Cable vs. Satillite for BASIC channels - Input

[TrepMan]

Gang - Need all of your input: Since we returned from China a year ago, we moved to DirectTV, and have not been thrilled with lossing singles in storms and have had 1/4 of the channels drop but not consistently to be able to have the repair guy here when they are not working. Oh and we have the cheapest DirectTV package, as we really only want about 20 channels (local channels plus things like Discovery, Animal Planet, Disney, Cartoon Network...) we have no sports or digital packages. Our contract is up this month with DirectTV and are looking to move back to Comcast, especially since we can then hook up in the basement our Wii TV if the kids want to watch something different at the same time (only have 2 Sat boxes today). We are looking at the basic/basic cable packages and don't have (nor plan to buy in the next 1-2 years) any big screen/HD TVs.



So, our choices are keep Direct TV (we watch about 20% of our current channels and never use the music component, as the kids have iPods), move back to Comcast with the cheapest HD package they can offer to get the few channels we want, or swap out dishes and move to Dish Network.



Any good/bad/ugly stories going either way or suggestions?

 

[Jimmy Easterling]

I like my DTV but have never tried anything else since I came off the antenna many years ago. I set my own and have very high numbers in signal strength therefore I don't lose my reception unless the storm clouds are directly above the dish, it happens but not often. And outside of fishing I have no life so I have a lot of channels.

 

[Ken Sabin]

I have diret tv. HATE it ! I have an absolutely crystal clear and totally uninterupted view of the southwest from the roof of my house. All it has to do look like its gonna rain and I loose the signal. No help from customer service. Im waiting for the fiber optic cable to finished in my neighborhood and I'll switch.

 

[TrepMan]

And I just found out ATT offers digial UVerse TV, anyone have any experience with it yet?

 

[Barry Dufour]

I have Direct TV and love it. With the local channels I get HD tv with surrond sound. I also have an outside antenna set up as a back up for the times I lose the signal. When I had Cox cable I would lose the signal on a clear day for no reason. At least now I can switch to the antenna and I have 12 channels in HD to watch. With the DVR I can record lots of shows anytime. During a hurricane I take down the direct tv dish and just use the outside antenna. With the generator I can still watch thw tv, make coffee, heat up food in the microwave and have beer cold in the icebox!

Barry from La.

 

[Tim Koepp]

My opinion:



IF you can get Uverse, get it. I can;t but relatives get it and it seems great.



Price should not be your final determining factor, but only one of the items



I have seen, personally, better service from Dishnetwork than Direct TV. and, currently, I am with DishNetwork, their HD package seemed more comprehensive when I signed up.



Service outages: While severe storms will cause signal loss, I have found perhaps as much as 75% of this can be eliminated with a perfectly aimed dish.

Probably not a factor for you, but I have my dish installed in a place where I can clear off wet snow when it loads up. I have broomed off as much as two inches of snow ON THE DISH AND TRANSPONDER and still not had signal loss. Now, with the SD Sat still being to the southWEST and the HD satellite being to the southeast, I have not had a situation where simply toggling from HD to SD for a short time didnt give me signal. Finally, on this note, I would never be without a backup for local Digital signal, as the most important time, here in the midwest, is when them sirens go off and you need to head for the basement, and likely, the clouds DO block the signal at the most important time.



Cable in rural areas is unreliable if even available. too many miles of old trees in the way.



I'd go Uverse if it was available in my area.



As a footnote, while I have not been a huge fan of netflix, with the new Samsung Blueray that lets you stream netflix on demand, and the fact there is like no incremental charge, we watch that more than other stuff. It takes a high speed broadband package.. minimum speeds wont do. but I get HD over the broadband from netflix.

 

[Dan J.]

I've been on AT&T U-Verse 450 for about a year and could never go back to Direct TV or Charter. Our area is laid fiber-optic in ground and our house was built similarly. The signal degradation from source is almost nil with FO. I can have both HD big screens in the family rooms, and HD going in one of the bedrooms while watching another one in the man-cave, all while surfing the net and talking on the phone with no problem. At the same time I can be rcording up to four shows simutaneously while loading pics/videos up to a TV from the desktop on the gateway. (AT&T's U-Verse modem) This system can do so much more than I'll ever be able to figure out and no signal loss or interruption. You will be impressed.

 

[Texas Transplant]

My son tells me to stay away from UVerse, no personal experience. However, I will certainly bow to Dan's review.



I have DirecTV at home, and have had it for many years. When the storms get BAD, I lose the signal, but not the other times. Given where you live, I'm guessing that part of your problems are the trees. Both Dish and DirecTV will have similar problems.



Have you looked at your DirecTV setup, and determined what the signal strength is now? You may have to hunt to find it, but you can see the signal strength - generally on a scale of 1 -100. If you are in the 70's or 80's, that seems marginal. Anything below that is very marginal.



