Can You Use a Tivo with Dish Network?

BillH

SatelliteGuys Guru
Original poster
Sep 16, 2003
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Can You Use a Tivo with Dish Network?

I was wondering if that is a option if dish has to shut down our DVR's.

Also, if they have to shut them down, does that mean that the entire box will be killed or can we still watch tv with it?

This is really the pits.
 
What is the Tivo

OK. Next Question.

Does a tivo act as the satellite receiver or is it just another VCR Recorder?

Meaning that we will have to have a satellite receiver PLUS the tivo.
 
Last Question, I promise

If you have Direct TV, can you get a Tivo that will act as the satellite receiver and the recorder, where you only have to have one gadget on top of your TV.

And does Tivo make one that has two tuners.

Thanks.
 
There is a standalone dual tuner TiVo. The caveat is only one of the tuners can control a set top box (digital cable box or satellite receiver). The other tuner is for analog cable feed, channels that aren't scrambled/require a cable box to view. An over-the-air antenna feed is not available as input for these models.

So, for a satellite viewer wanting dual tuners, a standalone version of TiVo is not available.

The DirecTV receivers with TiVo are dual tuners, but only for the D* sat signal. You're also limited as far as retailers still selling them.
 
I use two Tivo Series 2's to control two seperate Dish Receivers.

One is on a 301, the other is on the TV1 output of my ViP622.

Both change the channel and record what I want when I want.

With the NEW TiVo Desktop 2.3a - it automatically dumps my recordings to my PC through my network when the recording is finished - NO SWEAT!!
 
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To use TiVo with DISH Network you need to make some adjustments--read carefully, this probably isn't the "disable updates" solution you're thinking of.

Even with updates turned off your DISH receiver will still turn itself off and this makes your TiVo not work on random days. Even if you tell your DISH box to wake up for recordings, recent DISH boxes will "eat" the first number of a channel change so your first recording of they day will always fail (not good).

Here's how to fix this for good.

Schedule your nightly update normally on the DISH box (choose defaults).
Schedule a VCR Recording timer on the DISH box for at least 30 mins after the update until 5 minutes before the update the next day (for 23:30 long, or so).
Now tell your TiVo to manually record channel 101 for 5 minutes every day at 5 minutes after the start of the VCR Recording timer you set on your DISH box. It's a good idea to schedule this manual recording to, say, 4:45 AM, and end at 4:50 AM so that you don't miss recordings scheduled at 5:00 AM and onwards. Make sure this manual recording only saves "one" episode, is 5 minutes long, deletes when space needed, and is "basic" quality.

Now your DISH Network receiver will be properly updated by Echostar, and it will properly respond to TiVo commands when you want it to. I did this to my 322 and it has been flawless. The trick is to set the VCR Timer and to have your Tivo record a manual channel 5 minutes after the machine wakes up since it will always fail to change channels the first time it records on that day.
 
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I set my 622 to record 1 minute on TV1 and TV2 at 4am (manual recording of channel 122).

The recording never shows up in my recording list, but my 622 is never asleep when my TiVo needs it.

I just have to be careful about the format I set TV1 on or I get anamorphic recordings of HD channels on my SD TiVo.
 
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