Want an alternative to TiVo? Watch for the DTVPal DVR coming next month

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1. Echostar/Dish DTVPal DVR compared with Philips DVDR3576H

   I would give the DTVPal DVR 3 out of 5 stars if it worked.

   Let me first say, “DON’T ORDER THE DTVPal DVR until they fix the problems”. I got a defective machine and after seven hours of phone calls and letter writing, they haven’t replaced it. I am now working with VISA and hope they will refund my money. Even though this machine was paid in full and was working over 90% of the time, DISH deactivated it over-the-air and it no longer works at all. I wonder is Dish is not replacing my unit because they know they will be replacing it with another defective unit because that’s all they have. They won’t refund my money either.

   Dishes site compares their DVR to the VIP 622 and VIP 722 satellite receivers. If those are race horses, the DTVPal DVR is a pony at best.

   I will use words Dish and Philips for the Dish DTVPal DVR and Philips DVDR3576H.

   Both receive and record HD and standard digital broadcasts. Only the Philips receives and records analog.

   The Dish has a slightly larger hard drive but you cannot change the recording qualities. My Dish DVR only records about 110 hours of standard TV even though it says 150 hours on the box. You can set the Philips DVDR to record 66 to 198 hours of standard TV depending on the quality you want. I set my Philips to 99 hours and it seems to have the same quality picture as the Dish unit.

   The Dish DVR records two channels at a time, but it is tricky—you have to set the longer show before you set the shorter shows or it won’t record two at a time. The Philips will only record one show at a time. Both units will play back an existing recording while you are making a recording. Both will also play back a current recording while you are recording it. For example, you can start recording a three hour football game and start watching it an hour later and skip the commercials, time-outs etc. I usually start about two hours into a game and finish at the same time. I can even watch every play in less than 30 minutes with either machine.

   The Philips let you watch DVD’s or record to writeable DVD’s as well as the hard drive. I connected my VCR to my Philips DVDR and I copy my tapes to the hard drive. Because the Philips machine has an editing feature, I then edit out items I don’t want and record it to a DVD. You can record one to six hours depending on the quality setting. The DVD’s menu then shows each recording, but it always shows one extra menu choice which is empty. It only records standard definition to a DVD disc. The Dish DVR will not record to DVD’s.

   You can pause live TV on either machine, but the Philips does a poor job of this. It’s easier to just hit the hit the record button on the Philips machine. Just hit the pause or rewind or skip back buttons on the Dish DVR. It starts recording any show you watch and keeps an hour in memory if you don’t change channels. If you change channels, it starts over. This feature doesn’t work if you are recording two shows.

   The Philips unit looks good, about an 8 or 9 out of 10. The Dish unit looks terrible, probably a 0 or 1 out of ten. It even has the DTVPal TV emblem painted permanently all over the top of the unit. The Dish unit even has a satellite card sticking out the front of it. They didn’t even put a door over it like on their satellite units. They evidently use this to disable your machine if they want to—they disabled mine. The Dish unit has no buttons on it, not even a power button. It is controlled entirely by the remote control. The Philips unit has a power, play, stop and eject button on it. (I don’t know why they need a card. Cards are used to control your particular unit, either to limit service or bill you.)

   The Dish DVR lets you edit out channels you don’t want including sub channels like 8.4. The Philips DVDR is all or nothing. You either keep all of channel 8 and its sub channels or you delete them all.

   The Philips has a very low quality remote. I hope it lasts a year. I bought another. The quality of the Dish remote is much better, but it’s not excellent.

   I have one of the older Mitsubishi rear projection TV’s and it only has one 1080i component input. It also has 480 component input. Although the standard TV images are similar for both units, I have only used the Dish on 1080i input. It has a very good image, but not excellent. My seven year old Direct TV HD receiver (use only for over-the-air TV) has a better image.

   I live in the Phoenix Arizona area, one of the largest TV population areas and Dish doesn’t deliver as advertised. They only fill out their seven day menu for about 6-12 hours. You can only click on a show to record it if it is on the menu. You can’t set up you recordings for a week ahead or even the day before. I can’t even set up evening programming before work. At least you can’t set it up by clicking on the time slot on the menu. Also the feature that adds time in the front of the recording doesn’t work on my unit. It does work for adding time at the end. You can manually set up the unit by setting the day, channel, start time and then add one minute at a time until you say how long it’s on. Not a fun task if you want to record a 120 minute show. Some of the channels just say “not available” all day long. Most of the movies just say “ABC Movie”. Occasionally they give the name, but they never give the year made or list the main actors. It also doesn’t list if it’s new or a re-run. It’s still better than the Philips unit which only lists the current show. All Philips recordings are set up manually, but it’s much easier than on the Dish unit.