I have Time Warner Cable at our apartment in DFW. HATE IT! And I mean HATE IT! Now that I have HDTV set, I have a very marginal set of channels without paying bucks more. My set that does not have the digial tuner, the reception is medium to poor. Internet service is so-so at best. And where I live, Time Warner has 'bribed' the city council so only Time Warner is available. Nothing else live UVerse or FIOS.



What do most of your neighbors have? Many there that have dish or directv? Probably not, since you have so many trees.



Tex

 

[Jimmy Easterling]

Shoot, Dan, I'm impressed at what you can do all at one time.

 

[Dan J.]

:lol::lol::lol:



I wish I could do all that on my own. With the wife and two boys, running all that really occurs and I'm still impressed that it happens with one teeny weeny line hooked to the house. A tech guru I am not.

 

[Scott Hammer TOXIC]

Well, I just went through the selection process with my house in Florida. Talked to my neighbor who has Comcast and they absolutely despise it and will be changing as soon as their contract is up. I see the cable truck at their house once a month, same with my Landlord (on the other side). He is changing as soon as his contract is up as well (Comcast). I live in a very snooty area and they wanted to try cable before they went with external dishes. Lesson learned. So that left me DirecTV or Dish. I called both trying to get the best deal and I was soooooooo frustrated that I couldn't speak. I tried DISH first because I already had their saucer on the roof (found out later that it was old and would have needed to replace it anyway). Everytime I called Dish, I got their call center in Bangladesh and if I asked a question that was not in their flipchart, they were TOTALLY lost.....And I mean TOTALLY lost. I asked a simple question...What plan will give me the most HD channels for 50-80 bucks a month. They could not answer, they just read their plans out of the book and I could do that. I got so frustrated I hung up and about 10 minutes later got a call from a "supervisor" who was just a stupid as the order takers. Next was DirectTV. I was having problems with them as well and on about my 3rd call I got a kid who sounded like he was from Brooklyn and I was able to talk to him like a normal human being (found out later that DirectTV pulled their call center back to the US because of complaints). Since my house in VA is DirectTV and in my wife's name, I could set mine up in my name and each of us got the $100 off our bill ($10 a month for 10 months). You can bet I'll get my neighbors as well!!



As for those loosing signal here is my advice. We get some thick, low, dense storms here in JAX and I have never lost signal with DirectTV. Why? simple, first make sure your installer is a DirecTV employee not a contractor, second, make sure they bring all NEW equipment not re-furbed (they do this a lot). DirecTV employee installers get access to the new equipment before the contract installers do. Third, make sure they use all HD connections not regular cable connections. Fourth, demand a signal booster if you get anything less than 98-100% on ALL of the satellites. I have one sat that only gets 79-89% and I still have never lost signal. My installer was the customer service supervisor for my area. He put the "gang" connector on the house and I watched him dial in all of the sats. Actually, I called out the signal strength as he adjusted it. Since he could not get a constant 90% on one of the sats, he had to call in for a waiver and from what he told me it was rare that they approved it. Since I was there and saw the fluctuation and approved it, so did they. I have some Huge trees and he actually mounted the dish on the fence around my pool pumps. Also make sure the plug in power box is not on a switched outlet. He guaranteed me that I would not loose signal and gave me his personal cell if I ever did to just call him and he would come out. That is customer service. He said that with a digital signal you either have it or you don't and if you get things like a fuzzy/snowy picture that is between the TV and the receiver, never the dish. So far so good and I get a scad of HD channels.



TOXIC

 

[Jim B]

If the ATT service is fiber to the house id go for it. Where i live in Mass we have Comcast, Verizon Fios and a dish. I dumped comcast about two years ago for Fios and its unreal. The HD picture just blows away comcast at close to half the cost per month.

 

[Texas Transplant]

My son had FIOS at his house in Keller several years ago and RAVED about it. When he moved, he had the 'not approved for this area' scenario and had to switch.



I'd do FIOS in a heartbeat, but I have the same situation.



Just received an 'update' from Time Warner that they are adding three new HD Channels! Wow, three. Bravo HD, USA HD and some other thing that my wife probably will like. Three. Such a move.



I'm thinking about getting a second DirecTV dish (one house - one apt) if I can, and switching from Time Warner, but I don't know whether I want to pay the fee that I'll have to pay.



Tex

 

[Rich Stern]

We've got DirecTV and love it. Rarely lose signal. It's got to be raining really hard for us to get interference. On average, we might lose signal for a few minutes every couple of months. As previous contributors stated, careful dish alignment is critical. Some of the installers are not very skilled, while others are absolute pros. In general, customer service issues with DirecTV have been well handled, with one or two notable exceptions.



