# 622 and OTA locals



## Kazy (Mar 4, 2004)

Hooked up my new 622 today and all seems well. I scanned for my local HD channels, picked up seven. However, when I go to the guide they are not there.
What am I doing wrong?

Kazy


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## Bill R (Dec 20, 2002)

You need to subscribe to your locals (via satellite) in order to see your digital locals in your EPG.


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## Kazy (Mar 4, 2004)

Bill R said:


> You need to subscribe to your locals (via satellite) in order to see your digital locals in your EPG.


So......there is no way to watch my OTA locals unless I subscribe to satellite locals?
Please tell me I misunderstood you.

Kazy


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## lujan (Feb 10, 2004)

Kazy said:


> So......there is no way to watch my OTA locals unless I subscribe to satellite locals?
> Please tell me I misunderstood you.
> 
> Kazy


No, you can still watch your OTA locals, you just won't get the guide information unless you subscribe to the satellite locals.


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## Bill R (Dec 20, 2002)

Kazy,

To tune to your digital locals you will need to key in all five digits of the channel number. For example, if you have an OTA digital local channel 12 you would key in 01201 to tune to your local 12-01 channel.


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## David_Levin (Apr 22, 2002)

So, if you don't sub to locals they don't show up in the guide at all? Even as "no information"?


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## wingnut1 (Nov 10, 2005)

What I had to do to get them to show up was after scanning them I had to put a check mark next to each one that I wanted to show up in the guide. Then I believe I just had to push done. I'm going from memory and I don't think there was a save button on the screen. If there is press that first otherwise just press the done button. If you don't subscribe to locals you won't get the programming info and you won't be able to use a lot of the great features on the 622 like name based recording, but you will get the station in the guide just not what is playing on the station.


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## kbdrand (Apr 16, 2006)

wingnut1 said:


> What I had to do to get them to show up was after scanning them I had to put a check mark next to each one that I wanted to show up in the guide. Then I believe I just had to push done. I'm going from memory and I don't think there was a save button on the screen. If there is press that first otherwise just press the done button. If you don't subscribe to locals you won't get the programming info and you won't be able to use a lot of the great features on the 622 like name based recording, but you will get the station in the guide just not what is playing on the station.


Wow! I didn't realize this. I'm currently using a Tivo for my recording off of an 811 and I get my locals information from Tivo so I've never had the need to subscribe to the locals package. That really sucks that I'm gonig to lose that unless I pay an extra $4.99 a month. I mean what the heck am I paying the monthly recording fee for if not to get a complete guide?


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

kbdrand said:


> Wow! I didn't realize this. I'm currently using a Tivo for my recording off of an 811 and I get my locals information from Tivo so I've never had the need to subscribe to the locals package.


And for that privilege, you were paying $12.95 a month (or had earlier lightened your wallet by almost $300).


> That really sucks that I'm gonig to lose that unless I pay an extra $4.99 a month.


It hardly seems fair to pay $7.96/month less. 


> I mean what the heck am I paying the monthly recording fee for if not to get a complete guide?


To help subsidize a piece of equipment that would have otherwise cost you $800


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## wingnut1 (Nov 10, 2005)

You can still set manual timers to record the programs that you want. I prefer to pay the $5 a month to be able to do the name based recording. If you live in an area that gets or is going to get your HD locals by satellite you will get those for the same $5 a month that the SD locals cost you.


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## kbdrand (Apr 16, 2006)

harsh said:


> And for that privilege, you were paying $12.95 a month (or had earlier lightened your wallet by almost $300).It hardly seems fair to pay $7.96/month less. To help subsidize a piece of equipment that would have otherwise cost you $800


If I buy the 622 outright I don't get the locals either unless I pay extra, so I'm not sure I understand your argument.

And I did pay the one time fee to Tivo. I hate monthly payments on principle and it really annoys me that Echostar doesn't offer a one time payment option.

The problem is that the $4.99 (or whatever the cost is for the locals package) is for receiving the locals, not just the guide information. I have no desire to have my locals through Dish network, I just want the guide information, which I actually get on my 811 through the guide (not always accurate since it seems to be reading the information from the channel).

Why can't the 622 guide do just what the 811 does and display the OTA channel information (if it already does this then that information is good enough for me. I don't know if it does or not since I don't get my 622 until May 13th) as it comes from the channel provider?

When you add in the cost to lease the receiver, the extra cost for a HD receiver lease, the cost for enabling the PVR (recording fee, or whatever it's called) and the locals cost it seems to me that it is significantly more than other options (Tivo, etc).


