Directv VS Dish

[93 venture]

Im looking at making the switch over to Dish tv, but i know nothing about them, i been with Directv for over 15 years and never had Dish, just looking for some input, pro and cons on dish. they have a good deal going on right now with HD and Dvr's and it last for 2 years, after that its the same cost as direct, but i'll have a beter system.Thanks

[Eck]

All I have is cons...........

Every time it rains you loose the signal. When a nasty storm is approaching such as tornado activity in your area, and if it begins raining, the signal goes out and you have no way of watching the local news.

I hated ours. Maybe they got better over the last 10 years, but many around us got rid of their dish..

Maybe the link below may provide you some answers....

http://dish-cable.com/cable-vs-satellite.htm

[GAWildKat]

Eck's right. However, I have Cox. And because most if not all cable companies get their broadcast from satellite feeds, they can be prone to signal outages caused by weather too. But it has to be extremely severe weather to disrupt a cable signal. The only time I lost signal while using Direct, it was a severely stormy day that likely affected the cable company as well.

 

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[Flyinfool]

The farther south you are the less likely you are to loose signal during storms. The satellite is located over the equator and approximately lined up with the center of lower USA, so farther south is closer to the satellite, AND the angle is steeper so there is a lot less atmosphere for the signal to go thru where it can be interfered with by storms.

As far as Direct vs Dish, they will both loose signal at the same time in the same storm. They are both terrible to work with when you have a problem.

It is most likely that when you call to cancel Direct, they will match the offer from Dish.

I doubt there is much if any difference in picture quality.

[garyw]

Some years ago I had Diretv, my in laws had Dish. We were about 12 mile apart. When it even looked like rain they would have problems even after many times of having the dish adjusted with no improvement. Yes, I would sometimes lose signal but it had to be a very bad storm. I now have Uverse from AT&T and am very happy with the fiber optic delivery.

[MiCarl]

We used to have Dish (long, long ago). I was one of their first customers and the deal was I bought the equipment, installed it myself and they gave me the first year of programming for free. It rarely went out and when it did you knew that there was really heavy weather (storms or big snow). The outages were always brief.

 

Back in those days there was one satellite and I had my dish very precisely aimed. I believe now there are multiple birds and the dish is shaped to receive signals from all of them. I'm not sure if you can get the precise aim I had with the new set up.

 

We ditched Dish when the cable company offered a very sweet deal to give them my old Dish equipment. When the youngest left for college I dropped the cable and went back to the antenna. Now I save a fortune and can find out there is nothing good on in a few minutes rather than going through hundreds of channels to find out there is nothing to watch. A sports fan might feel differently though.....

[cowpuc]

Dont know squat about Dish TV stuff, always been a free TV antenna kinda guy. Will say this though, I had a chat with our phone provider repair guy (came for some service work and company made em tell me about their "TV" offerings) about all the "Streaming" stuff.. He was saying that things like "Ruku?" are having a big effect on the whole market - his words not mine.. I do know this though, if I were gonna go looking for some kind of TV provider I would definitely figure out what the heck he was talking about long before I signed any kind of long term contract with anyone.. Be kind of cool to end up with some super high speed internet system that allowed me to do everything thru it :bikersmilie::bikersmilie:

 

 

 

As soon as this thread gets some time on it (being fair to @93 venture and not be an obnoxious hi-jacker) I am gonna hi-jack this thread and tell you guys about my antenna ordeal..

[Flyinfool]

A lot of people are going back to over the air antennas.

I used to do installs for a few local stores.

Maybe time to get back to that.

[Beach Bum]

I was with Dish last year when they had their big fight with FOX news and dropped them from the lineup. Well after about two weeks of no Factor I called DISH and cancelled my service (I was out of contract so it cost me nothing). I signed up with AT&T for their U-Verse and it was awful. I didn't like the channel package, the on-screen guide, the controls and I had been with DISH for so long that I had their channels memorized. Part of the deal with U-Verse was no contract because I was already with them for my internet and a $250 Visa gift card for signing up. Now the good part.... Three weeks later Dish settled their dispute with FOX and the send me a letter with an offer inside. For the inconvenience of switching providers they would give me...

 

An upgraded package for $49 a month.

