I think a major distinction between Dreambox dm800 hd service, and regular DVRs, is that it completely removes the commercials from the picture for the viewers.  With regular CVRs on the other hand, when you’re fastforwarding through the commercials, you’re still seeing them — maybe even more so than if you weren’t skipping them, because you’re watching Dreambox dm800 hd intently to make sure you resume play at the right time.  I know that in my case, when I skip past commercials, I’m pretty aware of the content of those commercials, because my eyes are glued to the TV at this time.  The networks see this distinction, and they believe it is crossing the line.  I understand that in situations like this, companies like Dreambox dm800 hd will not work this out with the networks beforehand, because the networks would never agree to it — so I suppose they’d rather put it in the hands of the courts.  But, as at least one other person has said, no matter what happens in court, when it comes time to negotiate the contracts, the networks will make Dish pay in blood.  They will either ask for an exorbitant amount of money, or demand that their network be excluded from Dreambox dm800 hd.

As far as people who’re saying the networks are being greedy by wanting per subscriber fees on top of their commercial revenue, I believe that those subscriber fees would be a lot higher if there was no commercial revenue (like premium channels).  Not to mention, channels like Fox and CBS have a lot more content than Dreambox dm800 hd, and I’m thinking those without commercials, they would be a lot more expensive than HBO.And for the people saying they hate commercials, etc., I believe you are all taking for granted the ability to watch a ton of TV shows without paying an arm and a leg (imagine paying iTunes $3-4 per episode for every show you watch).  The system works the way that it is..  It doesn’t kill you to watch commercials.  And normal Dreambox dm800 hd DVRs still let you skip past them.  I am happy with this.  I don’t want less commercials if it means I have to pay more for TV.And to all those people talking about how torrents allow them to not have to deal with any of this stuff..  Good for you.  Torrents is irrelevant to this discussion, because maybe it works out for the relative minority that’s using them, but obviously, if every one used torrents, the TV industry would collapse.  And I’m quite sure that, the Dreambox dm800 hd, which are owned by the TV providers, or vice versa, would not let it get to that point.

I stopped watching television anything a long time ago and I don’t miss it one bit. Between youtube seeing ~27hrs of content uploaded frequently and it being in an a la carte form why bother paying to watch 30% commercials? Everything that the “providers” offer is antique and deserves the death that is coming. With recording Dreambox dm800 hd devices getting better every year, and cheaper as well, coupled with the spread of editing software to more people than ever it won’t be long before “amateurs” provide better quality content than the corporately backed pros can.t’s not that simple, fortunately. The main concern is that this will affect advertising revenue, but the auto-hop feature can only be used on pre-recorded events…it can’t skip commercials on live Dreambox dm800 hd TV. As such, advertisers will still have their ads aired in full during live TV (just as it is today), and those same commercials will be skipped on recorded events (just as it is today).  It seems that this is more about “the principle of the matter” than it is about anything legitimate.   The fact is that Dish has ~14 million subscribers, which is a lot of revenue for broadcasters. When considering the above, and how the auto-hop will not actually have an impact on the viewing habits of people and their recordings — broadcasters would lose MUCH MORE money by not renewing their contracts with dish than they would by allowing the Dreambox dm800 hd feature.

Dreambox 800 hd has been play catch-up for years. Dish has a better user interface, remote, and customer service, and their boxes are the ones winning CES awards every year, not Direct tv box, Dish also owns Slingbox, which it has integrated into one box, and they also have a dish online to stream everything you are paying for. I’ve had Dish for well over 10 years and been very happy with it. I expect Dreambox 800 hd Dish to push out a Mobile app at some point, Not to mention they now own Blockbuster, with gives them, more content tow work with, and more option to put it out.I think DTV is messing up an opportunity here.First of all a new HD-DVR costs $199.  A lot of subscribers hopped on board when the HR21′s came out a few years ago.Nothing has really been worth upgrading since and there’s no way I’m buying an add on Nomad to get a program on my phone (I do have a Thunderbolt) for $150 plus a monthly fees which appear to include Dreambox 800 hd MRV and a separate fee for this service.

