I love Dish but can no longer justify it.

AlaJoe

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Mar 5, 2005
417
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Well after 17 years I am leaving. I made my first post here Mar 5,2005 and got Dish Mar 27, 2005. I will say without question Dish has the best DVR system of any provider. The Hopper 3 / Joey system is awesome and I love it but I can no longer justify what it costs. I have been paying 122 a month for Dish. For $64.99 I get more from YoutubeTV. Granted the DVR system is not near as nice but we are talking $57 a month less or $684 a year less which is approaching a weeks pay less per year. I have always been a big dish suporter but this is a lot. I can not justiy working almost an extra week a year to have a little better DVR service.
 

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The equipment is killing you. Can you move to a Wally? Dish Anywhere has quite a few live feeds as well, so you can use it like YTTV in addition to the Wally. Add in an OTA antenna and you have a lot of content available.
 
Adding to dishdude's post, there is quite a few things you can shed off if you are willing to compromise/invest a little upfront. Ill try to list all in order, but I'm going to ramble quite a bit:

Flex Pack: Not much you can do with this, besides calling Dish and hoping for a retention offer. Welcome Pack is also a thing, but its a lot more limited, and from what I've been reading recently you can no longer get it unless you complain enough.

Locals: May be the easiest money saver, or biggest PITA. It depends on how close you are to the broadcast towers of the locals you want. Close in a urban/suburban area? Easy call. Invest in a OTA tuner (compatible one here, the $30 accessory labeled AirTV Dual-Tuner Adapter is the same one Dish sales) and get a indoor antenna from Walmart (RCA is a decent brand). Out in the boonies? Hard to say, you may be lucky to have a repeater nearby. Or nothing for dozens of miles. An outdoor antenna may help, but there are to many possibilities to say for sure, so YMMV. Once setup, place the antenna in a window (if indoor) facing wherever the local broadcast stations are and see what you get on your Dish receiver. If you stick with the Hopper/Joey system, the antenna gets connected to the Hopper and it can share the stations with the Joeys (It is limited to 2 Tuners however and no PTAT). Wally's are standalone, each receiver that needs to receive local broadcasts would need an OTA tuner and antenna (more about Wally's latter). Another possibility, if you just so happen to have a Tegna station serving one of your locals, you can call Dish and request a free tuner and antenna because there is currently a contract dispute between the two.
TLDR for this section: Under optimal conditions, you can invest about $60, give or take because taxes/shipping (Or free if you are lucky!) in equipment to get your locals over the air, and be rid of the satellite delivered locals to save $12.

Equipment
: Hooo boy. This one is complicated. You like the Hopper/Joey system, but honestly what parts are we talking about? Is it really worth $29? Could you possibly live with one or two or all three TV's having similar DVR capabilities, but completely independent for each other? (In other words, each TV having its own DVR library, or no DVR functions at all). Here is where the Wally comes in. It is a standalone, rather simple receiver that belongs to the same generation as the Hopper3/Duo, but without integrated DVR functionality and only 2 satellite tuners. Nice part about them, you can get them here for $100 (They are usually on promo for $60 with promo code WALLY40, dunno how much longer its going to last however), the first box is rent free, and if you own these receivers outright subsequent Wally's are $5. So with a 3x Wally setup, you are looking at $10 p/m vs $29. Caveats are as previously stated, these are not DVR's, but with an EHD and a one time fee of $40 (Covers the entire account) they can get DVR functionality. These are standalone receivers, so they cannot share there DVR library's. Also, as dishdude mentioned, Dish anywhere is a free service where you can stream quite a few (but not all) channels on dish, and it is compatible with FireTV devices. You can install it on multiple devices (10 a year or something like that?) but only one device can stream at a time. So if DVR is not essential in the other rooms, you can buy Firesticks for each TV besides the Wally, and not have to pay the $5.
TLDR for this section: Depending on your needs, you are going to spend around $60 per TV for either a Wally or $25 for a cheap Fire device, $50 to $100 on EHD's for every Wally you want to be able to record on (or, one EHD that moves around the home works too) and the $40 one time fee. So about $350-400 upfront to have 3 fully equipped Wally's, that will cost $10 p/m. Alternatively, only one DVR enabled Wally, $25 firesticks for the other rooms for about $200 total, $0 p/m.