No contract.

Free installation.

Free HBO, Showtime etc.

Free HD for life.

And a $750 gift card.

 

:mo money::mo money:

 

I cancelled my AT&T U-Verse and went back to Dish. Got all the swag including the $750 Visa gift card. Two weeks later my AT&T $250 Visa Gift card came in the mail. Not bad, made a cool $1000 for switching providers for 3 weeks. And now I get NFL channel for free in HD.

[yamagrl]

We have the greatest luck with dish. Watch it on my tablet, phone, etc. Occasionally lose signal but I watch most things pre-recorded on the DVR anyhow (no commercials). I kind of boycott commercials on paid TV and the dvr allows me to skip them.

 

Go Dish

[Freebird]

I too have had both Dish and DirectTV. A couple of years ago, Armstrong Cable entered this area and strung all new fiber optics. I had Dish for TV and Frontier had taken over Verizon which I had for my DSL service. My experience with Frontier was terrible. Though everything was supposed to be the same, my Internet service got worse and worse. I dropped Dish and Frontier and Armstrong installed their fiber optics for TV and Internet. It has probably been the best I'ver ever had.

 

I still have a satellite on the guest house. Had DirectTV there and was never pleased with it. Equipment, on screen menus, none of it was as good as Dish. Had it taken out and Dish installed there and have never looked back. For our uses, Dish was much better than DirectTV.

 

Yes, you can lose your signal if there is a really bad storm but it never happened often. I can't say that I've ever had a weather related outage with Armstrong cable...in fact...I've had no outages at all in almost 3 years now. I don't think that weather affects cable as much as it does satellite TV. Though I'm sure that they get their signal from a dish also, it is likely a much larger dish and is not affected nearly as quickly as the small dishes.

[93 venture]

Way back before Dish and Directv was around we had the old 10 foot dish and it work really good, only time it would loose signal was in the early spring, some solar flux or sometime like that would mess with it for like 10 minutes a day. it had a rotor on it and you had to move it to diffrent satlites for more chanels. i think we had about ever chanel you could get back then for like 39 bucks a month.

[garyw]

Way back before Dish and Directv was around we had the old 10 foot dish and it work really good, only time it would loose signal was in the early spring, some solar flux or sometime like that would mess with it for like 10 minutes a day. it had a rotor on it and you had to move it to diffrent satlites for more chanels. i think we had about ever chanel you could get back then for like 39 bucks a month.

 

That brings back memories! I had one also back in 83 or 84.Itwas great, you could get direct sport feeds and see behind the comercials without the comentaters not to mention free premium channels and feeds from across the country! There was the continuing upgrades to polar rotor motors and feed horns but that was kind of like a hobby.

[djh3]

That brings back memories! I had one also back in 83 or 84.Itwas great, you could get direct sport feeds and see behind the commercials without the commentators not to mention free premium channels and feeds from across the country! There was the continuing upgrades to polar rotor motors and feed horns but that was kind of like a hobby.

OH yea man. WE had one of those when we lived in Oklahoma back when thats what you had to have to get anything besides ABC and PBS. So we had the big dish and saw all the NASCAR races live feed and football games. Kind of wild what the camera guys would look at while on commercial break.

So on to the dish vs direct. Back a year or so ago I was ready to 86 the cable as it seemed they kept going up and up. So got a flyer in mail or something and one of the 2 had a good rate for their lowest tier. The available channels in which ever package you choose price wise may sway you. Reception wise I think they are about the same. For me it would cost more than my cable package I have to get the channels we want. As far as local TV for weather alerts or whatever you can just get an HD TV antenna for pretty cheap and that should take car of severe weather.

[DragonRider]

I have Dish now and its a vast improvement over Charter Cable, cheaper also, they are also chepaer than Direct, I compared and they beat Charter and Direct by aprox $50.00 a month, my charter used to go out all the time in storms, Direct does it sometimes too, but not near as much as Charter did. Also Charter had awful customer service................Dish customer service is very good.

[tufftom4]

I had Direct for many years living on a boat and there billing practice for over charging killed me now I have dish I have never had a problem and it goes out a lot less and it is cheaper for the same channels.

