Dish on Demane

[seattle vic]

I'm a new user, got my dish a week ago after dumping cable.

I figured out that I have to hook up to broadband to get true VOD, but for the short amount of time that my broadband connection was working (I've been on the phone with a hapless technician now for an hour),

So I expected that when I selected a movie, it would immediately begin to stream the film and I could start watching within a minute or two, as is the case for comcast.

What I saw was I could begin watching the film in a couple hours.

So it looks like there is no streaming, and the whole movie must be downloaded before you can start watching.

Is that the case, or am I missing something? That's not really VOD imho.

 

[dishjim]

Typically the total time for down load will be a couple hours but if you exit out and come back in about 10 minutes it will tell you you can start watching soon.

 

[bigfame]

its not VOD at all, and compared to even Directv's DOD its a joke, Directv's is the same way (download, not instant stream) however unlike Dish Directv's is organized by channel and has virtually everything comcast offers ondemand (besides HBO ondemand, directv doesnt have that). Thats one of the things that keep my paying for cable is the real ondemand feature. Dish really needs to step their game up in this dept. in my opinion.

 

[DishSubLA]

Agreed, one of the advantages of cable or similar technology. However, when considering all other factors, satellite still comes out WAY ahead for me. So, each has is strengths and weaknesses.

What I do is I peruse the DOD knowing I have no plans to sit in front of the TV for hours, and often select several to download and watch them either later that day or several days later.

To be fair, Tivo's On Demand service functions just like satellite's, with the same weakness. However, Tivo does have access to better content and one can "subscribe" to downloads so that they are on the drive waiting to be watched. But, just like satellite, it is a pretty slow download, but you can watch the programming when enough of it has been downloaded, about 10 minutes into the download, for Tivo and satellite.

 

[seattle vic]

Agreed, one of the advantages of cable or similar technology. However, when considering all other factors, satellite still comes out WAY ahead for me. So, each has is strengths and weaknesses.

What I do is I peruse the DOD knowing I have no plans to sit in front of the TV for hours, and often select several to download and watch them either later that day or several days later.

To be fair, Tivo's On Demand service functions just like satellite's, with the same weakness. However, Tivo does have access to better content and one can "subscribe" to downloads so that they are on the drive waiting to be watched. But, just like satellite, it is a pretty slow download, but you can watch the programming when enough of it has been downloaded, about 10 minutes into the download, for Tivo and satellite.

Thanks for the input guys. It's as I figured. After we got Dish, my wife was very disappointed that she couldn't get access to all of the VOD programming instantly, like previous HBO episodes, etc. But other factors (cost, more HD) balance it out.

Funny, but aside from cost, the thing that tipped us away from cable was that Dish has the UHF remotes, and we'd just remodeled our bedroom and didn't have space for a receiver. When I called cable, they said they'd never heard of such a remote! So now the receiver is in the attic.