However, I just got a new HD TV and I am wondering if I should sign-up with a different service so that I can take advantage of the introductory pricing.

Let us know how Comcast HD goes, what the DVR is like, and the channel selection.

Tristan

In short, I love the DVR with dish. I find the Bresnan DVR to be disappointing at best. Here’s a few examples—not a full review by any means but hopefully enough to give you an idea.

Dish’s remote is a thing of beauty. There’s a jump forward button (30 seconds I think), and a jump backward button (10 seconds I think). This asymmetric jump setup is amazing. You skip through the commercials in 6 or so presses, which usually puts you a few seconds into the show. Then you hit the jump back button once and you’re within moments of right where you want to be.

Bresnan’s remote is a mess, and (worst of all) there’s no jump forward button. There’s a jump back button, but not a jump forward button. Do you think this is an accident? Hardly. They want you to trudge through the commercials in regular fast forward. Ironically, I think, I watched and noticed more commercials with dish than I do with cable, because with dish you are stopping and paying brief attention every 30 seconds (i.e. every commercial), but with bresnan you’re just watching a blur hoping to pick up a visual cue that your show is back on. I was happier too. So cable’s focus on the advertiser dollar and not the customer does a disservice to both.

Dish’s guide and DVR system are, again, a thing of beauty. I liked it when I had it, but they’ve improved it greatly even so. Now, when you push record, you have the option to record just this, every instance, or (and this is the new part) every *new* episode. There’s a lot of little things—you can tell they put thought into it. Cable on the other hand, is obviously a minimal effort design. It works, barely. There’s a big ad on the bottom of the screen, that steals cursor focus whenever it can get away with it. There’s a lot of little things that make the experience disappointing. To me, the difference is night and day in favor of Dish. DIsh ain’t perfect, but in the absence of an open system it’s by far the best I’ve seen, though my experience is limited to those two. I haven’t tried myth, really, nor TiVo, so I can’t say if it’s the clear winner in DVR land, but it sure beats cable.