I was a E* subscriber for 7+ years and the lack of HD games on FSN North HD was the straw that finally broke the camel's back for me. I wanted to wait a few weeks to before posting a mini review so here are my thoughts:
First and foremost if you're considering switching or signing up for satellite service, I would HIGHLY recommend working through DishStore.net. I'll be honest I was a little skeptical about working through a retailer who was located in another town but Scott recommended I give them a shot so I did. I spoke with Claude personally and he answered all of my questions and set everything up for me in a 15 minute phone call. Less than 48 hours (yes, only 48 hours) later a D* installer was at my door. 99% of the install went perfect except for one hardware issue. This issue wasn't the fault of DishStore.net or the installer, just a hardware issue. I emailed Claude right away and let me tell you, he went absolutely above and beyond to fix it. He contacted several different parties to get my issue resolved ASAP! Now, thanks to Claude, everything is 100% perfect. I sincerely believe I would not have received this level of support from another retailer. Thank you DishStore.net and thank you Claude!
Now then, here are my thoughts on D* vs. E*
Negatives:
To put it plainly, the IR sensors on the D* remotes suck. Two of my receivers are placed underneath my tv's and I had a hard time getting them to pick up my button pushes. I ended up switching my living room box to RF and I had to adjust my bedroom receiver quite a bit. I never had any issues with IR transmission on the E* receivers.
The receiver software with D* is not quite as slick as E*. Doing searches, etc. seem to take a couple more button pushes on D* but this also has an advantage which I'll cover in the positives section.
After my two years worth of programming discounts run out D* will be slightly more expensive per month than E* for the programming package I want. I'm willing to pay a little more because of things like 24/7 HD RSN, NatGeoHD in my package and ESPNUHD but nonetheless it will be more.
Positives:
Whole home dvr...uh...wow! Not sure why I didn't understand how awesome this was but I love it. I read comments on the forum about playing from another room you have to wait for the content to start. Yea, like 3 seconds. And absolutely no degradation in PQ. Also with D* having only one DVR fee per household (rather than per DVR) I went ahead and got 3 dvrs so now I can share content on all of them. Fantastic.
Receivers. For years I have been reading on this and other forums that D* has better programming options while E* has better hardware. I disagree. Although the E* receivers have a slick interface it's my opinion that the D* receivers have better/deeper functionality. For example, the search function on the E* remotes is faster. If you're watching a show you can push one button and it will do a search for that show. With D* it takes a couple more button pushes. However, the functionality of the D* search kills E*. With D* you can search for actors, titles, keywords and, most importantly, the results denote whether or not they're HD without having to click on each one. Overall I would say the functionality of D* hardware is better than E*.
VOD. No contest. D* VOD is great. TONS of free, downloadable shows and movies and again, easy to tell which are HD. E*'s VOD? Joke.
Class operation. I believe Scott mentioned something like this in one of his Satellite Dish columns but after a few weeks with D* I get the feeling that D* is a classier operation. My install came right before The Masters golf tournament and I was blown away by the (free) Master's Mix channels, in HD! The free VOD, the mix channels, the season ticket packages, all first class. I always got the feeling with E* that it was much more of a fly by the seat of your pants operation. Popular channels being pulled, other channels nobody asked for showing up out of nowhere, etc.
PQ. I could write a whole other post describing the differences in PQ but I'll sum it up with this: PQ on SD channels is slightly better on E* and PQ on HD channels is better on D*. I watch 98% HD and I love how the HD looks. The SD is, well, SD.
Summary:
I wish I would have switched sooner. I honestly didn't hate E* and as I mentioned the move was really driven by programming but looking back I have no regrets. I was pleasantly surprised by the D* hardware, blown away by the whole home dvr and very pleased overall.
First and foremost if you're considering switching or signing up for satellite service, I would HIGHLY recommend working through DishStore.net. I'll be honest I was a little skeptical about working through a retailer who was located in another town but Scott recommended I give them a shot so I did. I spoke with Claude personally and he answered all of my questions and set everything up for me in a 15 minute phone call. Less than 48 hours (yes, only 48 hours) later a D* installer was at my door. 99% of the install went perfect except for one hardware issue. This issue wasn't the fault of DishStore.net or the installer, just a hardware issue. I emailed Claude right away and let me tell you, he went absolutely above and beyond to fix it. He contacted several different parties to get my issue resolved ASAP! Now, thanks to Claude, everything is 100% perfect. I sincerely believe I would not have received this level of support from another retailer. Thank you DishStore.net and thank you Claude!
Now then, here are my thoughts on D* vs. E*
Negatives:
To put it plainly, the IR sensors on the D* remotes suck. Two of my receivers are placed underneath my tv's and I had a hard time getting them to pick up my button pushes. I ended up switching my living room box to RF and I had to adjust my bedroom receiver quite a bit. I never had any issues with IR transmission on the E* receivers.
The receiver software with D* is not quite as slick as E*. Doing searches, etc. seem to take a couple more button pushes on D* but this also has an advantage which I'll cover in the positives section.
After my two years worth of programming discounts run out D* will be slightly more expensive per month than E* for the programming package I want. I'm willing to pay a little more because of things like 24/7 HD RSN, NatGeoHD in my package and ESPNUHD but nonetheless it will be more.
Positives:
Whole home dvr...uh...wow! Not sure why I didn't understand how awesome this was but I love it. I read comments on the forum about playing from another room you have to wait for the content to start. Yea, like 3 seconds. And absolutely no degradation in PQ. Also with D* having only one DVR fee per household (rather than per DVR) I went ahead and got 3 dvrs so now I can share content on all of them. Fantastic.
Receivers. For years I have been reading on this and other forums that D* has better programming options while E* has better hardware. I disagree. Although the E* receivers have a slick interface it's my opinion that the D* receivers have better/deeper functionality. For example, the search function on the E* remotes is faster. If you're watching a show you can push one button and it will do a search for that show. With D* it takes a couple more button pushes. However, the functionality of the D* search kills E*. With D* you can search for actors, titles, keywords and, most importantly, the results denote whether or not they're HD without having to click on each one. Overall I would say the functionality of D* hardware is better than E*.
VOD. No contest. D* VOD is great. TONS of free, downloadable shows and movies and again, easy to tell which are HD. E*'s VOD? Joke.
Class operation. I believe Scott mentioned something like this in one of his Satellite Dish columns but after a few weeks with D* I get the feeling that D* is a classier operation. My install came right before The Masters golf tournament and I was blown away by the (free) Master's Mix channels, in HD! The free VOD, the mix channels, the season ticket packages, all first class. I always got the feeling with E* that it was much more of a fly by the seat of your pants operation. Popular channels being pulled, other channels nobody asked for showing up out of nowhere, etc.
PQ. I could write a whole other post describing the differences in PQ but I'll sum it up with this: PQ on SD channels is slightly better on E* and PQ on HD channels is better on D*. I watch 98% HD and I love how the HD looks. The SD is, well, SD.
Summary:
I wish I would have switched sooner. I honestly didn't hate E* and as I mentioned the move was really driven by programming but looking back I have no regrets. I was pleasantly surprised by the D* hardware, blown away by the whole home dvr and very pleased overall.
