News and musings on Sirius, XM, DirecTV and the DISH Network.

Dish’s new tricks

Dish Network has long been seen as the Wal-Mart of home TV services, offering a cheaper package of cable-type channels than either the local cable service or its main satellite competitor, DirecTV.

But over the past two years, Dish also has built a reputation for delivering advanced technology and new features. Last year, it became the first satellite service to offer a receiver with a built-in digital video recorder (DVR) capable of recording programs in high definition.

This spring, Dish began selling the DVR 942 ($699), an upgraded version of the receiver, which comes with even more new tricks. Two in particular stand out:

Multiple recording. The 942 has three built-in tuners — two for satellite channels and one that works with an over-the-air antenna. That means you can record three different programs at once, with one in high-definition.

Remote delivery. Other satellite services make you buy separate receivers and sometimes pay a monthly surcharge if you want to watch different programs in different rooms. The 942 can service two TVs in different parts of the house with just a simple coaxial cable connection. The extension TV gets its own remote control that can order up live or recorded programs, but not high-definition.

The 942 has other features that make it compare favorably to digital cable or DirecTV.

The unit has a 250GB hard drive, which can hold up to 25 hours of HD programming or 180 hours of standard broadcasts.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 11th, 2005 at 2:05 pm and is filed under General, Satellite TV, DISH Network, Product Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.