Dish or Direct? Help Me Decide.

[Zer0Cool]

Hello Everyone,

I am an existing Dish customer, who is trying to decide which company to use for the HD service. I have been reading posts in this forum for the past 2h, and I have few questions which I hope you can help me to answer

1st. Is it true that Dish offers 1080i & Direct 1080p? I have 42” from VIZIO that has 1080p capability, is there really that much of a difference between the 2? Please describe.

2nd The only difference between the 622 model and the 722 is the HDD capacity correct? Also what is OTA? I seen lots of people use it in this forum.

3rd Assuming the 622 & 722 are the same accept for the HDD space, using the 622 model how does the recording/watching at the same time works exactly? From what I understand and correct me if I’m wrong, the 622 is a HD-DVR box that can give only 1 HD signal & 1 standard signal. Assuming that HD signal is TV1 and standard is TV2, can I record something on TV1 and be watching a diff chan at the same time? Same question is for TV2. Also if both TV1 & TV2 are recording can you watch different channels on both of them at the same time? How does it work?

I am not much of a sports fan, so all the NHL, NFL chanz that Direct offers I’m not really interested in. However Direct does offer the Sci-Fi chan, my brother would love it, 2bad Dish doesn’t. Right now Direct has more HD channels, especially movie channels, but I heard that Dish will be coming out with the new HD channels soon, how soon?

If you guys can answer my question, that would be great, thanks. I also want to hear what everyone has to say about why one is better than then other.

Thank you.

[garys]

Answers:
1. No, Direct has 1080i, the same as Dish. Only 1080p are very high end dvd players such as Blu Ray and HD DVD.

2. No, 722 will supposably be better with HD Dish On Demand.

3. You are mistaken. Both the 622 and 722 have two sat tuners and both are capable of recording HD on both tuners, (both actually have three tuners, the third is for OTA which is getting local digital/HD broadcasts over the air using antennas), Both receivers incorporate the signals into the guide (you also get the guide info should you subscribe to the local package thru Dish). Many people have done exactly what you are doing and that is confusing the tuners with the outputs. The receivers have many outputs which are all active at the same time. TV1 has connections for HDMI, Component (these two are HD), s-video, composite and rf (coax). TV2 only has composite and rf as far as outputs. What this means is any HD channel recorded on tuner 2 will be shown in HD when played back through HD outputs on TV1. More HD channels will be coming in the next few months on Dish, USA HD and SciFi HD have been uplinked on Dish for several months, they have not been activated yet, noone knows the reasons yet. Many hope for Monday due to the WWE wrestling programs going HD. Hope this clears up your questions.

[swade]

Both of these dish DVR's can be hooked up with an external Hard Drive via the USB port and the programs recorded on the DVR can be transfered to the external drive thus adding storage. You can then watch the recordings from the external hardrive and record new ones on the vacated space in the DVR Drive. So having 4 HBO feeds is not needed becuase you have space to record the movies you want to see and see them on your schedule.