After 8 years, time to say goodbye to Dish

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DishSubLA said:
Budget to get yourself a Roku because even die-hard TiVo lovers admit the on-line experience via TiVo is LESS than desired. I also say that from personal experience. As someone who subscribes to all the major on-line services, for evaluation purposes for possible cord cutting of some kind, and also have several TiVo's for OTA to take pressure off my Hoppers.

First, Amazon Prime is NOT available on the Premiere, but is soon to arrive to Premieres and Roamios, but ONLY in STREAMING service, no downloads to the HDD. What you have on the Premiere now is Amazon Instant Video and while you can download that content to your TiVo, all the content is either RENTED or PURCHASED for a cost, no free content included with your Prime account. Further, as much as I love the Prime service for its 2 day delivery and access to the LIMITED free content that I can stream or load onto my Kindle Fire HDX for viewing without an internet connection (although Amazon does impose some SILLY limitations) it is really the poorest value for free included with the Prime service. Much of what people want to watch is PAID content beyond the Prime. Amazon does seem to have overall better PQ along with Hulu Plus while Netflix is abominable PQ and audio Q far too often.

As much as I despise their PQ and audio and lack of content I would watch, Netflix is really the best value by far for everything at ONE price. No navigating the paid stuff and free included content of Amazon's dopey model, and you will rack up a lot of if you buy content from Amazon because it is EXPENSIVE. But Netflix has a great library of OLD CRAP we have all seen before.

Hulu Plus, has by far the most never seen in US (original and new to us) content and with often great PQ and audio. No the same content is NOT available across the big 3 streamers. But, then again, Hulu doesn't have as many movies as Amazon (most of which are NOT included with Prime,and the TV shows are sometimes FREE for the first season and PAID for subsequent seasons) nor the breadth of OLD TV shows Netflix does, but Hulu Plus fills a needed desire (FRESH programming) important to me.

I was really excited about these services when I signed up for them, but I have found far more frustrations and limitations and disappointment than I anticipated. Just a few include that the most RECENT episodes of current shows just are NOT available for over a year, often 2 from original air. Also, the streamers LOSE rights to a media company's content like Dish may lose channels, but with streamers, this loss is FOREVER to years. So, that show you had been watching or were counting on being available to watch when ever you want, is no longer available. So much for the cloud on that! Oh, that show that Netflix no longer offers is on Amazon (possibly at a cost beyond Prime) or Hulu Plus, but now you INCREASE your COSTS by having to subscribe to more than one, often ALL 3 of them.

Perhaps better, especially if one want to really save money, is, as I mentioned, getting the Roku not only because it is the BEST and most reliable streamer around with the BEST remote with that "Skip Back" button (and you can NOT skip back on the TiVo's with streaming) but also because Roku has a ton of "junk" channels that are free or advertiser supported such as independent or art films only channels, really old-time TV shows like the old Betty White show from the 50's, and UFO channels, and horror film channels, etc. So, if you can fill your TV watching time with that and live without a lot of fresh content from OTHER than OTA, then it can be a good alternative.

As mentioned, CBS is now offering it O&O stations streaming (just like watching live TV at home) along with ALL its current network TV content and a library of old CBS shows like the original Dallas all for one low monthly fee. In other words, one can now watch the entire CBS network line-up, and local news for one low monthly charge. Of course, this is the beginning of the end of FREE OTA TV, as the kiddies and cord-cutters have been waiting for something like this for a long time. You should enjoy it while it lasts, probably another 5 years tops.

What is happening is the often desired "a la carte" channel option that is truly the nightmare: a fee for CBS, a fee for NBC, a BIG, BIG fee for ESPN, HBO with its coming new on-line service at who knows what priceetc. and etc. and these are all entities with greatly desired content, not junk. Those media companies are moving away from giving Netflix the content for so low a price. Netflix has already announced it is raising prices, Amazon already has, and nowhere to go but up and up and add the internet service and the datacaps and what is happening is that the LOCATION of the content is changing, but the prices are well on their way to being what people today consider outrageous for Pay-TV, or already as high or higher than a cable or sat bill because of all the on-line services, ONE level of service to all from the cable cos which cost a minimum of $50 a month (the Comcast model being adopted by Charter and more in growing areas) but, the ISP's say, you are getting 50Mbps (or in some cases 100Mbps) for all that money, and what you have is the SAME costly monster, but in the costume of being accessed with a technology with which the young-lings are most comfortable and cord cutters never get the see the total cost of the changeover on a single bill, just lots of little charges for each piece of the entertainment pie. Now add to that the coming NuTV from Dish and other coming "low price pay TV via internet streaming" that cord cutters have been begging for from companies like Apple, Amazon, etc. (often the $30 price point has been cited by several as what they would be willing to pay such a service that can bring them ESPN and few other channels they greatly miss) and one can go over what they are paying for pay TV today.

