Dish or Direct TV

[MicroPilot]

Neither...Ditched DirecTV 3 years ago. I don't want to spend $2/hour to watch TV.

 

[zzvyb6]

I had Dish for a few years. It was flawless. HDTV and DVR were great. The key to good reception is dish attachment to a chimney, not to a floppy house wall with loose siding or shifting walls.

I just switched to U-Verse for combined phone, internet and TV. The U-Verse modem can more easily carry my security video system traffic compared to my former DSL. The internet download speed is higher to carry the video for TV reception.

I'm only 1/2 mile from the AT&T switch, so I guess that can give me better performance.

 

[jrepp44]

Directv was flawless in the 10 years I was with them - this was before HD.

I switched to Dish for the HD 3.5 years ago. It has not been flawless - not even close. The DVR equipment is unreliable - mine has been replaced 4 times. Everytime this happens I lose all the timers. I have an external drive (which I paid Dish $40 to be able to use) and its job is to save programming for when the equipment goes out, which it always does.

Directv has networkable receivers and the only thing holding me back from switching is I'm not sure Directv handles DVR recording of off-air channels. The Dish DVR handles this nicely. Dish HD is also very good (though not as good as Blueray or off-air), I assume Directv would also be good.

Alan - I have had the same problem with DVR's dying, is the $40 a one time fee or is there a monthly fee for the external drive connection? Can you save entire TV programs and movies on the external drive?

 

[DavidVT]

Great thread.
I enjoy 'zoning out' in front of the idiot box as much as the next person. I know there are better things for my longevity, not unlike smoking.
Well the cost of a pack of butts finally made me quit that habit.
Now I am pushing hard to drop the dish because the cost just keeps going up.

I miss the days living outside NYC where we had plenty of over the air channels.

Here in Rural Vermont in the shadow of several hills, I can not pull anything off the air. We had three channels before the Government decided we needed to digitize our over the air channels.

So, if I can ever convince my better half to dump the dish, it will go. Yeah, I know, fat chance of that...

We prefer the dish menus. I would prefer something interesting to watch on it...

 

[dmccarty]

We have had Directv for 6 years and no problems. We do loose signal with bad weather. Bad weather can be thunderstorms to the SW, ice and snow storms. Usually with the Snow and Ice storms we are without power so it does not matter much. Our dish points through some trees and ice on the trees will block the signal. We did have a snow storm this year where the snow stuck to the limbs enough to block the signal. First time that has happened.

Cable was much worse with weather interruptions which I always thought was ironically funny since they were running commercials about how much better they were compared to the Sat services. We never lost signal on cable due to snow or ice but thunderstorms would blow out the service all of the time.

We do not have the fastest DSL service which is frustrating since there is faster service in front of us. We will be trying NetFlix, Amazon, Hulu, etc soon once we get some networking and media center issues resolved.

Later,
Dan

 

[Richard]

I've been on DTV for around 11 years.

I would not personally care either way (however I've never experienced Dish) BUT FOR the NFL package.

That is one of my weak spots and although it's starting to get expensive and futile (I've been a die-heard Bengals fan since the days when they were respectable ).

If I were not still plugged into watching the NFL....which by the way, is starting to wane.... then it wouldn't matter to me which provider gave me my local news, Fox news, CNBC or other...

 

[Gods Country]

I've had dish for 6 months now. Finally got off of cable. Compared to cable dish is great. With the basic package, DVR, Free HD I'm paying just shy of what I was paying for fuzzy, analog, no DVR cable. Oh and dish is giving Starz package free for one year.

Oh and my TV doesn't go out for half a day every time someone knocks down a pole, break a line digging, or the myriad of other excuses I got why the cable was always out.

We’ll have to see how the equipment lasts. Both companies are providing the same China crap.

 

[Freds]

I've got Direct after having had Dish the previous five years. Dish had the local channels, DirectTV doesn't, but the figuring I did at the time (three years ago) said that DTV was the better buy, even after the promotions wore off. I bought a small antenna from Solid Signal and my local channels come in crystal clear. And Dish's customer service wins hands down when I have called. I can't stand their remote though, lol. The buttons I most use are way at the bottom of the remote and some careful finagling is required for one handed operation. Oh, and there is a slight lag time when changing channels with DTV compared to Dish. It's slight, but it's there. I wish I knew why that was...
I went from Dish to DTV shortly after I got my HDTV and DTV's picture on highdef channels blows away what I was getting with Dish Network. It doesn't drop the signal during a storm as often either, but that might depend on where you live. I'll stick with Direct, but I have noticed that their prices are becoming absurd now. I have been able to talk with them though and gotten certain packages for free. They'll be hearing from me shortly on this matter. It seems they want to do more to keep you than Dish, otherwise I never would have switched.

 

[rustedduck]

Had problems with Dish...could not recieve locall chanels between 6pm & 9pm.

Have had Direct for numerous years with no problems....Basic programing
much much better.

 

[Financegal]

I don't know if specific areas get better reception or what but I know around here we ALL have DISH. Brother lives 1/2 hour away and everyone in his 12 home community has DirectTV (we are both very very rural) so not sure if that has anything to do with it or not. Drive or walk your area and see what most have. To me, that would seem to be a good clue.

