[avphile newbie]

Hey all,

I've been a dish network subscriber for years now, and been viewing in HD for a while as well. Now, here's my question. We're moving soon and I would like to see if any one has some ideas on the most effective way to set this up. We have 1 Plasma, 1 LCD and 1 HD Bigscreen (basement/theater area) all of these are 1080. I would like to get full HD and DVR capabilities on these monitors and would like to know if this is possible without paying for/having 3 receivers. Any thoughts? What would you say my cheapest/best options are? Is there another service that can provide me good quality HD on 3 TVs with the DVR option for cheaper?


Thanks all.

 

[Ken H]

If you want to have the ability to watch 3 different programs at the same time, you'll have to get 3 different Dish set-top-boxes. Same with DirecTV.


For cable or over-the-air Digital TV (DTV), does the plasma & LCD have their own DTV or clear cable QAM tuner? If so, you could use the internal tuner for just the local HD stations. This would not include digital tier channels like ESPN, TNT, etc.


For a DTV DVR (not cable QAM), with no monthly fees, the DTVPal DVR is $250. See the HDTV STB Synopsis for details.


If you would be content with always watching the same program on all 3 displays, then one set-top-box could feed all 3 sets. You will probably need a distribution amp to get the signal to all 3 sets.

 

[avphile newbie]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken H /forum/post/16894732


If you want to have the ability to watch 3 different programs at the same time, you'll have to get 3 different Dish set-top-boxes. Same with DirecTV.


For cable or over-the-air Digital TV (DTV), does the plasma & LCD have their own DTV or clear cable QAM tuner? If so, you could use the internal tuner for just the local HD stations. This would not include digital tier channels like ESPN, TNT, etc.


For a DTV DVR (not cable QAM), with no monthly fees, the DTVPal DVR is $250. See the HDTV STB Synopsis for details.


If you would be content with always watching the same program on all 3 displays, then one set-top-box could feed all 3 sets. You will probably need a distribution amp to get the signal to all 3 sets.

Thanks for your help Ken. To clarify, right now we have 2 dishnet receivers which we can independently watch on 3 separate sets at the same time. The only difference is that one set right now is SD, while the other 2 are HDs. Both are the same HD DVR receivers, they can each have 1 Digital output as well as a co-ax output. I really like the Dishnetwork HD-DVRs that we have and out monthly fees for that are quite low, which is why I'm not too fond of the idea of shelling out for another component.


So it looks like dish network does not (yet) offer a dual HD-DVR that supports 2 HDTVs at once. Do any providers do at the moment? I feel that FIOS is more expensive compared to dish as well.