I just bought a brand new (at least, I paid for a brand new) DM500HD from authorized DreamMultimedia distributor in USA (there is only one such distributor in USA, and it's listed on DM web-site).
First of all, receiver came preconfigured for NTSC video output with some non-default settings in System Config.
It even had channels from two satellites in the channel database (European sats, not American, by the way).
That is, there were absolutely NO setup wizard during my first power up.
This is weird for a brand new receiver.

But this is not the end of the story.
Receiver was constantly freezing during my attempt to scan my satellites (froze picture with no responses to remote control).
I had to do reboot through power-cycling three times before I got couple of transponders scanned.
I decided to install the latest software version which I downloaded from this web-site (receiver came with preinstalled april's software version).
After software was successfully (as DreamUp said) copied from memory into flash, I am no longer able to boot this receiver. And I can not write any software into it either.

I opened the cover to see what's going on.
After inspection of the board, I found out that receiver uses REFURBISHED PCB. There are clear indication that board was damaged before, repaired, and then receiver was sold to me as a brand new unit. Repair was very unprofessional, mind you (check the photos). This could be the reason I it worked less then an hour on my end.

The question is:
do distributors know that they are selling refurbished units?
Should I be harsh with my distributor? Or they simply have no idea what they are selling (they sell whatever DM sends them)?

PS: i'm still angry at him, cause I still have not received reply on my e-mail question "how to return this crappy unit back to you?" I sent e-mail three days ago. And I left numerous messages on their answering machine.