Who ya got? Dish, DirecTv, Time Warner? by pizmobeach

GENERAL DISCUSSIONS

Who ya got? Dish, DirecTv, Time Warner?

POSTED BY: PIZMOBEACH
UPDATED: Saturday, January 2, 2010 12:01
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VIEWED: 2240
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Wednesday, December 30, 2009 5:19 AM

... fully loaded, safety off...

I'm thinking about giving TW the boot and switching to DirecTv. TW boxes are crap imho, mostly refurbed, under-powered and always rebooting and losing recorded shows + nickel and diming me to higher monthly bills (not that that is likely to change with any of the others).
I'm also a huge fan of High Definition everything, and DirecTv seems to be the premier HD provider.
Anyone have either Dish or DirecTv?

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

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Wednesday, December 30, 2009 5:29 AM

FREMDFIRMA

While unable to comment on the picture quality as I do not watch TV, I highly suggest you either do the mounting yourself or reinforce it substantially at the first opportunity, as those blasted dishes fall off the buildings at site three with amazing regularity - on my security rounds I often wind up flagging a downed dish and trying to determine what unit it belongs to so maintainence can then refer the inevitable complainer to the appropriate service provider, which takes their bloody time getting here to fix it, as well.

So be advised.

-F

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Wednesday, December 30, 2009 6:12 AM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

One useful trick I've found with the TW box (I've got the Scientific Atlanta/Cisco Systems Explorer 8400-series HD DVR) is to reformat it about twice a year. As it fills up and shows get watched and deleted, it tends to "fragment" the drive, breaking it up into more and smaller sections. This tends to lead to the picture and sound drop-outs, pixelation, jittery audio, and the like. And I tend to use the hell out of my DVR. I record ANYTHING I might like to watch, so it tends to fill up rather quickly.

There are instructions floating around online for how to reformat the drive. You lose everything you've got on it, and it wipes clear the recording schedule as well, but it makes everything nice and shiny again.

If you can't find instructions, I can maybe walk you through it, depending on what box you've got. I found them online, and it took a little trial and error to make it work for me, but now I've got it down pat (especially since I wrote it down, step by step, so I can't really screw it up!). :)

Mike

Work is the curse of the Drinking Class.
- Oscar Wilde

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Wednesday, December 30, 2009 6:27 AM

PIZMOBEACH

... fully loaded, safety off...

Thx Frem - good to know as I do live in a fairly windy area.

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

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Wednesday, December 30, 2009 6:45 AM

PIZMOBEACH

... fully loaded, safety off...

Thx Mike - appreciate the offer but right now I'm probably going to switch away from TW (an itch I gotta scratch). The multitude of HD programming - and true 1080p HD at that - are tugging at me too strongly.
So is Blu-Ray! And I swore I would NEVER get one of those until the discs came down under $20. I do see some movement in that area though, it's encouraging to see Criterion Blu-Rays around $25.

Fwiw, a good DVD site I just stumbled on: http://www.dvdbeaver.com

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

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Wednesday, December 30, 2009 7:00 AM

KWICKO

No worries, Piz. Good luck with whatever direction you decide to go. I've known people with Dish and U-verse (AT&T), and they've been as unhappy with those services as I've been at times with TimeWarner, so I think there's no perfection to be had, but hopefully something you'll like better.

For me, I'm pretty much locked into TW in this area, because they're the only ones offering SpeedTV, which is still the only source for watching Formula One racing live. So either I give up F1, or I stick with TW. :(

I hear ya on Blu-Ray, too. I "justified" the PS3 my wife got me by saying, "Well, it's not just a game console; it's also a pretty good Blu-Ray player," thinking I'd rarely use it to watch movies. WRONG! Four months in, I rarely play games, but pretty much ALL my movie rentals are Blu-Ray. Naturally, I had to start with Serenity, since watching it has become a tradition; whatever upgrades I make to my A/V system, Serenity is the first movie I watch, every time. :)

Luckily, Blu-Ray prices ARE coming down. I picked up 2001: A Space Odyssey for $9, along with Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan and The Voyage Home for the same price. Watch the sales, and you can find some great deals. I still haven't picked up Firefly on Blu-Ray yet, but I will.

Thing is, it does a good job of upconverting regular DVDs, too, so I'm happy enough finishing out some of my series (Tudors, Weeds, Dexter, etc.) on regular old DVD. That way, I can still loan them out to friends without Blu-Ray players, which is nice. At this point, I should pretty much be getting royalties on the number of Buffy, Angel, and Firefly sets I've sold! I've loaned out my seasons so many times, and the people who've watched them have invariably gone out and bought their own, and then continued the cycle.

Mike

Work is the curse of the Drinking Class.
- Oscar Wilde

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Wednesday, December 30, 2009 3:07 PM

ECGORDON

There's no place I can be since I found Serenity.

Mike, you do live in Austin don't you, or am I confusing you with someone else? I'm in Waco, and I have Grande Communications as cable/internet/phone provider. They're based out of San Marcos so I assume they are also in Austin. They offer Speed TV, although not in HD.

I would appreciate the instructions for reformatting the DVR. I have the SA-8300 HD-DVR, so I assume the process would be very similar to the 8400.

