I ordered the 522. Is it a bad product?

[cameron119]

In what way?
He made no well put point other than a failed attempt to stifle my right to give an honest opinion.

There is a difference between stating an opinion and trolling in a thread that has already found resolution.

I thought the advantage of Season Pass was that it handled all showings on its own. If you have to manually set overrun and underrun times...how is that a feature of season pass?

I owned 'em both, and I DO NOT miss having the TiVo incessantly trying to intrude on my television watching. I like to dictate my viewing preference as I view. I also like knowing my viewing habits aren't being monitored by big brother for commercial gain.

I can record my shows when I want them. I can record one show while being able to watch another live show. I can record 2 live shows and watch a prerecorded show. I know that I'm not feeding DirecTV any money...any more?

 

[cheezwiz]

Giving people an honest evaluation of features is a very important feature of any BB. OTHER people who are considering purchase of this unit or making the decision between DirecTV and Dish may find the info useful. The idea of "if you cannot say anything nice, then do not say anything at all." simply hurts all. The only reason I am a Dish customer now is the same as you stated in your post, I am not feeding the evil empire anymore money. However, avoiding criticisim of Dish serves no one! Especially us subscribers! Only through criticism will Dish strive to improve their products and service.

 

[Bizzach]

Cheez, there are a LOT of things that I don't say on here because they're not nice. It's common courtesy.
Also - I highly doubt Echostar executives are reading this forum, and even if they were, they wouldn't care to change a product because of something we said on here. If you have said 'criticism,' you need to take it directly to Dish Network.

 

[Hall]

If your favorite show is bumped due to a basket ball game, no problem, Tivo catches that.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe I read that even TiVo missed the infamous last episode of Friends' last (6) minutes (due to overrun).

There also is a thread from "Scott G", the owner of this site, who's seen "name-based recording" working on a Dish DVR. It's beta at the moment, but he says it works well. So, it's just a (short) matter of time 'til Dish DVRs have it.

 

[cameron119]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe I read that even TiVo missed the infamous last episode of Friends' last (6) minutes (due to overrun).

There also is a thread from "Scott G", the owner of this site, who's seen "name-based recording" working on a Dish DVR. It's beta at the moment, but he says it works well. So, it's just a (short) matter of time 'til Dish DVRs have it.

Indeed it did, Hall. We still had a DirecTiVo around here at the time (before going back to dish network) and sure enough, it can chase the changing of time slot but not the extension of a show beyond its slot. Most people only saw Ross in his apartment listening to his answering machine messages and seeing Rachel return if they used a TiVo without modifying the timer.

 

[cheezwiz]

However People with DIrecTivo's were instructed via an important on screen message that the episode would run long and that they should adjust recording properties for that. How exactly would my 522 have delt with that? It would have missed it too since all it does is record by channel and time.

I look forward to Dish adding Tivo like feature and feel that they will do so. I am guessing that there may be some patents that interfere with it or Dish would have done it long ago.

As for monitoring our viewing habits, are we sure that these DVR's do not do that also?

 

[cameron119]

However People with DIrecTivo's were instructed via an important on screen message that the episode would run long and that they should adjust recording properties for that. How exactly would my 522 have delt with that? It would have missed it too since all it does is record by channel and time.

I look forward to Dish adding Tivo like feature and feel that they will do so. I am guessing that there may be some patents that interfere with it or Dish would have done it long ago.

As for monitoring our viewing habits, are we sure that these DVR's do not do that also?

I never got that message and neither did several acquaintances.

 

[maximum]

As for monitoring our viewing habits, are we sure that these DVR's do not do that also?

I doubt it since the signal is one way, unless it sends viewing info. by dial-up.

 

[cameron119]

I doubt it since the signal is one way, unless it sends viewing info. by dial-up.

The TiVo does via dialup. They admit it. Not such a big deal, just something that would keep me away if I were particularly private.

 

[maximum]

The TiVo does via dialup. They admit it. Not such a big deal, just something that would keep me away if I were particularly private.

Hummm, I wonder if that's why they want to charge an extra $5/month if you don't keep it connected to a phone line. Maybe they are selling the info. It's not a big deal for me. Maybe it will get back to the networks and they'll get more info about who is watching what rather than just from the Neilsons.

