Dish Network ViP 622 (320 GB) DTV Receiver / 180-Hours DVR
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- Type: TV Receiver Video Recorder (DVR)
- Broadcast Type: Terrestrial
- Digital Receiver: ATSC
- Audio Support: Dolby Surround
- TV Resolutions: 480i (525i) 480p (525p) 720p (750p) 1080i (1125i)
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User ReviewRead All Reviews »
Makes you appreciate Tivo
Pros
Two-room access to DVR content.
Cons
Everything else.
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
User interface, programming guide and remote are all inferior if you've used Tivo, but two-room DVR access is compelling for people tired of waking up in the living room.
This review is of the very similar but newer 722 DVR and service.
Dish Network does NOT know their own product. In the course of switching to this unit from a Direct Tv/Tivo I had seven people at the company, including three installers, tell me point blank that the unit would not allow pausing live TV on the two tuners and switching between them. Some of them said they'd never heard of such a thing. Some of them said that it would not do that if you chose to make the DVR accessible to a second television.
All of them were wrong and the only way I determined this was by reading CNET's review before going to the Dish website.
As for user experience, it's mixed:
Cons:
-Image quality. The Direct TV signal provided marginally better quality for non-HD viewing than Dish does. Didn't have HD with Direct so I can't compare that.
-User interface. I've used Tivo for a few years now and thought it was brilliant from the first hour. What a shame Dish couldn't have incorporated some of those principles in to their software.
-Remote. Ditto. A blizzard of buttons spread out in ways that put the controls for associated functions in awkward places and the way those buttons control those functions is frequently badly thought-out.
Pros:
-Two rooms can access the same content.
-As Tivo no longer supports two satellite inputs and so will not time-shift two tuners on a Sat-based system it's only suitable for cable subscribers, so it's no longer a solution for Sat. customers, so our only choice is between Dish and Direct TV. And from what I've heard Direct's UI, remote and DVR are even worse.
Dish Network does NOT know their own product. In the course of switching to this unit from a Direct Tv/Tivo I had seven people at the company, including three installers, tell me point blank that the unit would not allow pausing live TV on the two tuners and switching between them. Some of them said they'd never heard of such a thing. Some of them said that it would not do that if you chose to make the DVR accessible to a second television.
All of them were wrong and the only way I determined this was by reading CNET's review before going to the Dish website.
As for user experience, it's mixed:
Cons:
-Image quality. The Direct TV signal provided marginally better quality for non-HD viewing than Dish does. Didn't have HD with Direct so I can't compare that.
-User interface. I've used Tivo for a few years now and thought it was brilliant from the first hour. What a shame Dish couldn't have incorporated some of those principles in to their software.
-Remote. Ditto. A blizzard of buttons spread out in ways that put the controls for associated functions in awkward places and the way those buttons control those functions is frequently badly thought-out.
Pros:
-Two rooms can access the same content.
-As Tivo no longer supports two satellite inputs and so will not time-shift two tuners on a Sat-based system it's only suitable for cable subscribers, so it's no longer a solution for Sat. customers, so our only choice is between Dish and Direct TV. And from what I've heard Direct's UI, remote and DVR are even worse.