[BigLenny]

Yes, both Dish and Direct TV will experience outages when the weather gets severe and a heavy rain, but there is a solution for when that happens. Get yourself an HD free tv antenna and hook it up to your tv. When your satellite signal goes out, switch the input over to the free tv antenna and watch anything on the major channels.

 

Simple.

[etcswjoe]

We have had Dish for 16 years and have had no major issues and great customer service, however I am tired of paying for stuff I do not watch so I am getting ready to drop it and go strictly over the air and streaming.

 

If you go Dish, tell them one of these folks referred you and both of you will get $50 bucks.

[videoarizona]

Yes, both Dish and Direct TV will experience outages when the weather gets severe and a heavy rain, but there is a solution for when that happens. Get yourself an HD free tv antenna and hook it up to your tv. When your satellite signal goes out, switch the input over to the free tv antenna and watch anything on the major channels.

Simple.

 

 

Actually, you don't need an HD antenna. Any good old VHF/UFH antenna that used to work back in the analog days for your area...will still work today. I dusted off my large roof top antenna from 25 years ago and it's grabbing local Tucson channels over 40 miles away! Radio Shack and others might argue about this but the only thing that's changed is the signal is now digital instead of analog. That plus some stations had to re-align their frequency due to swapping of channels. It's still VHF or UHF carriers.

Also...still against the law for any HOA to refuse to allow you to use a TV antenna.

[BigLenny]

Actually, you don't need an HD antenna. Any good old VHF/UFH antenna that used to work back in the analog days for your area...will still work today. I dusted off my large roof top antenna from 25 years ago and it's grabbing local Tucson channels over 40 miles away! Radio Shack and others might argue about this but the only thing that's changed is the signal is now digital instead of analog. That plus some stations had to re-align their frequency due to swapping of channels. It's still VHF or UHF carriers.

Also...still against the law for any HOA to refuse to allow you to use a TV antenna.

 

Well, there ya go. I didn't know that. I was thinking HD because thats what I bought for my HD TV.

[videoarizona]

Yikes! Hope you don't feel bad...a lot of people don't know this.

 

The only caveat to using antennas these days is how far the station is from your home. The old analog days, fringe reception was snowy but possible. Nowadays, the digital signal simply drops. The FCC calls the new stuff "progress". Well, I know a number of engineers that disagree with that. Yea it's a better picture, but very difficult to get in a city, in the car or from far away. (one of the reasons the old large antennas work so much better than any of the new ones). Once again, the FCC chose the wrong transmission format. Sigh...

[cowpuc]

Also might add,, I remember trying to use those little rabbit ears on the old Black n White,,, kinda sorta worked ok (like watching in a snow storm LOL).. We now have one of those little 30 dollar - electric "boosted" square plastic antenna's (things like 12 inches square and 1/4 inch thick) that does an AMAZING job!! Got a 40' tower laying on the ground out back with a rotor on it that I picked up to install.. Thinking now I am just gonna forget the tower and let the little pad do its thingy..

[cowpuc]

Yikes! Hope you don't feel bad...a lot of people don't know this.

 

The only caveat to using antennas these days is how far the station is from your home. The old analog days, fringe reception was snowy but possible. Nowadays, the digital signal simply drops. The FCC calls the new stuff "progress". Well, I know a number of engineers that disagree with that. Yea it's a better picture, but very difficult to get in a city, in the car or from far away. (one of the reasons the old large antennas work so much better than any of the new ones). Once again, the FCC chose the wrong transmission format. Sigh...

Glad I aint the only one that has noticed that same thing David,, use to be that a person could at tune a little to watch all kinds of stuff "in the snow" if ya had to.. Now aday's its all or nothing so to speak - me thinkin we got sheesh kaboobed.. Another thing,, how the heck do those TV Stations that are right on the line get the commercials to play when the TV show broadcasts wont.. Almost like they boost the output just a little xtra just for the commercials - pretty crafty if that's the case

[93 venture]

Well on monday dish will be installed, i wonder if the dish points in the same position or direction

[uechi kid]

Late to the party (as usual). We have had Dish for about ten years with very few issues. I have look at other services but haven't found any that match cost and customer service. They do however seem to be a bit behind in the technology area.