 

[Bird]

Dish had the local channels, DirectTV doesn't

When we lived down in the country, DirecTV (actually Pegasus) didn't have the local channels and I put up a big Radio Shack antenna for the local channels and that worked very well. But now, here in town, both Dish and DirecTV have the local channels. And today the mail brought a letter from Dish asking me to come back and a letter from Charter Communications asking me to change to their cable system,.

 

[Rocksprings]

Thank God for competition to keep the rates down. At least for the first year. I am going to try DISH. They have a $24.99/month basic one year package that includes local channels.Two year commitment with auto pay. (Your credit card) They say free insulation but charge a $99.00 processing fee or something like that. Thanks for all the replies folks. I think in the long run both Direct and Dish are real close to being the same channels/price, ect.

 

[thatguy]

we have had directv for 4.5 yrs (with DVR) and had no issued with service - but as mentioned the price does go up regularly..

rocksprings - just so you know (at least for directv) - the installers are contractors so you may have to pay extra if they run extra lines or have to set a post to mount the dish..

brian

 

[clemsonfor]

Directv was flawless in the 10 years I was with them - this was before HD.

I switched to Dish for the HD 3.5 years ago. It has not been flawless - not even close. The DVR equipment is unreliable - mine has been replaced 4 times. Everytime this happens I lose all the timers. I have an external drive (which I paid Dish $40 to be able to use) and its job is to save programming for when the equipment goes out, which it always does.

Directv has networkable receivers and the only thing holding me back from switching is I'm not sure Directv handles DVR recording of off-air channels. The Dish DVR handles this nicely. Dish HD is also very good (though not as good as Blueray or off-air), I assume Directv would also be good.

Makes me wonder. IEEEE. i need to look into saving my progrms somehow. I have hours of DVR that is goto stuff to watch when nothing is on. Im months behind in some not so important programs. I have like 60 timers! I have been lucky my dish DVR has not had problems in over 3 years. Hope im still good after this!

 

[Kal130]

Don't know if it is local or national, but dish subscribers in my are can no longer receive CBS.

 

[jwstewar]

Don't know if it is local or national, but dish subscribers in my are can no longer receive CBS.

It is local. DISH Network and LIN communications are in a fight over rates. We lost our local CW station - not that it really matters to us. We never really watched it - at least any more since they took According to Jim off around dinner time.

We had DirecTV through Pegasus from '99 to probably '03 or '04. Then went to DISH. Had them until '07 when the house burnt. They had a hard time finguring out why I wanted to cancel my service. Told them the house burnt so I didn't need TV service. They sent a box for me to sent the old receivers back to them. I was able to find them in the rubble. They were dripping with water had stuff on and in them. I put them back in the plastic to "protect" them and sent them back. Didn't hear any more from them about it. During the winter while living in a house trailer in the driveway, we just used an antennae and received the local channels. Moved into the new house, used the same antennae and TV and couldn't pick up any channels. Researched both DISH & DirecTV again, and DISH came out to be just a bit cheaper. Went with DISH HD/DVR on the main TV and standard TV on 3 other TVs. I've actually split this signal out to about 7 TVs now.

I actually just went through the cost analysis again a couple months back to see if it was worth switching. The first year DirecTVs specials make them cheaper, but then the second year, DISH catches back up and ends up being cheaper in the long run.

 

[Molerj]

I think they are both about the same. BUT, make sure you know what it is going to cost you. Lots of fine print. Recently added a second receiver, for Dish. Person said the cost would be an additional 6.00 per month, free installation. Got a bill with installation charge primary receiver charge, secondary receiver charge and a warranty charge. Had to make a phone call, talked to a foreign person & got a little irate, She connected me to another very nice lady that did make adjustments and now the charge is going to be 7.00 a month, she said the other information I got was wrong. This is for my 81 yr. old mother's house & if my mom didn't tell me about the bill, they would have gotten away with all the charges. Make sure you know what your going to pay.

 

[dgl24087]

I've been with Directv since 2000, and have been 99.9% trouble free. I've only had one issue, I upgraded to an HD DVR and the one that I received was defective. It would reboot continuously about 5 hours after it was installed. I called and the rep stated she would have a new one sent immediately. The only problem was that I was going to be 900 miles away on vacation at the expected arrival time. Couldn't get the rep to delay shipping, so when I got back home from my vacation, the DVR was on the front steps, where it had been for 4 days. Thankfully I live in a good community :thumbsup:. Anyway, boxed the old DVR up and sent it back, and have been troublefree since.

 

[dieselbeef]

im goin with free air broadcast hdtv...puttin up an antenna

 

[IXLR8]

im goin with free air broadcast hdtv...puttin up an antenna

I wish I could, since the gov't made tv better by going to a digital signal... I now get no signal at all where I live. Cable bills are killing me, Internet service and 2 digital box's with basic service is running $140/month. Dish and DTV for the 1st year would cut that by a good deal, but after 2 years I would be back to the same rates. I am considering doing 2 yrs of Dish, 2 years DTV... then going back to 2 yrs of Dish. I am going to start by calling TWC to see if they will do any better before I switch.