There are some on eBay right now, $199 w/free ship. You can upgrade these to a 1 Tb hard drive for 140 hours of HD recording!!
DVR Fees - Will they continue forever?
- Thread starter JonUrban
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There are some on eBay right now, $199 w/free ship. You can upgrade these to a 1 Tb hard drive for 140 hours of HD recording!!
When they asked the CEO of DIRECTV what was planned for the future in terms of additional receiver features, PIP was one of the items he mentioned specifically.Funny...I know what PIP is and used it 20 years ago when it wasn't anything special then and still isn't...
Thanks for this info - I have a new HD tv for the basement and paying fees for an old SD DVR I never use. I currently have an External HD that I'd like to use for movies I recorded from the other DVRs. Sounds like this will be the perfect solution (someone correct me if I'm wrong here.)
You can't mix and match hard drives. You can move activated hard drives between 211's on your account and between 722/622 on your account. You can't move a hard drive from a 722 to a 211 or vice versa without it first erasing and formatting the drive.
What he said
This is right the implementation for these was different than the built in HD DVR. So something isn't compatible which is too bad.
This is right the implementation for these was different than the built in HD DVR. So something isn't compatible which is too bad.
Darn. I thought since I used it on both my 622 and 722, it would work on the 211. Grrrrr.
IIRC, someone posted here that there were two series of motherboards used in the ViP222 boxes. The earlier one had some kind of hardware limitation (different version chipsets?) that would prevent proper EHD support. Therefore, the feature would never be implemented for that model.
Fios charges $20 for their home media DVR, $16 for hd dvr (same box as the other but without home media activated), and most likely more when they release the newer boxes with more space, the current ones only have 20hrs for a dvr that is supposed to supply the whole house. And the first box is not free like with dish.
We were paying $50 in fees for receivers with fios and were always running out of space and had sd boxes on hdtvs to save money(1 home dvr, 1hd dvr, 2sd boxes), almost the price of our base package on dish. We are paying $34 in fees with dish (1 722k, 2 211ks w/dvr, 1 222k and dvr fee) so for less we are getting more with dish as we have all 5 tvs hooked up and 3 dvrs, each with 1tb so we never have to worry about space. Yeah there was the initial costs for the hard drives, but its not like they are useless if we were to leave dish, i have 4tbs hooked up to my computer so i am always buying more space anyway, they can be re-purposed. If we had a similar setup on fios it would be $65 in fees, almost double that of dish for much worse equipment. So for us, dish is better in price, we save $30 right now over the bundle we had, we still have fios phone and internet, $20 when the promotions run out. Depending on your setup bundling is not always a great deal. Plus dish right now has more HD channels that we watch, we were happy to leave behind the .tv and home shopping channels in hd for the channels Dish has
Thank you, Jonhern. I have been tempted to cut costs by going Fios, even at the loss of a couple of channels I watch. But they make it hard to figure out what your actual monthly bill will be. From the sound of it, I probably would not save the $40 or $50 I was expecting. And replacing my 2 ViP722s and several EHDs would require a Hauppauge and time to strip off the programming I'd want to save for later. And they don't seem eager to let me fiddle with an actual HD DVR to see just how bad it is.
Fios charges $20 for their home media DVR, $16 for hd dvr (same box as the other but without home media activated), and most likely more when they release the newer boxes with more space, the current ones only have 20hrs for a dvr that is supposed to supply the whole house. And the first box is not free like with dish.
We were paying $50 in fees for receivers with fios and were always running out of space and had sd boxes on hdtvs to save money(1 home dvr, 1hd dvr, 2sd boxes), almost the price of our base package on dish. We are paying $34 in fees with dish (1 722k, 2 211ks w/dvr, 1 222k and dvr fee) so for less we are getting more with dish as we have all 5 tvs hooked up and 3 dvrs, each with 1tb so we never have to worry about space. Yeah there was the initial costs for the hard drives, but its not like they are useless if we were to leave dish, i have 4tbs hooked up to my computer so i am always buying more space anyway, they can be re-purposed. If we had a similar setup on fios it would be $65 in fees, almost double that of dish for much worse equipment. So for us, dish is better in price, we save $30 right now over the bundle we had, we still have fios phone and internet, $20 when the promotions run out. Depending on your setup bundling is not always a great deal. Plus dish right now has more HD channels that we watch, we were happy to leave behind the .tv and home shopping channels in hd for the channels Dish has
Is the FIOS DVR a Motorola Box?
Ghpr13
With FIOS you can always use TiVo with Lifetime. You can get a lot of storage with TiVo and can transfer from TiVo to your PC for archiving.
I'm one of those expecting that "lifetime" to be quite short, with Tivo going out of business in the next couple or so years. No guarantee that whoever buys them, or some of their assets, will continue the service or honor lifetime commitments if they do. And Tivo could reorganize, and be released from that lifetime liability.
I find their boxes to be slow and terminally cutesy.
I find their boxes to be slow and terminally cutesy.
I miss the days where DVR's were cheap with Dish. Now they are just ridiculous.
The DVR fee for the first DVR used to be $0.98 or whatever with DVR advantage. Then they got rid of DVR advantage and made it $5 or whatever. Then they applied the fee to the account, but still double dip and charge $3 extra for DVR boxes.
And they wonder why people are unhappy.
The DVR fee for the first DVR used to be $0.98 or whatever with DVR advantage. Then they got rid of DVR advantage and made it $5 or whatever. Then they applied the fee to the account, but still double dip and charge $3 extra for DVR boxes.
