DISH Network vs. BHN Questions

[icmroadkill]

I've been a DISH customer for over ten years and subscribe to everything. In the past few months, DISH has not acted like they care about my business. Today might have been the final straw. The details aren't important, but I'm looking to jump to Bright House. The rep I spoke with in Bakersfield, CA wasn't too clear on details, so I thought I'd ask a few questions here. Is it true that BHN's HD DVR only holds twenty hours of high def programming? I was told that I could use an exterior hard drive to expand the hours. Am I able to record directly to the external hard drive? Or does everything need to be recorded on the DVR and transferred? I was told that there are only two tuners in the DVR. Am I able to record three programs at once if I mix in a rooftop off-air antenna? (I currently have the ability to record 4 things at once with DISH and the antenna) Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[jimgoe]

I switched from Bright House Central Florida to Dish 10 months ago. I have no general complaints about Bright House and still use their Internet and home phone services.

It was a great change for us to switch to Dish with 722K and 211 receivers. We were always working to manage the disk space on the Bright House HD DVR. I don't remember the exact capacity but twenty hours sounds about right. I had an external hard drive (required a SATA interface) connected for a short time before we switched. Hopefully this has changed, but when we used it there were NO options for external hard drive usage. It just recorded wherever it wanted. It may have recorded to the drive with the most available space. There was no indication of which drive was used.

There are just two tuners - cable only. The receiver has no capability to view or record from an antenna.

The main reason we switched to Dish was the availability of the 722k with the ability to record 4 programs at once. In my mind there is no comparison in the usability of the Dish 722k DVR vs the Bright House DVR - the Dish unit is many times better.

It has been 10 months so my experience may no longer be accurate but I don't think they have changed much.

Good luck in your decision - it is the devil you know against the devil you don't know. Neither company is perfect. Both are better than lots of others out there.

 

[jcarrera]

jimgoe, what is your dropout experience during rain?

 

[The Insider]

He is correct, the Dish DVR beats the BHN DVR in dam near every category.. But id contest the BHN Services beats that of dish by far. (specially on a price/value ratio) (speaking only for CFL as cable is varies region to region)

 

[jimgoe]

We do see dropouts but not very often. It's annoying, but I can't think of a time when we've been unable to completely watch something. We had a lot more trouble on Bright House (especially on Thursday nights) when we had to do a lot of shuffling because we wanted to record more than 2 programs at once.

I'm in the Orlando area and most of our rain fade occurs during afternoon thunderstorms which is not when we record or watch much. Perhaps if more fade happened in the evening it would be a bigger issue for us.

 

[tim tim tim]

I actually work for BHN tampa now and used to work for dish network last year.. Dish networks beat brighthouse with dvr's all day. Im not sure if they are offered there yet but there are the new samsung dvr's here which alow 30 hours of hd recording. Still not as good as dish but a step in the right direction.

Im also not sure how you used to record 4 things at a time with dish. There recievers are only dual tuner as well. unless your using 2 dvr's at the same time or something i dont see it being possible. With BHN, you can record 2 things and watch a third if its something that is recorded. Or watch one, record another with live tv etc.

 

[jimgoe]

The Dish vip722k does record up to 4 programs at a time. The receiver has a slot for an OTA dual tuner module enabling you to record 2 satellite programs and 2 OTA programs concurrently. When the 722k became available last spring I quickly jumped from BHN to Dish. It is very rare for us to record 4 things at once but we do have 3 recording a few times a week.

 

[tim tim tim]

OTA you get like 10 channels. Personally I dont record the news but I guess that could be considerd a perk for a few customers.