   The Philips unit is much easier to watch and delete shows you’ve recorded earlier.

   The Dish unit has a slightly stronger receiver and gets one channel my Philips unit doesn’t receive.

   If everything was working, the Dish DVR would be better for everyday watching because it has two receivers, a better program menu or guide and better pause and rewind control. It also has a zoom feature the Philips doesn’t have. This will prevent burn-in on plasma and older TV’s.

   The Philips is better if you want to record your old VHS family movies or recordings or save current shows to disk.

   My Dish DTVPal DVR dies once for about every three hours of use. Some times it resets its self. Other times I have to re-plug the power cord. It fails to work for a few seconds to 16 hours and this really messes up your recordings or TV watching.

   The Dish site compares the DTVPal to the VIP 622 and the VIP 722. The VIP 722 satellite receiver has picture-in-picture or you can run a cable to a second TV. It has a menu or guide that is filled out and has proper information and color coded for movies, sports, news, etc. You can watch your show while looking at the menu or guide. Its hard drive is much larger and you can add an external hard drive. I only saw my son’s VIP 722 once so it may have other features as well that are not on the DTV Pal DVR.

   I thought that since the VIP 722 was such a great machine, that the DTVPal would be great also. That is just not the case. I’m sorry I preordered such a rotten product. It has potential, but it’s not there yet.

   The rest of this review is about my ordeal in trying to get a replacement for my defective machine. It’s not about additional comparisons. It’s part of my letter to VISA to try and get my money back. They wanted to hear about my efforts with Dish before they would try a resolution. My personal information has been omitted. If either VISA or Dish resolves this problem, I will let you know. Here’s part of the letter:

   SUMMARY

   I tried many times (over seven hours of phone time) to resolve this problem.
   I received a defective product that works part of the time.
   Dish Network deactivated my product so it doesn’t work at all.
   Dish won’t reactivate my product.
   Dish won’t give me a return authorization.
   Dish won’t pay return shipping for a defective product or even tell me where to send it.
   Dish won’t return phone calls.
   The product is packaged, ready and available for pick-up.

   DETAILS

   I pre ordered a DTVPal DVR from Dish Network on 12-3-08 which was to be shipped on 12-17-08. This was their newly developed machine that records regular over the air HDTV, never sold before. It’s not a satellite receiver. They never sent any kind of verification of the order, so on 12-15-08 I called them to find out the status of my order. They told me it would be sent after Dec 26th but couldn’t tell me if it would be a few days after the 26th or more than six months. Since they were not honoring their original shipping date of 12-17-08, I asked them to cancel the order. They refused, but after three hours I finally talked with Betty (last names omitted) in their executive offices and she said she would cancel the order and refund my money. I had made the order on line and had printed the screen showing the order. She said she would refund $275.25 but my order said $280.43. She gave me her e-mail address so I could send a copy of my order. The e-mail address didn’t work, so I called VISA to find out how much DISH had charged me. They had only charged me $275.25 so I called and left a message on her answering machine that the $275.25 was the correct amount to refund. I waited two days and no refund was made. I started calling every day and she never took my calls or responded to the messages I left. More than a week later, the recorder was delivered on Dec. 23rd about 7:30 PM.

   I installed the DTVPal DVR on Dec. 24th (not an easy task because it takes two hours to dissemble my unit to get to the back of my TV and two more hours to reassemble it. The recorder worked fine for about 45 minutes. Then it went dead. I followed the instructions and unplugged it for a few minutes before plugging it back in and the power and recording lights came on for a few second and went dead again. I tried this about 20 times over the next few hours, went to bed and tried again in the morning. Still no luck. About noon on Christmas I tried it again and it worked, but only for a few hours. I re-plugged it a few times and it worked again.

   I kept trying the machine but it kept going dead. It would work for an average of about three hours and go dead. Sometimes it lasted a day, other times it lasted only a few minutes. Sometimes it restarted on its own and other times I had to re-plug the power. There wasn’t a day it didn’t die, so on Jan 6, 2009 I called to have it replaced.

   I talked to Mack who I think was in the service dept. Because none of the numbers on the back of the machine started with RO it took about two hours. I evidently got a pre-production model or some model made before their normal shipping started for this new product they introduced.