BTW, if you are handy, great. But if you are not, get ready to pay Weaknees tons of $$ to repair your Premiere. I really would have recommeded the Roamio for you because it has 4 tuners, is compatible with the Mini and anyone can change-out the guaranteed to fail HDD with NO special tech knowledge. Just open it, take out the old HDD, and connect and install the new HDD, and then plug in the Roamio and it all takes care of itself and you are good to go in minutes, unlike previous versions of TiVo that require you to mess and load the appropriate software--careful it is the correct versions for your generation of TiVo--as a totally inefficient method of changing out HDD's . And yes, the Series 3 does have a better OTA tuner, and so does the Roamio. The Premeire is NOTORIOUS for its frustratingly lousy OTA receptions except in the most ideal of conditions.

My point is they have us coming and going. We're never going to escape the greed of the big media content owners, but a few years of being ahead of them provides a touch of satisfaction, for now.

Well, to each his own. I do wish that I had viewing taste to do a cord cutting event, but I have been doing it somewhat for almost 2 years now, and it isn't even CLOSE to getting me to cancel pay-TV, not for what we watch.

FWIW, I have been watching Star Wars: Rebels on DisneyXD on-line, but one MUST have a subscription to the channel via a pay TV service (and that is all too common, so I will miss out on MORE content by cutting pay TV) because it is in HD while Dish is LATE in providing XD in HD.

Good luck though and enjoy the extra $$ for as long as it lasts.
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hbo streaming 15 bucks a month http://news.filehippo.com/2014/10/hbo-streaming-service-cost-15-per-month‏/
 
To the OP, well said. I'm right behind you. I'm almost setup and ready to go as well. Dish has been great to me, and if I wanted to continue to pay for TV service they would be my choice.
 
DishSubLA said:
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I ordered a Roku 3 yesterday. I'm aware of the lack of Prime on the Premier, but really want the instant video. I want to be able to buy new Doctor Who and Mad Men and be able to download them. Aside from a media center PC with tuner cards and mythTV, it seemed to me the Premier was the only choice for this.

I'm pretty handy. From what I gather, the only thing that often goes wrong is the hard drive. I can pick up a 1TB WD AV-GP for around $50, and with some custom linux software and some other tools, plus a PC, you can replace the hard drive. I plan to do so in 6 months or so proactively. I'll just have to find someone who will let me use their PC; probably my parents.

Oh, and I should add that reception is not much of a problem. I live within a few miles of the transmitters for Cleveland locals. Most peg my 622 OTA tuner at 90-100, and that is including a lot of goofy wiring to diplex the sat and OTA signal, plus feed an NTSC signal to my second TV. I could not go with the Series 3 or Roamio because both lack the Amazon instant downloading feature.
 
HDRoberts said:
I just got a used Tivo Premiere with lifetime on Ebay, and will be getting my programming almost exclusively from OTA, DVDs/Blu-Ray's from the library and my own collection, and Amazon Instant video.
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Amazon Instant Video at 900bps needs to be experienced on the daily driver television before it is settled upon.

A lot of avenues seem like just the ticket until you put them to the test.
 
stardust3 said:
I never have this issue with them. It's always an excellent quality.

With my 1st roku it had some streaming issues. Don't recall the model but it was square & about the size of a couple stacked CDs.

I have 2 roku 3 models now. They are rock solid with any service regarding pq & audio. This is also on DSL with 8 Mbps down.
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I think it has more to do with the luck of what I choose to watch from Netflix. I have to say that I have noticed more content in better quality from Netflix of late, but still not as consistently high resolution as Amazon and, especially, Hulu Plus, and let's not forget Netflix's dopey "not available from your ISP" decison to provide high resolution at lower bit rates. Yes, Amazon and Hulu Plus do have to stream larger packets, but ANYONE who has the bandwidth can enjoy high resolution content this very moment if it is offered.
 
harshness said:
Amazon Instant Video at 900bps needs to be experienced on the daily driver television before it is settled upon.

