I'm about to cancel my service before I get it.

[WilliamC]

Well I ended up canceling my order last night. I was scheduled to get it installed this afternoon. Thankfully the phone call was short and sweet.

Dish gave me a deal I couldn't refuse. I have the 522 DVR with the everything pack right now, and it costs about $111 per month. Well they added HD Essentials to it and threw in a free 722 HD DVR receiver. My first three months will be 58.99, next 9 months will be 98.99, and after that it'll be 108.99, so it's cheaper than I'm getting now. They also waived the external hard drive activation fee, so I can expand my hard drive easily when I fill it up. Best part is that I will still have a DVR that can connect to 2 TVs and only one dish. I'll get that installed tomorrow too.

FINALLY , a pleasant satellite company experience!

Well good for you, I hope you enjoy Dish. I did not and thankfully I wasn't in contract when I cancelled. The installer was a *&**, but i expect that from pretty much all installers these places send out. At first the service was nice, some channels were actually HD and weren't down-rezzed. Then they down-rezzed channels and denied it and then spewed lies about how they had more channels and so on and so forth. In the end after a year I came back to DirecTV and I am happy. The PQ is much better, I can actually watch starz now without wishing I could ring dishes neck. Starz is by far the worst looking channel on Dish.

Bad experiences occur with any company. With that in mind, enjoy your service.

 

[charper1]

All I can say is good luck with it!

 

[gondwana321]

Starz is by far the worst looking channel on Dish.

And it is just barely better in Direct, I always have to crank up my contrast and color, when I am watching any of starz hd channels. It is very dim.

 

[dishcomm]

Well good for you, I hope you enjoy Dish. I did not and thankfully I wasn't in contract when I cancelled. The installer was a *&**, but i expect that from pretty much all installers these places send out. At first the service was nice, some channels were actually HD and weren't down-rezzed. Then they down-rezzed channels and denied it and then spewed lies about how they had more channels and so on and so forth. In the end after a year I came back to DirecTV and I am happy. The PQ is much better, I can actually watch starz now without wishing I could ring dishes neck. Starz is by far the worst looking channel on Dish.

Bad experiences occur with any company. With that in mind, enjoy your service.

"but i expect that from pretty much all installers these places send out"
What is THAT supposed to mean?

 

[charper1]

And it is just barely better in Direct, I always have to crank up my contrast and color, when I am watching any of starz hd channels. It is very dim.

Mine are gorgeous; no adjustments needed.

 

[NutFlush920]

My Starz is fine on DirecTV.

 

[skottey]

So I called the installation company (Ironwood Communications) to see if they could come out beforehand and let me know if the place I want to move my dish to has a good enough line of sight to the satellites. While talking to her, I find out that I have to have two satellite dishes installed. Is that right? I don't want two dishes.

Also, she said they will have to run an extra line in for my HD DVR.

I'm seriously about to cancel my order. Between lying to me about how many hours I'll be able to record to not telling me about this other stuff, it's been more trouble than it's worth.

That is odd.. I live in the Tampa Bay area of Florida and only have one DirecTV dish. I had two small dishes with Dish Network, and got one huge dish with DirecTV. It is so big, it has all these reinforcements into the concrete of my block home, presumably to stay put in a hurricane while the roof is ripped off.

 

[JINXR]

Well I got the install done. It was an actual Dish installer and not a sub-contractor. Very nice guy and did a very, very professional job.

I watched some Starz last night in HD and didn't nnotice anything. I'm not going to go looking for it though, because if there is something wrong, I'll always notice it.

Thanks for all the advice on here. I'm glad it all worked out.

 

[blueguy]

IMHO; It is one way to try to keep DIY'ers from wrecking their own setups/installs (a good bit of users really have NO IDEA what they are doing) and then bitching and moaning to DirecTV about why it won't work; in the end that CAN and DOES cost them money.

P.S what "cruddy" unit are you talking about? Mine operate flawlessly.

It's flawed thinking to inconvenience their customers like this. It's not brain surgery to unplug one unit and plug in another. We're seriously considering pulling the entire thing. We only have DTV for sunday ticket, I bought the HD-Tivo expressly for watching games in HD and now the only good HD unit for watching games is going away.

Why is the HD-tivo better for football games? Dual-tuner DVR. Real dual tuner.

Tuner 1 = start on say a niners game, then pause.
Tuner 2 = bounce around to an interesting game, like browns, then pause.
Flip back to tuner 1 and unpause, fast-forwarding to avoid commercials, replays and color commentary from the tools in the booth. Pause at any time.
Flip back to Tuner 2 and do the same.

The crudtastic HD-DVR from DTV will not allow for this.

I'm already mad I have to give up the good DVR, but now they're really pissing me off by telling me I have to sit around my house and wait for some guy to plug in a DVR. Send me the unit, I'll plug it in. I already did this the last time their DTV HD-DVR broke - they sent a replacement, I did the hookup and sent back the broken unit.