Direct TV or Dish

[dieselguy]

I'm beginning to grow weary of talking to "customer retention" at Direct TV every 6 months to keep my bill manageable. I've been with them since the late 90's, soooooo what if I go Dish? Those of you that have switched to Dish ... any regrets or quick returns to Direct TV? I'm only interested in mid to low end packages combined with the Starz package, so all the sports, racing, boxing, HBO type stuff makes no "brownie" points to me with the sell.

[Trailer Trash 2]

I started out with Direct TV, I purchased a Sony receiver and paid a bundle for it in the early 90s. after talking to a agent that had no brains telling me I needed a telephone line connected to my receiver on the RV in order for him to program the receiver along with a bunch of other very dumb comments is when I went to Dish. I threw the direct TV Sony receiver and the parabolic antenna in the trash, and have been with Dish Net ever since. always there when you need them.

[DQDick]

We've been with dish for the last three years and for the most part have been happy.

[davidaf]

I prefer Direct over Dish but Dish HD works with the smaller automatic portable dishes (Winegard Carryout) where Direct doesn't that was the winner for me. Direct's DVR is more logical and the service has more HD channels. My dish receivers reboot nightly to check for upgrades which is a pain if I'm up working in the middle of the night. Dish has a monthly plan so no contract or rental equipment. In the end it's just TV and Dish works just fine I wanted HD on the small dish so that's the direction I went.

[jfaberna]

I've had DirecTV since '97, but also added Dish because they were the first to add local channels over Sat. I turned off Dish when DirecTV got local channels. I prefer the technology of DirecTV, but now I'm not pleased with the complication of the DirecTV sat antenna setup, the lack of OTA support in the new receivers, the flakiness of their Genie DVR.

However, to support multiple TVs each watching channels from different satellites with single wire hookup, DirecTV seems to have it right. But I'm not an expert on Dish's latest equipment.

I plan on looked at all the choices when my 2 year commitment to DirecTV is up. I also get tired of having to call customer retention every 6 months to keep the bill down.

[WeBeFulltime]

In 2007 I switched from Directv to Dish and have been very pleased with that decision. Customer service was my reason for changing.

[pappy65]

Great thread. I have been with Direct since 95 and also get tired of negotiating every so often just to keep bill down. Have looked at Dish several times, but always end up staying with Direct. We are building a new house now and should move in late February. I will be taking another good look at provider then. I would probably consider cable, but we travel all summer and satellite is a must. I will follow this thread.

[K0LCB]

Hey Pappy, I tried that cable tv thing, but when I got to the end of the drive way it broke

[scott-pati]

I've been thinking about satellite as well. Glad this topic came up. Campground cable image stinks, all SD. Antenna is so much better and it's HD, for the most part. Other than the ME and PBS channels not much on. Been spoiled now by cable over the years. These new TV's don't like SD signals very much.

[hunts800]

I have been with Direct for 10 years. My main complaint is having to spend time to get a supervisor on the phone to temporarily change my equipment address when I am more than 500 miles from my stick house - otherwise. I lose all my local channels. From what others tell me, Dish is always willing to change your address when you move around the country. (FCC requirement that you lose locals when you get more than 450-500 miles from your stick house).
I would switch to Dish except for the $250 cost to modify my Winneguard antenna.

[lunalonestar]

we've been with Dish for 3 years. No real issues.

[richfaa]

We have been with Directv for over 11 years with not a problem with customer service or anything else. we do not see that much difference between the two of them and any service that satisfies you is fine. I would change service if is was to our benefit.

[BB_TX]

quote:Originally posted by pappy65

Great thread. I have been with Direct since 95 and also get tired of negotiating every so often just to keep bill down. Have looked at Dish several times, but always end up staying with Direct. We are building a new house now and should move in late February. I will be taking another good look at provider then. I would probably consider cable, but we travel all summer and satellite is a must. I will follow this thread.

If you do have good cable at the new house, then the pay-as-you-go plan from Dish may work for you. Pay only for the months used.
We have had Dish at home many years (local cable is really bad). Added the RV to the home plan for an additional $7/mo. Get all the channels in the trailer as we get at home.
And if we are too far from home to get our local channels, a quick call to Dish and about 5 minutes later we have the local channels of the nearest local major city. To me that is better than the DNS east/west coast thing as the network shows come on in their regular time frame and we can get local (to that area) news and weather forecast.

[grampachet]

I just got a message that direct dropped the weather channel...
we are with dish and are satisfied.

[TAKPAK]

Yes, indeed a very appropriate topic. We have had Dish for over 5 years at the stick home. Upgraded to HD recently. Very good customer service and when we had a minor problem with the receiver, I had three, yep three Dish techs sitting in my driveway fixing things. I grumbled a bit that I was paying $10 a month extra for the HD part, so they said that they would waive that fee if I signed up for auto and paperless billing. I plan to do that. Now we are going to get the Dish tailgater setup for the new 3725. I am pleased that since we already have Dish at home, we will only have to pay $7 a month for the added service. We can start and stop on a monthly basis, but for $7 a month I'll probably just leave it on...unless we don't go out for several months. Thus far, happy with Dish. I recently looked at a review of both sytems, side by side comparison for different issues, and Dish came out on top. Not by much, but still a bit better. And yes, HUGE fight going on with Weather Channel and Direct TV. Direct stands to lose a lot of customers over that one.

[Fire5er]

We have Dish at home and Dish for our 5er. We use the Dish Tailgater antenna and the 211k receiver to get full HD in the RV. The Tailgater set-up takes about 15 min. All you have to do is attach the coax cable to supply power to the Tailgater and for the receiver to get the signal from the antenna to the TV. The set-up is all menu driven on your TV...very easy. Once it is setup your good to go, as long as you do not move the Tailgater. If the antenna (the Tailgater) is repositioned and you loss satellite signal you will have to go through the set-up again.

[BB_TX]

For those interested in switching to Dish.
They used to offer the vip211k receiver. It has an HDMI output for the main TV and a coax output you can run to the bedroom TV. On mine I simply connected the existing coach coax behind the living room TV to the coax output on the receiver and it sent the signal to the bedroom TV. It is the coax that goes thru the switch box, so I can watch sat in the bedroom or switch over to antenna. It is the same sat program that is being shown on the living room TV due to it being a single channel receiver, but at least you can see the program in the bedroom also. We typically retire to the bedroom at night to watch the late news/weather there.
Now they have changed to the vip211z receiver. It has the same HDMI output for the primary TV but has a 3 wire composite video output (video/L audio/R audio) for the second TV. With this one you will have to run a new 3 wire composite cable from the box to the bedroom TV if you want sat there also.
Just had to complicate things. Not everyone's connections are probably as simple as mine, but now it gets more complicated for everyone.

[Rainer]

I like DirecTV. I have it in my Monte, and to add a separate DirecTV HD receiver to my home was just $6 a month more. That alone made the $2000 I spent for the automatic Winegard antenna and installation so that all 3 TV's in my Monte work on satellite worth it....

[Jolu]

I have Directv and am pleased with it. I really hardly ever speak with them. Maybe I have spoke with them three or four times since 1997 and that was when I got new receivers.
The Weather Channel is still here. Don't know where that rumor came from unless there is something going on in the standard definition channels I don't know about. I never watch standard def. Joe

[JandC]

We have Direct with the Travler dish mounted on top. This combination works for us. I like just plugging in after setting up and I have all my HD channels when I go in and turn on the TV. When we travel we have gotten so we don't call them for a change unless we are staying put for several days.