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direct tv or dish?


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I have dish network....I am pretty happy with it...comes with DVR...you get the NFL network but if you want Sunday Ticket you have to go direct TV. Dish network you only have one unsightly satellite dish as opposed to 2 with Direct Tv (One for locals and one for cable)...channel selection is about the same and prices are pretty close...it is alot cheaper than cable in my area 49.99 for high end lot of channel package on dish 69.99 with Comcast our local cable provider now. I have lost service twice with Dish in the last 4 years....once when ice built up on the dish (which I just knocked off with a stuffed T-Rex) and once when we had a torrential down pour for about 10 minutes. I hope this was helpful :)

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In Arizona with our Direct TV service we had 1 dish for both local and national programming but here in SD we need 2. Probably the biggest difference in Dish & Direct TV (besides the NFL Sunday Ticket) is Dish carries the Sirius radio channels while Direct has XM, so if you have a preference between the 2 satellite radio providers that may sway your decision.

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Other than the seasonal sports packages, the only other major difference is High Definition offerings. Dish includes the HDTV channels from the now-defunct VOOM network. DirecTV does not have them.

 

Dish has the following HD channels above and beyond what DirecTV offers:

 

A&E HD

Animania HD

Equator HD

Family Room HD

Film Fest HD

Food Network HD

GamePlay HD (cool to see demos and trailers of Xbox 360/PSP games as well as tournament coverage in HD)

Gallery HD

HD News

HGTV HD

Kung Fu HD

Monsters HD

NFL Network HD

Rave HD (All music concerts)

Rush HD

Treasure HD

Ultra HD

World Cinema HD

World Sport HD (if you're into soccer, rugby, etc. in high definition)

 

If you're into HD, the choice is a no-brainer...

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Other than the seasonal sports packages, the only other major difference is High Definition offerings. Dish includes the HDTV channels from the now-defunct VOOM network. DirecTV does not have them.

 

Dish has the following HD channels above and beyond what DirecTV offers:

 

A&E HD

Animania HD

Equator HD

Family Room HD

Film Fest HD

Food Network HD

GamePlay HD (cool to see demos and trailers of Xbox 360/PSP games as well as tournament coverage in HD)

Gallery HD

HD News

HGTV HD

Kung Fu HD

Monsters HD

NFL Network HD

Rave HD (All music concerts)

Rush HD

Treasure HD

Ultra HD

World Cinema HD

World Sport HD (if you're into soccer, rugby, etc. in high definition)

 

If you're into HD, the choice is a no-brainer...

Good point - since I'm not into HD I didn't even think of that. Direct is however advertising that they will soon be rolling out a package of 150 HD channels but I have not idea when that will happen.

 

I'd have to say overall we are very happy with Direct TV and have had it for over 5 years with very few problems. I think we had service interruptions twice last year when a couple big storms blew through but I also know a buddy of mine with cable has also lost service twice last year when some genius would cut a cable.

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I have Dish and am pretty damn happy with it.

 

:agree: Although I do prefer XM to Sirius, but other than that I like Dish better than Direct, having had both. My wife prefers Dish because the schedule fonts are easier to read onscreen than Direct's.

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  • 5 months later...

I had something nice happen last night. I had to call Direct TV because none of my local channels were working on our big tv but were working fine on the 2 other tv's. And of course I don't realize this until I'm trying to turn on the Vikings game and the channel is black. It could have been like that for weeks for all I know since we very rarely watch the local stations. So I'm on the phone with some friendly computer asking me to tell it/her what my problem is. Apparently the computer and I don't speak the same language because we just went around in circles for about 5 minutes and then she beeped at me and asked if it was working. I said no and she beeped some more (I'm serious here!) and asked if the problem was fixed. I said no again and we started back at square one. I finally started mashing buttons and got a real live person on the line who was very helpful and after about 10 minutes got the problem resolved.

 

He asked if there was anything else I needed and just on a whim asked if he had any specials on HBO for someone who has been a customer for many years. He kind of laughs and says "let me see what I can do". I didn't have my hopes up but he said he could give me HBO at regular price, add Cinemax at no extra cost, and give me a $10 credit on my bill for the next 12 months so I would be basically getting HBO and Cinemax for $3 a month extra! Very kind of him to do that and another reason I'll be sticking with Direct TV. :)

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I don't have cable or satellite. I'm guessing that I'm in the minority. It's just not worth what you pay when 90% of the channels are complete crap. The only way to get all of the channels you want is to get one of the biggest packages and then you're stuck with a couple hundred channels you'll never use. It's a bunch of bull. If I could design my own package I could probably get everything I wanted with 30 or less channels.

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every sat or dish i have watched always locks up and freezes at 1 point during a show or nfl game. it seems like any cloud cover or bad weather (and we get alot in kansas) will make dish or direct tv or any of those lose the signal. so we switched to digital cable and have a great picture and never lost a signal during bad weather. so im sold on cable.