 

[fbruno]

I'd just like to throw in my 2 cents. I wish I had the opportunity to hear more opinions like Cheesewiz prior to choosing dish.

The 522 is not Tivo Yet, not even close. For some people this isn't an issue, but for myself and other Tivo early adopters, you bet your ass it is. The tivo name based recording and the option to only record new shows runs circles around this glorified tapeless VCR. The price is right on the 522, however, I really do miss these options. I realise what some people said about padding shows, and they are correct, things did get chopped. However, for my family this only happened occasionally.

I'll give two quick examples of what I find severely lacking right now:

1) Monk. I set up a timer for monk on USA. Monk runs for around 3 months and then no more episodes for around 6 months.

522: Recored anything that shows up in that timeslot, even though it's not monk. Resolution: remove timer until new season.

Tivo: Stops recording and picks up again in the summer. Don't need to do anything.

2) Simpsons. One week they moved the new simpsons by 1/2 hour.

522: I got whatever was in it's place, missing the new episode

Tivo: no problem.

I'm currently used to the shortcomings of the 522. My son no longer uses timers and just tags his shows manually. I use timers and 50% of the time I get what I want week to week, or I miss and have to change them. This means if there is something that I don't want to miss, I have to check during the week to make sure it's setup.

I was going to switch to Directv when my contract ran out to get back to the Tivo. Now it looks like directv is dropping tivo, so I probably won't go that route until I know what their new DVR is like. I'm also going to look at Voom if they come out with a DVR and it's better than the 522. I am an unhappy dish customer. I hear it every day from my wife and kids, "Why did we leave cable". I'm hoping the 522 comes around, or they release something worthwhile. otherwise I guess I'm stuck or I go back to comcast which is the very last thing I want to do.

This is not a troll. This is a defense of cheesewiz and my opinion on the subject. Does anyone know for sure if they will ever do name based recording or only get new episodes? Personally I don't care about Tivos suggestions, just these two features.

 

[Hall]

I don't think Dish has ever claimed that they do name-based recordings. They simply create a "timer" for a certain channel at a certain time. Nothing more... It's not perfect, nor does anyone claim it is.

When Dish does add name-based recording to the 522, what will people bitch and moan about ??

 

[maximum]

Thanks for the explanations about the advantages of Tivo over the DVR 522. I wondered what was the big deal with Tivo anyway.

We used to have Qwest Choice TV (digital cable over the phone line) before switching to Dish, and Qwest was an improvement over the old analog cable service we had befor that. The big problem with recording shows from Qwest is that you had to set the cable box to auto tune to the show(s) you wanted to record and then program the VCR to record at the same time, make sure you had a blank tape with enough room, etc. Then you had to make sure you didn't accidentally change the channel during recording.
Name based and first run recording sounds cool but just going from VCR to DVR was a major improvement for us.

One feature I really miss that Qwest had was the ability to list programs for a single channel. You could select a channel in the grid and pop up another grid showing all shows for that channel only. I don't see a way to do this with the 522. With the 522 you have to scroll through the grid 1/2 hour at a time or browse one show at a time while watching the channel.

The best thing with Qwest's digital cable box was that it had three tuners and all three were combined to be distributed to remote TVs. You could watch three different shows on any TV in the house. It came with three UHF remotes (one for each modulated channel). Of course only the TV connected to the gateway box with RCA or DD connections could get stereo audio.

Each service seems to have it's pros and cons. The integrated DVR and a specific channel we couldn't get with Qwest was the main reason we switched.

 

[rad]

IWhen Dish does add name-based recording to the 522, what will people bitch and moan about ??

I missing a recording, crashing the box, recording the wrong show, you know the usual stuff.

 

[itsonthedish]

Digital cable was so ghetto it wasn't even funny. The menu's sucked (typical trash TV GUIDE style menues) and it took forever to change the channels. I must say I haven't really noticed any picture differences with the DISH DVR and DIRECTV (obviously it is completely digital- unlike TIVO which has to convert it to analogue first) One of the benefits of recording directly from the satellite.