I’ve been planning to switch to DirecTV with TiVo from our current Dish Network service, mainly because of the TiVo vs. the Dish Network DVR. When I called Dish to find out my options, I also found out that the Dish DVR could work better if we use it slightly differently.

The Dish DVR has basically been a VCR for me, I could only make it record shows based on time/date/channel. It turns out, there was another way to tell it to record that would also factor in the name of the show (more like TiVo). There were two ways to tell it to record a show, and depending on which you used different features were or were not available.

Because of these options, we didn’t even know about the functionality (well, most of it) that we were looking for. TiVo has a single, simple interface for recording shows. In many cases, having only one way to do something is better for usability. In this case, it lost Dish Network a customer; I just placed the order for DirecTV.

I actually didn’t intend to make the change today, but a strange thing happened. I called Qwest to set up voice mail on our phone line and got a really competent person on the other line. At the end of setting up the voice mail, he told me that Qwest was now offering DirecTV service. I got the pricing information from him and found it was the same as our Dish service. I asked if he worked on commission (always do this if you get a good rep). he did so I got his contact info

I called to verify that there was no penalty for cancelling my Dish service, then e-mailed the sales rep that I was ready to place the order and to please give me a call. 10 minutes later, I got a call from him and installation is set for Monday morning. 🙂

Another note, we don’t have the required phone jack where we will have one of the DirecTiVo units, but apparently you can use a wireless phone jack. We’ll see how that goes.