Can Primetime Anytime Record OTA?

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Original poster
Jun 13, 2006
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I enjoy PrimeTime Anytime Recording but want to lower my Dish bill. I installed a good over the air antenna. Is there any way to get those network channels to work with the prime time anytime recording?
 
If you want drop locals you can buy the USB OTA adapter with the following limitations.
1) You will need to set up your own recording timers for programs you want.
2) You will be limited to two simultaneous OTA channels.
3) The Autohop for commercial skips will still work if you turn on PTAT even though you don’t subscribe to locals.
4) You will get any subchannels that your OTA tuner picks up but most will not have any Guide information.


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I do have the USB OTA tuner adapter installed and it works fairly well and gets more channels than Dish local package has. The issue is the PTAT recordings are what my wife likes since it records all 4 networks at night. Are you saying PTAT won't work with the USB OTA antenna and will only be able to set recordings to 2 channels max?
 
I do have the USB OTA tuner adapter installed and it works fairly well and gets more channels than Dish local package has. The issue is the PTAT recordings are what my wife likes since it records all 4 networks at night. Are you saying PTAT won't work with the USB OTA antenna and will only be able to set recordings to 2 channels max?
That's correct
 
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The Dish OTA tuner is limited to two tuners. You can see this under TV activity.
1) Press Options on your remote
2) Select Tv Activity
3) Watch Live x of 16 tuners in use
x of 2 OTA tuners in use
4) Tuner 4 shows the PTAT channels

Although I get 73 OTA channels I subscribe to Dish locals since I watch a lot of local shows.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I do have the USB OTA tuner adapter installed and it works fairly well and gets more channels than Dish local package has. The issue is the PTAT recordings are what my wife likes since it records all 4 networks at night. Are you saying PTAT won't work with the USB OTA antenna and will only be able to set recordings to 2 channels max?
When I had Dish I had antenna installed and primetime anytime didn't work and local on demand didn't work either but if you set timer your good to go.
 
I had moved to just OTA and most was good. But one channel losing signal (FOX) was an issue with sports so we went back and paid the $12. We did have a struggle at times with the dual tuner OTA dongle. Once you set a two timers at the same time on OTA, you can't then watch a live event, or it will also block another user in your home to access another local channel. Would love for DISH to create a 4 tuner ATSC 3.0 tuner, but not thinking that's happening.:cool: I might also get a 3.0 tuner and run the antenna to my TV and then kill the DISH locals, but then I have a DVR issue to solve. If you divorce the locals, just be prepared you may want to add them back after seeing how it works in your particular home.
 
If it were me I would consider getting a TiVo Romeo with lifetime off of eBay. That would give you four tuners with guide for all channels. I would still utilize the dual tuner as well for a total of six OTA tuners. But as previously pointed out do not expect much in the way of guide data from dish with the exception of the four majors.
 
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With the TiVos you must look to see what model you are getting.

Some only do cable others do only OTA, a few do both some have 2 OTA tuners others have 4.

Not arguing against TiVo - I have 4 of them.

I find TiVos especially good for saving programs I want to put on a hard drive and save either using PyTivo or TiVo Desktop to download them to my PC.

With TiVo Desktop you have to have a video player that recognizes .tivo files.

PyTivo downloads them in multiple formats, I usually just do .ts files.
 
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With the TiVos you must look to see what model you are getting.

Some only do cable others do only OTA, a few do both some have 2 OTA tuners others have 4.

Not arguing against TiVo - I have 4 of them.

I find TiVos especially good for saving programs I want to put on a hard drive and save either using PyTivo or TiVo Desktop to download them to my PC.

With TiVo Desktop you have to have a video player that recognizes .tivo files.

PyTivo downloads them in multiple formats, I usually just do .ts files.

Yep. I have had a Roamio Tivo OTA for several years now since we get virtually all OTA channels, about 85 of them here. It works very well, and being able to download to my tablet to watch later while traveling etc is big plus.

Streaming out of home can be a little finicky and can't be done on other than an app on Android or Apple. In Home you can use a computer.
 
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