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.