I'm getting DishNetwork!

[Gregg Lengling]

Well, he signed my service agreement "Mike-06," and the phone number to the place he put on all our remotes is 866-335-3474.

Ah yes that's one of my pet peeves.....a CONTRACT!

[gparris]

The install went great... we got an installer from "Galaxy 1." I basically made a checklist from ALL the advice you guys gave, and showed it to him right up front... he said he was already planning on doing all of that. We ended up putting the dish on a (very sturdy) shed in our back yard... perfect placement for a totally clear view of the sky where it's facing. He ran the wire 4 inches under the grass over to our house where it runs to the switching boxes in the basement. For the non-DVR HD box, and the two standard boxes he used the existing coax in the house, and it presented no problems. For the HD-DVR, he ran two brand new cables directly to my room (no splitting, two cables from the switcher). I don't remember what all the signal strengths were but I do remember the one that Brad said should be in the low 90's was at about 103... he used that signal strength meter quite well, I guess.

Thanks for all the great advice, I'm loving the Dish, and not one break-up yet!

Good for you, Mark, your new HD DVR from Dish has GOT to be less "buggy" than what TWC has done for us recently...your timing couldn't have been at a better time!

Question:
Are you able to record all your HD local stations from your antenna on the HD DVR Dishnetwork has sold you (all 7 of them?)

[Mark Strube]

It is less buggy... no issues with the HDMI at all. It has a very steep 20-30 min learning curve, but once you've learned it, it's gold. My only complaint is there's a limit to the number of "timers" you can have set (near 300), and if you set a show to record only first-run episodes, it'll still count the "cancelled" repeats as timers, so that can fill up quickly if you have a big series recording list. This has forced me to refine my series recordings quite a bit, but that's a good thing... with all this summer activity I've been consistently behind in all my shows.

Yes, I can record from OTA HD (it integrates into the same guide)... it's capable of recording 3 HD shows at the same time... 2 from Sat, 1 from OTA. (While you watch a 4th pre-recorded program, if you wish.) For now I'm relying on my OTA antenna to get local HD's, until DISH adds the Milwaukee HD locals later this year. However, we do have the standard definition locals thru DISH for the two standard tv's, and because I can't get good reception on 24-1.

[gparris]

Thanks for the update, Mark Strube!
I am so jealous that you can get to record 3, watch the 4th (besides getting WB HD and recording it, too).

Your setup really comes in handy during the "sweeps" months...I have to shift between DVRs to get them done if more than 2 at once happen, although rarely.

That newest Dish HD DVR has had few problems from what I have read and it handles a second SD set, too.

I wonder when Dishnetwork will get those basic 4 HD locals and if they ever will add the HD local balance like Directv (assumption) will.