What would you do? I have been with Dish probably close to 10 years. I have had many different receivers over the years including a 722, a 200 series, and the Hopper/Joey. I have been fairly happy with Dish up to this point.
Back in October, my Hopper died. One DIRT rep kept denying it was bad, and weeks later I got another rep to replace the Hopper. That was very aggrivating to be told I was basically making things up, and that all Hoppers totally freeze up for minutes and hours at a time. They acted like they were doing me a favor by replacing defective equipment. The original install was horrible, the dish literally fell off the deck because of how the tech mounted it, and it was mounted so low snow and people on the deck blocks the signal. Customer service didn't seem to want to help with that either.
Fast forward to a couple weeks ago. Now the replacement Hopper is giving "must reformat hard drive" and "hard drive failure" error codes along with nothing recording, no pause, and no guide data. Live TV only is all that works at this point. I pulled plug, rebooted, reset everything to default, etc, but hard drive sounds like a cement mixer. Pretty sure drive is dead.
I have been disappointed with the Hopper from day one but I lived with it. In my opinion, it was a big downgrade from the 722 in a lot of ways, except for having 2 HD outputs instead of 1 HD and 1 SD output. I hate the 1 AM reboot, I work afternoons and evenings, and this stupid reboot is always needs to happen in the middle of watching things, or worse yet rebooting even while recording. I just want to relax and watch something and not have to babysit a control to prevent a 15 minute blackout of TV viewing. Reliability of my Hoppers has been terrible compared to past Dish equipment.
Recently I got the opportunity to buy a Lifetime OTA TIVO. I hooked it up, and have used it almost exclusively for the last two weeks. I love the way it works and I can get a pretty good amount of channels, plus use my Amazon Prime. I have only used the Dish a few times in that couple weeks. I only seem to use the Dish for the news channels, Discovery, and maybe 1-2 other channels. Pretty much none of the content I watch on the Dish seems to be available via streaming so it seems I need to have some level of Dish service.
I just got the yearly price increase mail. I am on the 250 package, and have been forever. I am at a tipping point with the cost vs value of the Dish. If only one of these things was in play, I don't think I would hesitate to continue service. Is there any way to get 2 HD and DVR other than a Hopper/Joey?
Sorry this was long, but what would you do?
Back in October, my Hopper died. One DIRT rep kept denying it was bad, and weeks later I got another rep to replace the Hopper. That was very aggrivating to be told I was basically making things up, and that all Hoppers totally freeze up for minutes and hours at a time. They acted like they were doing me a favor by replacing defective equipment. The original install was horrible, the dish literally fell off the deck because of how the tech mounted it, and it was mounted so low snow and people on the deck blocks the signal. Customer service didn't seem to want to help with that either.
Fast forward to a couple weeks ago. Now the replacement Hopper is giving "must reformat hard drive" and "hard drive failure" error codes along with nothing recording, no pause, and no guide data. Live TV only is all that works at this point. I pulled plug, rebooted, reset everything to default, etc, but hard drive sounds like a cement mixer. Pretty sure drive is dead.
I have been disappointed with the Hopper from day one but I lived with it. In my opinion, it was a big downgrade from the 722 in a lot of ways, except for having 2 HD outputs instead of 1 HD and 1 SD output. I hate the 1 AM reboot, I work afternoons and evenings, and this stupid reboot is always needs to happen in the middle of watching things, or worse yet rebooting even while recording. I just want to relax and watch something and not have to babysit a control to prevent a 15 minute blackout of TV viewing. Reliability of my Hoppers has been terrible compared to past Dish equipment.
Recently I got the opportunity to buy a Lifetime OTA TIVO. I hooked it up, and have used it almost exclusively for the last two weeks. I love the way it works and I can get a pretty good amount of channels, plus use my Amazon Prime. I have only used the Dish a few times in that couple weeks. I only seem to use the Dish for the news channels, Discovery, and maybe 1-2 other channels. Pretty much none of the content I watch on the Dish seems to be available via streaming so it seems I need to have some level of Dish service.
I just got the yearly price increase mail. I am on the 250 package, and have been forever. I am at a tipping point with the cost vs value of the Dish. If only one of these things was in play, I don't think I would hesitate to continue service. Is there any way to get 2 HD and DVR other than a Hopper/Joey?
Sorry this was long, but what would you do?