Now here’s what I would do though.  You offer up a brand new HD-DVR with double the capacity of the Dreambox 800 hd, add wifi to the machine, UI that’s blazing fast, nomad built in and I would give you $199 for the upgrade to that and maybe one monthly fee for MRV plus Nomad of $5 or less.  Otherwise I can see most of these units sitting in a warehouse collecting dust after the initial must have club buys a bunch.just got off the phone with a Dreambox 800 hd Direct TV assistant.  They said the Nomad is now currently available for a one time fee purchase and no monthly fee.  For me the DirectTV2pc works ok, and sounds very similar to the Nomad, where you only get to watch what you’ve recorded. I also have Dreambox 800 hd which works great if you have a good high speed connection to stream from.  I’ve worked overseas and tried to watch live football games and was uncessful due to streaming.

I believe by downloading from a Nomad to an electronic Dreambox 800 hd device e.g., iPhone, laptop, ipad etc… this may have better performance.  I’m interested in Nomad but waiting to hear from others that have actually purchased it. I don’t think Direct TV is providing enough details on this product.  Like other comments I’d wish Direct TV would have all of the DVRs wireless and blueooth compatible.  Customer satification should be a PRIORITY, especially to long time customers.  I personally think Direct TV has the best quality picture over Comcast and Dish which I’ve had them both.They better get this at least partially right.  I have been a fairly happy Dreambox 800 hd subscriber for the past 7 years now, but I find myself looking jealously at the options other providers have for getting their content on mobile devices and PC’s.  The Dreambox 800 hd app does not work well (read: at all) on my wife’s sort-of netbook, and I haven’t bothered to try to get it running on my desktop because it’s in the living room anyway and there’s no point.

Dreambox dm800 once owned and broken up by GE, is owned by Technicolor SA, a French Company. Many brands once NAME brands actually meaning something (as in quality or dependability) in the US as manufacturers went the way of the giant ‘sucking sound’ as Ross Perot’s trademark quote on the effects of NAFTA, (Mexico) and what turned out to be the vacuums source in China. You’ll see names like Zenith, Westinghouse, and others appear from time to time but they mean nothing of their founding or American ownership/manufacturing years. Westinghouse is manufactured in Mexico – at least their Dreambox dm800 HDTVs are. Like GE as well now in the process of selling NBC to Comcast not many once giant name brands seem to mean anything to an educated public while the uneducated greater masses continue to buy them thinking they are quality products. Time will tell on that score. One footnote: Maybe Technicolor will have a better reputation than GE’s ownership of RCA with defective TVs in the 80s/90s of a simple fix that was never undertaken on blacking out channels due to a soldering simple issue. The Dreambox dm800 part of the logo for me means nothing but the Technicolor development of an ATSC tuner for automobile reception does. In bad weather or news events having a local antenna alternative to flaky cell phone reception could prove the difference between informed decisions (where to go/drive or avoid) and dangerous situations.Its quite simple. You have to have an open mind.

Before you make one Dreambox dm800, you have to take a few things into consideration. You have to appeal to a certain crowd. You will not appeal to everyone. Be prepared to come under criticism. And when you get negative feedback, you don’t panic or get mad. You go with the flow. Everything you say won’t be gold.Next, you read the post. Then you get to the good part, let out your comedian side. But do not go too far as to where the reader can’t understand. Dreambox dm800 still has to make sense.Also, you must have originality. If you take a look at my previous writings, you may see many trends that I have. One example is the raps that I write. I always make a few here and there. They never are as popular as the dialogues, but that is something you would expect from a site that doesn’t cater to a hip hop status. Another trend you might find is the fact that I give character to the companies talking in my skit. I always paint a picture. And that’s the just of it. It’s art. Something we all can express. This thread reminds me of the Louis C.K. rant about the guy complaining that the wireless networking on his flight didn’t work perfectly. Hey, we’re experiencing the miracle of human flight, and you’re going to complain about something that you just found out existed five minutes ago? Cablevision is the only Dreambox dm800 TV operator ANYWHERE that offers a guide with this functionality. I wish I could get it, but I live in California.

