I checked my Dish bill to see if I paid anything in receiver fees; I have “DishDVR Advantage” for $39.99 which includes America’s Top 100 + Locals. This plus Bronze HD ($10.00) makes my bill $49.99 + ~$0.50 in taxes.

I don’t have any obvious receiver lease fees.

Sean

1) Multi-room DVR — my ViP 622 receiver (the old standard, now they ship the 722 which features HD in both rooms, I think) has this feature.

2) HD/SD. No problem here.

3) Same channel #. Yep. You have your choice of HD or SD though; they just list both channels in sequential order (but with the same number). I’m not sure the behavior if you punch in the channel # directly. (would test, but I’m mid-move and my Dish and TV haven’t made it yet)

4) I can’t tell you if it it’s 1080p or not; it either is or the receiver is upscaling. Quality varies based on what channel you’re watching, but I’ve found that it’s noticeably better than Comcast and a far cry from Blu-ray.

5) Channels. I can speak two BBC America, ESPN, and ESPN2, Animal Planet, Discovery, and History. I’m not much of a sports person. When I lived in Clovis, I pulled the locals from the Sat; but I also had an OTA antenna that pulled the same locals (in HD). The Dish receiver has a built-in DTV tuner that’s really handy for this (it even merges the OTA channel list into your regular channel list, pulls listings, and lets you record). The OTA HD was far superior than Sat for the same channels.

6) I pay $0 for the hardware per month, but I think there’s a nominal “DVR” fee. It’s rolled into my package (“Bronze HD” + Top 100 — $50/mo with taxes and everything)

7) Dunno about OnDemand. Dish claims to have something like it, but I have serious doubts.

No problems with my Dish DVR. Zero. None.

9) No remote scheduling. I want this too.

10) No luck with the convergence box you want. I imagine Dish will do this at some point, but I don’t know if I want their brand on all my media.

Cheers,
Sean