Direct TV?

[BPTactical]

Whats your experience with them?
How is their bundle service-tv, phone, interwebz?
Pretty sick of CommunistCast and their antics....

[SideShow Bob]

No problems, just be aware of the price jump after the introductory price period expires.
pie have had less no service issues than Communist Cast. Only a few sever weather and two of the times I only needed to clear heavy snow off the dish.

[KS63]

No experience with their Bundle, but I was a satellite tv customer for 10yrs. Never any problem with the tv signal portion, but their CS sucks. We asked for a more competitive price and they basically said fuck off. Went with Dish and have been very happy.

[BigDee]

I've been very happy with them. Their On Demand service sucked but it's getting a lot better. My pricing has been relatively consistent with them. With Comcast every 3 months my bill would more than double and I'd have to call in to get the latest and greatest promo which would expire in another 3 months.

Right now we have the second best package and every English premium channel available on 5 TV's our bill runs $101 per month. If we still had Comcast the bill would be over $150 just for TV.

As far as bundling goes I'm not really sure. If you want the convenience of paying 1 bill every month I can see the value in bundling but if you want the best deals out there you need to shop each company and get the best deal for each service you need.

[Aloha_Shooter]

I've been a happy customer with DirecTV since 1999 with a break in the middle due to going overseas. I rarely have rain fade and the Whole Home DVR service is pretty nice (albeit a monthly payment you may not want). They have a much more stable price structure over time. The only drawback I see is that their bundled Internet provider is CenturyLink (Qworst).

[cofi]

Go dish

Direct tv for us went from 50$ per month to over 125$

Dish has taken care of us while they had a dispute with amc they paid for us to download episodes of breaking bad from amazon

[Rooskibar03]

No experience with Direct but if you go dish LMK and I'll get you a referral that'll save us each $50 bucks.

[jerrymrc]

There are ways but you need a friend. [Flower]

[Gman]

I've found that Comcast has the best Internet. I use ViaTalk (http://www.viatalk.com/) for my VoIP. They regularly have buy 1 year get the 2nd year free deals and happen to be running it right now.

Special 1 Day VoIP Sale!

Sign up for VoIP service today before 11:59 PM EST and pay only $189 a year with one year free! Thats only $7.87 a month for 2 years of unlimited calling! With 2 unlimited phone lines, free International calls* and 40 plus calling features this is one offer you don't want to miss!

I switched from DirecTV to Dish somewhere around 1990, so I can't help you there. I can say that the Hopper and Joey product is the best receiver tech I've ever had with Dish.

[Mtn.man]

Rabbit ears, little pc of foil.............

[gnihcraes]

DirectTV, been good to me for many years.

I need to call and see about unbundleing, I'll probably drop my land line at the house and various other things. I believe the bundle discount was only a couple dollars.

[gnihcraes]

Oh, and if you do go with satellite, put the dish down lower to the ground if you can, then it's easy to clean out the snow. If it's mounted on the roof of the house, good luck!

[electronman1729]

Had for 12 months and it sucked. Was "forced in to it" since it was the only provider at my old apartment complex. No On-Demand, horrible customer service, and we had a dish and was knocked over during a snow storm and it took over a week to fix.
Went to comcast later it was way better,but canceled it since i got sick of the rubbish on TV.

[jerrymrc]

Rabbit ears, little pc of foil.............

I have that. 18 channels is a far cry from the 4 I grew up with. I will say that if you are on the top of Pikes peak with just rabbit ears you get 47 channels. [Flower]

I just need to change my internet/phone package.

[sniper7]

Have had them for 4 years. Price jump after 2, call and complain and they will work with you. Always been happy with the service. If you go with them I'll top the dish offer and save us each 10 bucks a month for 10 months. Its almost like you owe me now!

[def90]

If you get the bundle service you will be dealing with Century Link not DirecTV. Another downfall is that bundle customers see ads in the onscreen guide just like Comcast customers do, as you scroll up and down in the guide every couple of lines is an ad, I don't see any ads as a direct DirecTV customer.

As far as DirecTV goes, I have been a happy customer since 1996..

