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Jim5506 said:

I'd wait a few weeks to let the Hopper settle in and get it's brains unscrambled.

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Bobby said:

Actually it's days not weeks...

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mnassour said:

I thought I'd dredge up this old topic for the benefit of anyone thinking about coming back to Dish. I've now been on board about a month and thought I'd post a few impressions here.

The Hopper 3 is clearly the star of the show. I'm not even going to try to go into all its functions, but let's just say it is the most advanced DVR ever made. Since firing it up, it has not missed a program nor made any other kind of mistake or shown any software glitch. Dish left DirecTV in the dust on this one and the cable DVRs aren't even worthy of coming to this party. However, I do have to say that the menus are not completely intuitive.

The video quality is very good. I won't say excellent, as I think I may have been a bit more pleased in the past with what I saw on DirecTV. But if DirecTV is a 100, Dish is a 99, it's that close. Dish's picture is a bit smoother (it always has been) than DirecTV, and the trade off for that is more noise in DirecTV's video.

If there's been an issue, it was (until today) with the one wireless Joey. The video and audio are just as good as the Hopper, as one would expect them to be. However, this Joey is about 50 feet away from the Hopper, with five walls between the two. And the Hopper is on the floor. Signal strength on the Joey never rose above 35 and I'm guessing this is the cause of it's only problem...sluggishness. Sluggishness in doing anything. Scrolling though the guide, flipping between shows, changing channels, anything. Today, I was trying to watch a on demand title. The title played fine, but once I started rewinding and going back forward, the Joey froze and had to be rebooted. I won't accept that. I shut off the wireless access point and hooked the two up with a straight run of Cat5. Boom. Sluggishness is gone.

Dish's technical support via phone is NOT good. I have called about simple things, such as programming remote controls, changing programming packages, etc., and each and every call is a struggle, both because of language issues and simple training on the product. If there is a time of day when Dish has US- based technical support available, I'd love to know when it is.

I'm not completely thrilled with the remote, model 54.0. I still can't program it to change sources on my living room set, a six month old LG OLED. However, the two programmable keys at the bottom are very welcome! And the fact that it's UHF is a welcome bonus. It has excellent range.

As far as pricing is concerned, there is no contest. Dish is far cheaper (for the moment) than DirecTV. I've had both systems in the past, and came from TiVo running on a Spectrum Cablecard. The only advantage Spectrum had was channel selection and of course, YMMV. The hassles of keeping Cablecards up on the TiVo were nothing short of astounding. I'm glad to know that when I turn on the TV, the receiver will...just...work.

I purchased the external OTA tuner, that was a good move. Now I get all my local stations and save $10 per month over satellite delivered locals. That's a good thing for Dish to do, DirecTV didn't give me that choice with locals. But you do need to remember that you can record only two locals at once. That can be tough when you have all kinds of tuners for satellite channels at your beck and call!

There are so many features I have yet to explore, external hard drives, Dish Anywhere, etc. But if you're struggling with your current provider, especially if you're having DVR issues, Dish is an excellent alternative.

Thanks to everyone here for helping me make the right decision.

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