The time has come

[wroughtn_harv]

Comcast had an installer ring my bell last Tuesday a little after nine pm wanting to install digital boxes on my televisions.

I'm sure he left with the opinion that a old bear is one thing you don't want to wake up.

Then last night on my way home after a hard day my cell rings and there's another installer at my house wanting to install the boxes. No scheduling, no warning, just shows up and wants to do business.

But he wants me to help him get access to the back of my entertainment center. I'm dirty, muddy, got diesel on my jeans when means my wife is going to be chewing up nails and spitting out screws. I told them to take their cable and shove it.

If I'm going to have to get another remote and have another box over every television I want to see the options available.

I don't like Comcast. Them and their predecessors treated us out in Wylie like off colored step children that had severe acne. We received poor service, few channels, and paid the same rate as the city dwellers with zillions of channels. I'm the only one on this block with them.

But I've heard bad stuff about satellites too.

Tell me about it.

 

[PineRidge]

Harv I have DirecTV and I have no complaints. With the exception of a good hard rain I don't experience any outages. And even then it's only about 5 minutes max. The picture quality is excellent and the dish itself is a very small footprint. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[mikim]

$25 dollar radio shack antenna and for over 10 years in this house I've gotten 5 channels of garbage ....... why would I want more garbage? ... lessee - I can live with my 5 free stations just like when I was a kid ... or I can spend a lot of dough so I can pick which, of the 3 or 4 channels that are running the same show, channel of garbage to watch. .... pass .... although ... broadband modem will be nice .... wife needs it for work and guess what? .... can't get the broadband without taking at least the basic cable ..... /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gifsigh .. I'm stuck. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

 

[fivestring]

I've had DirecTV for 10 years now. I have no complaints.
If the satellite were to fall from the sky tomorrow, I'd do without tv before I went back to cable.

 

[MossRoad]

We have had DirecTV for 6 years. The quality of the picture is perfect. It cost $29.95 when we bought it and I think it is now $32.95 or close... anyway, still under $35.00. It recieves only one channel at a time, so if you want to watch two different shows at the same time(or watch one and tape one, or tape two, etc...) you have to get a second or third box. That tacks on an additional $5.00 per extra box. I've taken the video output and run it into a modulator and fed it into our home video distribution system, so I can flip any TV in the house to channel 4 and watch whatever is playing on the dish reciever. Helps when doing housework while important episopes of Sponge Bob are running /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

There are some really good deals on free equipment from both DirecTV and Dish Network.

Many people in my neighborhood have dumped cable for the little dish. More channels, better picture, more pay for view movies. And all for less price.

I've got to say that we really get our money's worth out of it. The history channel, discovery channel, and TLC are the most watched. National Geographic and Animal Planet, too. This is one product that I can definately recommend.

The downside is we live by the airport. If the wind is out of the south(rarely), the Fed X and UPS jets will disrupt the signal for a few seconds when they take off in that direction and cross the path between the dish and the bird in the sky. Happens about 2 times a year! But seriously, if there are large thunderstorms between the dish and the bird, the signal has cut out for about 15 minutes. But at that point, the storms are so bad that we should be in the basement anyway, not watching TV. Extremely heavy rain causes the same thing. Snow on the dish is a problem a few times a year. You can get a goretex boot that slips over the dish and the snow just slips off. One time the signal just stopped. I looked outside and a crow was sitting on the reciever arm of the dish. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif But compared to my in-laws' cable service, this stuff is way better. The cable drops out in just about every storm, the picture quality is lousy and they would have to pay extra to get access to digital cable and pay per view movie rentals. They pay more and have fewer channels.

Another consideration is local TV station access. Since so many people have cable, they forget that when the cable goes out, all they have to do is disconnect the cable at the TV, put in one of those little set top antennas and watch local TV for free. Well, with a dish, you can do the same thing with an A-B switch. The local stations are free, they've always been free, people just forget that they can get them for free. In larger market you can pay an additional $4.00 and get local TV on the dish, but unless you are in a place that you cannot pick up local channels, why would you pay for free TV? Something like 90% of the US population is in range to pick up local TV with a set top antenna. That's pretty good coverage.

I highly recommend this product to anyone considering it. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[JASTN70D]

We have had satellite about 3 years works good there are some outages as Pineridge said but there not bad or long. And as for the garbage you can customize the package to leave most if not all of it out. Much more friendly in that respect than cable. But you will have to have boxes on all TV sets or if you get fancy with your cabling and use the UHF ( I think it is called) remote type receiver you can use one box and control it anywhere in the house. Only can watch one channel at a time but on any TV.