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every sat or dish i have watched always locks up and freezes at 1 point during a show or nfl game. it seems like any cloud cover or bad weather (and we get alot in kansas) will make dish or direct tv or any of those lose the signal. so we switched to digital cable and have a great picture and never lost a signal during bad weather. so im sold on cable.

 

 

The EXACT same reason I switched from DirecTV to Digital Cable last year.. Got sick of the sattelite crapping out, then complaining to DirecTV and getting told They can't do anything about it.....

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I have digital cable and have never had any problems... sometimes the price difference between it and DirecTV or Dish makes us wonder if we should make the switch, but we haven't pulled the trigger on it just yet ...

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I don't have cable or satellite. I'm guessing that I'm in the minority. It's just not worth what you pay when 90% of the channels are complete crap. The only way to get all of the channels you want is to get one of the biggest packages and then you're stuck with a couple hundred channels you'll never use. It's a bunch of bull. If I could design my own package I could probably get everything I wanted with 30 or less channels.

 

 

This I agree with totally! Without going into much detail Check out the coolsats on Ebay:)

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I don't have cable or satellite. I'm guessing that I'm in the minority. It's just not worth what you pay when 90% of the channels are complete crap. The only way to get all of the channels you want is to get one of the biggest packages and then you're stuck with a couple hundred channels you'll never use. It's a bunch of bull. If I could design my own package I could probably get everything I wanted with 30 or less channels.

 

 

This I agree with totally! Without going into much detail Check out the coolsats on Ebay:)

 

Backed.....I have cable and it amazes me that when I'm at a loose end and fancy watching something there is hardly ever anything decent on over about 3 million channels

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If I could design my own package I could probably get everything I wanted with 30 or less channels.

Same here. I could easily fit all of my "must have" channels in a package of less than 30.

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My mother-in-law lives with us so we have to have HBO. She watches a lot of TV... we don't watch too much ourselves, so I would also be able to nail down my viewing habits with less selection, maybe 20 channels or so...

 

Food Network

History Channel

USA

TNT

Comedy Central

CBS

CNN

CNN Headline

Weather Channel

Spike

 

We have Dish Network, but I've had DirectTV as well... I HATE cable with a fucking passion, we had it for years and the reception sucked, the outages were frequent and unpredictable (at least with Sat TV you know if the weather's shitty it may go out), and it was more expensive (and yes, we had digital). Plus they raped us for the cable internet and their phone service SUCKED and 6 months after we cancelled they started billing us $2/month for service charges even though we didn't have the service any longer... that only took about 8 phone calls and 3 hours to fix...

 

The Dish RARELY drops the signal and it's got to be really fuckin' crazy out there for it to happen, and usually the power will go out shortly after at that point... :blink:

 

So yeah, I love my Dish Network, I'll never go back to cable, I fuckin' hate it. :soapbox:

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C-Band, the other 2 are not even close!

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  • 2 years later...

Sometimes it pays to bitch and complain...

 

DirecTV is in a pissing contest with Comcast regarding the Versus channel fees. So what Directv did was remove Versus entirely. The problem for me is that Versus is basically the only channel that shows hockey in the US. To rectify the problem I went ahead and purchased NHL Center Ice and figured I would get the Vs games on there as well. Wrong. I was pee'd and gave Directv a call and really gave it to those poor people that were unlucky enough to get me on the line. In the end though, they ended up giving me Center Ice for free (a $165.00 package). On the downside I will still be missing several games because of this little feud but at least some good came out of it. :)

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For the first time we just got DirecTV about 4 weeks ago.

It's like 200 channels (or more maybe) with lots of HD channels and it is $50 a month for 12 months, then $75 a month after that (which is a little much).

The HD looks amazing but really I only watch a handful of channels:

Science

Do It Yourself

History

Animal Planet

Travel

HGTV

Nat Geo

FSN Wisconsin for the Brewers games (a lot in HD so far)

Any channel the Packers might be on

 

So far it has been good. One dish for the HD signal, the free HD DVR required 2 cable runs which works great for recording stuff. The only issue I had was submitting my rebates. There system wouldn't accept it and the morons on the phone kept saying there was nothing they could do. I asked for a supervisor and the supervisor got it to work in a few minutes.

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I'm with Dish, and I ain't goin' nowhere. Why? My package doesn't exist any more, but I'm grandfathered in, so as long as I don't make any programming changes, I get to keep it in perpetuity

 

The package I have is "AbsoluteHD" which is basically all the HD channels and nothing else. That's fine for me, because I won't watch non-HD content if I can avoid it. Now, the downside is that as Dish adds NEW HD channels, I won't get them unless I switch to one of the higher priced packages, but it ain't worth it to get MTV-HD, BET-HD, Foxnews-HD, Nick-HD, etc. All the channels I normally watch are already there in HD (A&E, USA, TNT, Bravo, ESPN, etc.).

 

I just called up to get an additional HD box for a ghetto home theater I'm putting together, and if I am willing to commit to a 2-year contract (I was out of contract) the box and installation will be free; the only thing I have to do is pay the $7/month fee for a second box. No brainer, sicne I wasn't planning to switch anyway.

