Cable VS Dish

[zamboni]

This may have been brought up before, but Frontier is offering a very good deal on a high speed, phone and dish package, and for only $5 more than what I am paying for cable I can get dish. 200+ channels, while my current small town cable I get 30. Is the dish the way to go? I have been at peoples houses and at bars during dish outages, and it makes me kinda nervous, esp with Minnesota winters. Its Direct TV btw, not Dish Net. Please gimme some insight soon, tomorrow I make the call!

[Kallista]

I loved direct tv, but when its raining, cloudy ice storm or snowing you don't get a signal. My family member just got a deal with a free computer, he had to paid 75 bucks for shipping, and it said 25 bucks for start up fee, so he got it, within 5 days he got the dell, with monitor, then he gets the bill, 500 bucks, they charged him 150 set up fee, and 85 for the month, and the rest in one time fee's... Thats all i know on that so be careful, get names and write things down.. When i got my charter hooked up they sent the guy to Duluth, he called me telling me hes at my front door, i go there ..no one.. so after a bit of yes i am , no your not, he read the address and city, so then we reschuled the times and both days no one came, soooooooooooooo when they did, they gave me a special for 19 95 a month for 6 months, now after 3 months they charged me the regular price, so 2 hours on the phone later i got my other 3 months at 19 95 a month.. but it just shows you they will tell you anything to get ya and forget to tell you all the one time fees or what ever..

but i do love direct tv.. and it isn't hard to go out and carefully dust off your dish or scrape off the ice to get a picture as long as it isn't snowing and storming out..

[zamboni]

You're cable guy gave you the old Kosmo Kramer treatment. I think I might do this tomorrow, I will make sure I get all the details down before I commit, thats for sure.

[wishing for walleyes]

I used to have charter cable.For the last year now i have had dish network.If you have a HD tv dishnetwork is the way to go.I do not have very many non signal times.During a heavy rain it does go in and out.Charter does not have HD signal here in our area.Before i switched to dish i called charter and asked them when they will get HD signals here and was told they had no plans to do it,that they would have to run a fiber optic cable from albert lea.Ended up dropping their cable and internet and went with frontier dsl and dishnetwork.For the local channels you get fox 9 kare 11 and kstp 5.You do not get mankato local channel.If you have an HD tv see if they will give you a good deal on an HD receiver for the HD channels.I have a 42 plasma and HD is the way to go for me.Good service with both charter and dish so that was not an issue.But HD versus digital cable is no comparison.HD all the way.One thing you will find yourself watching some of the dumbest HD programs because of the awesome picture.Just my opinion here....others may have different opinions.

[Spork]

We have Comcast for both TV and internet. Can't really complain other than the high cost (around $110/month), but the service has been rock solid.

We only had one issue so far where one of their terminals blew up down the block from us so our internet was hosed. By the next day, they had someone down there fixing it so we were only without the internet for less than 24 hours.

Some people love'em, others hate'em...

[Flaco651]

Since my switch from cable to dish a couple months back, I've been more [PoorWordUsage]ed off with the service than happy with it. As stated earlier, a little rain, lightning, ice/snow all effect your signal. I've already missed good portions of close football games along with other interesting programs.

Thats been my experience so far. You do get a lot of channels to choose from with dish, which is good but I'll probably go back to digital cable.

[zamboni]

BTW- I found out this morning, that its DishNet, not Direct TV. My local stations will be pulled in through an antenna, which they are giving me and hooking up for free after I threatened to cancel service. Hopefully thursday when they hook it all up, I won't cancel.

[zamboni]

Wishing- just read your response, why won't channel 12 come in? Thats insane. BTW- Walleyes biting at Hanska......

[Central Bassman]

Direct TV!!!!

[OLY]

direct tv is garbage. Rain snow wind = no tv at least that was my experience.

[LMITOUT]

With any satellite service you're going to run into issues with inclement weather. I have Dish and it'll drop out in bad T-storms, very heavy rain, or even heavy wet snow. Fact of life and something you should learn to accept if you go satellite. That's probably the biggest negative when comparing satellite to cable. The rest is just deciding what programming you want, DVR or standard receiver, HDTV offerings, and price you want to pay for all or some of the above. If you're into HDTV or soon to be, I believe satellite is you best bet for the most programming available.

[SomethingFishy*]

One thing to keep in mind, Cable companies alwways bash dish service, ask the cable companies how they get their channels/signals? From a dish ofcourse, however theirs are much larger but are still troubled by inclement weather.

15miles of cable lines from Cable or 50ft from Dish, I will take dish anyday, you can also hook dish/directv up to your fishouse/camper/toyhauler/cabin.

[fishyguy]

All that may be true about where cable gets their signal but I will tell you that in 15 years of cable service in St. Paul I have had only 3 issues. One was resolved with a new cable box, and the other two were resolved with a signal sent from the provider to my box. I will take that over losing a program I am watching everytime the weather goes a little sour.

I have my phone (free long distance, vm, 2nd line), high speed internet, DVR, HD cable (upper level programming) all through the same provider. One bill, one number for service at a cost of about $180 a month.

I have never had a dish so I can't speak to it but it would be hard to pry me away from my cable.

