Switching to Directv after 16 years at Dish. Questions about whole house, need internet connections

[Rlanham]

I have got alot of help in the Dish network forums over the last 16 years, but I am moving to a new house and the deals with DirecTV, as well as the free Sunday Ticket for new subs are too good to pass up.

I am going with the Costco deal, with 2-HD dvr's receivers, and 3-HD receivers, and whole house DVR, and the choice extra package.

I have done some searching here in the Directv forums, but here are some of my questions, if anyone can help me out?.. especially if you have or have had both Directv and Dish.

1) With the whole house DVR, will I be able to watch either of the two dvr's programming at ANY location?

2) Will I need to hook up my receivers via CAT-5 for the whole house DVR, or to verify the rcvr's are hooked up at one location like dish does. The house is not wired for cat5, but there is a telephone jack by each wall jack.
I may have 1 unused rg6 jack in the office that is near my router?

3) The house is wired so 1-rg6 is sticking out the side of the house, and it goes to a splitter that 9-rg6 cables are attached to the splitter. Does Directv use switches, and can they jus tie in to the existing run of rg6?. Otherwise, it would not be doable to run new rg6 to each room the way they are finished.

4) is receiver as responsive as Dish, I know my buddy that has Comcast it seems like a lot of lag waiting to change channels.

Thanks for anyones responses in advance.

 

[RandallA]

1) With the whole house DVR, will I be able to watch either of the two dvr's programming at ANY location?

Yes, you will as long as the other receivers are HD.

2) Will I need to hook up my receivers via CAT-5 for the whole house DVR, or to verify the rcvr's are hooked up at one location like dish does. The house is not wired for cat5, but there is a telephone jack by each wall jack.
I may have 1 unused rg6 jack in the office that is near my router?

No, you won't. MRV works with RG6 cable. If you want the receivers to connect to the Internet for other features, only one of the receivers will need to be connected to the router.

3) The house is wired so 1-rg6 is sticking out the side of the house, and it goes to a splitter that 9-rg6 cables are attached to the splitter. Does Directv use switches, and can they jus tie in to the existing run of rg6?. Otherwise, it would not be doable to run new rg6 to each room the way they are finished.

As long as the cable is RG6, you're fine. Only a single cable run is needed to each receiver and one single cable from dish to splitter. Note that you'll have 7 tuners, the max you can have with a single cable run from the dish to splitter is 8 tuners. If in the future you decide to add more tuners, more cables will be needed from dish to switch.

4) is receiver as responsive as Dish, I know my buddy that has Comcast it seems like a lot of lag waiting to change channels.

The new HR-24 and H24 receivers are as responsive as Dish receivers. There's a new HD GUI coming up in the Fall and the reviews are very encouraging, most say that the new interface is faster.

 

[harshness]

The new HR-24 and H24 receivers are as responsive as Dish receivers.

You haven't done a side-by-side comparison (or seen the YouTube video), have you?

The newest DIRECTV Plus HD receivers are noticeably faster than the older DIRECTV Plus HD receivers but they are certainly not on a par with the DISH ViP series in terms of the metrics typically used to measure speed (channel change time and guide scroll rate).

 

[downthedoor]

You haven't done a side-by-side comparison (or seen the YouTube video), have you?

The newest DIRECTV Plus HD receivers are noticeably faster than the older DIRECTV Plus HD receivers but they are certainly not on a par with the DISH ViP series in terms of the metrics typically used to measure speed (channel change time and guide scroll rate).

You haven't seen the new GUI, have you? Even on my HR-22 the guide moves fast when scrolling through the guide... Now the channel change rate is less then desirable, but I have an HR-22 that is still downloading VOD channels.

 

[mdram]

if the hr-24 is slower, its not very noticeable during normal use

but if you use some of the features it has that dish doesn't its faster (quicktune, smart search, view upcoming, ect)

 

[lparsons21]

You haven't done a side-by-side comparison (or seen the YouTube video), have you?

The newest DIRECTV Plus HD receivers are noticeably faster than the older DIRECTV Plus HD receivers but they are certainly not on a par with the DISH ViP series in terms of the metrics typically used to measure speed (channel change time and guide scroll rate).

I just switched and I would disagree. With HR24s the speed is certainly on par with the Vip722k and 612 I had with Dish.

Edit: Note that if I have 'native off' and a fixed resolution on the HR24 which is the way all the E* Vip's work, then the speed of channel to channel switch is very much on par with Dish. But with 'native on' it is very slightly slower as it has to do HDMI handshaking each time.

 

[RandallA]

You haven't done a side-by-side comparison (or seen the YouTube video), have you?

The newest DIRECTV Plus HD receivers are noticeably faster than the older DIRECTV Plus HD receivers but they are certainly not on a par with the DISH ViP series in terms of the metrics typically used to measure speed (channel change time and guide scroll rate).

I don't need to watch any YouTube video, I had Dish before and I can compare the receivers myself. I had the 722, 622 and 612 receivers and the HR24 compares to any of them.

 

[Rlanham]

Edit: Note that if I have 'native off' and a fixed resolution on the HR24 which is the way all the E* Vip's work, then the speed of channel to channel switch is very much on par with Dish. But with 'native on' it is very slightly slower as it has to do HDMI handshaking each time.

Does this mean Directv receiver has the "option" to automatically choose the resolution of the input or upconvert everything to 1080i, whereas Dish upconverts everything to 1080i?

 

[lparsons21]

Does this mean Directv receiver has the "option" to automatically choose the resolution of the input or upconvert everything to 1080i, whereas Dish upconverts everything to 1080i?

Basically yes. Direct's HR series has the option of allowing something other than the HR to do the video conversion. I have mine set to Native On and all resolutions are supported. So whatever is being sent to the HR is passed to my TV (in this case, I could allow the AVR to do the conversion also should I want to)

The E* HDDVRs OTOH, allow you to pick which output resolution you want for all channels which means they are doing the conversion.

Note that one is not necessarily better than the other because of this feature, it depends on what does the best up conversion in your video chain. In my case I've found that my Panasonic plasma does the best conversion. And you really would expect that, or at least I do. My TV is a 1080p set, ALL video is displayed as 1080p either natively or converted by the TV. So if I let the HR do the conversion to 1080i, the tv still has to convert to 1080p.

 

[bill33333]

As long as the cable is RG6, you're fine. Only a single cable run is needed to each receiver and one single cable from dish to splitter. Note that you'll have 7 tuners, the max you can have with a single cable run from the dish to splitter is 8 tuners. If in the future you decide to add more tuners, more cables will be needed from dish to switch.

Question on this please: Is the "single cable" needed for whole house in addition to the cable that connects to the dish? Or does the cabling go from the dish to one receiver, and then from that receiver to the other(s?)?

 

[andrewj0781]

Question on this please: Is the "single cable" needed for whole house in addition to the cable that connects to the dish? Or does the cabling go from the dish to one receiver, and then from that receiver to the other(s?)?

One wire comes from the dish to the 4 output spliter (or what ever it's called), and from there each room you want hooked up gets a wire from the spliter, and that wire gets plug into a receiver. Least that's how mine was hooked up back in August. The Directv guy used most of the wires that were hooked up to Dish Network. I even got him to take down the old dish. Which helped me but it helped him too since the dish was going in the same spot.