I do not have a home phone, and am thinking about getting Dish Network. Unfortunately, in order to use DVR you have to have a home phone. Is there a way to use Skype to dial out for the satellite guide? I do not want to get an expensive land line for only this purpose. Thanks for your help.

Are you sure you need a landline? My parents have a dish, and no phone line near their receiver, and they're not having any trouble getting the schedule. They connect up a phone line when they want to watch pay per view though.

In any event, I would assume that this would not work. The Skype connection sounds pretty good to you and I because they compress the data very well, basically removing the parts that we don't here. Unfortunately, when you do that to a data or fax modem transmission, you start dropping bits, which generally makes data unusable.

However, I'd love to be proven wrong here, so I look forward to what others have to say....

[quote=etalk]I do not have a home phone, and am thinking about getting Dish Network. Unfortunately, in order to use DVR you have to have a home phone. Is there a way to use Skype to dial out for the satellite guide? I do not want to get an expensive land line for only this purpose. Thanks for your help.[/quote]

I don't think this would work because Skype != phone line. Your DVR has a modem in it. That modem isn't going to connect to somewhere through a piece of software . It doesn't know how to talk Skype.

My Tivo does require a phone line. It won't work without it. The Satellite boxes will work without them, but the DVRs usually won't.