And if you can’t find out what’s cool about it, or how Dreambox dm800 differs from their past mosaics, then you didn’t dig very deep. You can personalize up to nine tiles with ANY channel. Name and personalize up to 20 mosaics. Look at the guide for each channel in your mosaic, and program your DVR from that guide. Or, look at a guide comprised of all nine channels, again with Dreambox dm800 DVR functionality.You could make a different mosaic for each night of the week, or genre mosaics for sports, news, etc. And each person in the family could have multiple mosaics. This would make viewing TV so much easier. On any given night of the week, it’s rare that I’m interested in more than 9 channels.Oh, and by the way, since Cablevision is into the whole cloud thing, it means that it doesn’t matter what Dreambox dm800 you have, you get cutting-edge functionality. Sorry for the rant. I’m always reading about all this cool stuff that Cablevision is doing (like that PC to Media Relay thing), and it seems like a lot of their customers take it for granted.

Pretty much most phones in Japan come with a Dreambox 800 digital TV tuner built in; 1-seg.  The devices that don’t, like the iPhone, Nintendo DS, PSP, all have small antennas you can attach.  One of the reasons that the US doesn’t have larger usage of digital terrestrial broadcasting on mobiles is because there isn’t a mobile variant of Dreambox 800 digital broadcast for the US.For instance, 1-seg is H.264 broadcast in 320×240 at 320kb/s, perfectly fine for mobile devices.  You don’t need 1080p and the amount of data and processing that needs to be handled when watching TV on your phone.  The US should seriously consider 1-seg-like standard for the US, but the ‘free’ nature of terrestrial broadcast rubs a lot of the companies the wrong way.The the EyeTV app on the iPhone/iPad. After a few revs of the app, it runs smooth as silk on my Mac Mini streaming live unencrypted cable channels over WiFi or 3G. Fabulous performance. And, when I bought the tuner for 179., my original intent was just to watch on my Mac Mini.If your are thinking of getting a used 250 Plus at discount, be careful. There is an earlier version of this product that is not Dreambox 800. It won’t decide this unencrypted cable channels, so please be careful.

The typical Dreambox 800 rant always starts with Codecs/File Formats. I installed Shark 007 with the hope I could get Gundam Wing to default to English instead of Japanese. No such luck, I would have to remove the Japanese stream with MakeMKV. Too much work, but I don’t complain about it. That’s just another project, rip Dreambox 800 instead of downloading it. Other than that, I have had to do very little and I use it everyday. Doing that delays updates and upgrades. I just set aside some time and do it. I bought a 4 port USB 2.0 bracket and I have yet to install it. Between my laziness, projects and my classes, just don’t have to desire to do it at the moment. It doesn’t take away from my Dreambox 800 experience which is near perfect.Installing Haali Media Splitter and FFDShow Tryouts solves every codec issue with WMC. As for performance, I hate saying “something is wrong with your system”, but any dual core CPU made in the last 4 years plus any recent nvidia/ati gpu (integrated included) should run anything in WMC with ease.

Bought a Dreambox 800 about a month ago. It’s all about paying upfront for what you want if you ask me. All together I payed less than $600 for the computer and two USB Tuner Cards for OTA reception. Windows 7 Home Premium with Hulu Desktop, Kylo, Playon installed for remote access to use with my Droid, Netflix Streaming, and all I have to pay is for my Broadband internet connection. I can stream content to my Droid, and I can stream content from my Droid to my HTPC. No monthly Fees, contracts, yada yada yada. Pay upfront like our parents did back in the day.A Media Center system should be used for one thing only. Treat it like a Dreambox 800 DVD player or game console. Give it one tasks and let it do that one thing to its full potential. Don’t make it play games, edit pictures and videos or surf the pop-up/spyware/trojan laden internet. Use your laptop sitting next to the couch or your desktop PC for your other stuff. Those aren’t as critical to your significant other if they crash, your TV, Music, Pictures and Videos should always work and that will make everyone happy.

The Cheap Dreambox has a dedicated hardware decoder, ideal when for HD formats that AppleTV 2G can struggle with or flat out choke on.  Plus I can connect USB device to it (mp3, phone, thumb drive, ext hdd, etc) for playback and share that out on the network if I want.  It can also act as a poor mans NAS, just connect a USB hub and add devices, you dont even need the HDMI connected, its all UPnP.  It does this out of the box, no jailbreak. Cheap Dreambox is the only reason to buy an AppleTV 2G and it requires an afternoon reading guides on how to jailbreak, install and customize. Its not for the novice and if you dont jailbreak your AppleTV, you’ll end up selling it after a few months.I have a HD Homerun Prime (Cable Card tuner) and only Windows Media Center can tune into most of the (non free-to-air) HD channels. And the video that is recorded (.wtv) by WMC (on Windows 7) is not playable on any other media player (not even Windows Media Player can play it).The wtv files recorded off those Cheap Dreambox HD channels are encrypted and have copy protection flag applied to them. So, they cannot be converted to any other format.  And, comskip or showanalyzer cannot be used to auto-skip commercials.

