Hi there. I was a formerly happy Dish customer for several years now, but I’m jumping ship immediately because of thissorrymess.
I have (soon to be past tense) a Dish DVR – rented, not owned, thank goodness. I was doing the America’s Top 150, which has all the channels I wanted, no premiums.
Poking around the DirecTV (henceforth DTV, the intercap is annoying to type) options, I see I can get a DVR plus 1 reciever for $99, not clear if that’s installed and if I’m renting or owning the equipment.
I also see there are vastly more 3d party boxes for DTV. Hughes, Philips, Samsung all make DVRs for DTV.
Goal: new satellite and DVR by 8pm Friday when Survivor comes on.
Questions:
Should I get the stuff from DirectTV? Is there a signup agreement?
I see DTV sells a DVR with a paltry 35 hours, but I can buy a DVR with much more storage. If I get the DTV DVR just for starters, can I switch over to a 3d party box easily? Or am I stuck renting the DTV box?
What channel package is equivalent to the Dish package I was using?
What additional charges are there for DVR?
Is the DTV equipment compatible with Dish? Can I just stick a new DTV dish on the Dish mount on my roof?
I see my local DTV retailer is Best Buy. Is it worth buying from them?
Any satisfied customers of 3d party DVRs or other recievers here? Are you satisfied or dissatisfied?
First, I’m not going to answer any questions with obvious answers that are also answered here. That’s where you find pricing and package information.
DirecTV doesn’t rent anybody the equipment, you buy it, it’s yours, but you’re usually locked in to a 1-year commitment if you buy it at their discount. $100 seems to be a magic price point, they usually offer deals that get you up and running for $100. You can also always break the commitment if you’re willing to pay full price for the equipment they gave you.
Everybody’s third-party receiver works with the DirecTV dish. If you want to upgrade your receiver later, it’s a real easy process. You just pay for the updated receiver and spend 20 minutes on the phone with customer service, and they deactivate your old smartcard and activate the one in your new receiver.
I’ve found that the best deals (read: Cheapest) on equipment are usually from DirecTV themselves, rather than the Best Buys of the world, but at Best Buy you get to choose exactly what equipment you want, and may still get a deal on installation or a new dish or something if DirecTV is running a promotion.
The DTV dish won’t mount on a Dish mount, and the DTV satalite is in a slightly different orbit, so you may not get a signal at your current mount location. At my new house (which had a Dish), the DTV installer had to move the mount about a foot to get a signal.
There are no stupid channel outages on DTV, in fact they recently started offering CBS in HDTV in LA, NY, and a few other remote markets.
DTV’s sales/service staff are really pretty good once you get a live person on the phone, I’d suggest giving them a call and asking some of your questions.
Should I get the stuff from DirectTV? Is there a signup agreement?- When I signed up I had to sign a 1 year agreement (which included installation and equipment charges). After that it’s a month to month thing.
I see DTV sells a DVR with a paltry 35 hours, but I can buy a DVR with much more storage. If I get the DTV DVR just for starters, can I switch over to a 3d party box easily? Or am I stuck renting the DTV box? - We jumped on the DirecTivo deal (the DVR box) it has 40 or so hours. However you could see if thy offer othe rbozes, or just go with a reciever and buy a separate DVR unit.
What channel package is equivalent to the Dish package I was using?- Probably Total Choice Plus - all the channel minus the permiums and the 6.5 million sports channels.
What additional charges are there for DVR?- if you have the DirecTivo unit it’s less than $5 a month. If you buy a separate DRV whatever that DVR company charges you.
Is the DTV equipment compatible with Dish? Can I just stick a new DTV dish on the Dish mount on my roof? - I do not know about this.
I see my local DTV retailer is Best Buy. Is it worth buying from them? - I bought from DTV and they sold it to me and had a local dealer come out and do the install. I can’t help you here.
Any satisfied customers of 3d party DVRs or other recievers here? Are you satisfied or dissatisfied? - My receiver is a Phillips from DTV, my first receiver (pre DVR) was a hughes both were fine.
Has DTV had any of these stupid channel outages? Never had something like this yet.
OK, I deserve that. I did ask some pretty basic questions. Thanks to you and BurnMeUp for the additional info.
We’ve gone ahead and ordered the DTV $99 1 DVR + 1 reciever package. Too good a deal to pass up. The salesperson answered most of my questions.
And as I find out more, of course there are more questions:
What model is the DirecTV box? From browsing some links, it seems to be a rebranded Philips box of some sort. Does anyone know what model DTV is currently selling (e.g. DSR 708, DSR7000 etc) ?
Is there some place that has the specs on this box? There’s darned little to nothing on DTV’s site. Although if someone can answer the question above about the model number, I can google up something I’d bet.
The DTV site has a thin FAQ with this:
Does this mean I could not hook up a second reciever if I want to use both tuners in the DVR? (I assume I could work around this with a DSS multiswitch or somesuch…?)
Hmmph. I see that the manuals for all the set top boxes are on DTVs web site but there’s no reference for which one is the $99 DTV “tivo” model. So I called DTV to ask them what receiver model I’d be getting from them, and the reps only reply was “I don’t have that information”. Me: “um, doesn’t everybody get the same model of DVR from DTV?” Him: “No.” Thanks, buddy.
That’s because, for the DirecTV-Tivo combo units, they’re all the same thing, just a different casing. I believe they’re even all made at the same factory. The manuals should be basically the same for all of the DVR models.
Depends on which dish you get. If you get the latest oval multi-satelight dish (or upgrade to it later), it’s got a built-in multi-switch, 4 ports coming straight out of the dish. That’s probably what you’ll get (making it easy to upgrade you to an HDTV customer), the warning is probably meant for people with older, 2 port dishes.
As for which DVR you get, it’s basically which one of the “equivalent” models your local installer has in stock. That’s why DTV can’t give you that information, they don’t know. With the basic receivers, they’re all so similar that it doesn’t really matter. With the HDTV receivers, however, I made sure and bought the brand I wanted. Dunno about the DVRs.