12 HD Days of Christmas: Day 1

"It's the most...wonderful time....of the year..." If you could hear me sing that, then you would very much appreciate the fact that I'm a blogger and not a stage performer. In fact, I think our cats just ran out the front door. Anyway, it's time to kick off the HD Beat "Twelve HD Days of Christmas!"

Each day for twelve days, Matt, Richard and I will highlight a high-definition related product that we would love to see under our tree. We figure, if they're good enough for us, then you might want them too, so we'll share our reasons for the choices. This gives you plenty of time to get out and get one of these great HD products for yourself a loved one.

I'm up first and I'm highlighting Echostar's model Dish-Player 942 HDTV
receiver and PVR for Dish Network. Find out why after the jump!

So what's the love-relationship I have with this satellite receiver? For starters, it has three tuners in it. Two of the tuners are for your satellite reception and the third tuner is a built-in OTA (over-the-air) tuner to catch your local digital and high-def broadcasts. At the moment, Dish doesn't provide local channels in high-definition, so you can add your own antenna to the 942's ATSC tuner and catch your locals in HD for free, depending on your location.

The 942 also takes advantage of multiple outputs because you can use this box with two televisions at the same time. On TV1, you can view HD
content or upconverted SD content. On TV2, you can view SD content or downconverted HD content. In either case, you can watch live or recorded programming on either television.

As far as recording, Echostar provides a roomy 250 gigabyte hard drive which provides storage for 180 hours of SD, 25 hours of HD or a combination of the two. By the way, remember that built in OTA tuner for your free local channels in DTV and HDTV? You can record those
channels on the unit too.

Two separate remotes are included with the 942; one for each TV. The remote you use in the same room as the 942 is Infrared, while the
"remote" remote for TV2 utilizes RF, or Radio Frequency, to communicate with the receiver.

DIRECTV also offers a receiver with similar qualities, but the reason I'd prefer to see the Dish unit under my tree is because of the HD
content. Earlier in the year, Echostar nabbed the VOOM network channels
from Rainbow Media. This gives Dish up to 21 high-def VOOM channels.
Currently Dish only offers ten of these channels, but plans are in the works to provide the other eleven once Dish frees up some bandwidth after the MPEG-4 transition.

Aside from the ten VOOM channels, Dish also offers HBO-HD, Showtime-HD,
ESPN-HD, Discovery-HD, TNT-HD, HDNet, HDNet Movies and pay-per-view movies in high-def. Sure, you could get one of the less expensive HDTV
receivers from Dish, but the extensive PVR capability paired with a solid lineup of high-programming has the 942 on our "Dear Santa" list.