Dish Network Revisited

Back in June, I told you the story of my efforts to get cable TV to my house. To recap, what I wanted was a technology  called “whole house DVR.” This technology allows one to record a program and watch it in any room in the house. This feature is very important to me because it allows my wife and I to watch separate and different programming or to start to watch a program in one room and finish watching it in another room.  Charter, the first company I went with after many fits and starts finally admitted they didn’t have what I wanted. The company I’m currently with, Dish Network, seemed to have what I was looking for, but it turns out the answer is – “not quite.”

In hindsight, with respect to both Charter and Dish Network, my viewing choices and expectations probably weren’t accounted for in either business model. You see, my wife on a typical evening may watch one program and want to record two other programs which are airing simultaneously for later viewing. Meanwhile, in another room I may be watching a baseball or a football game. Well, it turns out that this scenario is not possible under Dish’s Hopper/Joey system, which is what I have. The Hopper advertises that it can record 6 channels at once. The problem is that this statement is slightly misleading. The Hopper comes with three, not six tuners. If you elect to use its Prime Time Anywhere function, then the Hopper records NBC, ABC, CBS & Fox on one tuner. So you have 2 other tuners to use to record or watch anything else that is not on those major networks. Some quick math will tell you that that’s not enough tuners for how my wife and I view TV.

When I called Dish to say the Hopper wasn’t going to work for me, the sweet-voiced customer service representative suggested I tell my wife not to record so many programs at the same time. I informed this nice lady that I’m looking for technology that meets my needs as I and my wife use it and the Hopper doesn’t. I then asked how much they’d charge me  to void my contract with Dish. Amazingly, the representative’s attitude changed immediately and she suggested that we could switch out our the boxes and get one DVR per 2 TVs.  This would allow for the recording/viewing of 4 channels simultaneously and not cost me any additional money. This was the option I went with. The alternative was to get an additional Hopper to support 5 actual tuners – at additional cost.

I’m not sure how long I’ll be happy with this current arrangement. I just never knew watching TV the way I want could be so hard.