Grande is a bit cheaper than Time Warner here, although they charge extra for the HD tier and TW says they offer it for no extra charge, but I'll bet they end up being about the same. At this time the only HD channels I get are the major networks, all of which have affiliates here in Waco.

I did want to switch to DirecTV due to cost, but they said I have too many tall trees around my house and I can't afford to have them cut or trimmed at this time, so I'm sticking with Grande for now. Other than the cost I have had no complaints about their service in the approximately six years since I switched from TW.

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Wednesday, December 30, 2009 4:32 PM

AVERYFINECOMPANION

I have Directtv and I hate it. The local channels come in crappy and the signals goes in and out a lot when there's a storm.

If I had a choice I'd go with Time Warner. Even though I heard their costumer service sucks a lot.

Sorry if I mentioned something that's already been said or didn't contribute much. I sort of just skimmed though the other posts.

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Wednesday, December 30, 2009 7:19 PM

NCBROWNCOAT

I have Suddenlink here. They just added a bunch of new HD channels with more on the way and I'm pretty satisfied except for the price of course.

At my old house I had Dish. I had no trouble with it even in near hurricane force winds. Amazingly the worst problem was when it snowed and it only lasted a little while.

When I moved my neighbors surrounded me with trees so I can't get Dish, but Suddenlink is a good compromise.

And I'll second what Kwicko said about Blu-Ray. I love it and either rent or buy them.

BTW Amazon has been having a lot of Blu-Ray sales lately. Some movies are as low as $9.99-mainly older titles though.

http://fireflyfaninnc.livejournal.com/

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Wednesday, December 30, 2009 8:05 PM

KWICKO

ECGordon: Yup, I'm in Austin. I'd talked to Grande (we used to call 'em "Grenade Cable", cause it seemed like they were ALWAYS in the old 'hood doing repairs) some time back, and they didn't have SpeedTV, so I forgot about them.

But yeah, TW *does* indeed have an awful lot of HD channels, and they're not any extra.

I just double-checked my DVR, and it's the SA 8240 model, not 8400 series. Should be the same for the 8300, though, since this was originally posted for an 8000 series, and it still works fine on mine...

Anyhoo, here's what you do:

1) Turn off the cable box so all you have showing on the LCD window on the front of the box is the time.

2) With the DVR remote, hold down the "Pause" key for several seconds (I can usually count to about seven Mississippi) until the green "Mail" icon light starts blinking on the LCD, then let go of the Pause button.

3) Press the "Page -" (Page Down) key once.

4) Press the "List" button three times. Pressing it should bring up readouts on the LCD like "HDD-", "HDDF", etc. You're looking for "HDDF" (Hard Disk Drive Format). When you get that (it should really only take three button pushes on the List button), leave it alone. It will take the "Format" command, you'll get some various readouts on the LCD, and it will shut down completely and reboot in about 5 minutes or so.

Congratulations - you've just "wiped" the hard drive, defragged it, and gotten rid of any corrupt data. Of course, you've also lost all your programs that were recorded, as well as any information on scheduled recordings that were coming up in the future, so you might want to have a list of what you record, since you'll have to reprogram all your recording info again.

Like I say, I do this about twice a year, and it works like a champ every time. I found this online at an A/V chat forum a while back, after spending HOURS on the phone with TimeWarner while they tried to troubleshoot my unit over the phone. They eventually had me reformat, which solved the problem, so any time the box starts acting up, I wipe it clean! :)

Mike

Work is the curse of the Drinking Class.
- Oscar Wilde

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Thursday, December 31, 2009 2:27 AM

ECGORDON

There's no place I can be since I found Serenity.

Thanks, Mike. I give that a shot. Now's the time to do it since all the shows I usually record are on hiatus or in rerun mode. The only thing I have on my DVR at the moment is The Bicycle Thief off Turner Classic Movies.

wo men ren ran zai fei xing.

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Thursday, December 31, 2009 2:49 AM

NCBROWNCOAT

On some DVRs you can save programs using a flash drive, if there's a place to plug it in. The Suddenlink instillation guy told me this when he was installing the DVR in May.

BTW I don't do it. I usually keep programs on the DVR until the DVD comes out (for recent series), then delete them.

http://fireflyfaninnc.livejournal.com/

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Thursday, December 31, 2009 4:33 AM

PIZMOBEACH

... fully loaded, safety off...

Quote:
Originally posted by averyfinecompanion:
I have Directtv and I hate it. The local channels come in crappy and the signals goes in and out a lot when there's a storm.

Thx everyone for the feedback.

Scary AFC ... but the trigger has been pulled, I'm committed for 2 years to DirecTv... they better treat me nice!

And I do have trees around my house, so it should be interesting.

I've noticed that some of the newer tvs have online widgets and limited internet stuff (flickr, youtube), my question is why not the whole damn thing? Answer is most likely they don't want to compete with themselves and the internet connection they provide (which is the same). Stayed at a hotel once that had what was in effect the internet on your tv (their own browser) - loved it. It wasn't exactly the same experience and I wouldn't use it all the time, but sometimes you want to check something out and you don't want to run to a computer. Seems inevitable.

