Thread: Dual DVR vs. Whole Home - thinking about switching

I have been a long time E* customer and am fed up with their additional fees. It seems every month, my bills creeps up more. I got swindled into their service plan when they said I needed a tech - the tech came and nothing was wrong. Now, I can't get out of the service plan without a $25 fee.

Anyway, I'm thinking of switching to D Whole home. Currently, I have 4 TVs, two with DVR access (Family room and bedroom). I like being able to watch shows recorded on the main tv in bed and vice versa.

I have learned with D whole home, I can have DVR access on all my TVs (4) and the only difference is I can't pause live TV on my bedroom TV if the DVR is set on the main TV in the family room. I like the idea of being able to watch DVR'd shows when I'm working in the kitchen.

We have only one HD TV and that is a small TV in the kitchen ... I'm sure we will get some in the future, but even if we had all HD TV's, the HD channels wouldn't be that important. Even then, the lifetime HD with D* is attractive for when we do eventually upgrade our TV's.

Price is a factor and it seems D is much cheaper. We are currently paying almost $90 per month with E* and now they are getting rid of Fox local, news, sports and DH is especially mad FX is gone . We wondered where Sons of Anarchy went! We thought they were on hiatus. We only learned FX was gone when a tech came to check my Canadian satellite receiver/setup.

If anyone has gone from E* Dual DVR to D* Whole Home, I'd really appreciate your feedback. We have been with E* for many years and I grow more disconcerted with them all the time.

Ooops, I think I posted in the wrong forum. Will ask in the DTV forum. Thanks.

I got both Dish and Directv.

I got both services at my house, and personally the way my televisions are setup with DISH and Directv is that I have a Dual Tuner DVR dedicated to each Television.

With my setup, the Multi-room DVR is great since I can share the shows between all my DVR's, and im able to pause on every television.

I think the whole house DVR will drive you crazy if you can't pause on the secondary TV. If you got to switch to Directv, I would pay the $99 and upgrade the second TV to an HD/DVR, and then do the whole home DVR between the 2 DVR's

Is this only not being able to pause live TV on the Non DVR TV? I can handle that. I can't handle not being able to pause a recording. Say the DVR is in the Family Room and I want to watch Live TV in the bedroom. I can watch a recording in the bedroom, but if I'm watching Live TV, then I can't pause live? Is that correct?

If I do two DVRs with D*, can I still swap recordings between ALL 4 TVs? Or does having 2 DVRs cause separate DVRs and thus recordings limited to the TV to which they are connected?

I can't speak to multi-DVRs but I did recently switch from Dish 622 DVR to Direct. I have one DVR in living room and 2 HD receivers on other TVs.
As indicated, you cannot pause 'live' tv from the non-dvrs but as a sort of workaround, you can start recording form the non-DVR tv and then pause the recording. The biggest drawback is that aside from the DVR tv ONLY ONE of the non-DVR tvs can watch a recording at a time.

So you can watch one recording on the DVR and one on any of the non-DVR tvs BUT you cannot watch a recording on 2 non-dvr tvs at the same time.
This is in very fine print in the DirectTV ads - imagine that!

Otherwise the switch has been "ok" so far. At least all the TVs get full HD unlike the remote tv used to under Dish and there will hopefully be fewer shenanagins about channels disappearing due to contract disputes. I DO miss the Sirius music channels though. The Sonic-tap options stink!

So you can watch one recording on the DVR and one on any of the non-DVR tvs BUT you cannot watch a recording on 2 non-dvr tvs at the same time.
This is in very fine print in the DirectTV ads - imagine that!

Ok, so to be clear - The DVR will be in the Family Room. Bedroom and kitchen have HD receivers that can view the recordings from the DVR in FR. Dh can watch his recorded crime show in the bedroom while I am watching recorded Survivor in the Family room. Since we are both watching recordings, only live TV can be viewed in the kitchen. We can watch live TV in the Family room while a recording is watched upstairs (or vice versa). We can record two shows at a time and each watch a recording on any TV so long as it's not more than 2 at the same time being watched.

I'm not seeing anything different from the E* dual DVR. I'm seeing I have DVR capability on one more TV than with E*. What am I missing?

Yes that is pretty much it. The only feature you lose is that you cannot pause live on the non-DVR tvs.
I was just surprised when I tried to watch a recorded show in my bedroom (non-DVR) because my son (non-DVR) was already watching a recorded show.

How would that stop you from pausing if you're watching a recorded show? I thought the lack of pausing is only on Live TV on non-DVR TV. Does that also extend to pausing while watching a recording?

No not at all. If you are watching a recorded show, you can pause on any tv- sorry if my answer was confusing.
I was comparing to the Dish dual-tv functionality - in that scenario, you can pause from either tv whether recorded or live.
With the DirectTV offering, you can only pause when viewing recorded shows on the non-DVR TVs. From the DVR TV you can always pause/resume.