DISH NETWORK 625 DVR DUAL TUNER SATELLITE RECEIVER VIDEO RECORDER DISH PLAYER

I Own 160 H replaytv model (for about 4 years). And recently I got another DVR that comes with DISH (the 625 DVR Dual Tuner model). I see a review from Daniel in Dec.. Daneil, maybe the replaytv model is the perfect one you are looking for (although there are a few problems with it too). My experience comparing these two DVR below.

I gace the DISH unit one star, amybe because of how unhappy I am with in comparrison to the replaytv unit. I would still recommend either of these DVR’s over a VCR anyday. I am however planning on dumping the DISH unit when I can, and get a second replytv (I need extra tuners).

BTW: (adding to below): the replaytv unit did have one annoying problem: It went thru a time when the audio would cut out on several of my favorite shows,, lasted a few months.. I believe the automatic updates eventually fixed it..

The replaytv unit is vastly superior in every way (well, except I wish the replay unit had more than one tuner). The only other problem I have (which affects both units) is the electronic listings are wrong enough to be annoying.

Once you get a DVR, you will never go back to a VCR. I suggest you get at least 160 hours (more if more than one person will be using it).. Reasons will become clear with use (IE: you tend to save the last 3 or 4 shows of everything, so if you go on vacation (etc) they will be there waITING FOR YOU.

THE DISH DVR: (BOO):

There are too many crappy issues with the DISH unit to even remember them all (here are a few I can think of ):

When you hit pause (and go away).. It will start playing again by itself, so you miss your show (which is the point of the DVR in the first place).. And, it will not let you rewind when it starts playing automatically. It probably fills up the hard drive.. but there is no way to “not” fill up the hard drive because of the way the thing records shows for you (FIFO style). When you pause to see something the pause bar that pops up (to let you know you pauded presumably?) covers about a third of the screen (enough to cause you to miss 100 percent of whatever it was you wanted to see). NOTE that you can hit the arrow to go into slomo (from pause), but it skips away from what you want to see (so you are still screwed here). Trust me on this, Im not even sure a kid would have the patience to find something to see in slomo with this thing. When you record your shows, replayTV lets you organize stuff in whatever manner that suits you (very convenient after setup).. The DISH unit puts the most recent recordings in a list, with newest first. Sounds like no big deal, wait till you have over a hundred, and if you were able to compare this against the replay unit, you would understand.
Rating: 1 / 5

Its great to be able to record things when you want but this model only has 2 tuners so unless you want both tvs to be watching the same thing there is no way to make use of the swap and pip buttons if you have it connected to another tv. It holds a pretty decent amount of video though up to 150 hours. It only has 1 USB input. Its kind of big so you would expect that it has a place to plug in your tvs power cord into it but it doesnt. You can pause but thats about the only good thing since you cant swap to skip commercials.
Rating: 3 / 5

Excellent. Excellent. Excellent. Feature loaded! The dual tuner works great. Now, I can be watching one show in the basment, while my wife watches another upstairs, both using all of the DVR functions from the same receiver. Plus, countless times I have recorded two shows at once while watching another on DVR — which used to be unheard of with Satellite TV.
Rating: 5 / 5