 

[Bird]

Harv, when we moved back to town to an apartment, we got AT&T broadband internet and cable TV, and since I'd never had such, I paid extra for their "premium" installation (everything hooked up and working and it didn't take the installer long to do it), then Comcast bought it. Then we bought this little mobile home and I called to have our service moved, asked how much it would cost, etc. Of course, I physically moved everything. When the installer (young kid) showed up, he said he had to replace both boxes for the cable TV (I still don't know why, since the others were less than a year old and working OK), but he replaced both of them and then spent a lot of time getting them to work - had to call his office a few times, but finally got the TVs working. Then he said he also had to replace the modem for the internet service, and did, and then of course it didn't work, but he had a big book and two CDs that he gave me for me to complete the installation. I explained that it wasn't going to work that way and he told me that I hadn't ordered the "premium" installation; that if I wanted them to make it work, they'd have to send a different installer on another day and at extra cost. So I told him if it didn't work, I wasn't going to pay for it and he could just take all his equipment with him. So he called his office again and they tried to give him instructions as to how to do it, but he couldn't get the hang of using a computer keyboard. He worked at it over an hour, it got to be 5 p.m. when he was supposed to get off work, and he still never succeeded. So he finally got on the cell phones with a different installer who was a long ways off and due to get off work, also, and finally talked that installer into agreeing to come over here before he went home. So the young man said the other installer would be here sometime "this evening" and he wanted me to sign his work order so he could go ahead and leave. I told him I'd be glad to sign it . . . just as soon as it was working. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif He was not a happy camper, but he left. And about 30 minutes later, the other guy showed up, sat down at the keyboard (didn't use the CDs or book the first guy left), just typed a few keystrokes, and voila, in less than 2 minutes everything was working. /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

So, it's been OK now for 6 months. I think it's too expensive, but everything seems that way, and I've had a couple of occasions to talk to their tech support folks on their chat line and they were pretty good, so I guess you could say we're satisfied with Comcast, but not overly impressed. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[MossRoad]

Simple whole house video distribution...

Run two RG6 cables to each TV location in the house from a central(home) location, usually a closet or somewhere in the basement. Then you can use a combination of splitters, combiners and amplifiers at the home location to distribute the video with an even signal level all through the house. With that setup, you can output video from any location and watch it in any location in the house by using modulators to put the video signals on a channel of your choosing.

Want to watch a movie in the living room but the VCR or DVD player is located in the family room? No problem. Set the family room modulator to channel 50. Plug in a movie in the family room, go to the living room and flip the TV in there to channel 50... the movie appears in your living room(or on any TV in the house that is tuned to channel 50). /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif

 

[MikePA]

harv, I had DirecTV until a tree got big and blocked the signal (poor planning on my part)! I installed everything myself which included connecting 2 TVs to the dish, incorporating the satellite feeds into a digital recorder connected to each TV, etc. It will be a piece for cake for you to install. I bought everything online as well.

Recommendations
1. Install the dish so that trees, or anything else, wont grow up and block the signal.
2. Buy the dish that can pull in all the satellites, including the ones that handle the high definition signal. While you might not need it now, it will be a pain to do it later.
3. Each satellite box has to connect to a phone line. Get the satellite box that can translate CallerID. It was great being able to see who is calling pop up on the TV.

BTW, for people who have cable modems from Comcast...Comcast is sending out letters to people who they (Comcast) think are using too much bandwidth.

 

[tc35dforme]

Harv,

We have Directv...its our only option ( if you ignore the over the air snowy channels ). Our town has too few houses, and too many miles of roads to justify cable ( we do have small towns out here /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif ).

I'm happy with it. We run ( 2 ) boxes and get our local channels through space so our total with taxes and fees ends up around $ 45.00 / month.

I really enjoy the dozen or so science / nature / history channels...the kids really enjoy the disney and stuff...and the wife always finds that craft or home decotaing show she needs.

I like the option of getting news from many sources ( especially the BBC ) to hear a different slant on things.

We're happy with it, but then again we don't really have the cable option.

Most of our service outages are due to snow...we know we're in for a big clean-up when we wake up and there's no TV service. Snow is over the dish again !!! That won't be your problem !!!! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif