the commercials have ended.

          5. I am saving the worst problem for last. When I go to “My Recordings” on the new interface, many of the shows I                 know are being recorded do not even show up. These shows can easily be seen on the TV and Android                           interface but do not show up on the PC interface. How I am supposed to watch shows that are not listed?

[josephwit]

OMG. I watch a show on my Mac that broadcasts 6-7pm, but I often get there late. The show is set to record daily.

Before, I could click on LIVE TV, and slide the timeline slider back to watch from the beginning, or go to DVR, select the show, and select Start Over,  while the recording finished.

Tonight, I went to watch at 6:50, with 10 minutes left to record. No time line! No way to watch from the beginning.

And when the show was over, as was just said, the recorded show did not appear in the DVR list. Signing out and back in did not help (and gave the ridiculous message "Another device is watching, do you want to take over"). DishAnywhere on my Windows 10 PC also did not update to show the recording. On the TV with the Hopper, it is there.

Totally unacceptable!! I watch Dish more on my devices than on my actual TV. Going to have to look for another solution. Can we go back to DishAnywhere Player until they figure out how to implement HTML5 right??