HR10-250 & OTA only with monthly fee

[dcwebman]

I must be missing something here. Say I want to get an HR10-250 and only use it for OTA. D* is telling me that I still have to pay $5.99/month for the DVR service in order to make the DVR even work. Does that sound right?

I currently have D* for only the Sunday Ticket. If I get the DVR, I can understand that if I want to pause the football games and the OTA, that I'll probably have to pay that monthly fee. It just doesn't seem right with the OTA only if I just wanted to add the DVR for OTA and keep my existing receiver without pausing football games.

And here's the final question. With the new DVR coming out sometime this year, should I get the HR10-250 now or wait until the new one?
Thanks,
Jeff

 

[Tonedeaf]

I think it will work for just OTA, but, you won't get any functionality of the DVR from it without the DVR fee. I could be wron.

I am waiting until the new Mpeg4 dvr comes out.

 

[dishrich]

Unfortunately, if you want the DVR to actually work, you got to pay the DVR fee, sorry.

 

[dcwebman]

That's wierd for just OTA. They must be sending some signal down that makes the DVR work. Oh well.

 

[Neutron]

I believe it all has to do with your access card, for the DVR service to work.

 

[popechild]

On a related note, if all you care about getting in HD are your OTA locals, do you still have to pay the $11/mo HD programming fee to use the box, or can you not pay that and still access OTA HD with DVR, etc.?

 

[Tonedeaf]

No, you do not have to have the HD pack. Would still just need to have the DVR service active to have DVR features.

 

[dishrich]

But, if you already had an SD DVR on your account, you would not need to pay the DVR fee again - just the 4.99 added receiver fee.

 

[dcwebman]

This may be just an issue with the D* DVR's. I have a friend who has had a Panasonic HD DVR for 6 years that is really a D* receiver but he always just used it for OTA, never contacted D* at all, and it worked fine.

But this is all a moot point for me now. While trying to get a good price on the DVR from retention, I was informed that starting the 2006 football season, anybody with Sunday Ticket MUST have a base package too. There's no way I'm getting rid of the NFL so now I am being forced to switch to D* for everything. They also recommended that instead of getting the DVR now to wait for the MPEG4 one since they didn't have any upgrade information yet and I could be just wasting my money on the HR10-250.

 

[elephant98]

If all you care about is getting OTA locals in HD on your HR10-250 , then you do not have to have the DVR service or D* service activated. In other words, you won't be able to record anything, but you will be able to watch your local channels in HD.

Ironically, I ended up in this exact situation in the aftermath of Hurricane Wilma, when my dish got blown completely off my house in the storm. Because I didn't have a satellite, I obviously lost all satellite channels and the DVR service stopped working. But, I was able to use my HR10-250 to pick up OTA locals in HD.

 

[Plywodstatebum]

I have my H10-250 to one input and a H10 connected to another input for OTA when there is 2 programs being recorded at the same time on the Tivo. I can watch OTA with the H10,, Its not under contract and works great.

 

[boba]

If you don't already own the HR10-250 you will need to agree to a 2 year contract with a minimum of the $29.99 spanish package so this discussion is moot.

 

[dturturro]

If you don't already own the HR10-250 you will need to agree to a 2 year contract with a minimum of the $29.99 spanish package so this discussion is moot.

What if you do own the box and you've met the initial requirements? Could you drop all programming and just pay for the guide?

 

[newsposter]

What if you do own the box and you've met the initial requirements? Could you drop all programming and just pay for the guide?

nope or lots of people would do it.