Dish TV or Direct TV ?

[Redneck in training]

This is somewhat off topic. When you buy big TV look for power consumption too. Plasma TVs are power hogs. You pay twice. First time for the power the TV uses and second time for AC that has to remove the heat from your house. I think LED are the best. Look for Energy Star logo.

 

[jinjimbob]

There isn't an LED tv, there are however LCD models that use an array of LEDs for the back lighting. LCD TVs require back lighting, plasmas do not as each pixel is individually lighted.

Plasma tvs are much better than LCD TVs, if the main item you want is picture quality.

 

[/pine]

With DTV you have to lease the equipment...

Not true...you can buy a compatable receiver on e-bay etc. and call Direct TV...they will activte it or send you an access card for it...done it many times.

Also dealing directly with them (DTV) there is no contract involved

 

[WarrenF]

That brings up something that's been overlooked so far...

If you go to a big-screen from a smaller set, you're REALLY going to notice the "pixelation" of DTV. Dish is not exempt from this either. That's one of my biggest pet peeves about both of these guys is how badly compressed the transmission is. On a big-screen, it's much more noticeable. On a big-screen where you've been watching an HD program, the adjustment to a compressed transmission is nearly unbearable.

You are up in the thumb of Michigan....You will have a different signal strength than Eddie who is more in the center of the country. Simply by the location as to where Eddie lives....he will have a "stronger" signal. The reason stronger is in quotes is because that is not the technically correct word but you would understand it.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Not true...you can buy a compatable receiver on e-bay etc. and call Direct TV...they will activte it or send you an access card for it...done it many times.

Also dealing directly with them (DTV) there is no contract involved

I stand corrected on this one.
When I had inquired with DTV, about 2 yrs ago, they told me I could only lease the equipment. I bought my dish 722 DVR new from dishdepot. I also have no contract involved since I own the equipment.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Please people.....of course you got upgraded to the dish 500 without having to lease. The dish 500 is at least seven years old. I suppose to clarify things I should have put a time frame on it....furthermore there has never been a lease on the reflector, think dish 500. Trust me, if you try to upgrade your receivers in today's market you will be leasing. I suppose all of the dealers and all of the business rules from Dishnet and Directv are simply bogus and you are the final authority......sheesh.

I'm just giving advice based upon my experience. check out Dishdepot.com
you can upgrade by buying, no contract either. They now have a DTV receiver you can buy and not lease.

 

[keegs]

Well...how about OTA?

Over the air broadcasts are in digital and high definition now and they're free. So many people tell me they pay $100 a month, have 400 channels and there's never anything on worth watching.

Since the conversion to digital, many stations are broadcasting on two or three channels now so there's more programming.

If you have broadband for your home computer then take it a step further and connect it to the TV. You can leverage your broadband connection for more programming...plus you can record.

We bought an HDTV 8 or 9 years ago and at the time the only way to get high definition was OTA. I bought the biggest antenna I could get and haven't paid a TV bill since. 100x12x8=it's not chump change.

It's worth a look.

 

[mjarrels]

We had dish years ago and switched to direct tv a few years ago. With direct tv, we are able to get 6 or 8 channels of abs/cbn from Minila Philippines so the wife can keep up on whats going on there.

mark

 

[Western]

We had Direct TV for about 5 years then switched to Dish, can't really tell a difference outside of customer service, Dish has been better for us.

We have been getting tired of the movie channels programing, HBO ect tra. been thinking about dropping the movie channels and going with Net flics for that, watch what I want for half the price. I do like the outdoor,history type channels so I would keep that portion.