oldslabsides wrote: 
Hm, as Dave in V suggested, you typically need a phone line connection for PPV. When no phone line is nearby, they'll often rent you a wireless device that has a sender at one end (phone line wall jack) and a receiver at the other end that plugs into the DVR. I was thinking that's what this device was. If they're renting it to you you'll see it on your bill. It might be an additional $2-$5 monthly fee. Or they may sell it to you at installation. 

 swell_sailor wrote: 
yes, there is.  we have ONE phone jack in the house.  the thing plugged into it is - I assume - is the modem for internet service, which is thn connected to our wireless router.

 oldslabsides wrote: 
On the Toshiba built Directv box I had the phone line was hooked to a phone jack and if you wanted to watch PPV or On Demand it would dial Directv and thats how'd they'd know to bill you for it.

 oldslabsides wrote: 
Is there another similar looking device plugged into a phone line somewhere else in your house?

Just got off the phone with customer service.  Apparently with the setup we have it can take two or three days for a movie to download.  If we want it to download faster, the DVR must have an internet connection which will take $100 worth of additional gizmos.  It would have been nice if someone had explained this to us up front.

Also, that phone line coming out of the DVR?  It's plugged into a white box which is plugged into the a/c power strip everything else is plugged into.  Customer service has no idea what that is or what it does.  That's nice. 

 oldslabsides wrote: 
Nothing crappy about 3.98 down.

From where I sit anyway. 

 DaveInVA wrote: 


still crappy, but far better than the service I had with COX

 Coaxial wrote: 



:no:

The satellites have only so many antennas to broadcast down to Earth. There's no practical way to deliver on-demand programming from a dozen or so sats to millions of customers wanting to watch millions of different programs at different times. Without a phone line or an Internet connection, you can get PPV but not on-demand.

 oldslabsides wrote: 
This is off the Directv website:

"Because Directv is a satellite based system, they had to establish an Internet server to feed their On Demand (Cinemaplus) programs to their customers.  In addition, they decided to send full HD resolution so the files are large.  So, it is necessary for you to download and record the program on your DVR.  If you have a fast Internet connection you can put the program to download, go to your playlist, select the program and begin watching it right away.  On the other hand, if you have a slow connection you'll have to wait until at least a part of the program downloads.

 

If you'd like to go to www.speedtest.net and run a speed check on your system and post back the download results, we can comment on what sort of time frame you can expect."

 oldslabsides wrote: 
Everything concerning the TV does come through your dish...The phone line is strictly communication between ATT and your receiver.

 oldslabsides wrote: 



The satellites beam everything to everyone all the time. Your receiver lets you watch the stuff you pay for. So if you order a PPV, the satellite is already beaming it to you. You just have to tune in the next time it starts.

But the sats don't have zillions of antennas to beam down stuff on demand. So either you have to wait in a long queue for your movie to come off the satellite or they have to send it another way - either streaming it like Netflix or downloading it to your DVR. Dish used to download all their PPV selections to everyone's DVRs at the start of the month. Then when you ordered one it was already there - provided you had an active phone or Ethernet connection hooked to the box 24-7 like they asked.

 kurtster wrote: 
sounds as if your set up is just like ours.  I have been under the impression - perhaps mistakenly - that everything concerning the TV came through the dish on the roof and the phone/DSL came through the phone cable coming off the utility pole out back.  Having seen the phone cable plugged into the TV box has confused me.  The phone/DSL was wired/installed by AT&T and the TV box/dish were installed by DirectTV.  I was painting while the DIrectTV guy was doing his thing so I guess I missed the phone cable hookup.

Guess I'll call customer support today and see if they can explain it to me so we can watch our movie. 

 oldslabsides wrote: 
Our Dish box has both ethernet and phone.  We have them both hooked up.  The box is hardwired to the router and the phone line goes to the wall.  We have DSL and a landline.  So there are 3 ways for a download.  We get caller ID on the tube.  Haven't used any of the interactive features other than the viewing options for something like CNN where you can open up extra windows.  Which supplies that, the sattelite, ethernet or phone, I have no idea, we hooked them all up in the beginning.

 winter wrote: 
rly?  we use DSL on the same phone line and it's reasonably speedy.

 oldslabsides wrote: 



Not sure - with Dish it was pre-loaded. You should probably call Direct. (Keep in mind how long it can take to download a whole movie at dialup speeds.)

 winter wrote: 
downloading was mentioned, so I guess we're dealing with on-demand.  will it let us know when it's available or what?

 oldslabsides wrote: 



Is it PPV or on-demand? If it's PPV you tune to whatever channel is showing it whenever the next showing is. If it's on-demand then it should have been downloaded to a partition on your DVR over the phone line (assuming it's an active line and always connected).

 DaveInVA wrote: 
we've never used it before...maybe because it's our first pay per view transaction??  we'll see in a bit, i guess......i just want to see "dracula" some time before halloween!!

 oldslabsides wrote: 
I guess they are just taking sometime to process it then...

 DaveInVA wrote: 
just looked - there IS a phone line in the back of the receiver.