 

For 2 HD boxes + HD locals + AbsoluteHD + CinemaxHD = $49.99 net.

 

For anyone on Dish considering getting a DVR and thus having to pay the $6/month DVR fee per receiver, DON'T DO IT! You're hosing yourself. Dish has a little-publicized program where you can hook up an external USB 2.0 hard drive to non-DVR receivers, and pay a ONE-TIME $39.99 fee per ACCOUNT and you will have full DVR capability with no recurring charges.

 

Do the math. If you have 1 boxes with DVR capability, it pays for itself in 7 months. If you have 2 boxes, it pays for itself in 4 months. Plus, since it's a single fee per ACCOUNT, not per box or hard drive, you can use whatever size hard drive you want and upgrade on your dime and schedule; you're not limited to the internal capacity of the hard drive in the DVR unit itself.

 

Seagate 500GB external hard drives are about $70, 1TB externals about $110. Some people are reporting better luck with Western Digital drives. NOTE: it must be an AC-powered drive, not one that pulls power from USB.

 

You can also switch back and forth between hard drives. From a post at DBSTalk:

 

Some of us use four port USB switches and it makes it very easy to bulid up a nice HD library and keep things organized. On one receiver I have 4 drives, one for HD movies and series (750 GBs), one for SD movies (500 GBs), one for the grand kids shows (120 GBs) and one for "misc." programs (250 GBs). The other receiver has a similar external hard drive setup. Next year I plan on upgrading the smaller drives (120 and 250) to 750 GBs or 1 TB drives (if DISH offically supports 1 TB drives then).

 

Dish only "officially" supports hard drive sizes up to 750GB, but folks at satelliteguys.us report success with current 1TB and 2TB drives (although success varies by brand).

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I'm with Dish, and I ain't goin' nowhere. Why? My package doesn't exist any more, but I'm grandfathered in, so as long as I don't make any programming changes, I get to keep it in perpetuity

 

The package I have is "AbsoluteHD" which is basically all the HD channels and nothing else. That's fine for me, because I won't watch non-HD content if I can avoid it. Now, the downside is that as Dish adds NEW HD channels, I won't get them unless I switch to one of the higher priced packages, but it ain't worth it to get MTV-HD, BET-HD, Foxnews-HD, Nick-HD, etc. All the channels I normally watch are already there in HD (A&E, USA, TNT, Bravo, ESPN, etc.).

 

I just called up to get an additional HD box for a ghetto home theater I'm putting together, and if I am willing to commit to a 2-year contract (I was out of contract) the box and installation will be free; the only thing I have to do is pay the $7/month fee for a second box. No brainer, sicne I wasn't planning to switch anyway.

 

For 2 HD boxes + HD locals + AbsoluteHD + CinemaxHD = $49.99 net.

 

For anyone on Dish considering getting a DVR and thus having to pay the $6/month DVR fee per receiver, DON'T DO IT! You're hosing yourself. Dish has a little-publicized program where you can hook up an external USB 2.0 hard drive to non-DVR receivers, and pay a ONE-TIME $39.99 fee per ACCOUNT and you will have full DVR capability with no recurring charges.

 

Do the math. If you have 1 boxes with DVR capability, it pays for itself in 7 months. If you have 2 boxes, it pays for itself in 4 months. Plus, since it's a single fee per ACCOUNT, not per box or hard drive, you can use whatever size hard drive you want and upgrade on your dime and schedule; you're not limited to the internal capacity of the hard drive in the DVR unit itself.

 

Seagate 500GB external hard drives are about $70, 1TB externals about $110. Some people are reporting better luck with Western Digital drives. NOTE: it must be an AC-powered drive, not one that pulls power from USB.

 

You can also switch back and forth between hard drives. From a post at DBSTalk:

 

Some of us use four port USB switches and it makes it very easy to bulid up a nice HD library and keep things organized. On one receiver I have 4 drives, one for HD movies and series (750 GBs), one for SD movies (500 GBs), one for the grand kids shows (120 GBs) and one for "misc." programs (250 GBs). The other receiver has a similar external hard drive setup. Next year I plan on upgrading the smaller drives (120 and 250) to 750 GBs or 1 TB drives (if DISH offically supports 1 TB drives then).

 

Dish only "officially" supports hard drive sizes up to 750GB, but folks at satelliteguys.us report success with current 1TB and 2TB drives (although success varies by brand).

Very interesting! I wonder if that kind of setup would work with Directv receivers...

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Very interesting! I wonder if that kind of setup would work with Directv receivers...

 

You can hook up an external USB drive to a DirecTV DVR to expand internal storage, but you cannot add DVR functionality to a non-DVR receiver with DirecTV.

 

The allure of this to me is (1) circumventing the monthly DVR fee, and (2) not having to get new receivers, since my current receiver is not a DVR.

 

Very consumer-friendly on the part of Dish, in my opinion.

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