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## kbdrand (Apr 16, 2006)

wingnut1 said:


> You can still set manual timers to record the programs that you want. I prefer to pay the $5 a month to be able to do the name based recording. If you live in an area that gets or is going to get your HD locals by satellite you will get those for the same $5 a month that the SD locals cost you.


But why would I want compressed OTA digital channels when I can get uncompressed OTA digital channels for free?

If Dish wants to charge me a little extra for the local guide information, fine, but make it something like $1 extra to the PVR fee, don't make me subscribe to locals (and pay the full locals price) I don't want. That's all I'm saying.


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## Gramps (Apr 27, 2006)

I think you all just answered my question. I had a JVC HM-DSR100 for a number of years and several months ago replaced it with a 942 after purchasing an HDTV. I was less than pleased to discover that I could no longer automatically record OTA programs as the local program guide doesn't work on the 942; the only option was to set manual timers. I didn't mind paying extra for the HD receiver and the HD programming, I just felt I came up short on the OTA program listings that were available on that old receiver. I've called DISH to inquire about the 940 to 622 upgrade and the person I talked with implied that the OTA program listing was available, but I could not pin her down on it. I got the bit about having to $ubscribe to the satellite locals to get the listing, BUT my OTA locals are HD. Does that mean I can see what's on Channel 6 tonight, but if I want to record it on HD 6-1 I still need to set a manual timer?


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## DP1 (Sep 16, 2002)

Gramps said:


> I got the bit about having to $ubscribe to the satellite locals to get the listing, BUT my OTA locals are HD. Does that mean I can see what's on Channel 6 tonight, but if I want to record it on HD 6-1 I still need to set a manual timer?


If you subscribe to Locals it will fill in the guide data for your OTA channel listings too. So you dont have to mess with manual timers that way. You'd just record them the same way you would any other channel on the system.

If you dont sub to Locals than the OTA channels will just say "Digital channel" or something like that on all of them and you would have to do manual timers.


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## Gramps (Apr 27, 2006)

I understand that subscribing to local channels through DISH will fill in the schedule, but will it fill in the schedule for the OTA HD channels also? DISH doesn't yet offer local HD in this market, may be several years in coming.


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## kbdrand (Apr 16, 2006)

Gramps said:


> I understand that subscribing to local channels through DISH will fill in the schedule, but will it fill in the schedule for the OTA HD channels also? DISH doesn't yet offer local HD in this market, may be several years in coming.


Since the 622 can not receive analog OTA I would assume that it would fill in the digital, but I can not confirm until I get my 622.


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## ChuckA (Feb 7, 2006)

Gramps said:


> I understand that subscribing to local channels through DISH will fill in the schedule, but will it fill in the schedule for the OTA HD channels also? DISH doesn't yet offer local HD in this market, may be several years in coming.


Yes. You get EPG data for sat local SD and OTA HD channels when you sub to local channels. That is true even if Dish does not yet provide sat HD locals in your area.


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## Gramps (Apr 27, 2006)

Thank you, that's the answer I was looking for. I stopped by a couple of local DISH dealers this afternoon and neither had an HD receiver hooked up, so they couldn't show me and neither knew for sure if HD guide was included with the local channel subscription.


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## wingnut1 (Nov 10, 2005)

Personally I would like to get my HD locals through sat elite. Then I could record an HD show OTA and two through the satellite. Right now if I want to record more than one show at the same time on my locals only one can be in HD.


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## kbdrand (Apr 16, 2006)

wingnut1 said:


> Personally I would like to get my HD locals through sat elite. Then I could record an HD show OTA and two through the satellite. Right now if I want to record more than one show at the same time on my locals only one can be in HD.


That is a good point, it let's you record more than one local at a time. I just don't like the idea of paying $5.99 a month (looked up the actual locals cost) just to be able to record OTA locals and use named based recording.

That being said I will have to pay for the locals since there's no way that I'm going to give up named based recording. There's too many shifts in programming schedules to try and keep up the timed based recording.


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## titansky (May 10, 2006)

ChuckA said:


> Yes. You get EPG data for sat local SD and OTA HD channels when you sub to local channels. That is true even if Dish does not yet provide sat HD locals in your area.


I just installed the 622 from a 921. I had OTA EPG data WITHOUT any local channel fee to D*. Locals are not available in 42101 zip. However, the 622 so far does not have any EPG data. CS says EPG is not available without subscribing to locals. But they do not have locals here!! This is a "down grade" not an upgrade! Why take away features already there in 921 and 811 plus spend more $$$ to get new equipment? This is not right. Dish is shafting it's customers in this situation. I would pay for locals to get EPG but that is not an option according to CS. D* should fully explain BEFORE exchanging what is being lost. They dwell on the new great stuff. Why want D* just modify 622 software to list EPG like 921 and 811?  Note: I had realtively few problems with 921 in recent months. I regret making the switch at this point. But D* will not refund $299 or take it back. Not very consumer friendly.


