So I’m watching something on my DISH Network ViP622 DVR a couple of nights ago and the picture suddenly disappears. Think “fade to black,” but without the fade part. I noticed that the yellow light on the front of the unit had gone out and the green one remained on.

A few seconds later the green light also went out. I walked over to the unit and could hear it making the usual sounds it makes as it is being restarted. It attempted to restart itself three or four times until it finally seemed to stabilize and was OK for the rest of the evening. Thinking that there may have been some kind of urgent software update or something, or perhaps a technical glitch somewhere, I didn’t think too much more about it. Until last night.

Same story last night. This time I dialed up DISH Network right off the bat and got someone on the phone who tried to help me out. Problem was that the DVR just wouldn’t stay up long enough to do anything with. Just as she was walking me through some of the settings to check, it restarted itself again.

At that point, she decided it would be best to send me a new unit. She said they would ship it out ASAP and we can return the original DVR in the same box with a pre-paid label provided.

I had a pretty good hunch that the thing was on its way out, and I appreciated the fact that the support representative on the other end of the line did not treat me like a dope and have me trying all kinds of pointless tricks to make the thing work. The only thing we tried was unplugging the DVR from the power-surge protected power strip and directly into the wall. I was not surprised that it did not help.

After I hung up with DISH Network, the DVR managed to struggle back to its feet and seemed to be Ok for the time being. It restarted one more time a short time later but came right back up and seemed to work OK for the rest of the evening.

While I’m waiting for the new one to show up, I will go through my scheduled timers and make a note of all the programs I have set up to be recorded. I’d love to get the 8 recorded episodes of Planet Earth off of there and onto the new DVR when I get it, but I am not sure that’s possible and have not researched it yet. Heck, I can probably catch repeats of them some day. Could never bring myself to delete them.

Anyway, I was kind of hoping for a new model, but from what I can see when I log into my DISH Network account online, it looks like they will be sending me another 622. I was not even aware that they made them any longer.

I’ve had the unit about three years but it does get some pretty continuous use. I watch recorded programs on it just about every night and my wife records her share of programs as well. This is the first time we’ve had any serious issues with it.

Oh well, we’ll see what happens, and hope I can get through the next few days without too many restarts or a total failure.