I was a Cheap Dreambox user for several years before I finally moved to WMC just to get better picture quality (HD). Overall, I’m happy with the decision. The only thing  that I feel like I miss is the ability to auto-skip commercials.Btw, from what I could tell, none  of the SD channels are encrypted. So, they can be played by any media player and we can use any DVR program (doesn’t have to be WMC) to record them. It’s just the Cheap Dreambox HD channels that are mostly encrypted. If you are seeing the copy-never flag on normal subscription channels, you need to file a complaint with the FCC.  FCC rules prohibit marking any normal subscription channels as copy-never.  Additionally, no OTA content can be marked with anything other than a copy-freely flag, even if it’s a cable company rebroadcast of an OTA channel.The only channels that are allowed to be marked as copy-never are non-subscription channels.  Basically that means pay-per-view channels.  Note that sports packages are technically Cheap Dreambox, and thus can be flagged as copy-never.

Digital Cheap Dreambox downloads were scarce on the ground and surprise surprise, Napster/Audiogalaxy/KaZaA filled that niche and cut the labels out of the market. If they hadn’t given in with iTunes there would be no labels as we know them today. So haven’t they (video providers) dragged their feet long enough? People have been downloading TV shows on BitTorrent for 5-7 years now, and they’ve only been doing crappy attempts at streaming recent stuff for a coupleyears. Besides, cablecos have next to 0 competition in the US for actual high-speed Internet. If they suffered declines in revenue due to people cutting the video cord, they can easily simply raise rates for Internet (“What are you gonna do, go to Cheap Dreambox? LOL”) or mandate a bundle with video even if you don’t want it/don’t watch it. Or they can say take your pick of paying for TV you don’t want or Home Phone you don’t want in order to get Internet. Phone may actually be better for them since it’s pure profit. With video they actually have to pay ESPN, etc.Paradoxically the situation worsens when they add bandwidth limits on your cable service which effectively puts limits on IPTV watching at the current price people pay for both services. In the long term they will probably include expensive tiered data plans on top of your expensive tiered Cheap Dreambox channel plans and cash in on your entertainment addictions further.

The older unit didn’t have a Shop Dreambox interface at all in it either, which the new one does.  You aren’t talking about just tweaking something that’s already there.  Do you complain that your Xbox can’t play Xbox 360 games? Or your Dolby matrixed surround sound receiver doesn’t just upgrade into a 7.1 digital capable one with a software upgrade?  It might not look that different, but there are significant hardware Shop Dreambox changes to facilitate the new functionality in the new units. It shouldn’t surprise you that the old units can’t handle all the fancy new stuff. The new ones cost like 80$, you should really set your expectations for a 3 year old piece of tech a little more realistically.The system on the newer devices is not at all similar to the last generations, so I can see why it would only work on the newest line. All of you people threatening to buy a Roku need to get a clue…I just came from having a Roku for the last two generations, and then got one of the new WD TV Live Hub units and there is no way in hell I’d go back to Shop Dreambox.

The only thing you’d gain from getting a Shop Dreambox is hundreds of foreign and religious channels that flood the channel store. Oh and some crappy games that justify including a remote that sucks down batteries in a couple weeks! I don’t understand the outcry for Amazon. There are multiple on-demand options that are equally good, and the Amazon Prime has all the same stuff as Netflix only less of it.m right there with you. I got my dad the original Shop Dreambox WDTV HD when it was released a few years back, and for some reason I decided to upgrade to the Roku XS, mainly because I liked it’s interface a little better. BIG MISTAKE. For starters, it refused to output sound over HDMI in a way that allowed the TV to pass it on to his older surround sound system via TOSLINK cable. You could hear sound from the tv, but not the surround system. This is the first component in 5 years, among various cable Shop Dreambox, DVD player, bluray players etc that I’ve had this problem with, and Roku’s customer support line was so worthless that it was almost comical. I explain my situation to them, and their reply was “is the unit plugged in?” Boxed it up, took it back last week, and gave him the new WD Live for Christmas this morning. LOVE IT! Easy setup, the new web-based menu system is great, and it plays every single format I throw at it, plus it has SOUND! All that, and it was ten dollars cheaper at Shop Dreambox.