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## titansky (May 10, 2006)

ChuckA said:


> Yes. You get EPG data for sat local SD and OTA HD channels when you sub to local channels. That is true even if Dish does not yet provide sat HD locals in your area.


How do you go about getting EPG data when sat locals are not available?


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## David_Levin (Apr 22, 2002)

titansky said:


> How do you go about getting EPG data when sat locals are not available?


He didn't say that sat locals weren't available. He said HD locals not available.

HD EPG could just be copied from the SD EPG channel.

If there are no SD locals then I'm not sure where your EPG info is coming from. Normally, the 921 doesn't show OTA EPG without an local package either. If you had it before, you got lucky (so many bugs in the 921 o say what might happen).

By the way:
E* = EchoStar
D* = DirecTV
(I wish these abbreviations would just go away).


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## ChuckA (Feb 7, 2006)

I can't answer that. It sounds like a bad situation to me, if this is indeed true. You should email [email protected] and complain until you get a good answer from E* or they set you back up with the 921 and a refund. BTW, D* is used as the short form for DirectTV and E* for Dishnetwork (EchoStar actually).


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## TheTony (Jan 6, 2006)

This is really a function of Echostar's unwillingness to properly support PSIP in their receivers that support ATSC. Their fear of malformed PSIP data introducing issues in their receivers has trumped what seems like a logical ability to make OTA recording (based on the OTA data) available - at least for now. 

I just find it silly that Dish even publicizes OTA as an alternate means for customers to receive their local programming but does not truly support it when it comes down to it. Not only is this an issue for those who do not subscribe to locals - it also affects those who have local stations that broadcast additional/non-simulcast programming OTA.

Count me in as one who would very much like to see PSIP data passed through. This is an issue that should be raised to Echostar by correspondence, tech and/or Charlie chats. It seems to me that there may be enough interest from subscribers to put at least some pressure in place and perhaps make this a reality.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

kbdrand said:


> If I buy the 622 outright I don't get the locals either unless I pay extra, so I'm not sure I understand your argument.


You paid $300 to receive information for SD programming. With Dish, you pay $4.99/month (this seems to be the price as opposed to the website price).


> I just want the guide information, which I actually get on my 811 through the guide (not always accurate since it seems to be reading the information from the channel).


That's why they no longer offer the 811. All currently offered dish receivers require locals service to get local guide data.


> When you add in the cost to lease the receiver, the extra cost for a HD receiver lease, the cost for enabling the PVR (recording fee, or whatever it's called) and the locals cost it seems to me that it is significantly more than other options (Tivo, etc).


Some of the Dish Network receiver advantages (versus any TiVo branded receiver) are these:

1. You can record HD content
2. There is no quality hit because of re-encoding the program material
3. Digital audio is preserved
4. You can record up to three programs at once (one OTA, two Dish)

The competitive solutions have their advantages, but the above advantages are relative show-stoppers.


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## titansky (May 10, 2006)

harsh said:


> You paid $300 to receive information for SD programming. With Dish, you pay $4.99/month (this seems to be the price as opposed to the website price).That's why they no longer offer the 811. All currently offered dish receivers require locals service to get local guide data.Some of the Dish Network receiver advantages (versus any TiVo branded receiver) are these:
> 
> 1. You can record HD content
> 2. There is no quality hit because of re-encoding the program material
> ...


 Incorrect: the 811 and 921 DO NOT require locals service to get OTA EPG. I have both and get the EPG. Locals are not available in this area. D* arbitrarily decided not to have local OTA EPG in 622. This is wrong and should be corrected with new program. Why penalize the customer when we spend more money for a supposed upgrade to 622?


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## titansky (May 10, 2006)

ChuckA said:


> I can't answer that. It sounds like a bad situation to me, if this is indeed true. You should email [email protected] and complain until you get a good answer from E* or they set you back up with the 921 and a refund. BTW, D* is used as the short form for DirectTV and E* for Dishnetwork (EchoStar actually).


Thanks for the correction. I got carried away about EPG and got E's and D's screwed up.


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## TheTony (Jan 6, 2006)

titansky said:


> * arbitrarily decided not to have local OTA EPG in 622. This is wrong and should be corrected with new program.


