Direct TV vs Dish - Montana Owners Club

azstar · 01-03-2005, 10:53 AM

I could use some help from someone with knowledge about Direct TV.

We currently have Dish net. We have a single LBN, which makes us choose between Sats. either 110 or 119 and when in upstate NY during the summer near Saranac Lake, the line of sight to the Sats. are very low in the sky, making it difficult to get 119.

Here are the questions. Can you get the 150 stations with the Locals using one LBN on Direct TV? Is the Direct TV Sat. highter in the Sky than Dish Net's Sats.?

I'll bet someone out there in "MOC Land" has tried both and has the answers.

I'm thinking of moving over to Direct from Dish. I really like the little portable dish we have and would like to be doing it all on one sat.

Thanks and Happy Camping

toolmanroy · 01-03-2005, 12:39 PM

We have Dish Network and I got a twin LNB on e-bay. We had an extra dish from our 500 upgrade. We get both satellites just fine most of the time. What I would like to do is quit Dish for some time and then come back as a new customer and get all those freebies we never got!

MuddyPaws · 01-03-2005, 02:08 PM

I have Direct TV with TIVO. Love both. My neighbor has Dish and you really can't tell any difference in quality. DirectTVs dish is a little smaller.

If I could do it again today I'd get the TIVO with the built in DVD recorder.

If only TIVO would let you 'chain' several programs together when recording to videotape......

c5racer · 01-03-2005, 04:30 PM

We have Direct TV and when we were living and camping in Washington State, which is a lot farther North than NY, we got all the channels with locals just fine. The only State we can't get locals in is Nevada, cause they put them on a diff sat along with the Mexican channels. When we are in Nevada, we order the East and West locals feed, and we get the NYC and Los Angeles network stations.
Don't know the location of the satelites. The satelites are all the same distance from the equator, around 23,000 miles. The curvature of the earth makes the satelites on the east and west end lower in the sky. Maybe 119 is on the end of the satelites making the look angle lower.

azstar · 01-03-2005, 05:42 PM

c5racer,

Thanks, this is the kind of info. I'm looking for. Are you doing this with a single LBN?

Here in the Phx. area the Sats. are about 185 deg. From Wash. I'm thinking your about 180 deg.?

When by the Can. border in upper NY were dealing with the curvature in two directions which is a double whammy. I'll bet you right the elevation on all the Sats. is probably pretty close. So there may be no advantage to either in this regard.

The only advantage may boil down to being able to get it all with one LBN (eye) on the dish.

Montana_31 · 01-04-2005, 12:39 AM

We have DirecTV with one LBN for 2 TV's. During the summer we get the Baltimore local stations and can watch them in Southern Pa. and in Northern Virginia. We are currently in Florida and are getting the local Tampa stations. All it took was one toll free call to change. I have heard in the past that Dish Network was more RV friendly, but I haven't found DirecTV to be unfriendly. I just told them we are wintering in Florida and will return to Maryland in May. I'll need to call to change our local stations back to Baltimore in the spring. We don't have a land based telephone, just a cell phone and they are aware of that. As far as the height of the satellite, the farther south we travel, the higher the dish must be aimed. In Pa. it was around 37 degrees elevation and here in Florida, it's around 51 degrees.

lightningjack11 · 01-04-2005, 03:27 AM

We use Direct TV with one LNB and get the same channels on the road as home. When we leave this area we lose the locals.

azstar · 01-04-2005, 04:14 AM

Bob & Donna, lightningjack11 and others,

Looks like we're closing in on the answers.

I just checked as if I were in the So. part of PA. (used Harrisburg). Dish Net. would have a 29 deg. elevation and as you mentioned ,Bob & Donna, Direct would be 37 deg. This tells me Direct is in a higher orbit. Which also means it should be easer to get line of sight up north.

It also sounds like I could get buy with my portable (collapsible) dish with one eye (LBN).

Any other info. out there would be greatly appreciated.

mobilrvn · 01-04-2005, 02:35 PM

WHOA! There is another choice out there in satellite TV land. I dealt with DirecTV and Dish for several years each before finding the way--Star Choice, Canadian TV. We go to Mexico each winter and still haven't figured out Spanish, so it is nice to have English language TV down here or anywhere in Canada or the US. Drawbacks are buying your own equipment and having to use a "broker" unless you have a Canadian billing address. Because of the currently strong Canadian dollar, we now pay about the same as we did for Dish for the same programming. It did run about a third cheaper. Go to www.global-cm.net for info. We have had it for more than a year. Do have a 75cm antenna which works better in Mexico.

Montana_31 · 01-05-2005, 12:14 AM

Azstar, you will need two receivers to get different channels on both TVs at the same time. An extra receiver is $5 more per month with DirecTV. I left this fact out in the last post.

lightningjack11 · 01-05-2005, 02:49 AM

What is nice about it is that you can take on receiver with you and someone at homebase can use the other. When I took a temp contact position on the other side of Florida, Betty was home so we both were able to use the receivers. 5 dollars is not a bad price for TV on the road.

I am thinking about getting a dual lnb so we can keep one receiver in the bedroom and one in the living room. We don't watch the same channels.

I installed a crank up dish on the roof so all I have to do is crank,point and lock the dish. Dual switch installed at each console for cable or SAT.

CW also has a dome type dish that has an auto setup mode fully equiped with two lnb's. Runs about a 1000 dollars. My neighbor has one and it sure is nice. If I were installing a roof mount now that is the way to go. The price used to be a lot higher.

Oh I can still get pay per view by ordering the movie by internet. Approval is instantaneous and automatically charge to your bill.

paulrem · 01-05-2005, 02:58 PM

Howdy Folks, I have Direct TV and I love it. We have traveled from west coast to east coast from the Canadan border to Interstate 40, and have had success with it everywhere we set it up. I use the zip code for the nearest town for the up and down and the compass for direction. I use a portable dish mounted on a homemade stand that sits on the ground. The reason that I chose Direct TV is because I like to watch NFL football in the fall. They have been very nice to us when we want to make any changes. I live in an area were we do not have local stations, so that takes care of that. I live in a rural area and Pegasus used to be our provider and I was very glad when they sold their client list back to Dierct TV, nothing but trouble with them.

azstar · 01-15-2005, 09:50 AM

Hi Folks,

I wanted to thank everyone who replied and get back to you with our decision.

After getting your help and researching info about our Winegard Portable Sat. Dish we found that we definitely can use our dish on either, Dish.net or DirectTV.

I also found that we would be able to recieve all the Stations that we wanted from Direct with one single head.

We also discovered, that when aligning to the Sat. DirectTV has the advantage the further east we travel. The elevation is higher for the Sat. Not much difference in the western US but places like, OK City +4deg. Harrisburg PA +8 deg.,Lake Placid NY +8.5 deg. and Miami FL +12 deg. This should help gettin over some trees and Mountains.

It was perfect timing, We got a 2 room set-up with DVR TiVo. The DVR TiVo will stay at home and the 2nd room is out Mountaineer. We had to commit to one year.

The whole package wound up costing us $69 including installation and shiping. With a $50 rebate from TiVo, a free DVD player and 3 Mos. of HBO and MAX for free. So all this only cost us $20 out of pocket and only $3 a month more than we were paying.

We had been with Dish for 7 yrs. When I called to cancel I was referred to 2 different persons. They would have done anything to keep us. I think they were going to offer us the same perks that we got from Direct for free but when I told them the biggest reasons for moving to Direct were being able to line up on just 1 satellite and a little advantage on the elevation there was nothing that they could do.

So there's our story and again thanks for the help.

PS, This TiVo and DVR is really cool stuff.

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