[purtman]

I am looking at returning to DISH. We're moving and will no longer have large trees blocking our line of sight. I noticed that on DISH, it says that it has the capability of 2,000 hours but only 250 hours of "personal" use. What do they mean by that? How many hours are available? How many shows can you truly record at the same time?
Thanks!

 

[patmurphey]

If you want Hopper/Joeys, it's 2000 hours SD (bragging rights), but the Hopper/Joey combination is aimed at HD. Each Hopper can hold 250 hours of HD in the user section. That increases to 500 hours HD with software that is rolling out now. In addition Hoppers will keep 8 days of Prime Time HD (96 hours) in a separate section. External hard drives (up to 1000 hours HD each) are now easily accessible from the DVR menu.

One Hopper 3 recordings at once, 6 during prime time. Two Hoppers double that. If you have more than 3 TVs/family members, better with a second Hopper that has the same monthly fee as a Joey.

 

[purtman]

Pat, thanks. We plan to have one hopper and three Joeys. I know my kids will want to record everything under the sun. We'll have to watch them and make sure they record their shows in SD.

 

[david_jr]

Pat, thanks. We plan to have one hopper and three Joeys. I know my kids will want to record everything under the sun. We'll have to watch them and make sure they record their shows in SD.

From what you're saying sounds like a second Hopper would be money well spent upfront ($200) with no additional increase in monthly fee.

 

[oldengineer]

Pat, thanks. We plan to have one hopper and three Joeys. I know my kids will want to record everything under the sun. We'll have to watch them and make sure they record their shows in SD.

I agree with other posters about the 1H/3J setup. You may run out of tuners if you have several different TVs on simultaneously. It's worth the extra bucks upfront for a second Hopper and if you're a good customer you can probably talk Dish into getting it for $100.

 

[3HaloODST]

If you have software version S207 or older, S208/S209 will effectively double your current Hopper(s) capacity.