In my elder years I've gone for simplicity. At one point in time I had a dual bus 4 channel switcher, one bus feeding the main TV the other the secondary TVs with a Boxee Box for this, an Apple TV for that, all 4 channels occupied. Had/have a Harmony remote to make sure everything switches to the right input on TV, switchers, devices . . . Had 2, 2 tuner Directv DVRs stacked on each other. Then came the Gene, how can you get better than the Gene? 4 tuners (or was it 5?) in one box. I left DTV shortly after ATT took over and started running it into the ground. It's ridiculous to pay $10 a month for HD. When it first came out, yes. Now? I guess I should have been glad they didn't charge extra for color. If you called and bitched they would give you a "courtesy" $10 credit for a year but you had to call in every year to renew. That went away with ATT. Then there's the Pac 12 debacle. Don't get me started. Track paid my way through college. There's very little track on TV, Pac 12 net actually has a few track meets and living in Pac 12 territory there are a few football games of interest also.
Sooo I bid DTV adieu just before the H3 came out so I had a H2 for 2 years. Just upgraded to the H3 this summer. Everything in one box, Netfixs, Amazon, Home Media Player, Sling Box 16 tuners (H2 really only had 3, 1 for the 4 locals and 2 for Sat channels. Had lots of scheduling conflicts). So bye bye to the complicated system.
Now DISH is charging extra for locals. I know marketing is saying they are just splitting out the costs of locals so we can see what they are up against. BS, why didn't my programing package go down $12 when they added $12 for locals? I'm now hopping (commercial skip) on CBS and FOX and non prime time programing via the PLEX DVR using OTA tuners via H3's Home Media Player. It works fairly well but it gets confused once in awhile which is why I need a good OTA tuner in the H3 for backup and there are still a few bugs to work out. Then I can tell DISH what to do with their locals.