Add ons
: These depend on your needs. Once you have a tech out to install the Wally's if you go for them, I would get rid of the protection plan, you can re-add it at a latter date if you need it. Also, you are getting showtime at $7.50, with a 50% promo. This makes me believe you got grandfathered from the original $15 price for it, it is now $10 so if you can get that offer changed to the $10 ($5 with promo) rate that's a possible $2.50 in savings. So, you can go from $29.49 to about $17. If you cant get Showtime at $5 then its still $19.50.


Even thought the investment looks large, If you are able to implement all of this you can end with Flex Pack ($52.99), 3x Wally's ($10), Addons ($17) for about $80 ($70 if you go for one Wally and firesticks instead) a month, add one or two dollars for taxes. Still not YTTV prices, but $40-$50 less per month. At least worth exploring IMO.
 
The equipment is killing you. Can you move to a Wally? Dish Anywhere has quite a few live feeds as well, so you can use it like YTTV in addition to the Wally. Add in an OTA antenna and you have a lot of content available.
I use the vip211k and the outboard HDD and OTA antenna for the built in OTA tuner. I pay a bit over $100 for AT250/Movies/Supers. No receiver fees. With OTA, gives me dual tuner. The Wally I hear also do much the same with the OTA dongle. I have a Fire TV with Dish Anywhere and that works fine. You can call Dish and negotiate your bill. Often they will drop your bill to keep you as a customer. I have been with Dish since 1999 and I love set up. Long time customers have a value with Dish as with many companies.
 
I’m in the same boat. Love Dish (been with them since 1999) and the Hopper but the equipment fees are hurting them. We are trying out Fubo on the side to see if we like it. The dropping of Root Sports pushed us into looking at options.
 
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I have an H3 with one Joey 3.0, AT200, that's ALL.

Taxes and equipment, everyrthing $120 per month.

Not going anywhere.

I have 3 four tuner TiVos that could suffice for OTA but for now I'll stay with Dish locals even though I am only 5 miles from transmitters.

Streaming is to disjointed I like linear TV.

Daughter has You Tube TV but I find it too clumbsy.

For now I'm with Dish.

You could gain $7 by using a fire Stick in place of one Joey.

You could save $9.99 bu dropping Dish Protect Silver and only adding it when needed.

You could drop locals if you can get them OTA and save $12, these three total $29 per month in savings alone.
 
You could knock another $7 off per month (Sorry Jim5506 I didn't see your post yet) by replacing a Joey with a Firestick and the Dish Anywhere app. Absolutely drop the locals for an OTA Adapter and drop the insurance and you just got your bill down to $93.00 a month. Still more than streaming YT, but also still having the DVR, et al
 
$25 for a cheap Fire device
Just pointing out the FireTV Stick BF deals on right now.
  1. Fire TV Stick Lite (no TV controls) $18
  2. Fire TV Stick (with TV controls) $20
  3. Fire TV Stick 4K (also with TV controls) $24
I picked up another 4K stick that I don't even need at the moment. The cheapest I've seen for #2 was IIRC on Woot for $12. I don't know if that is still available. But the deals above still are.
 
Just pointing out the FireTV Stick BF deals on right now.
  1. Fire TV Stick Lite (no TV controls) $18
  2. Fire TV Stick (with TV controls) $20
  3. Fire TV Stick 4K (also with TV controls) $24
I picked up another 4K stick that I don't even need at the moment. The cheapest I've seen for #2 was IIRC on Woot for $12. I don't know if that is still available. But the deals above still are.
I wouldn't settle for anything less than the 4K
 
Do you guys not realize these suggestions involve spending even more money just to save money, buy Wallys, buy OTA adapter, buy Firesticks, once you do all of that, he will not be saving that much.

The best option is just call Dish and say I am canceling to go to YTTV for the purpose of saving money, I cannot imagine that Dish will not give him a better deal.
 