A lot of avenues seem like just the ticket until you put them to the test.
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Yes, and I was really so excited when I began my streaming experience, and the somewhat bitterly disappointed. I'm not anti-cord cutting, it's just that it was not ready for prime-time, at least for me. The US version of House of Cards or shows like The New Black is Orange that are getting all the buzz is NOT enough for me to dump traditional pay-TV, and the really ugly irony is that the people I know who are eating up Netflix are doing so watching OLD TV SHOWS that aired YEARS ago, and I mean stuff like Monarch of the Glen and all sorts of old shows that they could have recorded on their Dish DVR's but didn't at the time. Yours truly has to supply them with new stuff they miss out on and want because they are binging on old TV shows on Netflix, and I have already seen those shows when they aired via Dish channels YEARS ago.
 
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KAB said:
Netflix WAS abominable when Comcast and AT&T throttled them down until they payed the piper(s). That s why the whole net neutrality issue is so important, but most of the population seems to be asleep about.
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And what's really sad is the by Netflix paying, they set a bad precedent although I totally understand why Netflix caved in and paid: they can't have their product diminished more than it is already compared to the competition, but still a terrible example has been set.
 
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harshness said:
Amazon Instant Video at 900bps needs to be experienced on the daily driver television before it is settled upon.

A lot of avenues seem like just the ticket until you put them to the test.
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And I forgot to add that DVD's and Blu-ray are HUGELY expensive and a far WORSE value than the streaming services. I really don't get the idea of saving money or cutting down the cost of watching TV and movies at home if one buys or even RENTS hard copy discs. See, another leak for costs to rise. I think one is better off at keeping costs down by just sticking with the streaming services and waiting until it is available at no extra cost there. It is almost as if people are just shifting the money around instead of really realizing significant savings.
 
HDRoberts said:
Why I got the premiere. It downloads Amazon Instant titles rather than streams. So it can take 6 or 7 hours overnight to download the HD.
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Yeah, but that is PAID, and often expensive content. That totally blows the point of really getting the most money savings. AFAIK, the plan for the S4 and S5 TiVo's (Premiere and Roamio) is to REMOVE the current Instant service (Roamio has no Amazon at all for the moment) that allow download to HDD and replace it with the Prime service, and again, the Prime will be STREAMING ONLY. That is set to happen pretty soon, and not soon enough for most TiVo owners. However, the older TiVo's such as the S3 and older will continue to have Amazon in the form you currently have and prefer, so you may want to get an S3 model, and good fortune that those TiVo's are going for virtually peanuts these days at ebay, so it won't cost you a lot of money to get one.

The good news is the the Prime membership is a far better value than what you currently have on the TiVo because you can limit yourself to the FREE content included in your Prime membership, so that is what will save you a lot of money. I think it stinks they won't allow us to download Prime to HDD, but that is what the content owners want. Please get a Roku and check out all those free "channels" that have FREE content because if you do some hunting you really can find some movies--older or good quality independent films--and some esoteric old TV Shows, and fill your TV watching with that content at NO ADDITIONAL COST. Your current cord-cutting model is a bit expensive by comparison, and I think you may like some of that free stuff on the "odd" Roku "channels."
 
BBCInc said:
Does the Roamio have PiP buffers?
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All the tuners are always buffering, but there is no PIP feature. Instead it you can switch among all the channels, or you can select the buffering channels from the Info banner. It works more like the Dish Multi channel Recall. All the tuners continue to buffer even you put the TiVo in Standby.
 
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DishSubLA said:
Yeah, but that is PAID, and often expensive content. That totally blows the point of really getting the most money savings. AFAIK, the plan for the S4 and S5 TiVo's (Premiere and Roamio) is to REMOVE the current Instant service (Roamio has no Amazon at all for the moment) that allow download to HDD and replace it with the Prime service, and again, the Prime will be STREAMING ONLY. That is set to happen pretty soon, and not soon enough for most TiVo owners. However, the older TiVo's such as the S3 and older will continue to have Amazon in the form you currently have and prefer, so you may want to get an S3 model, and good fortune that those TiVo's are going for virtually peanuts these days at ebay, so it won't cost you a lot of money to get one.

