Satellite TV

[Silvic]

I have been with Direct TV for nearly two decades but was forced to do an upgrade to HD last June due to the deactivation of Direct TV's standard equipment and they could not repair my system. Since then I have had nothing but issues. Technically and administratively/billing. As a result I am evaluating whether to stay with them or jump to Dish.
You hear all sorts of things about Dish TV but not in any concise form or format.

So here is my request:

For anyone with Dish what have been your experiences? Both good and bad.

For anyone with Dish that changed to Direct TV. What caused you to move/abandon Dish TV and why?

For anyone that had Direct TV and moved to Dish were you happy with the move after the fact and why? Did you regret it and wish you had not moved?

 

[bigtiller]

The last I heard, dish and directv are wanting to partner up, but they are waiting on government approval.

If the sale is approved, your troubles may double.

 

[Ken45101]

We had Direct TV for a while until we could get out of their contract. Service was okay but nothing but lies, lies, lies over billing. They never met the price the salesman promised in writing, and every month there was an increase. We got very tired of fighting with them and the lies.

As soon as we could, we changed to DISH. Consistent and promised (promotional) price for 2 years. Then that ended and they wanted to go from $86/month to over $136. We said "no thanks" and cancelled. Although we are 60 miles from Cincinnati, we can pick up 30+ channels on a simple antenna mounted on a 20' mast. If we wanted more, a rotator or additional antennas would pick up a couple of more major cities and a handful of smaller ones.

$136/month * 12 = $1632 a year. Satellite isn't worth it to us.

 

[Ken45101]

The last I heard, dish and directv are wanting to partner up, but they are waiting on government approval.

If the sale is approved, your troubles may double.

That's a shame. Government permitted monopoly. Bad news.

 

[3Ts]

We have Dish, never had Direct. We've had it for a little over 4 years and haven't really had any trouble with them over the equipment or billing so haven't needed to talk to customer service. We can not get OTA. I think the TV programming is terrible and the commercials exceed the program content so we plan to cancel as soon as we can get Starlink and we'll stream what we want to watch.

 

[oosik]

I've had DISH for over ten years. No problems AND no other way to receive TV. It's either satellite TV or listen to the radio.

 

[Beeenvenue]

We’ve had direct for 15 years. Pricey but reliable and never an issue with what they say vs do.
My sister in law lives 2 miles away and has dish. Seems like every other month they are dropping a channel due to contract negotiations. Sometimes it is the main networks, sometimes a lesser known channel but always something.

 

[jyoutz]

I have been with Direct TV for nearly two decades but was forced to do an upgrade to HD last June due to the deactivation of Direct TV's standard equipment and they could not repair my system. Since then I have had nothing but issues. Technically and administratively/billing. As a result I am evaluating whether to stay with them or jump to Dish.
You hear all sorts of things about Dish TV but not in any concise form or format.

So here is my request:

For anyone with Dish what have been your experiences? Both good and bad.

For anyone with Dish that changed to Direct TV. What caused you to move/abandon Dish TV and why?

For anyone that had Direct TV and moved to Dish were you happy with the move after the fact and why? Did you regret it and wish you had not moved?

I fired Direct TV about six years ago because DTV kept jacking up the rates. I’ve been with Dish Network since then with zero issues and they’ve been very judicious about rate increases over the years. No complaints with Dish. The only time I’ve had service interruptions is when snow fills the receiver dish. I had them mount on a pole outside instead of on the roof, so a broom easily takes care of the snow issues.

 

[jyoutz]

We had Direct TV for a while until we could get out of their contract. Service was okay but nothing but lies, lies, lies over billing. They never met the price the salesman promised in writing, and every month there was an increase. We got very tired of fighting with them and the lies.

As soon as we could, we changed to DISH. Consistent and promised (promotional) price for 2 years. Then that ended and they wanted to go from $86/month to over $136. We said "no thanks" and cancelled. Although we are 60 miles from Cincinnati, we can pick up 30+ channels on a simple antenna mounted on a 20' mast. If we wanted more, a rotator or additional antennas would pick up a couple of more major cities and a handful of smaller ones.

$136/month * 12 = $1632 a year. Satellite isn't worth it to us.

I have Dish for $60/month and plenty of channels.

 

[Smokeydog]

Had direct tv since they started. Yes to all their frustrations. They wanted to upgrade but wouldn’t replace dish on wall on roof offset. I or them have replaced that dish 4-5 times in 25 years. Insisted a new dish be installed by my main entrance on front of house and more trees to block??? Butt ugly too.

Tried Starlink beta test last year, inconsistent connection. Spendy option too.

Spent the last 4.5 months working with ATT to get 2600’ of fiber to house. Now great internet and use DTV streaming. Save $80/mo and so much better. So long dish.

Telecoms have gotten billion$ from our taxpayer $$ to bring high speed internet to rural areas so keep checking. If you have a landline phone should be able to get fiber soon.

 

[Diggin It]

So here is my request:

For anyone with Dish what have been your experiences? Both good and bad.

For anyone with Dish that changed to Direct TV. What caused you to move/abandon Dish TV and why?