What’s amazing is that adapting this update for the older models, and fixing all the ridiculous bugs each firmware update introduces, could easily have been fixed just by hiring another software engineer.Shop Dreambox WD has created huge amounts of ill-will among thousands of its best-informed and vocal users over something that could have easily been solved with a fairly small investment.  It’s not like having a crappy reputation *helps* you sell more junky units to no-nothing Best Shop Dreambox customers.  I used to be a free app troll on iOS (wifi iPod and iPad) but I’ve spent more on apps in the last few months since getting the 4s than the last couple years combined. Not even 100% sure why. But partly it’s because my phone is on me all the time and many more apps are useful now. Also the camera is so darn good I’m getting a lot of photo editing and camera apps.

The problem is that this isn’t much different than what Dreambox 800 Dish has been doing for quite a few years now with its dual tuner.  With three tuners you’ll still have run three separate coax cables from the “server” to those additional TVs.  The plus to this is the Dreambox HD capability over coax as Dish does not allow HD over the 2nd remote TV.  It seems logical to place the server near the central location in which all coax cable ran throughout the house converge, “passive splitter point on the outside of the house.” Three coax cables would then have to be ran through the wall to the junction Dreambox.  This seems excessive to me.  I’d be impressed only if it was over a single high quality coax cable that can then be connected to any existing coax ran through the house.  Maybe it’s just me but I’m not about to make a massive hole in the side of my house to run 3 coax cable lines with a server in my office where I don’t want a Dreambox TV.You are mistaken.

Dreambox is simply the dipslay protocol, this implementation uses a MoCA variant for transport which means you only need one coax cable run to each tv with a high qulity splitter somewhere in the house. If you have cable tv, you are probably all set unless you have more than one splitter, which is never recommended period. This was the information I was looking for so thank you for providing it.  What I wasn’t sure of was whether or not this required a single coax running from the server to each Dreambox TV or a single coax that is then split elsewhere and then runs to the TVs.  If it’s a single coax I’m definitely all for the design as you are correct in saying that I’m already prepared for it using a single 4-way high freq (5- 2.15Ghz) splitter running high freq (3.0Ghz) coax cable to each of my TVs.  I’ve been waiting for a significant reason to ditch my cable company and when my pricing promotion ends in 2 months I’ll have even more of a reason to ditch them.  My cable/internet will jump up to $90 at that point and then up to $120 the following year which is ridiculous when you don’t subscribe to anything other than digital Dreambox cable.

It’s a neat idea, as long as your equipment has Dreambox clients.  But for 99.99999% of the people out there, that’s not going to work.  Hopefully in the next few years RVU becomes standard and more operators get behind it.  DirecTV is also working on an HD GUI, so I hope that a high resolution graphic interface can still be displayed remotely, and if the RVU spec has some considerations in terms of performance of pushing 1280×720 or 1920×1080 pixel’s over the wire to multiple Dreambox simultaneously. The problem there is that those 2-way communications are subject to throttling from ISPs that also happen to be incumbent cable operators. The nations cable operators will likely ensure that Dish and DTV never have to worry about the kind of competition you’re talking about.DirecTV will disappear, but they’re going to face competition from internet-based services which have the advantage of high-speed two-way communication and don’t require expensive capital investment in satellites. Couple that with an increasing willingness of the content owners to go direct to the customer base and they and Dreambox Dish are going to be squeezed.

