Dish Network vs Direct TV

[coffeeman]

I think I took his comment differently than you did. How I take it is a new customer can get a better price than they give me,,,,,, unless I call and *****. In your case you are calling them every year to get the "new customer" deal. I've never called Dishnetwork to negotiate my monthly fee. Maybe I should? But it shouldn't be necessary. As a long term customer I should be getting the best price available.

Yes, Shouldn't have to always check prices. They set prices, give deals and exchange customers every 2 years. Same as auto dealers. All bad service and we shop. New dealer is just as bad. Except, in rare cases.

My dish freezes up. Call for service, expect a wasted 1 1/2 hour wasted time with them. They send service. Service person saysI am recording too many programs. I show him; I unplug main receiver and reboot. Machine works fine. Phone service suggested I unplug every day. But Dish automatically resets every night from 2 - to about 5am every nite. I start morning with fox news. In kitchen I want to join fox in bedroom and is impossible. Next, I must pull main receiver. In 10 minutes I can tune into Fox. Every one awake using other 4 tvs, Into kitchen, "whats wrong with Dish." I tell them I shut 'er down. They are not happy. Week by week & sometime day by day.

My Problem, Over $120 month and don't work right. Changing robs me of no less than 8 hours of my time or someone else has to tend to. Call them, negotiate price, check competition , meet the guy ( waiting in a 4 hour window) , listen to guy complain on how hard job is, your wires no good etc. etc. Don't forget, below par service but get penalized for dumping them. IT AIN"T FAIR.

I am also fed up with bad service, from restaurants, garages, Lowes, Walmart you name it.. Many don't comprehend , "Can I help you?" When I get
GOOD SERVICE I stick with them, even if more expensive.

Also, fed up with cheap foreign stuff. Hey we save couple bucks on sink faucet. 2 - 3 years it's leaking. Trip to Lowes and they can't match to faucet parts. Familiar words, "It's cheaper to buy new one." I believe pay more, and save the fuel and time to Lowes. How about miles on my tires and truck. What the heck did I save?

One more rant. Life-Savers candy. Wife checking out calories on label. Have to write William Wrigley Jr Company, Chicago, Il. for nutrition facts.
The icing on the cake; MADE IN MEXICO. Also, "PRODUCED WITH GENETIC ENGINEERING". What the heck??? Same with thousands of others.

I have loved Life-Savers since the 60s. I thought they were a USA product?

Cheers........Coffeeman

 

[dragoneggs]

Sure, if you spend the time to pick out which shows/times/dates you want to record and go through the process of storing the data like a cave man. There are certainly downsides to that antiquated method of pre recorded TV to watch. Recording TV won't be around much longer as there is no reason to do so when the shows are all available on demand without wasting your time.

That's the beauty of on demand. Pick you show and episode and watch without having to do anything in advance. And you can stop watching and come back when you want as well as pick which episodes you watch even going to different seasons which you can't do while recording live TV. No worrying about standing in front of the screen when the show is on live and no hassle of recording TV to watch later via a hopper.

LOL, Have you never watched any TV on demand?

Live sports is the last hurdle for internet cable services to tackle and several already have done so with options as low as $25 for ESPN. The rest of the content from movies to TV series and other programming on just about every topic you can imagine can be watched on demand which is the future of TV. Pre recording live tv events with a DVR is just slightly better than recording TV shows with VHS tapes to watch later. Time to catch up with technology and get past the stone ages of TV.

Well this caveman likes the dish hopper system and recording shows even though I can also use VOD. Difference is I can skip back and forward pass commmercials, etc on recordings but not always using VOD.

 

[two_bit_score]

has anyone had experience with a Sling Box?

 

[ray66v]

has anyone had experience with a Sling Box?

Yes, I have one. It was an effort to get it working on my wifi, 3 different ROKU's, and my cell phone.

But, I like it.

 

[dragoneggs]

has anyone had experience with a Sling Box?

Yes worked great for me on iPad and MacBook over hotel wifi as long as their connection speed was sufficient. Otherwise too pixelated to watch sports or action shows. Now my dish hopper DER has sling built in and I can access any show regardless of which tv I recorded from. Even better.

 

[two_bit_score]

Yes worked great for me on iPad and MacBook over hotel wifi as long as their connection speed was sufficient. Otherwise too pixelated to watch sports or action shows. Now my dish hopper DER has sling built in and I can access any show regardless of which tv I recorded from. Even better.

I'm just now looking into it. Sounds like your well experienced. Do you primarily use it as a recorder?

TBS

 

[Blicker]

We just got DISH two months ago when we moved to a new house and have no complaints. The wireless receivers for other TV's in our house work great too.

 

[dragoneggs]

I'm just now looking into it. Sounds like your well experienced. Do you primarily use it as a recorder?

TBS

Typo in my last post... should be DVR not DER. Digital Video Recorder. Yes, we rarely watch anything live anymore. Dish Anywhere is nice because you can control your DVR anywhere from your iPhone, iPad, laptop.... meaning you can watch, record, delete, etc. With the Hopper/Joey system you have one DVR (Hopper) and a Joey for each TV. Before I had a couple DVRs that each had two tuners but the sling box could only be connected to one. This meant that if you are on the road and want to watch a recorded show, you better have recorded in on the right DVR. Now if you have two TVs or less then it is a non issue. We have 4 TVs hooked up so I upgraded to the hopper/joey.

We never see commercials anymore and an hour show becomes about 40 to 44 min. The skip forward/backward is very handy. fwd is 30sec increments and back is 10sec increments.

 

[jack707]

I rather pick the channels I want that's why I gave up the dish until then I won't bother!.

 

[roadhunter]

Well this caveman likes the dish hopper system and recording shows even though I can also use VOD. Difference is I can skip back and forward pass commmercials, etc on recordings but not always using VOD.

I'm not saying its doesn't work, but recording things to watch later is not the future. Heck I remember recording songs off the radio onto tapes so listen to later. Nobody does that anymore. Or taking the time to record songs on CD's. Now you just put it on your phone or MP3 player and listen to it whenever you want. TV will be no different.

The reality is live sports are about the only thing left that requires live TV. Most everything else is prereorded. Here is a scenario you get home late and miss the 10:00 pm news. For on demand customers you just choose the 10 o'clock news of your choice and watch. In the caveman scenario you woud have had to plan ahead and pre record the news. The VOD scenario you didn't have to do anything. So essentially you are choosing between taking the time to pick and choose what shows and what times to record. People are lazy, doing nothing will win out.

Movies are the same way. People dont pre record movies like they used to. They simply go to a site like netflix and pick the movie as opposed to waiting until it's on TV and then recording the movie to watch later. Make sense?