High rates. Poor, argumentative 'customer service'. Horrible company profile ... harrased a disabled employee for example. Repetitive programming. Limited choice of companies and formats. No Learning on The Learning Channel. No Arts or Entertainment on A&E. Nonsense on The Weather Channel. Proliferation of 'reality' shows.

I've had DISH for over ten years. No problems AND no other way to receive TV. It's either satellite TV or listen to the radio.

Radio is worse than TV as far as commercials. Turned it ALL off years ago. No regrets. I record my own music now from web sources or LPs I've digitized. My playlists run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and I rarely hear the same track more than once a month. No talk shows. No ads.

NO TV at all for close to ten years now. Don't miss it a bit.

I have Dish for $60/month and plenty of channels.

All owned and operated by the same couple of companies.

 

[Spike56]

Same here - DISH. DirecTV, owned by AT&T .... fired them and regret ever signing up with them. Have AT&T cell phone coverage - wish I did not ! My experiences with ATT have been poor to say the least. They constantly change prices and will take you for every cent they can.
My DISH satellite saves me about $30-$40 / month and I am not missing any channels I care about. So far (1 year) so good.

 

[techman]

We had dish for many years. They would try to raise prices every few years and it took several phone calls with threats to cancel to keep the old price, or just increase it a bit. Finally an increase came that they would not negotiate and it crossed our rubicon of $100/month, so we cancelled. We started streaming our TV and we get all we want (and more) for $ 65 a month. Looking back we should have made the change earlier. We have a number of friends that have also gone streaming vs satellite and cable. Some were over $150 a month for directv. All are happy streaming and saving money.

paul

 

[Oaktree]

High rates. Poor, argumentative 'customer service'. Horrible company profile ... harrased a disabled employee for example. Repetitive programming. Limited choice of companies and formats. No Learning on The Learning Channel. No Arts or Entertainment on A&E. Nonsense on The Weather Channel. Proliferation of 'reality' shows.

NO TV at all for close to ten years now. Don't miss it a bit.

TV programming was dumb 50 years ago too. The term "idiot box" has been around a long time, when did Newton Minnow declare TV a "vast wasteland", late 50s/early 1960s?
That having been said, even though we're not big tv watchers, it's something to do winter evenings. Can only spend so much time on TBN. Even some of the "reality" shows aren't too bad...kinda like Storage Wars and the Amazing Race, maybe a couple others.

We considered going to one of the satellite services back in '08 when we lost all OTA due to the digital conversion, never got around to it, then Time-Warner cable came down our road in '12 so we just went with that.
Thing I don't like about either of the satellite services is they give you an introductory rate good for one year, but make you sign a 2 year contract. Selection of "local" channels wasn't as good as TWC gave us either.

Spent the last 4.5 months working with ATT to get 2600’ of fiber to house. Now great internet and use DTV streaming. Save $80/mo and so much better. So long dish.

Telecoms have gotten billion$ from our taxpayer $$ to bring high speed internet to rural areas so keep checking. If you have a landline phone should be able to get fiber soon.

Nice if you can get it. Thing is, there's no ROI for wiring a large part of rural America. Fiber is expensive, and you need a certain subscriber density to make it worthwhile, even with government money.
Even where we are, both the telco and TWC ran fiber down our road, but the actual distribution is copper, not sure why. I asked the service tech one time when he was working on a pole in front of my house and got a vague answer.

 

[reb]

We had Dish for 20+ years. The receiver crapped out and we decided to drop it. Our town has fiber internet so we went for streaming. So far it works well and we ended up paying less than half what Dish cost.

 

[bigtiller]

We bought our first DVR in 98 from a TV retail store and signed up with DirecTV for the programing. We still have DirecTV but are on our 3rd DVR. They mailed us out 2nd & 3rd boxes. I think it is a good marketing plan to do that.

We have the opportunity to go with fiber optic but haven't made the switch yet.

 

[Sawyer Rob]

I've had Direct for about 10 years now, for the most part, they have been pretty good. I've never had a complaint big enough to make me want to change to anything else.

SR

 

[deserteagle71]

Radio is worse than TV as far as commercials. Turned it ALL off years ago. No regrets. I record my own music now from web sources or LPs I've digitized. My playlists run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and I rarely hear the same track more than once a month. No talk shows. No ads.

^ This is me also. Except that I also had a huge music library on reel to reel and cassette tapes in addition to the vinyl. Now all my music is stored on flash drives that I can plug in to my stereo at home or any of my vehicles.

 

[kcflhrc]

I switched from Direct TV to Dish about 3 years ago. The only reason I switched was pricing. Direct TV wants to suck you in with a 24 month contract and promotional pricing for only 12 months of that contract then they give you the bone on months 13 thru 24. Dish is a 12 month contract with pricing locked for that entire 12 months then of course you have to renegotiate which is a PIA.

 

[Oaktree]

^ This is me also. Except that I also had a huge music library on reel to reel and cassette tapes in addition to the vinyl. Now all my music is stored on flash drives that I can plug in to my stereo at home or any of my vehicles.

Yeah, same here. I do still listen to the radio for those times I want to hear new music and/or stuff I don't already have.