TechWriter wrote:
phnguyk wrote:
TechWriter wrote:
bluwtr49 wrote:
Oh, by the way, if Direct doesn't have a receiver comparable to the Hopper, that would be the deciding factor for me.
DirecTV's counterpart to the Hopper is the Genie which is a 5-tuner receiver as opposed to the Hopper's 3 tuners.
X2 Hopper is not even in the same ball park as the Genie.
Mmmm . . . not so fast . . .
Can you receive OTA programming on Genie & record OTA on Genie's DVR?
Can you use a tablet (like an iPad) to view Genie content wirelessly?
UH YEAH. If you mean OTA as in antenna? What's the point. If you mean locals of course. I can record any five shows at once unlike hopper which claims six but is a total bait and switch. The following is copied but sums it up. As for HD in an RV dish does have its benefits.
First off, the whole "record up to 6 shows during primetime" is technically correct but there is alot of fine print and the average person with a family is probably going to be PISSED when they find out how limiting having just one Hopper can be. First off, the Hopper is the main satellite receiver, all tuners are built into it. Satellite "Joey" boxes hook to each TV but do not have their own independent tuners. You probably see an issue right off the bat here. Dish will quote you a free install for up to 4 TVs which is 1 Hopper and 3 Joeys. The issue here is that you can ever only watch 3 TVs independently at the same time and if something is set to record then one of those 3 TVs has to switch to that channel or cancel the recording. If TWO things are set to record at the same time you are down to 1 free tuner... The exception to this is what is called "Primetime Anytime" or "PTAT". PTAT uses 1 tuner to record all 4 major networks during Primetime. This is how they get "up to 6 during Primetime". PTAT on 1 tuner for 4 shows and the other 2 tuners for 2 more shows=6. You can see how much of a problem this would be with 2 adults and 2 kids already where at least 1 person is not going to get to watch what they want.
I'm not sure who Dish used as a test audience for this but they must not have had very many kids... The good news is that a second Hopper bumps the available tuners up to 6 which should suit most households. The bad news is that it is an extra $199 at install and until a new firmware update is pushed, the Hoppers cannot communicate with each other so a TV with a Hopper cannot see programs on the other one with a Hopper. The Joeys all can though so they would probably do best on the main TVs until Dish pushes the update that gets the Hoppers talking. Another issue is that 1 bad Hopper will take out the TV it is directly hooked up to and any Joeys that operate off it so you can lose up to four TVs for one bad Hopper.
Comparing it to DirecTV which is my current system made me think that DirecTV was easily the better option to stay with in the Satellite war especially with their new HR34 (HMC) DVR that has five (yes FIVE) tuners built in for recording up to 5 things at once at any time no matter what channel it is on. This sounds even better since DirecTV's system has independent tuners on every TV so if I'm watching TV in my basement I will never have to worry about it forcing me to change the channel or watch what someone else is because I am out of tuners.
Not so fast though. What DirecTV will NEVER mention to a customer is that their base install can only support 8 active tuners at once. This means that if you have the new 5 tuner HMC you can only have up to another 3 TVs in the house before you have to call them to upgrade you to 16 tuners... which costs $600... Another problem with 5 tuners on 1 box is it is going to run out of space really quickly in a family of 4 or 5 that actively records a lot of shows or movies. A good compromise to this which I am probably going to do myself is add another HD DVR (HR24 and also an extra $199) which has two built in tuners that gives me a total of 4 tuners that can record, doubles my available space since I use my own 2TB external drives, and allows me to have up to 6 TVs on the base 8 tuner system instead of 4.
So which one is better? Well it really boils down to what channels you have to have, if you have to have everything you watch in HD, do you need to have Sunday Ticket and do you like the idea of sharing tuners across your TVs or having each one have its own dedicated box? Dish is slightly cheaper, has more regular cable channels in HD (H2, NatGeoWild, Hub, DIY, Cooking, Epix1/2/3 etc...) while DirecTV has a LOT more sports channels (and Smithsonian) in HD and just in general with a bazillion FSNs, non local CSNs etc... The most important thing is channel lineup so it is a really good idea to research which channels are in what packages and if one network has a channel you watch alot that the other one doesn't.
