Does anyone have Dish Networks with DVR? (like Tivo)

[marit]

I am thinking of switching from cable TV (Comcast) to satellite (Dish Networks). And also trying to decide weather to subscribe to Tivo or take the Dish Networks DVR offer (much cheaper).

Would love some input on Satellite vs. cable and Tivo vs. Dish Networks DVR service.

Thanks

[bcky2]

ok, i have direct tv and tivo. i am so unhappy. the satellite is always going out and not picking up a signal. the tivo has wanted me to reprogram it a few times because of the satellite. i must be one of the few that dont enjoy tivo and could at this point care less about having it :( i hated our cable company but i never had the issues that we have had with satellite. do i sound bitter?

[hautemama15]

well, we had Comcast for years and switched to Direct TV a year and a half ago. Major quality differences. DTV was just awesome!! We had lots of problems with Comcast from day one. Recently we had to go back to cable for the next 3 months while construction is done on our townhouse (dis had to come down, mandatory). I HATE it!!!!! Not only did they get our order wrong and charge us more anyway for services we did not actually get, but the quality really stinks!!! I will be so glad when we move and can have our DTV back again!!! We also had a DVR with Tivo and I LOVE LOVE LOVE IT!!!!!!!

[VenusElon]

We have Dish with DVR and I love it! It is only 4.99 a month, and you can record 100 hours of programming. I think there have been some upgrades since we got ours a few years ago. We have to look for the program-say Lost-in the guide and can then tell it to record weekly or type Lost into the search function. But now I think you can type in Lost one time and the unit will search for you. ALso we referred friends and get the $5 a month discount, and I noticed on their TV it shows who is calling on the phone, so you don't even have to get up to look at the caller ID!

Venus

[kellyotn]

I have Tivo & DirectTV and love it. Love it. I only know what I have though, so I really can't help you compare. There have been a few threads talking about it fairly recently if you do a search. Type Tivo and DVR and they all should come up.

The major "points" to consider are things like - can you record one thing and watch another, can you record an entire season of something, can you to rewind live tv (for example, can you let a show start and go back 15 minutes later and rewind to the beginning and FF thru the commercials, etc), can you have it record things you might like. You can specify actors or teams or keywords and it'll record them if they pop up. It'll also "learn" what you like but its pretty hit or miss.


I'm sure they all this stuff if you get the right package or whatever, but those are the things I love about what I have. ;) My mom has a setup where she can't record one thing and watch another. She didn't think she'd mind, but found it is kinda annoying since her and Dad have such different tastes, she wishes she could be just recording her stuff while he's watching his.

[o_mom]

We had Dish Network for 3 years before our trees grew too high and we couldn't get the signal. Loved the customer service, rarely had service go out. We had many more outages with cable. We switched to DirecTV and have also had great service.

Just make sure when they install, that they get the best signal possible. Most of the 'free' install guys will just get it tuned enough to come in, but a high signal strength on all channels is the key to having few blackouts. (There will be a meter on the screen that goes 0-100, you want 90+ on all channels) It takes a really strong storm for us to lose signal - the kind of storm where you shouldn't be sitting in front of the TV anyway.

No clue on the Tivo vs DVR.

HTH!

[sidmand]

We have the Dish Network with DVR and for the most part I love it. I never had TIVO though, so I can't compare it to that. I think the one thing that TIVO does that the DVR doesn't is that it knows for instance if a show that normally runs 1 hour is running 2 hours and will tape all of it. So if and when that happens, we will sometimes miss that. But it also may be that we manually set a bunch of timers and so we manually set it to be 1 hour instead of 2--not totally sure about that.

But you can pause, rewind, and fastforward regular TV (very cool!). We have one that tapes up to 60 hours and we've never had more than 40 hours taped. We have had it blow up on us twice though. It's a computer hard drive and sometimes it crashes. We've lost everything we taped twice because of that.

In heavy rain and heavy snow we do lose the signal and so can't watch TV.

You can't tape something at the exact same time as watching another channel, but you can watch anything previously taped while it is taping something new (did that make sense?).