I think you mean E* (Echostar, as opposed to DirecTv [D*]).

That said, and as I pointed out earlier, the decision wasn't arbitrary. Echostar did not want to support PSIP being passed through and decoded by their receivers, in the event of malformed data or improperly formatted messages in the PSIP bitstream.

It's very understandable when you think about it, especially in the midst of the digital transition, where some locals _still_ aren't doing PSIP correctly. However, proper PSIP transmission should (by nature of progress and mandate) become less and less of an issue.

I don't agree with it - I'd rather take my chances with the PSIP data (I believe all of my locals are in compliance). After all, February 2005 was the FCC mandate for full implementation of the ATSC PSIP standard (officially granted exceptions not withstanding). Even if it's not the default, having the option in the firmware to use one or the other would be highly preferrable. With an ATSC tuner, it'd be nice to use it as it was intended and as E* states it, though right now E* isn't willing to make it a possibility.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

titansky said:


> Incorrect: the 811 and 921 DO NOT require locals service to get OTA EPG.


Your 921 is unique; perhaps automatic updates are disabled. Mine shows no local EPG for OTA channels unless I subscribe to LIL


> This is wrong and should be corrected with new program. Why penalize the customer when we spend more money for a supposed upgrade to 622?


If their goal is to sell people locals, then they probably should avoid giving it away. You'll notice that the EPG oversight was not made with the 411 nor the ViP211. Consider the free EPG information to be a unique feature of the 811 that is not shared by the other six HD receivers.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

titansky said:


> Incorrect: the 811 and 921 DO NOT require locals service to get OTA EPG. I have both and get the EPG. Locals are not available in this area. D* arbitrarily decided not to have local OTA EPG in 622. This is wrong and should be corrected with new program. Why penalize the customer when we spend more money for a supposed upgrade to 622?


Actually you are incorrect titansky. The 921 does usually require local sub to get EGP information into your OTA slots. Obviously you got lucky and received it but in general it requires subbing to locals.

As to the 811, Yes that does not require subbing to locals. The 942 also requires subbing as does the 211 I believe.

This was not an arbitrary decision with E*, but one they made around the 921 time frame if I recall.

As to including PSIP support. At one time I thought this would be a nice idea, over time and reading a lot of posts from people with different levels of PSIP support I no longer think it would be. I could see a lot of effort to provide it and lot of customer support issues because of bad guide information. Since NBR is only as good as the guide, having a good source of EPG is important.


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## TheTony (Jan 6, 2006)

Ron Barry said:


> As to including PSIP support. At one time I thought this would be a nice idea, over time and reading a lot of posts from people with different levels of PSIP support I no longer think it would be. I could see a lot of effort to provide it and lot of customer support issues because of bad guide information. Since NBR is only as good as the guide, having a good source of EPG is important.


Doesn't this become less likely as all broadcasters meet PSIP compliance?

Even with compliance, I can understand E* not wanting to have to support PSIP and it's guide, along with their own. Why not make it available, though, but just not the default for guide data? As it stands, E* doesn't provide guide data for all my locals (I have an 811) - the ones that are not simulcasts of the analog signal (multicast channels, locals with more than two frequency assignments) are not included.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Maybe... however, I would not be suprised if different markets provide different levels of information. 

The guide situation is a real mess and when you are combining an outside source with an inside source across the nation it is one huge problem to solve. Lots of variables and edge conditions one must deal with. 

From the outside, being able to utilize another GUIDE source like what is provided with PSIP to be used instead of Dish EPG sounds cool. But do you handle this feature as an all or nothing switch? one to be used to fill in the gaps? How do you address conflicts and slots with reduced EPG info. 

Providing support for two EPG source is opening a can of worms and personally after some thought I think it muddies up what is already very muddy water.


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## TheTony (Jan 6, 2006)

Agreed. It definitely does raise some questions.

That being the case, is Dish receptive to customer requests to add locals not already in the guide into it? My PBS affiliate has 2 frequencies, one HD and one SD simulcast. I'd like to see their HD channel show up in my guide data and not the generic digital message shown today. All that I see is the EPG for some of the SD programming (what Dish carries with SD locals today).

I guess my complaint becomes that they charge $5 a month for it, with the 622, but do not on other receivers.


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## Jim5506 (Jun 7, 2004)

It would work better if Dish used a central repository like TitanTV or Tivo uses to gather the program data.

PSIP data depends in each station to broadcast its own info - many are pitifully poor at doing this.