And they wonder why people are unhappy.
Is the FIOS DVR a Motorola Box?
Ghpr13
Yep, the same ones that a lot of cable companies use but with IP. We originally switched from Cox and were surprised they used the same boxes. That should have been the first warning lol. I saw last night the new UI they plan to release, but while it looks nice it will be very laggy on those boxes, the widgets on the current UI take forever to load.
Yeah, had the same experience when we were looking to switch, it was hard to pick out the tv cost from the bundle. Iirc I figured the bundle discount to be about $7-15 for fios tv. So for us the discount was equal to or less than the discount on dish for the 1st receiver being included. I know it is not technically a discount, but for comparison purposes you can then just look at the tv part more easily since the bundle discount is a wash. For us the big determining factor was the bad equipment that did not justify the high rental costs. And when we called to cancel they tried to get is to stay but their only suggestion to lower costs was to downgrade equipment, lol, we were already using SD boxes on two hdtvs, not to mention fios is all about hd so.what's the point if u can't watch it.
Here are the prices to help you out, I don't think they have changed.
Home Dvr $20
Hd dvr $16
Hd box $10
SD box $7
Sent from HTC Evo
Jonhern,
Thanks for that reply. I've been hoping Fios would come to Louisville so I could have a choice between Fios & Dish, but knowing that they use those P.O.C. Motorola boxes, well that's a deal breaker. The one I had from Insight Cable was the worst piece of A/V equipment I ever used.
Ghpr13
I doubt TIVOs will be unsupported, the guide info must not cost much, and if any incarnation of tivo stopped supporting the guide data there would be a explosion heard around the world.
its altogether more likely TIVO will be awash in Es money from the lawsuit settlement
actually prefer the tivo with cable card over my 722Ks, TIVO is rock solid and just does its thing no troubleshooting needed plus i own all the content, so archiving will be easy.
the tivo suggestions are very handy and i have found some great shows from it
its altogether more likely TIVO will be awash in Es money from the lawsuit settlement
actually prefer the tivo with cable card over my 722Ks, TIVO is rock solid and just does its thing no troubleshooting needed
plus i own all the content, so archiving will be easy.the tivo suggestions are very handy and i have found some great shows from it
Been DirecTV and Dish for many years but dropped D* 3 years ago because of lack of HD and higher costs.
I am always interested in learning ways you misers figure out on saving money but after reading this complete thread, I was thoroughly disappointed. It appears the two services, cost-wise are a wash with very minor differences between levels of services.
What I did learn from the thread is if you really need to find the cheaper rates, you'll need to do your own comparative analysis for what you need and want.
If the two are close, then you need to carefully determine offered equipment features to be sure you don't overpay for something you will never use. Not only that but you need to check out ownership vs lease, but in my experience ownership is far more costly due to equipment obsolescence and your DVR's having no resale value. I have done much better at the end of 2 years now leasing the equipment, althiough my gut feeling is I would rather call the stuff "mine" Sometimes this is just too costly as in the case of DVR's. While it may appear to be costly each month, it really is cheaper due to the life of the DVR. I've owned several DVR's as well as leased them and none have lasted more than 16 months. Either hardware failure or obsolescence. My HDTIVO could not be sold due to obsolescence. It became total junk in the trash can! $1000 I paid for that TIVO. My lifetime SD TIVO is also obsolete as it was an analog model so it is worthless. I gave it way to my nephew but with ATSC now he can't use it.
So, my conclusion for the OP is to just look at your total bill and don't worry about your itemized costs. Figure you can't have one line item without the other so it's the total that matters. Then be sure the DVR has the features you want and need.
I am always interested in learning ways you misers figure out on saving money but after reading this complete thread, I was thoroughly disappointed. It appears the two services, cost-wise are a wash with very minor differences between levels of services.
What I did learn from the thread is if you really need to find the cheaper rates, you'll need to do your own comparative analysis for what you need and want.
If the two are close, then you need to carefully determine offered equipment features to be sure you don't overpay for something you will never use. Not only that but you need to check out ownership vs lease, but in my experience ownership is far more costly due to equipment obsolescence and your DVR's having no resale value. I have done much better at the end of 2 years now leasing the equipment, althiough my gut feeling is I would rather call the stuff "mine" Sometimes this is just too costly as in the case of DVR's. While it may appear to be costly each month, it really is cheaper due to the life of the DVR. I've owned several DVR's as well as leased them and none have lasted more than 16 months. Either hardware failure or obsolescence. My HDTIVO could not be sold due to obsolescence. It became total junk in the trash can! $1000 I paid for that TIVO. My lifetime SD TIVO is also obsolete as it was an analog model so it is worthless. I gave it way to my nephew but with ATSC now he can't use it.
So, my conclusion for the OP is to just look at your total bill and don't worry about your itemized costs. Figure you can't have one line item without the other so it's the total that matters. Then be sure the DVR has the features you want and need.
Don, nice write up and I agree with it.
It isn't the itemized parts of the bill that matter so much as it is the bottom line. I get irritated when I look at the itemized list of charges to see the equipment fees moved up. But the bottom line is what I pay and for me, E* has more of the channels I want to watch in HD for a better price.
For me, if I were to want to change providers, I would pay more and get less of what I want.
It isn't the itemized parts of the bill that matter so much as it is the bottom line. I get irritated when I look at the itemized list of charges to see the equipment fees moved up. But the bottom line is what I pay and for me, E* has more of the channels I want to watch in HD for a better price.
For me, if I were to want to change providers, I would pay more and get less of what I want.
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