A few months ago Jana and I were looking at ways to cut monthly expenses. Going through our Dish Network DVR timers, we found we taped something like 22 shows. Out of those 22, 19 of those were from over-the-air stations (2, 4, 5 etc.). So it seemed like an easy choice... Dump the dish.But one thing made it not quite so easy: Dumping the Dish meant dumping the DVR. I'm assuming most of you have a DVR by now. If you do, you understand that once you go DVR, you don't go back. It's the only way to watch TV.
So after quite a bit of online research - I found the perfect solution: The Dish DVR-Pal. The DVR-Pal is a digital-to-analog converter box. But it much more than that. It has a DVR built in. It records and plays back HD video. It is exactly what we were looking for.
PROS: It's absolutely free. This will save us $50-60 a month! Tivo offers basically the same thing for MORE money AND you have to pay a monthly subsription fee to use it.
As Luke gets older we'll have less crap on TV for us to worry about him watching. It uses the exact same Dish remote that we're used to and the interface is almost the exact same. Lastly, I now have an HD-DVR (I wasn't willing to pay the extra money for this). We also pick up way more channels than I was expecting.
CONS: It cost $249.00. It will take 4 or 5 months to pay for itself. Also, when I record in HD it looks like it's going to fill up the hard drive pretty fast so we'll have to stay on top of our TV viewing. It doesn't give me the option of recording HD or SD, so if a show is HD it records HD. The timers aren't smart - so if The Office has a special hour-long episode we'll have to manually adjust it. And Dish Network didn't want to sell it to me since I'm a current Dish customer, so I had to have it shipped to my brother's house. Lame.
Also, since the remote is only IR, it only works in the room where the reciever is located. Since we wanted to use ours throughout the entire house, I found a nice workaround for this and purchased this nifty UHF remote extender that seems to be working quite well so far.
So far I would HIGHLY recommend this product to anyone who would like to save $50+ a month but cannot live without a DVR! It is an excellent product and exactly what we were looking for.
6 comments:
But what about Yo Gabba Gabba and Disney?
The plan for Yo Gabba Gabba is to purchase the Yo Gabba Gabba DVD. Yes we'll watch the same 5 episodes over and over, but that will have to do.
What about an old fashion vcr?
Does it give you the guide like Dish? Or do I have to say "record channel 5 at 7 on Thursday?"
Spencer - It gives me almost an identical guide like Dish, but it sets up timers. So yes you would say "Record Channel 5 at 7 every Wednesday," and if channel 5 moved your show to 8 you'd be screwed.
But it does name the shows in the DVR so hopefully that answers your question.
Awesome. Thanks.
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