The good news is the the Prime membership is a far better value than what you currently have on the TiVo because you can limit yourself to the FREE content included in your Prime membership, so that is what will save you a lot of money. I think it stinks they won't allow us to download Prime to HDD, but that is what the content owners want. Please get a Roku and check out all those free "channels" that have FREE content because if you do some hunting you really can find some movies--older or good quality independent films--and some esoteric old TV Shows, and fill your TV watching with that content at NO ADDITIONAL COST. Your current cord-cutting model is a bit expensive by comparison, and I think you may like some of that free stuff on the "odd" Roku "channels."
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Roamio had Amazon Instant and just added Prime
 
DishSubLA said:
Yeah, but that is PAID, and often expensive content. That totally blows the point of really getting the most money savings. AFAIK, the plan for the S4 and S5 TiVo's (Premiere and Roamio) is to REMOVE the current Instant service (Roamio has no Amazon at all for the moment) that allow download to HDD and replace it with the Prime service, and again, the Prime will be STREAMING ONLY. That is set to happen pretty soon, and not soon enough for most TiVo owners. However, the older TiVo's such as the S3 and older will continue to have Amazon in the form you currently have and prefer, so you may want to get an S3 model, and good fortune that those TiVo's are going for virtually peanuts these days at ebay, so it won't cost you a lot of money to get one.

The good news is the the Prime membership is a far better value than what you currently have on the TiVo because you can limit yourself to the FREE content included in your Prime membership, so that is what will save you a lot of money. I think it stinks they won't allow us to download Prime to HDD, but that is what the content owners want. Please get a Roku and check out all those free "channels" that have FREE content because if you do some hunting you really can find some movies--older or good quality independent films--and some esoteric old TV Shows, and fill your TV watching with that content at NO ADDITIONAL COST. Your current cord-cutting model is a bit expensive by comparison, and I think you may like some of that free stuff on the "odd" Roku "channels."
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Yes, it's expensive, but still way cheaper when you only care about two shows. Buying seasons of Doctor Who will be ~$40. I was paying ~$245 for that privilege before (3 months of Dish). The last 7 episodes of Mad Men will be $2.99 each. Plus, I at least know my money will go to my shows, not see most of it go to pay for overpriced sports contracts on channels I don't watch.

Of course, those shows are not even an option with Prime, so it is not saving money to do prime streaming. That's like saying I could save money by going to McDonalds instead of getting the steak I was craving. Sure, you're right, but I was hungry for steak. Prime won't give me the shows I want, and being streaming only, won't give me the quality I want, either.

I will be extraordinarily pissed at Tivo if they yank the download functionality. I don't care if they don't have prime; that's why I got the Roku. I just want the few shows I actually watch, even if I have to pay a lot of money. I went with the Premier because it was the newest Tivo that had that functionality. It already is not supported on Roamio.

Listen, I know many of you have great ISPs around the country with great speeds available at low cost. Not so in Cleveland. Again, it is not worth saving money on cable/satellite if it means I need to quadruple my internet bill.
 
^^ I have seen Doctor Who listed as included for Prime streaming although don't know which seasons though (as I haven't started watching it) I am just rewatching Stargate & Everybody loves Raymond these days (and all seasons are included of these 2 shows though). Check Doctor who before buying the season
 
rajmarie said:
^^ I have seen Doctor Who listed as included for Prime streaming although don't know which seasons though (as I haven't started watching it) I am just rewatching Stargate & Everybody loves Raymond these days (and all seasons are included of these 2 shows though). Check Doctor who before buying the season
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Not the current season. Only past seasons.

I will see the finale on Dish this weekend. Then, if all goes well with the Tivo, Dish will be cancelled next week. The first Amazon Instant title I plan to buy is the Doctor Who Christmas Special. I'm not going to wait a year for it to show up on Prime when I can buy it for $6.
 
The Premier should get the Amazon Prime app in 2015. Dr. Who (and other BBC America titles) are available on Prime about 1 year after airing.

I am in the middle of trying out a Roamio OTA and Mini setup right now. If things continue to go well, I will likely cancel Dish in 1 month's time.
 

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