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First, I just want to say that I have Dish and am very happy with their service, but I was looking to switch to D*. The only reason I want to switch is for the Sunday Ticket. Watching football is one of my only hobbies and, frankly, im tired of watching the garbage games that they have on regular TV. Especially when all they did last year and all they are going to try and do this year is force games that feature Brett Farve down our throats. Cant tell you how sick of watching the Jets I was last year every single week. But I digress......

I have several questions about some of the differences that would most affect me by switching. I know I can probably call customer service, but im sure I would get better answers by asking here without feeling the pressure to make the switch. Any help would be appreciated. So, here goes......

1) I hear you can record two shows and watch a third with D* dvr's, is that true? Can you use PIP with the dvr's? I assume their is no limits like (I think?) U-verse has where you can only record or watch one HD channel at a time?

2) For the dvr's, do you need to have two coax cables going to each box or just one?

3) I have a 622 at the moment and I absolutely love it mostly because of the 30 second forward and 10 second back button. I assume D*'s dvr's do not have that feature, but instead they just have forward and reverse buttons? Other than that are there other major differences between the two? ( I really just watch TV and record a few shows, I dont use any of the fancy features)

4) My parents have D* and it seems like the receiver response time is WAY slower than Dish's boxes (Like the guide seems like it takes forever to come up and also when changing channels it seems slow). I dont know what model boxes they have, but is that common?

5) Do you have to have a phone line connected to D* boxes in order to receive Sunday Ticket? ( I dont have a home phone, so that could be a deal breaker) If you do have to make that connection, can you connect using the internet instead of a phone line? Also, do you have to have the boxes connected somewhere (either phone or inet) to avoid the "phone connect fee" that these companies like to rape you with?

6) Do I have to order the special sports package to receive my local RSN or do I just get the one local RSN with a standard package? All I want to make sure here is that I get Fox Sports so I can watch Brewer games locally, I dont care about the rest of the RSN channels.

7) With Dish, it seems like the signal goes out most of the time rain comes through this area. Is D* just as bad or is that because my original installer did a bad job aligning my current dish in the first place?

8) If I decide to make the switch, is it best to contact a local dealer or should I just call D* directly? With Dish, I just called them, but that was before I came to this site and realized it was possible to contact dealers directly. If so, does anyone have any recommendations for dealers in the Milwaukee area? What would be the main advantage/disadvantage to contacting a dealer direct rather than going through D* directly?

9) Does anyone know when the latest promotion ends? The one where you get a free HDDVR upgrade with Sunday Ticket and so much off for 12 months?


Like I said, I am happy with Dish and would be happy with all the channels D* has as well. My main reason to switch was for the Ticket. I was just hoping to get some questions answered before pulling the trigger. I probably have a million more that I had thought of during the week, but these are some of my major questions.

Sorry for the wall of text, but any and all help would be greatly appreciated....

Thanks in advance.