Honest Opinion on Satellite TV (1 Viewer)

[Djordje]

I live in NYC and am a long cable user. Am getting a little(irony) mad @ cable tv rates. So I need an opinion from sat tv users in NYC or elswhere whether I would benefit from a switch? Thanks.

 

[Frank Zimkas]

After years of putting up with lousy picture quality, poor service, high rates, and outages (both scheduled and unscheduled), and billing errors, I made the jump to Dishnetwork. That was over 5 years ago and I haven't regretted my decision. Better picture quality, better sound, more channels for less money, as far as I'm concerned it's the only way to go.

 

[John Kilroy]

Another satisfied satellite user here.

Pros:

Better picture quality, better sound (5.1 on many movies), excellent integration with Tivo, great program guide, lots of channels, reasonable rates.

Cons: You lose picture when it rains really hard, expanding hardware can be costly (e.g., adding receivers).

All in all, it is worth the tradeoffs. Be sure to get as many lines pulled as you can when they do the install, and if you're going to do Tivo, be sure to have them drop two lines to that location.

 

[Bruce-E]

Happy Directv customer for 7 years.

 

[BrianWoerndle]

For users with only 1 or 2 TVs, satellite is usually a cheaper alternitave. But adding more TVs is harder and more costly. Most dishes only support 4 TVs, and you have to pay an additional $5 per month for each additional TV. With cable, you can split the ananlog channels as many times as you want.

For me personally, I have a TV with PIP (which I use all the time) 2 VCRs, and a digital cable box. Not to mention the 3 other TVs and 2 other VCRs in the house. So for my house, satellite is not really an option.

 

[Kenny_H]

Dish Network customer here in park slope, bklyn of almost 5yrs! There is NO comparison! I will NOT go back to cable ever again! I have NOT lost a day of work waiting on a repairman since I switched. My channel selection beats cable in everyway. Yes, I have purchased my recievers, and except for one problem, i'm still satisfied!!! Now have a Dish PVR w/80 hr hard drive & 301 reciever. Minimal signal loss compared to my neighbor who has Direct TV (heh-heh)!

 

[Djordje]

Thanks for all your answers!

 

[Mike_J_Potter]

Another happy direct tv owner here the picture looks tons better and they actually have somewhat good customer service. One suggestion if you are thinking of getting a enhanced receiver such as a Tivo model or HD get when you first get the service, you can frequently get great deals with a new activation.

 

[John_F]

I've had Direct TV for ~9 months. I previously had Charter Cable, analog service. The reason I switched was that I was tired of my cable bill going up every year. Here are my opinions.

Direct TV pluses:

1) Cheaper, but before I had 3 TV's, now I have 2.

Direct TV minuses:

1) Picture quality isn't as good as cable.

My thoughts on Direct TV: they need to get focused on their customers/me . For example, why, when I spend $600 for a HD box, plus $10.99 a month for HD programming, do I have to commit for a year of service? Why don't they add HD programming that all of their subscribers can use, instead of adding HD channels that only a subset of their subscribers can actually recieve (CBSE,CBSW).

What I really want now is HD programming. When my current one year commitment is up, I will check my local cable company to see what they are offering, and won't think twice about switching.

Regards,
John Flegert

 

[Lee Distad]

I'm on ExpressVu here in Canada, and am very satisfied. In 2 years I've only experienced 2 outages due to ridiculous rainfall. Even last winter when I had 3 feet of snow covering my dish, I had no reception problems.

This doesn't impact me directly, but last month DirectTV announced that this year they would release a combination HD reciever/PVR at a retail of US$999. That's what I'm waiting for in our marketplace before I upgrade to HDTV. I imagine other consumers are thinking the same thing.

 

[Aaron D]

I have used DirecTV for 4 years and have never had a problem- the moving help alone is worth using it!

Has anyone checked out/signed up for Voom, the new HDTV satellite yet? (See www.voom.com) Looks like $750 setup and $40 /mo.

I am trying to find the best value for HDTV programming.

A

 

[SteveW]

Switched from cable to Dish about 3 years ago and couldn't be happier. Here is why:

-Better picture and sound.
-Menus and channel guides make finding something to watch or a specific program a snap. No scrolling through channels or going to one specific one that has a scrolling guide of what is on. If you miss the station you are looking for you might have to wait a few minutes for it to scroll back around.
-Outages are very minimal and last 5-10 minutes at most. Unlike the 2 or 3 days I suffered under cable.
-More for the money. I get over 100 channels, PPV, and digital no commercial music stations for a few dollars more than I was paying for basic analog cable.

The choice is obvious. Personally as long as I have the choice I will never go back to cable.

 

[MichaelKO]

While I like my Direct TV/TIVO much better that my ex-cable company, I find that standard def. broadcast is not so hot on my Hitachi 57" RPTV. That's no secret: from what I have read, there is no good SD, cable or otherwise for largescreen TV's.

I miss the PIP from cable that I was able to do, but I suspect that DIGITAL cable make that impossible as well.

I've heard that there will be a TIVO box coming out that WILL allow you to do PIP... Now THAT I'm very interested in.

OH, BTW, DO get the best initial setup deal you can, I.E. gat a TIVO box -- you'll love it!

 

[Brett_H]

Hope the original poster doesn't mind if I piggy-back on for a small question:

Are there any good sites that review the current Dish/DirectTV pricing schemes? I'm a current analog cable subscriber thinking of making the move to either digital cable or some sort of dish and would like some price comparison info. So far I've been unable to find any.

Thanks,
-Brett.

 

[Ted Lee]

switched to directv (with tivo) about six months ago.

i will *never* go back to regular cable...

howz that for an endorsement?

a couple of electrical storms caused havoc with the reception, but for all the benefits i get, i had no problem with it.

 

[Lew Crippen]

Never say never Ted. I too have DirecTV: two HD receivers and a two tuner SD Tivo—and it is great. But I also have to get most of my network HD from an antenna—and I’ll be surprised for that to change, as the number of transponders is limited and HD takes a lot of bandwidth.

Cable has the potential to be able to deliver a ton more bandwidth than satellite—plus it only needs to carry local channels for one area—not all. So I can see the day that cable could be a superior offering.

 

[John_F]

Could you expand on this statement. When you say a "ton more bandwidth", using current delivery hardware (currently layed cable and currently installed STBs), how many HD channels can be delivered?

Thanks,
John Flegert

 

[Ted Lee]

lol lew ... okay, you got me there. i didn't account for hd - although i'm waiting for my receiver/tivo/hi-def unit to appear.

addendum:

"i will never (unless lew tells me to) go back to regular cable"

 

[KevinW]

Djordje, I've been a broadband installer for Time Warner Cable for two years now and I'm perfectly happy with my Directv service. Better picture, better sound, better price, and if the dish is installed correctly, almost no signal loss(only when it's pouring cats and dogs).

 

[Thomas_A]

Back in @ 94 we switched from Cable to Primestar....anyone remember primestar. It was a bit larger dish then the 18" dishes at the time...but you didnt have to buy it! We had som many issues with cable... prices..outages and poor service! when we sold our house... we then went to direct tv then finally dishnetwork for the last 4yrs! love it. I get a great image for standard stuff..very clean! My parents ditched cable couple years ago for satellite also...and have never looked back.

Granted...if you have 5+ tv's and want roadrunner/cable modem...then yes... suffer with cable