I was on the same boat a year ago. I felt paying close to 110-120 bucks a month no longer made sense. The wife and I came up with a plan. We wrote the channels we watched during entire month including recordings from dvr. The list contained about 15!! We realized we didn't need top 250. We didn't want to give up Hopper 3 and three joey 2. No kids at home. Just 2 geezers. But, they are all used and very convenient. Changed the package to 'Welcome'. Saved about $50 a month. Honestly, we miss nothing.

I checked all the streaming from different sources and only ota. I believe people switch to streaming because they want to save money not because it is more convenient. I read so many complaints about youtube, fubo and others. Their cost is slowly creeping up. Low Internet speed, you can not do much with your tablet, laptop when somebody streams.

I say look at all the packages, determine $ amount you are willing to pay. How much tv are you willing to watch? With Roku, Fire stick, streaming 4-5 free movies every month from your local library you have so many options.
 
I was on the same boat a year ago. I felt paying close to 110-120 bucks a month no longer made sense. The wife and I came up with a plan. We wrote the channels we watched during entire month including recordings from dvr. The list contained about 15!! We realized we didn't need top 250. We didn't want to give up Hopper 3 and three joey 2. No kids at home. Just 2 geezers. But, they are all used and very convenient. Changed the package to 'Welcome'. Saved about $50 a month. Honestly, we miss nothing.

I checked all the streaming from different sources and only ota. I believe people switch to streaming because they want to save money not because it is more convenient. I read so many complaints about youtube, fubo and others. Their cost is slowly creeping up. Low Internet speed, you can not do much with your tablet, laptop when somebody streams.

I say look at all the packages, determine $ amount you are willing to pay. How much tv are you willing to watch? With Roku, Fire stick, streaming 4-5 free movies every month from your local library you have so many options.

I agree. I tried Slingtv for a few years but the prices on it and all of the streaming services keep rising. They’ll soon catch up to the cost of Dish. That’s why I think Dish’s hardware charges are where they’ll have problems and squeezed. I already own streaming devices so it’s no cost for me just to switch over to one I already have. It is good that Dish offers streaming via the Firetv (which is super cheap to buy) but you still have to pay the monthly Hopper fee that the streaming services don’t have to charge.
 
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I prefer the Chromecast w/Google TV. IMO, the only reason to use a Firestick is if you're a Recast user.

The Chromecast is so much more open and customizable. I can run a VPN and use it out of the US for example.

 
I got rid of Dish a over a year ago. My reason wasn't so much to save money but to end my frustration with rain fade.

I first bought a TIVO with the one remote for for local channels with DVR and commercial skip. Works great! Lifetime subscription package and has better image quality than my Dish DVR had.

Second, for the "cable channels" I subscribed to FUBO with the 500 hr DVR option for $69 a month. I had an Apple TV box for 4K IPTV which has worked great too.

Last summer FUBO dropped the History channel so I had to subscribe to Sling to get one of my favorite cable channels back. That also comes with a digital DVR and commercial skip. I think that cost $39 a month more. So, I'm back to what Dish cost me but everything works very well and I haven't lost any of my programs in over a year since switching. I took down all my 3 sat dishes and tossed everything in the trash.

I also have the freedom of adding so many new options that I was always limited with Dish or Cable to what they allowed me to see. HBOMax, Disney+ Hulu, YOU Tube commercial free etc.
 
As time goes on and the price increases keep on coming every year ,I think you will see more and more satellite dishes by the trash can. I can get everything I had with DISH and get it on all of my tvs in my house using Sling tv and it only cost me $56.00 a month before taxes. The locals are integrated from my ota antenna and I can record 4 ota channels at a time and it cost me nothing. Loved DISH and the Hopper dvr is great and have been with them for almost 25 years in January 2022, but I have been on pause since June and plan to dump DISH next month when my pause ends. The price increases and equipment fees are simply too much now. Streaming is where we are headed for everything now.
 
Do you guys not realize these suggestions involve spending even more money just to save money, buy Wallys, buy OTA adapter, buy Firesticks, once you do all of that, he will not be saving that much.

The best option is just call Dish and say I am canceling to go to YTTV for the purpose of saving money, I cannot imagine that Dish will not give him a better deal.
What??? A Firestick is 25 bucks. Pays for itself in 3 1/2 months
 
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