Dish TV or Direct TV ?

   / Dish TV or Direct TV ? #11  
Well, I've got a different outlook on Direct TV. I'd rather have a hangnail than to have Direct TV. I've worked construction a lot of my life so I know a bit about liars, and the people at Direct have all the liars I've ever seen or heard of beat hands down. It would take a month for me to explain but They have lied to me so many times their nose now reachs to the moon.
Whatever they tell you the bill will be, then double it and add tax, and then next month it will go up again, and if you call to ask the time of day it will extend you contract for 347 years or cost you 3 million bucks to get out of it.
Really, from day one they have lied to me on the price and on their so-called discount packages.
Last month the main reciever quit working, just a blank screen and the power button would not stop blinking so I called them. The lady that I talked to made me spend an hour chasing wires that had worked fine the day before. I asked her if she suspected that someone broke into my house and rerouted the wires over night. She finally said she would send a service man out but it would cost me 149.00. I explained that it was their equipment that I was renting and it went bad through no fault of mine and I would not pay a service charge to have them fix something thar they owned. She relented and said she would sent me a new reciever, but I would need to return the old one to them. When I got it from fed-ex 3 days later it had a paper in the box that said if the old unit wasn't returned in 7 buisness days from the date I talked to her there would be a 470.00 charge added to my bill. I returned the old one on the same day, but will forever hate Direct TV. hope they go bankrupt myself, later, Nat


I've had both dish and direct tv and this was the type of crap I experienced with dish network. Dish network lures you in by saying 24.99 per month for 10 months, then they don't give you the discount unless you call and raise cain. Then sure enough same thing the next month. I went round and round with them till my contract expired. I made sure my account was cancelled asap after my 18 month contract. I am as against dish network as it sounds you are against direct tv:D
I didn't have any problems with direct tv, but I'm sure the quality of service depends on location:confused:
 
   / Dish TV or Direct TV ? #12  
I've had DTV just about since it was invented and have had no real problems. But my receiver is so old and outdated now that the menu doesn't show all the PPV channels. The same thing happened to my daughter so she called DTV and explained the problem and they told her she needed a new receiver and told her how much it cost. She explained to them that she could get four free receivers etc from DISH. They sent her four new receivers and remotes.

That's what I plan to do when I upgrade to HD since Dish offers all the equipment free. DTV charges for the upgrade on the receiver. When I look for prices in trying to make a decision I look past the special and compare what I'll be paying when the deal is over.
 
   / Dish TV or Direct TV ? #13  
I have had DishNetwork for 12+ yrs. When I have looked to change to Direct, it is always way more expensive. Another difference, is Dish allows you to own your own equipment, so you don't have to pay the rental fee every month. Direct absolutely makes you rent the equipment, and that price is in addition to the service price they quote. Dish does offer rentals also. When either offer "free equipment", you have to pay a monthly rental, at least you did the last time I checked into it.
I prefer to own all my own equipment. It did drive Dish nuts when I bought an HD DVR and didn't subscribe to the HD service. I bought it for the amount of record time it offered. Dish and Direct both broadcast in digital, so the picture quality for me doesn't matter between non HD digital and HD digital. It bugs me that they charge for HD service at all. The programming is all available in HD, and eventually they both will discontinue non HD service as soon as the number of non HD receivers in service becomes low enough to force the switch.
As far as satellite location, I thought they both flew around 110 and 119.
 
   / Dish TV or Direct TV ? #14  
Aren't they both owned by the same European holding company? I thought I read that in the paper several years ago.
 
   / Dish TV or Direct TV ? #15  
We just switched from DTV to Dish. There was nothing wrong with DTV but they cancelled bull riding and it made my wife mad. So now we have Dish. It is cheaper by about 20 USD/month for the similar package. The receivers are better than DTV though. Both are dual so we can watch four different channels. One of the receivers has RF remotes so they work trough the walls so the receiver can be in different room than the TV. The digital recorder can record, if I am not mistaken, about 30 days of HDTV. It has 30 sec skip forward feature so if you are bothered by commercials record the show and then watch it with 15 or so minutes delay and when commercial shows up press a button and it will skip 30 sec forward.
 
   / Dish TV or Direct TV ? #16  
you do know they are both owned by the same company now right?
 
   / Dish TV or Direct TV ? #17  
The primary consideration in choosing between direct and dish is the programming package contents and prices.
You can go to their websites and d/l comparisons within their company. When I looked, direct was heavy in sports packages. They played dirty too telling their retailers, like radio shack, that they would be dropped if they started selling dish (or echostar as it was called at the time).
If you have limited view of the sky, it behoves you to determine which satellites that you need to see. You may need to use two or three satellites. All of the satellites are positioned over the equator so it's a lot rougher for those north of the Canada border.
Finally you need to determine which hardware that you want. You can rent but there are places (like dishking.com) where you can buy your hardware.
My choice was dish, the basic programming package, a pvr recording controller and two single satellite dishes. If you ignore the pay per view, shopping and religious channels, that still leaves me with 63 channels to watch. Sure there are others that I woldn't mind having, but I don't want to pay a premium for them.
 
   / Dish TV or Direct TV ? #18  
We had Dish for about 4 years until they no longer carried one of the local stations. Something about the station/network wanting a 75% fee increase or something. We waited a few months and they never settled on a new contract or whatever so we moved to Direct. For the most part the programming is the same. Personally I think the software for the menus etc. is better/ more mature on Dish. The Direct software just doesn't seem as polished/easy to use... maybe it's just me.

One of the guys that works for me just upgraded to HD with Direct. Instead of calling regular Customer Service he called the 'disconnect' line. This got him to a 'Retention' agent.... where he explained they were going to get a much better deal from Dish and not have to pay $$$$ to replace receivers etc. etc. .... so Direct sent a tech out to upgrade everything for free. The tech apparently had to upgrade the wiring as well, spent 6 hours at his house :eek:
 
   / Dish TV or Direct TV ? #19  
you do know they are both owned by the same company now right?
Dish Network is owned by Dish Network Corporation. Dish was formerly under the umbrella of Echostar, but Echostar was spun off and is now just the satellite and technology division. DirecTv is owned by DirecTv Group (formerly Hughes Electronics), which is controlled by Liberty Media, also a major investor ($530 billion) in Sirius XM.
 
   / Dish TV or Direct TV ? #20  
Eddie,

IF you are a NY Yankees baseball fan then you have no choice but to go with Direct TV. :mad: Dish does not carry YES network. I have had both Dish and Direct TV and both are OK.

If you like to deal, call Direct TV and tell them you will be switching to Dish because of a better deal and get switched to a 'Retention Agent". I got free HBO, Star and several other movie channel plus a $10 a month credit for 1 year.

As far as the new HG TV is concerned, the best time to buy is Black Friday. A lot of retailers will have them for sale with great discounts.

Web sites like these will have all the deals listed as well as what is the best buy.
Coupons, Deals, and Cash Back Shopping - FatWallet.com
Black Friday @ GottaDeal.com - 2009 Black Friday Ads - Official 2009 Black Friday Deals Site

By the way I shop on line on Black Friday no way I am I standing in line at 4 AM. I got both of my HG TV's on line.
 
 
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