[PierBridge]

The main problem with dropouts with satellite TV is poor installation and alignment of the Dish I installed my own and with all the rain we have had in the last couple months I have lost reception for maybe 15 minutes max.

When I do lose signal a few times year I switch over to OTA HD via rooftop antenna.

That being said I couldn't live with out Dish it sure is nice being able to watch Gopher Hockey while Ice fishing on LOTW or Mille Lacs....Go Gophers!

[Central Bassman]

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That being said I couldn't live with out Dish it sure is nice being able to watch Gopher Hockey while Ice fishing on LOTW or Mille Lacs....Go Gophers!

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NICE!!

[solbes]

I've had Dish Net for 4-5 years now. I actually do fairly good in the snow (maybe dropped 3 or 4 times total). The rain is a somewhat common occurrence. I drop out maybe 5-10 times per warm weather season. It's usually precedes the rain (aimed SW) and comes back on in less than 5 minutes. I do like Pierbridge does and switch to the local antenna channels that always work.

My biggest pet peeve is my receiver has technical difficulties from time to time from all of the updates they do.

[Ranckenstuff]

I just bought the new DirectTV hd receiver to get the new channels and the new TBS in HD doesn't come in for some reason.

Anyone else running into this?

[zamboni]

Well, I have had DishNet now for 3 days, and we had to get an antenna installed on the roof for a few local stations to come in, but guess what? We don't watch locals anyways, having 250 stations is enough, and I am very happy with it so far. I get in CBS crystal clear, so the football games will come in good, so I am satisfied!

[Shawnny B]

a few things to point out..Yes Cable gets some of its channels via a DISH, but with improvements in our system we have actualy run a fiber to most of the broadcasters so we actualy get a large amount of our feeds over a statelite feed that goes to our head end, from there it will be transfered over the sonnet to other head ends in that providers area, no more need for Satelites. The other thing to remember is that as of 2009 there will be no more OTA broadcasts the anolog will be cut off by the FCC, make sure you get the correct TV's, converter box's and or Antennas. You can always look at this site, Digital TV Broadcast

The other thing that I dont understand is why does DISH make you sign a contract....are they afraid your going to leave?

Yes Im bias but hey I am a cable guy ....=-)

Shawn

[SomethingFishy*]

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The other thing that I dont understand is why does DISH make you sign a contract....are they afraid your going to leave?

Yes Im bias but hey I am a cable guy ....=-)

Shawn

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I hear you on the contract, I believe it is to cover install and other various equipment charges, but I think it is a load of dump. I also think the fact that to get premium equipment ( HD/DVR/HD-DVR) That there is a cost for the equipment yet it is only a lease. That and the mirroring fees associated with multiple boxes.

It is just that the HD selection for DTV is great and cable is slow out of the gate.

[Shawnny B]

I dont think it costs anymore to have DISH installed than it does to have Cable installed, the other thing that I have heard is if you go out and buy the equipment you still have to pay a access charge...UGH

As far as all the HD content, yeah Im not so sure about it what are some good examples that DISH has for the HD channels? I heard one of them was the japanese Game show HD...I guess its a nitch thing....

[raymondk]

a lot of problems with satalite is the setup if you have a poor signal you won't really notice until the wheather getts bad . i had direct tv first and i set it up myself to save money at first they charged alot to do it . I never reallt could get a strong signal and the only time i had problems is when the weather turned. now i switched to dish i had them install it the first thing i made a point to the installer that i wanted a real good signal . he was real helpfull the last one was mounted on the side of my house this one we put it on my roof right at the peak on the opisit corner so the top of the trees wouldn.t interfere . the only time i have outages there has to be a real bad storm usally if it goes out it is time to go in the basement.I would never go back to cable in my area service was really bad one time this disconected me instead of my neughbor it took a week to get hooked up again with no credit or even any body saying that they were sorry it also took me 3 phone calls '

[SomethingFishy*]

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As far as all the HD content, yeah Im not so sure about it what are some good examples that DISH has for the HD channels? I heard one of them was the japanese Game show HD...I guess its a nitch thing....

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DirecTv currently offers 70 HD channels, Charter offers less than 20. Cable subscribers/employees want to believe that HD is a "nitch" thing right now because they have yet to update their offerings and capacity.

[zamboni]

One good thing about Dish Net, don't know about Direct TV, but the guy said that when that FCC law comes into effect where you need to have either HD tv or have to buy a converter box, the Dish Net box has that all built in.

[LMITOUT]

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what are some good examples that DISH has for the HD channels? I heard one of them was the japanese Game show HD...I guess its a nitch thing....

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Big 10 HD

TBS

History Channel

Animal Planet

TLC

Discovery

Food Channel

Home and Garden TV

Univision

NFL

ESPN2

ESPN

Discovery Theatre

TNT

A&E

Fox Sports North

Those are just a few of the majors. There are quite a few more odds and ends HD channels that are offered.

Both Direct and Dish are playing the numbers game now in the way that they advertise how many HD channels they offer. Direct says 70 or something, but they are counting all the PPV channels, movie channels (HBO, Shotime,etc), as well as all the Fox Sports HD channels, although you only get the one in your market area (Fox Sports North for us). So, you have to do some research to get a real count of the HD channels you are actually going to receive with either service.