How to do 3 at once?? If I'm recording channel 177 and watching/recording channel 105 (i.e.) I can try to change channels but it says "your request will stop the tv recording and switch to live mode tv"
Here in Connecticut UVERSE has been DOWN a lot lately because of the weather. When UVERSE is down you can not do ANYTHING... You can't even watch your recorded shows on your DVR as to play they your DVR must first contact their DRM server to get permission to play the show back! If the network is down it can no contact that DRM server.
The fee is $6 for two or more channel recording. It isn't $3 each.If the fee is $6 for 4 channel recording, then it's about the same as a 2nd receiver which gives you more benefits that just the additional recording features. Somehow I don't see it as being free to record 4 channels vs 2 (sat).
Although technology has changed since, I do remember Mark Jackson answering such a question on a Tech Forum about 4 or 5 years ago, at least, and he said they did, in fact, have a prototype of such multiple tuner DVR, but that in their testing (likely extreme testing ) they found the HDD was getting beat up and failing far sooner than the dual tuner units, so they ceased further research on such a DVR for all. Considering the Dish still has to replace DVR's when the HDD fails, they probably didn't like how this looked on the spreadsheet. The 722K with the MT2 being purchased and used for 3 or 4 tuner at one time recording is a feature being used by a very small number of subs, so the metrics are different and sustainable.
However, a true whole home DVR would have to have more than 2 tuners, one would think. Right now, the Moxi HD DVR has 3 tuners and in it's multi-room mode, the main box loses one of those tuners to the 2nd room. I don't know, but can today's HDD take heavy, and I mean heavy, DVR demands and use for up to 4 tuners and access by about 4 different people all at the same time, day after day, after day after big family use day and not fail TOO SOON.
For their part, DIRECTV has been working on some manner of 5-6 tuner unit for around six years.I didn't think that the satellite providers would allow 4 recordings from satellite feeds for free, when they are limiting it to 2 feeds per receiver now. (I might not be exact on these details, but that's my experience/understanding).
You have to have the OTA hooked up and then you can record an OTA channel in addition to the 2 satellite channels. You can also watch prerecorded programming off the hard drive while those 3 are recording.
I wish the DISH OTA tuners were of better quality. Even on my most reliable OTA channels (80 - 90 % SS) I get occasional dropouts while wathing recordings. Watching the same channels OTA on the TV, they seem to almost never dropout. I just picked up a reasonably inexpensive LG 32 inch LCD and it scanned several channels that none of my DISH receivers can scan and the channels stay on it rock solid. DISH OTA DVR on the other hand is always a crap shoot here and my wife gets very perturbed when a dropout cuts 20 seconds or so of her program (usually at a crucial moment). My point is DISH should really improve the quality of their OTA tuners or at least allow us the ability to purchase high quality OTA tuners for our equipment.
Or a preamp may help.
But heck, I'm glad we've got OTA tuners in our receivers. After all, Dish is a satellite company, doesn't make anything out of our using OTA.
The only thing that an OTA amplifier will do for you is to compensate for cable losses over long runs of coax and or splitters. They won't stabilize a bad signal.
One of the biggest reasons the signal goes from fairly high to dropping out are due to reflections and this is caused by using a marginal antenna and/or antenna location. The way to solve it is to get an antenna that is going to work for the channel that you are trying to pick up. AntennaWeb and TVFool are good places to start that research.
I partly agree. The antenna and location is the most important part. But you are wrong, there is no question, a signal that is not existent, or perhaps only sometimes exists, can be helped with an amplifier. I can get an out of state NBC station with the amplifier, I could rarely get it before I got one. It also stabilized a weak in-state signal that I got from my antenna, but the Sat box would not lock. Now it does.
If you don't have an amplifier in line that would be what I would suggest,because it seems even though your signal levels are high they need to be stabilized and a OTA amplifier would do that.
Might also be a good idea if you haven't already is to go to AntennaWeb or TV Fool and double check where your broadcast towers are and adjust your antenna to compensate for dropouts.