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

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Saturday, January 2, 2010 10:48 AM

KWICKO

Quote:
Originally posted by ncbrowncoat:
On some DVRs you can save programs using a flash drive, if there's a place to plug it in. The Suddenlink instillation guy told me this when he was installing the DVR in May.

BTW I don't do it. I usually keep programs on the DVR until the DVD comes out (for recent series), then delete them.

http://fireflyfaninnc.livejournal.com/

Y'know, mine's got the USB port right in front, but for the life of me I can't remember if it's enabled or not. There's a way to get into the root-level menus to see, but I've forgotten how, lost the page that explained it, and haven't really been able to get interested enough to look it up. I *should*, though, because with my DVD Recorder on the fritz, and only able to record at 480 resolution anyway, I'd really love to be saving things to an external backup drive.

One thing I *do* remember hearing about the TW DVR, even when the USB port is enabled and working fine, is that it won't save to the external drive UNLESS the main drive inside the unit if filled up first, so that kinda sucks.

Still, more options is almost always better.

Mike

Work is the curse of the Drinking Class.
- Oscar Wilde

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Saturday, January 2, 2010 10:57 AM

KWICKO

Quote:
Originally posted by pizmobeach:
Quote:
Originally posted by averyfinecompanion:
I have Directtv and I hate it. The local channels come in crappy and the signals goes in and out a lot when there's a storm.

Thx everyone for the feedback.

Scary AFC ... but the trigger has been pulled, I'm committed for 2 years to DirecTv... they better treat me nice!

And I do have trees around my house, so it should be interesting.

I've noticed that some of the newer tvs have online widgets and limited internet stuff (flickr, youtube), my question is why not the whole damn thing? Answer is most likely they don't want to compete with themselves and the internet connection they provide (which is the same). Stayed at a hotel once that had what was in effect the internet on your tv (their own browser) - loved it. It wasn't exactly the same experience and I wouldn't use it all the time, but sometimes you want to check something out and you don't want to run to a computer. Seems inevitable.

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

Yup, more and more, it's getting closer together. It's called "convergence", and it's coming, hopefully soon. I just saw a new LG wireless TV on sale - it's got a plug for the power, and that's it. Everything else plugs into a "media box" that goes with it, and is then transmitted wirelessly to the monitor in full 1080p resolution. THAT is the kind of idea I can get behind - especially when that media box starts including a full browser, your choice of Windows, MacOS, or Linux, AND your DVR, Blu-Ray, etc., AND it can all go wirelessly to more than one TV in the same house at the same time. In other words, you could be watching one thing in one room, recording three or four other things at the same time, and watching something else OR surfing the web on another monitor elsewhere in the house. It's all headed that way, and it's coming faster and faster now.

I'm so hooked on IMDB (the Internet Movie Database) now that I keep my laptop near my living room chair, so when I'm watching something and see somebody familiar, I can just pull them up and see what other shows I know them from. At some point, I fully expect to just be able to pull it up inside a small picture-in-picture window on the TV screen, and my "remote" will be a small keyboard or a netbook. :)

Mike

Work is the curse of the Drinking Class.
- Oscar Wilde

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Saturday, January 2, 2010 10:59 AM

OUT2THEBLACK

For Folk without a Blu-Ray player as yet , you might check your local BlueSun Boxmart , aka WallyWorld , or their online store , as I just got a MaggotBox Blu-Ray player for 78 bucks...

I normally avoid BlueSun as much as possible , but did a walk-through with a relative a couple of nights ago and noticed a skid of these players , and had promised myself when I found one under 99 bucks that it would be mine...

Here it is @ WM online :

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=11319406

Shows @ 98 bucks online , but notes that price may vary by store...

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Saturday, January 2, 2010 11:33 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

I gots Comcast, and while it's not perfect, it ain't bad. I went w/ out any cable for 3 years, and survived just fine. Were it not for my XBox & love of high speed internet, I'd likely save the monthly charge and just stick to the basic digital service.

The T.Rex they call JANE!

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Saturday, January 2, 2010 11:36 AM

AVERYFINECOMPANION

Quote:
Originally posted by pizmobeach:
Quote:
Originally posted by averyfinecompanion:
I have Directtv and I hate it. The local channels come in crappy and the signals goes in and out a lot when there's a storm.

Thx everyone for the feedback.

Scary AFC ... but the trigger has been pulled, I'm committed for 2 years to DirecTv... they better treat me nice!

And I do have trees around my house, so it should be interesting.

You might have better luck then me. For some reason my tv craps out more then any other tv in the house and since your box is newer maybe it'll work better.

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Saturday, January 2, 2010 12:01 PM

ECGORDON

There's no place I can be since I found Serenity.

I missed my chance to reformat my DVR since this site went down yesterday and I had neglected to copy the instructions Mike provided. Then I needed to record some Doctor Who eps I had missed before. Maybe I'll reformat tomorrow or next weekend.

My DVR does have a USB port although I have never attemtped to use it. If I ever got instructions with my DVR or remote I have no idea what happened to them, so I'll have to experiment on trying to save something onto a flash drive and see what happens.

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