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## ChuckA (Feb 7, 2006)

But titansky's problem is there are no locals available in Bowling Green. Even if he wants to pay for locals to get the EPG, he can not get it. I would hate the thought of not having NBR available after paying to upgrade my equipment to the latest and greatest. I don't understand why he had EPG before, but it sounds like the upgrade became a downgrade for him if it is really true.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Yes it does seem to be the case for titansky. My guess is that he was a beneficiary of a bug in the 921. Hopefully the executive office can swap him back to his 921.


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## titansky (May 10, 2006)

Ron Barry said:


> Yes it does seem to be the case for titansky. My guess is that he was a beneficiary of a bug in the 921. Hopefully the executive office can swap him back to his 921.


The EPG was only available after software upgrade March 2005. I have kept current with upgrades. Apparently, it was the intent of E* programmers to make it available. I've had it continually since that time. It has alway been there with the 811. Why would E* sell any DVR without complete EPG? (sat & OTA) They boast about the most HD and locals available. They have to be aware of all the situaions in the market place to make EPG info avalaible. If it's intentionally omitted to force more local sub, seems unethical. If it's simply a technical issue, they should identify and resolve soon. The 622 has superior technical features overall but I frequently record OTA programming for my convenience. The manual timer process is awkward and confusing. This is the work around offered by CS. The EPG data with visual info, point & click timer set, and program data is mandatory for much DVR use.

I have sent an e-mail to the address mentioned above. No response yet.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

titansky,

I suggest you wonder over into the 921 support forum and look back. There was a period where a EPG was accidently added and then removed and then added and then removed. I don't remember the details, but I can assure you that the only receiver that does not require local sub is the 811. Like I said you got lucky and Dish does not consider it a defect. 

If you like to discuss the ethics of this business decision, please take it into the general areas because those discussions have occurred many times over and the support forums are not the appropriate place for this type of discussion. 

Good luck on getting them to take it back and give you your 921.


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## Rogueone (Jan 29, 2004)

kbdrand said:


> That is a good point, it let's you record more than one local at a time. I just don't like the idea of paying $5.99 a month (looked up the actual locals cost) just to be able to record multiple locals and use named based recording.


that's a crazy statement. you can't possibly record multiple HD locals without using the Sat tuners and Dish having your HD LIL's up, so how is it a problem you would have to pay for sat locals so you could do something you can't do otherwise? yeah, you get the NBR ability by paying, but you could still record without it. But you can't, no matter what you do, record 2 HD local programs, without buying something else to tune in the station, and something else to record it. That doesn't seem logical when you could just turn on locals and use 3 at once does it?

Either you do or don't have a need for recording multiple locals at once, and either you do or don't desire to do this in HD? I could have kept my 921 if I didn't mind having only 1 of 3 shows in HD (with one being on my 501) or I could have kept the 942 I was sent to replace my 921. But if I'm gonna watch a show that is offered in HD on my TV which does HD, i want to see the show in HD, so I immediately got the 622 because I can now get AI, NCIS, The Unit, House, Bones, Lost, Criminal Minds, and whatever else all in HD, where before I had to pick and choose what to get in HD. Now the only issue is which is OTA and which are sat hd  That is a great problem to have. As I see it, the charge for locals is only an issue if you never want to use the sat HD tuners for recording local HD. but it sounds like you do want that feature if you are considering or are getting a 622.


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## kbdrand (Apr 16, 2006)

Rogueone said:


> that's a crazy statement. you can't possibly record multiple HD locals without using the Sat tuners and Dish having your HD LIL's up, so how is it a problem you would have to pay for sat locals so you could do something you can't do otherwise? yeah, you get the NBR ability by paying, but you could still record without it. But you can't, no matter what you do, record 2 HD local programs, without buying something else to tune in the station, and something else to record it. That doesn't seem logical when you could just turn on locals and use 3 at once does it?
> 
> Either you do or don't have a need for recording multiple locals at once, and either you do or don't desire to do this in HD? I could have kept my 921 if I didn't mind having only 1 of 3 shows in HD (with one being on my 501) or I could have kept the 942 I was sent to replace my 921. But if I'm gonna watch a show that is offered in HD on my TV which does HD, i want to see the show in HD, so I immediately got the 622 because I can now get AI, NCIS, The Unit, House, Bones, Lost, Criminal Minds, and whatever else all in HD, where before I had to pick and choose what to get in HD. Now the only issue is which is OTA and which are sat hd  That is a great problem to have. As I see it, the charge for locals is only an issue if you never want to use the sat HD tuners for recording local HD. but it sounds like you do want that feature if you are considering or are getting a 622.


That was my mistake, I didn't mean multiple locals.


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