Why would you need a monthly service fee for a Dreambox 500s cheap DVR unit that doesn’t even have storage. The starting price is also pretty pricey. It’s more then most streaming boxes that play video games and surf the net. The Guide is sent OTA from your local channels. Sucks you have to pay $5 a month for this plus internet streaming.Really, I just want a simple DVR Dreambox 500s cheap that simply receives the OTA HD signal, gathers the program information and display it in a “Channel Guide” type of way. The only thing it needs is a USB port for storage and an HDMI out for the TV. It shouldn’t need a data connection as everything it needs is capable of being pulled from OTA signals.They can sell the “Big Boy” box with WiFi streaming to other devices for more. But the box above shouldn’t be more then $50-$75. I can’t see paying that much more for local channels when you can already receive them for free.I think this box is more focused on taking a CABLE connection and resending it over WiFi to iPads and such. Similar to a Dreambox 500s cheap. something we DON’T need.Internet Streaming is really on the rise. More and more people are cutting the cord from the expensive cable company. Local channels and Internet boxes like Roku, newer Bluray players, and TV’s. They need to figure out how to handle OTA signals from local channels (some TV’s do this perfectly built-in).

I just got off the phone with a Dreambox 500s cheap Direct TV assistant.  They said the Nomad is now currently available for a one time fee purchase and no monthly fee.  For me the DirectTV2pc works ok, and sounds very similar to the Nomad, where you only get to watch what you’ve recorded. I also have slingbox which works great if you have a good high speed connection to stream from.  I’ve worked overseas and tried to watch live football games and was uncessful due to streaming.  I believe by downloading from a Nomad to an electronic device e.g., iPhone, laptop, ipad etc… this may have better performance.  I’m interested in Nomad but waiting to hear from others that have actually purchased it. I don’t think Direct TV is providing enough details on this product.  Like other comments I’d wish Dreambox 500s cheap Direct TV would have all of the DVRs wireless and blueooth compatible.  Customer satification should be a PRIORITY, especially to long time customers.  I personally think Direct TV has the best quality picture over Comcast and Dish which I’ve had them both.

I think Dreambox 500s cheap is messing up an opportunity here.  First of all a new HD-DVR costs $199.  A lot of subscribers hopped on board when the HR21′s came out a few years ago.  Nothing has really been worth upgrading since and there’s no way I’m buying an add on Nomad to get a program on my phone (I do have a Thunderbolt) for $150 plus a monthly fees which appear to include MRV and a separate fee for this service.  Now here’s what I would do though.  You offer up a brand new Dreambox 500s cheap HD-DVR with double the capacity of the HR-21′s, add wifi to the machine, UI that’s blazing fast, nomad built in and I would give you $199 for the upgrade to that and maybe one monthly fee for MRV plus Nomad of $5 or less.  Otherwise I can see most of these units sitting in a warehouse collecting dust after the initial must have club buys a bunch. They’ve got problems but an A-to-B comparison of DirecTV’s HD picture quality blows Comcast and Charter out of the water in my area. In our master control plant, we can monitor dreambox HD signals on all major providers and over-the-air on identical monitors and the Dreambox 500s cheap DirecTV picture consistently finishes second only to OTA in terms of sheer quality.  Comcast and Charter barely qualify as “HD” by comparison (in Nashville, anyway).

Pretty much most Dreambox dm500s in Japan come with a digital TV tuner built in; 1-seg.  The devices that don’t, like the iPhone, Nintendo DS, PSP, all have small antennas you can attach.  One of the reasons that the US doesn’t have larger usage of digital terrestrial broadcasting on mobiles is because there isn’t a mobile variant of digital broadcast for the US.For instance, 1-seg is H.264 broadcast in 320×240 at 320kb/s, perfectly fine for Dreambox dm500s devices.  You don’t need 1080p and the amount of data and processing that needs to be handled when watching TV on your phone.  The US should seriously consider 1-seg-like standard for the US, but the ‘free’ nature of terrestrial broadcast rubs a lot of the companies the wrong way.The the Dreambox dm500s app on the iPhone/iPad. After a few revs of the app, it runs smooth as silk on my Mac Mini streaming live unencrypted cable channels over WiFi or 3G. Fabulous performance. And, when I bought the tuner for 179., my original intent was just to watch on my Mac Mini.

This stupid thing is the perfect example of something that’s not up to snuff with the “experience’ that fanboys like you whine about. Dreambox dm500s inherently problematic approach to something that can be done far more simply with the appropriate desktop software.Anything that is an iThing specific device is automatically a fail. It’s far better to use standard interfaces.A Dreambox dm500s TV tuner is an obvious case in point here. It’s an obvious choice for a standard USB port.So you have a problem with iOS providing more choice?  Is there some other OS I’m not aware of that offers more choice in accessories, games, content, and apps?If so, please name the OS with more choices.  Otherwise your comment is quite lame and sounds a bit butt hurt. Or maybe you just hate choice and options in accessories, games, content, and Dreambox dm500s and prefer to be more restricted and locked down in your amount of choices in the aforementioned.  If it’s your preference to lock yourself into a smaller walled garden of accessories, games, content, and apps than what you could get with iOS, then that’s fine as long as you know what you’re (not) getting.