We used to get the West channels (we're on the East coast) which I loved! But now we can't do that anymore, but we do add the Superstations.

I wouldn't give it up and it's worked very well for us.

Customer service has been awful though, although they do seem to be better than they were so maybe they're working on that. We've had Dish Network since 1997, so I guess the good definitely outweighs the bad.

Debbie

Mom to Sawyer!
http://lilypie.com/baby1/060607/0/3/1/-5/.png[/img] ([img)

[Momof3Labs]

We don't have Tivo or a DVR (and no plans to add one) but are just switching from Comcast cable to DirecTV. We had DirecTV at our last house (moved in July 2005) but tried Comcast here because they were running a great 6 month deal. The Comcast quality has been poor - fuzzy pictures, lots of snow. We've probably had slightly fewer problems with service (lost our cable once when someone cut a line down the block, compared to DirecTV going out during any storm).

We're switching back since satellite is cheaper for us, plus we like the quality better.

[marit]

Thank you! Can you set it to record an entire season?

[kaylinsmommy2]

You've had a lot of advice on the DVR/TiVo thing, so I won't say anything other than the fact of how much our lives have changed now that we have DVR - I, personally, think it is SO worth it!

We switched from cable to Dish Network last Oct, and in the 9 months we had it, we had to have our DVR box (which is the same as the reciever box - all in one) replaced THREE times! :( I think we paid for the shipping charges for the first time, and they offered to pay for it the next 2 times. After it broke again, they offered to pay for shipping and credit back the shipping for that first box and even said, "yeah, I had an older lady who had hers break 3 times, but that fourth box really did the trick and didn't break again." We decided to switch back to cable (they gave us a great deal to switch back). The problem with the borken boxes is that we couldn't watch any TV until the new box came, and we lost all the things we had recorded on the DVR at the time. Really, it was just too much of a hassle. Our cable company would be able to come out within 24 business hours to bring us a new box, if it were to break.

HTH

"ma meee" "mama" and, occasionally, when she's ... confused :"dada" to Kaylin 6/5/04

http://b2.lilypie.com/9KMlm7/.png[/img][/url]

[pb&j]

I've had all three (cable, DirecTV w/Tivo, and Dish w/DVR) in the past few years. Cable sucked - poor quality, and it was always going out. DirecTV w/ Tivo was awesome. I love Tivo. Tivo has the best user interface, and makes those cool noises when you fast forward/rewind, or select anything. Tivo is a feat of cognitive engineering. DH and I were very satisfied with DirecTV and their customer service. We couldn't get local channels because of our small market, but got networks from NYC and LA which was cool, because that meant if you missed something, it would be on the LA channel 3 hours later.

However, the no local channels thing became a big deal when the Nationals games started getting blacked out on TBS whenever they played the Braves (DH's team). We could only get ONE local channel over an antenna, and it wasn't one that showed Braves games, so any time the Braves played the Nationals, no baseball for DH. Very big deal.

So, when we moved, we got Dish because they do carry our local channels. So far, we're satisfied with the service. We can DVR one channel and watch another, set up to record a whole season, and do all the functions that Tivo can do. However, I have to say I miss the interface and the happy little noises. Also, we ended up getting a great price because we bundled it with our Sprint DSL/phone/wireless.

-Ry,
mom to Emma, stillborn 11/04/04
and Max, edd 01/15/06 - it's a HEALTHY BOY!

http://lilypie.com/days/060115/3/25/1/-5/.png[/img] ([img)

[nfowife]

We have the dish with dvr. We used to have comcast with tivo. It works just fine, but doesn't have as good of a user interface as tivo- you have to get used to the differences. But I do love that we don't have to watch what we are recording and that we can record 2 things at once if we want! Also the large capacity so we don't always have to rush to erase stuff. Overall, we are very happy with it and have not had too many interruptions or service problems.

[Melanie]

We have DirectTV's TiVo (it's integrated with your Dish receiver) and it's invaluable. I was really against it in the beginning, thinking it would make us watch more TV, but it doesn't. We just watch what we want, when we want, and that's it.

