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Thoughts on Dish Network/TurboHD
cctex823
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm moving, and went with Dish Network for cable (internet was atrocious compared to cable broadband) and was curious as to what people thought. I haven't used satellite since the days 20 ft dish's and waiting for the damn thing to move to another satellite. I got the TurboHD bronze package with America's Top 100 w/ an HD/DVR box. Any advice? Any sneakiness to expect on their end regarding programming or bills? Does it really go out on you during a storm?
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I was originally going to go with DirecTV but they had terrible terrible deals at the time. The bronze pack seems right up my alley... just need a DVR to go with it. How well does this stuff work? Lag on menus?
On a side note, I will NEVER again use cable tv service. The cable company here (Time Warner) has shitty hardware with shitty software/firmware and their HD lineup is a pathetic waste of $10+ extra per month.
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I had TW as well. I was actually quite pleased with them. They supplied me with the SA 8300HD and kept firmware up to date and it was adequate for my needs. The HD lineup was average to above-average, with ESPN, ESPN2, HDNET, NBC, TNT...
Bullshit is what TurboHD is.
Most of the channels you get are not HD, just upscaled SD. A lot of the time the "HD" content isn't even widescreen, it just has added-on bars that say CNN-HD. In exchange for this TurboSD content, Dish pulled all the Voom channels from anything but the uppermost tier, which were actual HD (and commercial-free, likely why they were dropped). After you've seen RaveHD, concerts on the MHD replacement is like looking through a screen door. GameplayHD 1080p or G4 480p, gee that's a hard choice.
The only HD channels still worth watching on Dish are Discovery, the 3 HDNet channels, and ESPN/TNT for sports. The only one that measures up in visual quality is Discovery HD Theatre. Locals you can just pull with rabbit ears.
Personally, I'd go with DirecTV for HD these days. They have something like 95 "HD" channels, while Dish and most cable top out in the 30s.
The Dish DVR setup is passable, but hardly Tivo. It's nicer than DTV's DVR, though.
Regarding bills - watch out for phantom $5 surcharges from Dish for supposedly not having your receiver plugged into a phone line, even when it is and has been for the last __ months. You can get it dropped from your bill if you don't mind spending 30 minutes on hold and arguing with a CSR, but it's still a hassle.
Right now they're offering a free HD DVR with the purchase of NFL Sunday Ticket. They also throw in their most premium package. The price savings is immensely in your favor after you get rid Sunday Ticket. You can adjust to a different package at that time.
This is not a Dish problem, its EVERY carrier. They can only provide channels that are available to provide. So if a channel is mostly upconverted shows with primetime in HD, nothing Dish/DirectTV/Cox/TW/Charter can do.
"Was cursing, in broken english at his team, and at our team. made fun of dead family members and mentioned he had sex with a dog."
"Hope he dies tbh but a ban would do."
Most of them are channels I rarely watched anyway, and so this doesn't much affect me. Many of them are ostensibly HD channels that never actually show HD content. (Cartoon Network is considered HD for some reason, but I have never once seen a show on there that was actually HD.) I'm moving and switching to SureWest, which is fiber-optic based and also a lot cheaper.
The difference is Dish used to provide true HD channels. All the Voom channels, like Rave and Gameplay, were legit HD content, not upscaled SD. Granted, not as good as a 1080p Blu-Ray via HDMI, but better than say, the 720p video content on Xbox Live.
Then Dish removed those channels and replaced them with those upscaled "HD" versions of USA, Disney, etc. And tried to pass it off as an upgrade to their HD customers.