# Dish Network to DirecTV - Part 2



## curtisjackson (Apr 7, 2005)

The installer showed up as advertised between 10 and 2 on Monday (today is Thursday; I wanted time for the unfamiliarity to wear off so I could give a more fair review). The installer was efficient and very knowledgable, and he works with and holds stock in both companies. He said I would be happier with DirecTV because their hardware is faster, more reliable, and they fix problems. He was incredulous that Dish sent me a replacement 721 instead of a ?7000? because the run of 721s that included my replacement had terrible hard drive problems. He was doubly-incredulous that they had yet another one in the mail to me.

He said it was not legal to sell receivers on the open market for about 18 months or more now, because people were buying them and mod'ing them to get free programming. That is also why Dish is going smartcardless; the cards are too easy to hack.

As various reviews have said, the HD DVR (H10-250) from DirecTV started out very slow for the first 48 hours, but since then has been very snappy. It thus far has not shown any of the myriad problems that I experienced with the Dish 721, nor has it shown some of the incredibly annoying behaviors. For example, on Dish if I was watching already-recorded program A from disk so I could burn it to DVD, and using one tuner to record program B, and then a timer for program C kicked in, Dish would put up a dialog saying that both tuners were in use, and could it please use the main tuner to record? Of course, both tuners were not in use, and my DVD would end up with 30 seconds of this pointless dialog burned onto it. The DTV unit does not do stupid things like that.

The HD is wonderful. Not only that, my wife and I independently concluded that even watching programs in good old 480i is clearer and sharper than watching the same on Dish. It is trivial to switch between HD modes, but they also made one design decision that makes life a little complicated: If you are outputting anything other than 480i, the S-video and composite outputs are not driven at all. This means that if I want to record an HD movie, then watch it in HD while I also burn it to DVD (the latter has to be 480i), I can't do so. This takes a lot of the joy out of HD for me, because now I have to play the move once to watch it in HD, and again to burn it to DVD.

Also, this means that, at least with my Samsung DLP HDTV, although it is trivial to switch from, say, 480i to 720p and back, I also have to switch from the S-video to DVI inputs and back on my TV. My TV will correctly handle 480p/720p/1080i via is DVI input, but it does not like 480i there.

Back on the plus side are some of the Tivo features, such as the Wishlist (go find this program anywhere and everywhere and record it, even if you have to wait a year for it to turn up), the Season Pass (record this show on this channel -- first run only, first run + repeats, or all including duplicates), etc.

On the minus side of the Tivo coin, however, are two design philosophies that I find completely incongruous (and one of them unforgiveable):

1) The Tivo model is obviously designed for the lowest-common-denominator user. How much disk space/recording time do you have left? Now, now, you don't need to worry your pretty little head about things like that! There is literally no way to find out.

The model is also obviously geared towards their Wishlist and Season Pass; people who want to watch "their shows" and maybe the odd ball game. It is _not_ geared towards people like me who want to pick and watch 2 or 3 dozen individual movies a week. In fact, in many ways it is actively hostile towards that kind of thing. I'll give just a couple of examples: it is more painful than on Dish to navigate forward in the guide to a particular date/time in the future. Once you are there, you select a show, set the recording options for it, say "OK", and it goes back to the guide -- AT TODAY'S DATE/TIME. So if I've gone to the online web guide and found a bunch of movies to record, it is *incredibly* painful for me to go set up those timers. Another example is the way they handle timer conflicts when you try to record a one-time event and there are already 2 Season Pass/Wishlist items at that timeslot. Instead of showing you all 3 items like Dish does and giving you freedom to resolve the conflict as you see fit, they only show you the one-time item you're trying to set up and the lower priority of the other 2 things.

2) This is the unforgiveable part. The Tivo UI is, what, 7 years old now? It appears to have been designed by a very junior engineer with a bad haircut. To have a task model that is so hand-holding and information-hiding, and then couple that with a usability model that is so arcane and bizarre and counterintuitive -- well, as a software engineer turned manager who is married to a top UI/usability designer, it just boggles my mind.

Watching a recording and want to stop it? That's easy, hit the left arrow key on the rocker panel. ???

You start watching a show that is already in progress on Dish, and decide you want to tape a later showing. Hit # (admittedly not intuitive, but easy enough once learned) then Select. Done. Want to do the same thing on Tivo? You have to act as if you want to record the show (very very unintuitive, and probably scary for naive users). So: hit Info (about as arcane as hitting #), hit Select (to record the show), in the resultant dialog move down to Season Pass & Other Options, hit Select, in the resultant dialog move down to View Upcoming Showings, and hit Select again.

In the Guide, and want to go 24 hours ahead? On Dish, you hit the "jump-forward" button and you're there. On Tivo: Info + Down Arrow + Down Arrow + Right Arrow + Select + Select. Or you can hit the Fast Forward button _16 times_ (1.5 hours per).

I could go on for days, if not weeks, in this vein. If the hardware and systems software wasn't so apparently solid, and Dish's hardware and systems software so incredibly bad, I'd kick this thing to the curb. But given the choice of flaky hardware+systems software and good UI, vs. solid fundamentals and awful UI, I'll have to go with the latter every time. I just don't have to like it. I run in some of the same circles as some Tivo folk; I hope I never knowingly meet any of their UI/usability/engineering marketing people at a party when I've got a few under my belt...

But, all that grousing aside, let me reiterate that given today's choices, DirecTV beats Dish hands-down overall, and I am very glad I switched. If not, I would have taken one of Dish's many pleading offers today when I called up to cancel -- I had been a Dish customer for 8.5 years, it turns out, and they were loathe to lose me.


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## reddice (Feb 18, 2003)

I had a DirecTV and a Tivo and I hated it with a passon. I am now back with Dish PVR and I am glad I am back.

Anyway not to troll again I hope you enjoy your new system.


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## lazaruspup (Mar 18, 2005)

Congrats on the new D* system. I myself am debating an upgrade to the HDTivo or waiting until the Humax systems launch... love Tivo, so I may be swayed...


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