The typical Dreambox dm500s rant always starts with Codecs/File Formats. I installed Shark 007 with the hope I could get Gundam Wing to default to English instead of Japanese. No such luck, I would have to remove the Japanese stream with MakeMKV. Too much work, but I don’t complain about it. That’s just another project, rip Dreambox dm500s instead of downloading it. Other than that, I have had to do very little and I use it everyday. Doing that delays updates and upgrades. I just set aside some time and do it. I bought a 4 port USB 2.0 bracket and I have yet to install it. Between my laziness, projects and my classes, just don’t have to desire to do it at the moment. It doesn’t take away from my WMC experience which is near perfect.this mornings mail brought a free offer to upgrade my Sky +HD box for a replacmeent that is 25% smaller in size,double the existing storage,Sky Anytime and free installation.And the oppotunity to purchase the new box with 1Tb of of storage for £149,as an existing Sky customer with the full package (movies ,Sports,etc) I can tell you that all this ain,t cheap.But the quality of the Dreambox dm500s HD channels are second to none.But also looking to invest in a HTPC, maybe a Dell Zino, when the price is right!

Simply supporting Dreambox 500 live TV is not worth getting excited about.  XBMC supports HD Homerun live streams out of the box by creating a channels files, so in XBMC you can click on a channel just like you would a local file and it will tune it from the HD Homerun.  They have had this since 2009.  Big deal if Dreambox 500 can do the same.  Now if they say they have a way to bring digital cable premium channels from a Ceton or HD prime, integrate them into a Episode Guide a-la Windows Media Center/MythTV, and have full DVR recording scheduling and playback in the Boxee interface, then my ears will perk up.If you are going to build a HTPC anyway, why not make it as versatile as possible?If you have ever tried streaming video over anything that wasn’t robust enough, you will understand why I bought more hardware to deal with less than optimal wireless strength, and don’t want a laptop sitting out or a cheesy looking Dreambox 500 case.

Why would you need a monthly service fee for a Dreambox 500 DVR unit that doesn’t even have storage. The starting price is also pretty pricey. It’s more then most streaming boxes that play video games and surf the net. The Guide is sent OTA from your local channels. Sucks you have to pay $5 a month for this plus internet streaming.Really, I just want a simple DVR Dreambox 500 that simply receives the OTA HD signal, gathers the program information and display it in a “Channel Guide” type of way. The only thing it needs is a USB port for storage and an HDMI out for the TV. It shouldn’t need a data connection as everything it needs is capable of being pulled from OTA signals.They can sell the “Big Boy” box with WiFi streaming to other devices for more. But the Dreambox 500 above shouldn’t be more then $50-$75. I can’t see paying that much more for local channels when you can already receive them for free.

Internet Streaming is really on the rise. More and more people are cutting the cord from the expensive Dreambox 500. Local channels and Internet boxes like Roku, newer Bluray players, and TV’s. They need to figure out how to handle OTA signals from local channels (some TV’s do this perfectly built-in).As for mobile streaming, if you really want to avoid paying that $30. (which I don’t know why it is so big a deal if you are spending $200. to $300. for the device) for a player, you can buy small Windows based computing device. My BenQ S6 is only 5″, and can run the Windows Sling Player for free. Mobile streaming, and fre, wa la.And last but not least, Slingbox is not a Dreambox 500 DVR per se, and I never called it a DVR. It’s funny that you call it that. It doesn’t have a Recording function (merely a 1 hr buffer for live pause that’s all). So don’t know why you call it that.You have to flip through all the encrypted carriers and programs to find these channels, and a lot of TVs are too dumb to let you lock out sub channels, preventing you from flipping. This is a well known issue with Cox. If you have a CableCard, even a nonactivated one, the card will download the mappings via the proprietary Scientific Atlanta DAVIC channel and it will work right. We also still have analog channels in our Dreambox 500 system.