[DebbieJ]

We have Dish Network with DVR and love it! We've had it for the past year or so and have only had an outtage maybe two or three times. We had one this week because we had a really wet, heavy snow and it accumulated on the dish. Thankfully, ours is not installed on our roof, but about 10 feet or so up the side of our house on the back corner, so I was able to take a ladder out of the garage, sweep off the snow, and we were back in business!

I have a coupon for new subscribers if you would like it. It's $25 off your first bill, $19.99 and three movie channels for free for your first three months. It expires 1/31/06. Just email or PM me your address and I'll drop it in the mail.

~ deb
DS born at home 12/03
2 year check up: 25 lbs with clothes on and 35 inches!
BFARed for 20 months and 6 days
(Breastfeeding After Reduction is possible! www.bfar.org)

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[JElaineB]

I've had Dish Network for 6 years. We live out in the boonies though so no cable for us (no cable modem either, and I just found out we can't even get DSL, wah!) We have been very happy with the service. They recently upgraded our actual dish for free (had the same one for 6 years) so we could add local channels. We hardly ever have blackouts, only very rarely in bad weather. We don't have a DVR receiver yet, though I have been contemplating one. This post might just push me over the edge to get one.

Jennifer
mom to Jacob 9/27/02

[JElaineB]

double post

[sidmand]

Hmmm. What am I doing wrong then? We DO have to watch what we're recording (or watch something on DVD or previously recorded) and we can't record 2 things at once. Ah, maybe we just have an older version of the receiver that can't do those things? So a newer version can? I might have to upgrade if that's the case!

Debbie

Mom to Sawyer!
http://lilypie.com/baby1/060607/0/3/1/-5/.png[/img] ([img)

[nfowife]

I'm not sure why we can watch something different...I know that our dvr has 2 modes: tv1 and tv2. We set the dvr to first record things on tv2 (which we can't watch live, just record from and then watch if that makes sense). Tv1 is what we can see on the tv and if tv2 is recording and something else also needs to be recorded it goes onto tv1 and then we have to watch tv1 while it is recording (or go through the dvr and watch what is recording on tv2 from the beginning) if that makes sense...it's kind of confusing but it works! We've only had ours for about 5 months now so you might want to get a new dvr receiver that is dual mode! It's very nice!

[ribbit1019]

Debbie I would say that you have an older DVR. I have one too, where I can only watch what I am taping or what was previously taped. I know there are new models that allow you to tape two channels and watch another channel (my parents have that model and they got it last Christmas). Upgrades can be expensive, but I would call since it does exist!

Christy
Maddy born 6/09/04
http://lilypie.com/baby2/040609/3/4/0/-5/.png
Little Man due 3/02/06
http://bd.lilypie.com/cKLom4/.png
Co-Owner Ribbit Baby

[sidmand]

Thanks Christy and Margaret,

I went on the Dish site last night and of course there are newer models than mine (I don't even know how old mine is, probably the first DVR there was!).

I'm probably better off not being able to tape two shows at once, it would just up my TV viewing, but there have definitely been times those features would have come in handy. Hmmm... something to think about...

Debbie

Mom to Sawyer!
http://lilypie.com/baby1/060607/0/3/1/-5/.png[/img] ([img)

[searchdog]

We are yet another happy Dish Network customer, we switched from Comcast and couldn't be happier!!!

I also sent you an email.

[daniele_ut]

We have Comcast with a 2 Tuner DVR and we've had no problems whatsoever with it. I can't compare it to Dish or Direct TV, but our quality is really good and we've only had one 20 minute outage in the 4 months since it was installed. I also can't compare to Tivo, but we really love having a DVR. You can search for programs by title or type and we can do series recordings, setting it to record all new episodes or re-runs as well. You can set it to delete programs by priority when it is full, but we've never had ours get full yet.

We got a really good deal for the first year when we signed up. The $80 package plus the DVR is only costing us $40 a month for 12 months. They gave us the Dish winback special. We'll have to re-evaluate at the end of a year, but we did not have to sign a contract. We weren't crazy about committing to a year of Dish and finding we didn't like it.