   He said they would send me a new machine and it would be delivered on January 8, 2009. It took two hours but I was happy because he told me they would send it and that I could use the new box to return mine and they would include a pre-paid shipping label to return mine. I wouldn’t have to spend four hours getting to the back of my TV to get to the TV cables they included because I could just return the new cables.

   This is important.

   They then deactivated my unit. It is no longer usable at all. I don’t know how they do it, but they can deactivate your unit through the airways even though it’s only connected to a regular over-the-air antenna.

   I figured they deactivated it to insure I send my defective unit back since they were sending me a replacement before I returned mine. I could do without HD TV for a few days. You guessed it. It didn’t arrive on the 8th, so on the 9th I called to get a tracking number to find out when it would be delivered and to ask them to reactive mine so I could watch HDTV with it. I wanted to watch the playoffs and “24” in High Definition. I told them, they only needed to activate it until the delivery date of my replacement machine.

   There service department is in India so he was hard to understand, but the serviceman’s first story was it would take four weeks to process a new order and another two weeks for delivery and that they would not reactive my machine. I told him that was not acceptable and that it didn’t take two weeks to ship the item from Colorado to Arizona, two stated that touch each other. I told him his solution wasn’t acceptable and to try again or get a supervisor. He put me on hold about five times (three to fifteen minutes each time) and never came up with any solutions. Then one last time on hold and he said that I was correct and that the recorder should have been sent on the 6th and delivered on the 8th, but that it wasn’t and that he was not permitted to tell me why and that I would have to speak to a supervisor for an explanation.

   He transferred me to Veronica and I told her everything I had just done with the previous person and that he was not permitted to tell me what was happening and that she could help me. She said she would help and put me on hold 5-10 minutes, came back as asked me to continue to hold and after another 10-15 minutes she cut me off. I didn’t know if it was accidental or on purpose. (It’s a common practice to put customers on hold forever or to put you on hold and then cut you off). I gave her “the benefit of the doubt” and called back. It takes about ten minutes each time you call to get the privilege of speaking directly to a supervisor and they will not give out direct numbers and they said they were not permitted to call a customer back. (Pretty convenient when they keep cutting you off.)

   I tried five times to call back to speak to a supervisor. Each time I was put on hold then cut off.
   By now, I was up to three hours, trying to get my replacement. I guess they decided I wouldn’t give up and on the sixth attempt to speak to a supervisor, I was put through to Darrell. I told him what I’d gone through and he said he would take care of it and that he wouldn’t cut me off. He put me on hold for about ten minutes and then cut me off.

   I called VISA to have the charge cancelled. They told me I needed to write and tell what happened before they could attempt to cancel the charge and that it needed to be ready and available to be picked up by Dish Network.

   Then I remembered I had Betty’s number at the executive office, so I tried to call her. She was off for a few days. I kept trying to get a hold of someone and after about half an hour, I was able to get a hold of Arleene. This was at noon on 1-9-09. I asked her to ship the replacement like Mack had originally promised and to reactivate my unit until the new one arrived. She refused and said I would have to return the defective product first and that I would have to pay for shipment. I told her it would take me four hour to get the wires out to send it back and hour hours to replace everything when I got the new one. She didn’t care.

   I told her I had already paid for shipping to get the item and that I shouldn’t have to pay for shipping because they sent me a defective product and that it was their fault they had poor quality control, not mine. I asked to speak to her supervisor. She put me on hold 28 minutes and came back and said she would send me a prepaid shipping label and asked if I still wanted her supervisor. She said she could mail it or e-mail it to me and that an e-mail would take an hour.

   I told her to e-mail it and that I would no longer need her supervisor. I waited about two hours and never received the prepaid shipping label. I called and got her machine and left my e-mail address and phone number in case she was having problems. She didn’t send it or call me back. I called again the next day and she still didn’t send it or call back.

   It appears she had no intention of honoring her word and that she just said those things to make me go away.

   I purchased this product from Dish’s website. It doesn’t state anywhere that they don’t allow returns and I have included the print-screen copy of my order. Dish won’t return calls or start communications with me. I have to initiate every communication and most of the time they don’t answer their phones. Nearly everything they promised was a lie.

   I hope you can resolve this problem or return my $275.25.

   Thanks for your help.

   Reply

   Roger on January 12, 2009 at 10:28 pm

2. I've been very happy with the DTV Pal DVR, except for the relatively high energy consumption (21 Watts when "off"). The unit has been reliable for me, and has only minimal quirks. Unlike TiVo the unit never tries to sell me anything else, and never records stuff I don't want.

   Reply

   Bryce on October 19, 2009 at 5:43 am