We have several of the DirecTV HD DVRs in operation, and those boxes work great. I have one of them networked, and the recorded content can be watched anywhere in the house via a PC. I also stream the XM audio via our LAN, so it can be enjoyed from a PC. I listen to XM via networked DirecTV at my desk while working.



We had Charter cable for about 12 years before moving to DirecTV, including about 5 years of broadband service. I had frequent signal loss problems with my broadband modem. Eventually, after years of frustration, Charter sent the right guy out to fix the problem. He laid new coax cable in the yard (trenched under the driveway) from the street to the interface on the side of the house, and the problems went away. But it took numerous visits over years of complaints before the right guy showed up. So, really, no different than DirecTV in the sense that: Get the right people and the stuff works. Get the wrong people, and it's an exercise in hair pulling.

 

[David Heine]

I work for AT&T and I sell Uverse, if anyone wants it, I can see if it's available in your area. It is truly awesome. [email protected]

 

[Gene B]

I've been checking AT&T for a couple years and it still isn't avaiable here. See if you can pull a couple strings for me will ya? We have been happy with Dish network. We have dial up for internet would like to get the high speed for around $20 thru AT&T.



Gene

 

[Carlos Hathcock III]

I have comcast, and no complaints....



On par with the pricing for what we want between that and fios...



Had some initial issues with cable internet quality, but the fixed it after much teeth gnashing....but it is fixed

 

[Donnie Matney]

Ok here is what I know....



I have Direct TV and only lost signal once and it was a real bad storm.



Tox and Tex if you call Direct TV you can add a reveivers to your second homes and for about $5 a month plus DVR fees if you go that route. They ad it like a second receiver. Depending on your contract you may have to buy the box, if not you can upgrade it. I have a buddy who is an installer and he does this ALL the time. Hope this helps.



Donnie

 

[Scott Hammer TOXIC]

Well, they sure didn't give me that option when I called Donnie!! I'll look into it. Thanks.

 

[TrepMan]

Still on the fence, thought we were decided on Comcast (so we could get reception on all 3 TVs and they have a $29 for digital starter that covers all our needs with no contract like I had to get a good deal with Direct TV) but 3 different calls to 3 different customer no-service salesweasels gave me THREE different prices on EVERYTHING - monthly, install and extra tv-top boxes! So we are gonna wait till Tomorrow and see if Direct TV, Dish or Comcast has any new years specials.

 

[Rick Cohoon2]

We have Comcast and with no complaints. TV, Phone and Internet in a bundle, can match that with Dish or DTV. My biggest need is High speed internet, and the dishes can match the price.



Friend next door has DTV and losses his signal any time a fly farts. OUtages here (Cape Cod) are rare, I loose power more than cable. In fact power gose out I hook up to a generator and have TV and Cable back.

 

[William H. (Bill) Barham]

I had Comcast for a long time Michael and had absolutely no problems at all except the cost kept going up and up.

I switched to Verizon FIOS about a year ago and love it. Never a problem. Their website, along with some other peripherals aren't as good as Comcast but I have saved about $85.00 per month since I switched, mainly because I went over to fios Telephone also. Their bundles are cheaper side by side to Comcast with far more channels and a lot more HD and their HD set top boxes and DVR's are a lot cheaper to rent. I couldn't get DirectTv because with all the trees surrounding me I couldn't get a clear line of site to their satellite. I had to use a compass because they wouldn't come out to see if I would be able to receive their signals. Good Luck



Uncle Billy

 

[TrepMan]

Uncle Billy - SisterNLaw has Fios and LOVES it, for the same reasons you do! They don't offer it here in North GA yet, seems there is an existing marketing deal between ATT and DirectTV that won't let ATT offer Fios for our area yet :-(

 

[TrepMan]

Anyone have ATT Uverse? And any thoughts/issues/install problems? That looks like my next phone call on Monday morning with a bundle with our phone and internet already through ATT.

 

[Dan J.]

Had it for a year now. Haven't had an outage or any problems. (Our area is FO laid.) The fastest up/down int. speeds we've had. If your area is fiber-optic and you have an HD TV, you will be amazed.

 

[Texas Transplant]

May be moving to AT&T Uverse, if Time Warner can't fix the ongoing problem with the Internet dropping my VPN connection to work. It's supposed to be available at apartment in Bedford.



Tex

 

[TrepMan]

Well did it, or pushed the buttons to do it, ordered Uverse tonight, bundling Internet, TV and Phone, great deal got $400 cash back, free DVR, 1 HD reciever (might have to get a HD TV now!! LOL) and free ATT wifi at all the stores they have it in, for a total of $10/month more then DirecTV, and 3 TV's instead of 2 on the DirecTV. I'll let all y'all know how it works once its all installed and set up.

 

[Dan J.]

I don't think you'll regret it. You actually understand and can do all the things that they offer with U-verse!! :lol: