A Moment of Silence...

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You should all pause from your busy days to take a moment of silence for...

MY DVR!

It's about to croak. Very sad. Makes me want to cry. Take drugs. Valium.

Seriously, can you think of a better invention in the last 20 years? No way. It's wonderful. It's like sticking it to all those networks and their commercials every time I turn something on.

We bought this unit a number of years ago second-hand on eBay to avoid charges from Dish Network. It was the last model that didn't come with the monthly "access" crap fee. It's served us well for years.

Now, it freezes up and does all sorts of indigestion things at least weekly, but usually every couple days.

So I've been out shopping for new services lately. I've long been opposed to cable. I think Comcast is anything but Comcastic. Sadistic might be a better word. Just for kicks I went to their site this week to see what they'd want to charge me to switch to them. Didn't take me long to realize why I don't like them. Too expensive.

So I'm wondering whether I should switch to DirecTV or stay with Dish. Any suggestions? Dish will soon be releasing a DVR that has Slingbox built in (means you can watch your junk remotely via Internet--good for when I travel--or on another computer if your kids are hogging the TV). Direct already has the "start my DVR from the blackberry" scheduling function, which I like. I'm even toying around with the Windows Media Center and a media extender. Hypothetically, I should be able to record HD content over the air and play via my extender, getting 70% of the shows I like to record without spending a penny. Sadly, WMC should more likely be used with the word pathetically than hypothetically. Early tests show it's not quite ready.
The good news is that no matter what I choose, my new DVR will certainly be HD. Wahoo.

The bad news: small mortgage payment each month to support my habit. Have you ever considered that if you spend enough time in front of the tube to justify the $80 bucks a month they want you to spend for the HD DVR, that you're probably wasting too much time and shouldn't be there anyway? Dang.
I like to share what I learn, and I like to learn from others.

Comments

Ryan said…
You have my sympathy. I cannot imagine a world without my DVR.

If you stick with Dish, check out the Turbo HD packages. For less than $50/mo we get and HD only (plus public access - BYU TV). And it has all the channels we actually watch. With our 722 we can record two satellite feeds and one OTA feed at the same time (while watching teo other programs via the DVR).
April 4, 2009 at 3:02 PM
Jenn said…
We only just recently got a DVR, since we aren't big TV watchers. Well, WEREN'T is probably more correct. Now there's something good on always.
We go through AT&T U-verse, it's only available in some areas, not sure what I think of the service yet.
April 4, 2009 at 4:32 PM
Erica said…
Well the benifit that you have is that you can get a DVR with high def. We just upgraded our DVR to a high def one a couple of months ago and it is AWESOME. We have dish and I think that it is the best priced one out there. Good luck!!
April 4, 2009 at 9:30 PM
kevandcan said…
I'm a huge fan of SageTV (http://www.sagetv.com). I have no monthly fees, the DVR is way better than anything the major players provide, and the technology is a lot of fun to build on. Wrap that with a good HD antenna, and you pay $0 / month on tv/dvr...
April 5, 2009 at 11:04 AM
James said…
I think there's supposed to be a RC build of win7 out at the end of the month, so you could test drive it for a bit. I'm using a cheap OTA tuner, $99 internal blu-ray player + Win 7 beta for my media center with good success.
April 7, 2009 at 1:15 PM
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March 25, 2022 at 11:20 PM
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