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Direct TV vs. Dish Network?

alb52

alb52

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Joined
Apr 11, 2007
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have one of these?
prefer one over the other?

debating canning our cable and heading to satellite tv....
 
We had to go with satellite because the local cable wasn't in our development yet - not enough houses. We went with Dish because they were offering the best rebates at the time, but in hindsight it was a better option - there's a couple of different larger towns here, ours and one about an hour away. Turns out Dish airs our local news, and Direct TV offers the other town's, plus there were a few other channel options we get with Dish we wouldn't have gotten with Direct TV. Other than that though, they are essentially the same, and from what I've heard, have the same issues. I'd do some research on channels, then find out which one is offering a better deal right now.
 
I've had both in the past, I preferred one over the other because they had a partnership with TiVo so their DVR was a TiVo. I can't survive without a DVR, and I prefer TiVo.

The thing that drove me nuts about having satellite, though, was that I would lose the signal on cloudy/rainy days. Which was a real PITA when I'd sit down to watch something I taped and find out that it was nothing but dead air. That. Drove. Me. Insane. Also when there was severe weather, good luck getting an update on the TV. LOL

But the savings was great. Right now I pay much more for cable, but I love our cable Internet (25mB service, baybeeee!) and you need to have at least basic cable to get it. So we have digital cable, Internet and phone all bundled together through them. One (high) bill per month. I think it costs us about $160/mo. :: gulp :: (And I have a standalone TiVo, which I pay for separately and own ... so I'll never be without TiVo again!)
 
we have direct tv - because my husband wanted to get the NFL sunday ticket (can watch ALL the games - LOL) ... he mentioned the other day that the direct tv/nfl monopoly is over now and that you don't need direct tv to get that anymore (or at least you can get the 'redzone channel' other ways) ... one thing i don't think is great with direct tv is their on-demand - we have to have a special little box for it and it's not as great as i had with our cable, but, we survive :) we are moving this summer and i think we are going to check out ATT U-verse (or whatever it's called ... ) ...
 
Peppermint said:
The thing that drove me nuts about having satellite, though, was that I would lose the signal on cloudy/rainy days. Which was a real PITA when I'd sit down to watch something I taped and find out that it was nothing but dead air. That. Drove. Me. Insane. Also when there was severe weather, good luck getting an update on the TV. LOL
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We have issues when its windy, but only to the High Def channels - they cut in and out, but if you switch to a regular channel it comes in perfectly clear. We have two dishes - one for regular and one for high def, so the HD one must be more sensitive to movement
 
We had Dish for a while and now have Direct TV. I am not necessarily in love with either one and when our contract runs out, we will most likely be looking at ATT U-verse.

DVR is a must at our house too. I loved on Dish that there was just one box and it would record and you could watch it on either TV. With Direct TV, you have to have a DVR box for each TV and so we only opted for one and we can't pause tv or watch recorded stuff in the bedroom. I didn't realize this when we switched or we might not have.

If you can get U-verse where you are, you might want to check into that, b/c they seem to have the best deals and no contracts!
 
We had DirectTV for years and then had a round of pretty bad customer service with them so we canceled and had just cable for a while. When we moved a couple of years ago..way out to the country, our only option was satellite so we went with DISH..I have say we have been more than pleased. I also like them b/c we can get local network channels through them which we could not do with Directv. And a few months ago when our 2 year contract ran out..they notified US to let us know we were eligible for the same incentives they were offering new customers..so we were able to get another free DVR for our bedroom so now we have 2 :). The only drawback is like others have said..when it's raining you lose signal which can be frustrating.
 
we have DirecTV right now and I MUCH prefer them over Dish. Only because the CS at Dish is AWFUL. They treated us terribly anytime we had a problem. Seriously. DirecTV is always very very nice and anytime we call for anything they give us free stuff. lol! We never had a DVR and our contract is up at DirecTV so the hubby called and asked if we could get a DVR and they told us it would be 100 dollars for each receiver we wanted. He told them no thanks and said that since our contract was up we would just change so we could get one for free. He was very nice and polite and not mad at all. They transferred him to someone else who gave us two free receivers, free movie channels and free DVR service for a year. lol! We just find them to be much more people friendly. :)

We get our local channels from directv....so you might just want to ask I guess since it seems so many others couldn't. We live out in the boonies in rural IN and we still get local channels so I don't know what the difference is.
 
We have AT&T Dish Network. We swapped for U-Verse at one time last year but didn't like it and had them replace our old DISH. It was my hubby that made the decision - I don't watch that much tv. I think he didn't like the fact that he couldn't pause 2 channels at once with U-Verse and we needed to have a box with each TV that we didn't like either. Right now we run both our tvs with one box.

bderby said:
We had Dish for a while and now have Direct TV. I am not necessarily in love with either one and when our contract runs out, we will most likely be looking at ATT U-verse.

DVR is a must at our house too. I loved on Dish that there was just one box and it would record and you could watch it on either TV. With Direct TV, you have to have a DVR box for each TV and so we only opted for one and we can't pause tv or watch recorded stuff in the bedroom. I didn't realize this when we switched or we might not have.

If you can get U-verse where you are, you might want to check into that, b/c they seem to have the best deals and no contracts!
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We've had both Dish and Direct. We really preferred Dish and only switched to save money with one of those 6 months discounted rates with direct. LOL.

That being said, TV is TV. It's all the same to me. LOL. We still prefer the Dish guide and favorites lists - it's just WAY easier to use with Dish. But Direct is ok. Their channel line ups are a bit different - Direct actually has quite a few channels that we watch that Dish didn't have for our package.

We had DVR with both - no Tivo with Direct so that must be an older thing. CS has been fine for us both places.

So really, I say go with whichever one has the best deals right now. :)
 
When we had satellite we had Dish b/c they had some soccer channel that DirecTV didn't. In the early days of our Dish ownership I thought our service was bad or something b/c channels were changing w/o reason. But then I figured out it was the neighbor's remote affecting our TV lol. I changed some setting and then it was fine.
 
meems said:
In the early days of our Dish ownership I thought our service was bad or something b/c channels were changing w/o reason. But then I figured out it was the neighbor's remote affecting our TV lol. I changed some setting and then it was fine.
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HAHAHAHA! The visual I have is cracking me up!
 
omgosh! We had a neighbors remote that did that to ours when we had Dish! LOL! It was really freaky! I would be watching something and then all of a sudden the channels would start flipping around...lol
 
we love and adore DirecTV. they have the most channels in HD and HD is my best friend. :luvya
 
I can't speak for your providers, because I'm in Canada, but I thought I'd just chime in and echo what others say about losing your signal with satellite. Even with a great sightline on ours, we would lose signal so much and it drove me crazy. Heavy rain broke the signal up all. the. time., and we get a LOT of rain here. I don't know about you, but I don't watch a ton of tv on a must see basis, but bad weather is exactly the time I will want to curl up on the couch and watch and that was exactly the time the signal would crap out. I'm a big hockey fan too (that's my must see TV) and when I'd lose signal during games it made me want to scream.

In the end we found it just wasn't worth it. Cable is competitive with satellite here anyway, and we have a package that includes our phone and highspeed internet. We'd get more HD with our old provider, I think, but that doesn't mean much to me when I don't get to watch them a lot of the time.
 
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