A DVR will change your life. Literally. Words alone cannot describe the joy that is DVR. I’d give up the internet before I’d turn in my DVR.
We’ve had Dish for about 8 years and haven’t had any serious problems. In fact, my original 301 receiver is still working in my daughter’s bedroom. The remote on my 510 DVR had it’s “SAT” button stop working so I got another one from eBay.
A few years ago I considered switching to DirecTV since my contract had expired. When I called Dish to tell them my plans, they gave me a bunch of free stuff including the DVR so I didn’t switch. Did I mention that I love my DVR?
According to a support guy I talked to, you should reboot your DVR about once a week. Just hold the power button down on the unit until it cycles itself off and on.
The only other problem that I’ve had was when we had a new roof put on our house and the guys weren’t very careful about where they threw the old shingles. They knocked the dish out of alignment. I called Dish and they wanted $110 to come out and point it again. I said no thanks and armed myself with a Sharpie to mark the original location. Five minutes later, I was pausing live TV again.
I’m a satellite hobbiest, Airblair. Where did you get the info about going to MPEG-4?
It’s long been talked about on various message boards like Satellite Guys and DBS Talk. Specifically, here are two recent tidbits:
At last week’s CEDIA show, Dish Network exhibited the 411, the first-generation MPEG-4 receiver. http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=45910
And in Monday’s “Charlie Chat” with Dish Network CEO Charlie Ergen, he mentioned that the November “Tech Chat” will include a discussion of the new MPEG-4 products. Hopefully that will give us the pricing and timeline for introducing these to current subscribers. http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=45974
Dish Network will be a few months behind DirecTV in their MPEG-4 rollout; DirecTV’s will start in November. Among satellite cognoscenti, the consensus seems to be that DirecTV overcompresses their signals, leading to an inferior picture quality.
Wow. Lots of good and bad stuff here! I’ll go ahead and try it, since it CANNOT be any worse than the stupid Rapid Cable that we have now! Our cable, analog, digital AND internet, goes out anytime there is any amount of rain. I’m sick of it, so we’re going to try DISH. Hopefully, it’ll work out for the best.
Thanks for all the input!