[NFATrustGuy]

I recently cancelled my DirecTV service and switched to an Over the Air antenna. I'm in northwest Loveland and get all the Denver channels without an issue. I mounted the antenna in my garage in the attic. I probably have ~$300 invested in splitters and amplifiers, but I've got 3 TV outlets upstairs and 3 downstairs. All of them have crystal clear pictures.

The only thing I miss from the satellite service is the whole-house DVR setup. I tried to use an OTA tuner for the Mac Mini I have connected to my main TV, but the DVR software was terrible--useless because of audio sync issues. I recently purchased a TiVo Roamio DVR that works with an antenna. It's fantastic and every bit as good as the satellite DVR. I spent $200 for the TiVo and another $400 for lifetime service. All told, I have $900 invested in my OTA setup so my break-even point is approximately 9 months based on what I was paying DirecTV.

Of course all this assumes that you don't mind doing without the 500 channels available on cable. I find that I watch mostly network stuff and what isn't network is available via Amazon Prime ($70/yr)

For what it's worth...

Rod

[JMBD2112]

No experience with Direct but if you go dish LMK and I'll get you a referral that'll save us each $50 bucks.

It's $100 now, just did it

[hghclsswhitetrsh]

+1 for dish.

[spleify]

I like them they have been great

[Beprepared]

I've had a problem with my main box, the new automated service call scheduler has had me out of (full) service for almost 6 weeks. Plus, no BlazeTv. I'll try Dish after my contract is up.

[BigDee]

If you're a Costco member and you sign up at Costco you'll get an extra $10 a month off of your service plus a $200 Costco gift card. They are also offering the Sunday ticket for free for the remainder of the football season.

[waxthis]

[fyou] Directv........................Still nothing but problems and their CS sux!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ReadMe (https://www.ar-15.co/threads/68037-Directv?highlight=Directv)

[StagLefty]

As far as bundling goes I'm not really sure. If you want the convenience of paying 1 bill every month I can see the value in bundling but if you want the best deals out there you need to shop each company and get the best deal for each service you need.

^ This.

[revor]

We had a bundled mess of DTV, home phone and internet.. The servive work but the cost was stupid. Basic cable, no HBO etc bundled was $180 per month. I've been a customer for 15+ years, I figured I'd call and see what they could do about the cost o fthe TV, they pretty much told me to pound sand so I quit them. I mad a deal with "what ever the phone company calls itself these days" for cheap Internet, ditched the home phone and the DTV. I now pay $25 for internet, bought a Roku Streaming device and a digital antenna after the initial investment of about $200 I now pay netflix to stream most everything you get on cable, the wife is a member of Amazon Prime which streams other stuff, and there's Vimeo etc,etc Total monthly now is less than $50 and I couldn't be happier. If there is something you absolutely have to watch in my case that would be new Breaking Dad or Walking Dead which I pay $2 for keep in mind this is for the latest episode. Ala carte is good for my wallet.

[kawiracer14]

I had DTV for 2 years bundled with Century Link (or was Qwest then I guess). I had no problems what so ever. When we had a really heavy snow I would have to go out with a hockey stick or brush and knock the snow off but that maybe happened twice in two years. I like them much better than Comcast.

When I canceled my service they begged me to stay and offered me some ridiculous deal to keep it but I told them unless they were paying me to keep it, it wasn't a deal.

I use rabbit ears now and save ~$1200 a month.

[akumadiavolo]

I had DirecTV for a few years. It would constantly have trouble with this channel or that channel. Rarely would everything go out, but almost always something was out or the receptions was so blocky and pixilated it was un-watchable. As other have said the CS sucks donkey balls and they never did anything to solve problems or compensate me.

I also just changed away from Century Link for internet. I was paying 60 bucks for a 17 meg connection and now pay 35 bucks for a 58 meg connection with Comcast. The Century Link connection was constantly dropping for just a minute or so at a time, which made surfing the web annoying and watching streaming video almost impossible.

All in all I was not satisfied with any portion of the DirectTV/Century Link service.

[CO Hugh]

I don't have any problems with the service, even in bad weather generally good.

Don't like price though. Where is free tv and Beverly hillbillies.

[Dave_L]

Ive had them for about 2 years now. No complaints. I got sick of having to call Comcast and "renegotiate" my price every 6 months. My friends just got them and had nothing but headaches though. :shrugs: I've had reception go out maybe twice in 2 years and it was brief because of major storms rolling in from the south.