Netflix and Dish Network

[DarkEL]

Anyone have any good / bad experiences with either NetFlix or Dish network?

I'm thinking about signing up with both of these and was hoping to hear what experiences others have had with them

Thanks

[Graham]

I've had generally positive experiences with Dish.  No complaints.  If you have specific questions, let me know.  I've been with them for about 4 years now.

[warning]

I have/use both and love both.  Do you have some specific questions I could answer for you?

[DarkEL]

woot! fast responses!

okay here's some specific questions

Dish
- How's the quality of the service and the equipment (since they seem to provide the equipment)?
- How often do you suffer with outages? how long do they last? ( we live in KS so we get a lot of thunderstorms in the spring)
- Any experience with their DVR? I see it can pause, rewind, record. But how's the programming capabilites? i.e. could I say record all episodes of Family Guy irregardless of time / channel like Tivo?
- Parental controls? How are they? Could I lock down the whole system from being used at all w/o a password?
- What does it need a phone line for?
- I've heard some horror stories about the "free Installation" - i.e. that it's free basic installation but they try and stick you with a whole bunch of other costs - like saying your coax in the house isn't good enough?


NetFlix
- How easy is it get your number one picks? i.e. how often are you left waiting for a dvd to come in that you want to see?
- Can you split your desire list between types of movies (i.e. we would want to get one movie for our 3 year old but wouldn't want to end up having 3 childrens movies sent to us because our other choices were out)
- How long would you say the wait is between sending one dvd back and getting a new one?
- hows the selection?
- any bad experiences at all?

[Jeff]

NetFlix
- How easy is it get your number one picks? i.e. how often are you left waiting for a dvd to come in that you want to see?

very easy. They have so many distribution centers now, that in the last year or so, I've never had to wait.

- Can you split your desire list between types of movies (i.e. we would want to get one movie for our 3 year old but wouldn't want to end up having 3 childrens movies sent to us because our other choices were out)

This isn't really relevant, as movies are rarely out. You can't sort your "desire list" (it's called a Queue there) by types, but it's easy to number the list in the order you want them.

- How long would you say the wait is between sending one dvd back and getting a new one?

for me it's two days. Yes, two. I order on monday, get it on Tuesday, send it back on Wed, gets there Thursday, get next set Friday, etc.  That's for a '1 day each way' scenario, which is what I get, and they claim 50% of their subscribers get.


- hows the selection?

All of them

- any bad experiences at all?

for me, nope.

[Graham]

woot! fast responses!

okay here's some specific questions

Dish
- How's the quality of the service and the equipment (since they seem to provide the equipment)?
- How often do you suffer with outages? how long do they last? ( we live in KS so we get a lot of thunderstorms in the spring)
- Any experience with their DVR? I see it can pause, rewind, record. But how's the programming capabilites? i.e. could I say record all episodes of Family Guy irregardless of time / channel like Tivo?
- Parental controls? How are they? Could I lock down the whole system from being used at all w/o a password?
- What does it need a phone line for?
- I've heard some horror stories about the "free Installation" - i.e. that it's free basic installation but they try and stick you with a whole bunch of other costs - like saying your coax in the house isn't good enough?

The service is excellent.  When you call them up, you actually get a real person on the phone.  No voice mail.

I have had it happen a couple of times, but not that often.  Probably once a year if I I would have to guess, and it doesn't last too long.

I ahve their basic DVR.  It isn't a TiVo, but I'm happy with it.  If I want to record something, I bring up the guide, select the program, and then I can tell it to record it weekly, monthy, M-F, or once.  I like it a lot though.

I haven't used the parental controls but I've looked at them.  You can specify what ratings are allowed and what ratings require a password to be entered on the remote.

If you order movies on the Dish, then it requires the phone line to upload the information that you ordered the movie.  If you have Caller ID, it will allow you to see who is calling while you are watching TV too.

I haven't had any problem as far as installation went.  My first installation I needed to get an amplifier and signal combiner to get the antenna for the local channels, but it was worth it.  I got a new Dish to get local stations recently, and the guys were pretty good with the installtion.  It's a local shop though, so YMMV.

You can IM me anytime you see me on AIM if you have more questions.  You can also download their receiver manuals at their web site.  www.dishnetwork.com

[Juntei]

I have had both Dish Network and DirecTV, and I gotta say I like DirecTV better than Dish Network. If you have both available in your area you might compare packages and pricing.

- How's the quality of the service and the equipment (since they seem to provide the equipment)?
      Good from both

- How often do you suffer with outages? how long do they last? ( we live in KS so we get a lot of thunderstorms in the spring)
     Depends on the severity of the storm and the duration of the storm but in general rain doesn't do anything i've noticed. Would gave to be a pretty sever storm.

- Any experience with their DVR? I see it can pause, rewind, record. But how's the programming capabilites? i.e. could I say record all episodes of Family Guy irregardless of time / channel like Tivo?
   Only have experience with DirectTV Tivo and it rocks

- Parental controls? How are they? Could I lock down the whole system from being used at all w/o a password?
Didn't have to futz with this but i think they are adequate.

- What does it need a phone line for?
 Uses the phone to update the menu/tivo info.

- I've heard some horror stories about the "free Installation" - i.e. that it's free basic installation but they try and stick you with a whole bunch of other costs - like saying your coax in the house isn't good enough?
No probs from either on install.

Edit to add that Netflix has been good to me, I haven't had any issues getting the movies I want.

[SkyLander]

I have had directv and I now have Dish.

The quality is good I don't think I've had an outage quite yet even with the crazy weather Reno has.

Someone once said the TIVO is a dedicated DVR with a satallite box while the Dish DVR is a satallite box with DVR shoved into it, thats a pretty correct statement. The 710 has been pretty rock solid even with its ass backwards design the 521s atleast for us can get screwy at times, like freezing and so forth, but most of the time they work great and do what they do. I have mine record 3 separate programs in a day. The 710 is a dual tuner box so that you can record and watch something else at the same time even though its weird.

DirecTV is like the high end you pay a lot of extra costs for little things and you throw a TIVO on top of it its just more money at them. While if you just keep a certain level of subscription it deals withe everything and you get a DVR out of it. So basically you get a lot more stuff for less. When you go through DISH. Its great though I doubt I would go back to Directv after having all the options and local channels through Dish. Also we didn't do a contract we can cancel and do something else whenever the hell we want to.

[Zekester]

Another happy Dish customer here.

I do get outages when there are storms around, though.
They'll last anywhere from a few seconds to 10 minutes, depending on the storm.

If your house already had cable, then installation should be no problem, but they don't like to do "professional" installs too much; no fancy hanging/mounting of cables inside or out.

Dish seems to be "on the level" though, and haven't let me down yet with customer service.