satellite or cable

[Great-Kazoo]

SO with the ever changing Tv market cost wise per month.
Direct TV or Comcast Cable & why? reception, cust svc etc. After speaking with Comcast about my $10 per month bill fluctuation, and their yeahhhh i guess we can review your bill attitude. I'm looking for another option. Unless Direct Tv is not as good as it looks on paper
i could care less about sports packages.
HBO's a must.

[al_g]

DirecTV has been great for me. I had a billing problem when I switched to HD receiver and it got marked as a new install and not a replacement.

Given a choice I'll take DirecTV for TV and Comcast for cable modem.

[Birddog1911]

DirectTV has been good for me as well. The only time there have been the weather outages that cable likes to try and point to, have been during the most severe thunderstorms or a couple of times in blizzards when the dish was covered in an inch of snow. Not that hard to go out and wipe it off.

I live in the country, so cable is not an option for me. But, I don't miss it from when I lived in town, either.

[Concealed45_1911]

DirecTV for me, I installed for them for a while and had to hear all the complaining about ComCast and Dish Net. From what I have heared DTV service and selection is alot better. The above prob with the bill was the installers fault, Im sure it was done on purpose so he would get paid more. they pay like $7 to do a upgrade, or $30 for an install. I live in the country and my dish is on the south side of the house. only once did I loose signal due to weather. Of course we lost power an hour later and didnt get it back for 3 days so it didn't matter.

[car-15]

+1 for directv.

[Fourthwind]

+2 DTV I will never go back to cable.

[theGinsue]

Well, I'm not going to try to stop the momentum of the DirecTV train here. I had DTV for a few years before moving to Massachusetts and I loved them. When I got to MA I lived in AF base housing and wasn't allowed to put up a dish so I went with Comcast (yeah, they're out there too).

With DirectTv I paid about $35/month and I had an occasional outage in heavy snow but I simply went outside and brushed the snow off and WHALLAH - I had reception again. (NOTE: They now make/sell heater units that stick to the back of th dish so this isn't required any more.)

With Comcast I paid over $100/month (that's just for the TV channels for 1 TV, not counting the internet) and had REGULAR outages which sometimes lasted for days - with no explanation or compensation from Comcast. Of course, they charged me a shiney nickel to install and I had to rent the converter box which I had to drive all over God's green earth to find the location to return it when I left so I wouldn't be charged $150.

When I moved back into my home here in CO I quickly got DTV with every channel I want to watch (and more, no premiums like HBO and no HD) and only pay about $65/month for 4 TV's. I don't have HD as I'm too cheap to pay more for it (it's available on a LOT of channels, if not all of them), but every channel is good/clear digital quality. The installation and equipment was FREE! (they had to install a connection in each of my 2 kids rooms upstairs as I didn't get that when the house was built - all FREE).

I've also checked out the Dish Network and found I have a better deal with DirecTV. If you choose to go the DirecTV route, give them the name of someone in your area who has DirecTv and they will credit both your account and that persons account with $50!

[HunterCO]

Direct TV for me I like them the best.[Coffee]

[Paradude54]

DVDs!

I ditched the cable a year and a half ago and haven't looked back. No rabbit ears, no satellite and no cable. My bill stays the same every month and I don't have to pay for a lot of crap that I could care less about. The ONLY way that I'd ever consider going back is if they offered it ala' carte'.

[kwando]

i'm biased because i work for EchoStar (formally dish).

Advantages of comcast - on demand. does not go out during heavy snow/rain.
Disadvantages of comcast - expensive. shitty UI and very complicated to operate.

Satellite - great for if you cannot get comcast. Cheaper. Dish has the best UI. Excellent HD quality. Dual tuners, etc.

[sniper_tim]

+1 paradude - didn't have cable, dish, or nothing for several years and enjoyed. Unfortunately, family won out and we have comcast now.

Comcast broadband is a must for me, work from home majority of the week!

Have considered going back and forth with comcast or dish or DTV, however I have tv's in every room plus garage, literally like 9 tv's (ironic considering we went from none to a whole house full). Anyway, no way dish or DTV would be cheaper with all those boxes and rental fees.

I have comcast digital package now with 1 reciever to get on-demand and premium channels in living room (~$120/month including broadband). All other TV's in house run off the cable from the wall and they get about 50-60 channels (basically the basic cable package), you don't need the box to get the basic channels. Also, you don't need the box to get HDTV, by law any channels currently broadcasting in HDTV, the dealers must pass through, so if your TV has built in digital reciever and is HD compatible, it will get local channels in HD without box! So, i don't pay extra for it like the dish providers require, and my LCD produces full HD at 1080p (you can switch back and forth between the original and HD channel to see difference).

happy watching

[Great-Kazoo]

Appreciate the info.

NOW since i forgot in my original post.. ON Demand. can i watch certain shows from an On Demand menu live Comcast?

funniest thing is. i called comcast and asked them to justify to me the approx $1200 per year i was paying them. The attitude of the cust svc rep was a lackluster @ best. his hey its a free market, do what you want, was not impressive. he didn't even offer me any incetives to stay with them. i'm going to call back tomorrow and see what another rep has to say.
my only issue is the possible unavailability of an On Demand style svc

thanks

[Elhuero]

never had experience with direct tv, between dish network and cable I liked cable better.

[TheSparkens]

I have had Dish from the start and I buy and install my own equipment. I love dish I have a large HD TV and have the best picture I have seen on a TV in HD.

[Asha'man]

I have Comcast cable, but I only have cable TV because it makes my internet faster. TV is pretty useless in general and I wouldn't pay any more for it than I do now ($15/mo on top of 'net). My gf has DirectTV and while it's kinda neat for watching movies when we want to, she pays way more for it than it's really worth.

[thedave1164]

we have comcast for high speed internet, and dish network for tv.

Had direct tv before, years ago, and while it worked, we do like dish better.