Anyone have satellite instead of cable?

[Byrons_Ghost]

Greetings Fellow Columbian!

I have Dish Network. Got it through Hunt's Communications in Warrensburg (The Ad was in the Columbia Yellow Pages). We got all of your equipment for free, but we had to sign a 2 year agreement (as we own our house, our chance of moving in the remaining 6 months of the agreement is nil).

We recently had some problems, but we eventually got it resolved.

What do you have now?

If you have Mediacom, I found them to be pretty good, esp the High Speed Internet. Pretty close to Dish in many ways (But that has been well over a year ago).

If you have Charter....

Drop them. They are trully one of the worst companies I have EVER dealt with, in any industry. If you measure Costumer Service, Quality, and Value each on a scale of 1-100, Charter maight get a 3, Total.

To Repeat. If you have Charter DROP THEM AT ALL COST. I'd go without TV, Internet, Clothes, Food, Shelter, than have to deal with those SOB's ever again.

While it comes down to a choice similar to "What Blunt Trauma to the Groin would you Prefer?" Charter is the Rocket-Powered Anvil of Destruction, as opposed to the Ball-Bats of Satellite and Cable.

Dish seems to be the Better deal in the Columbia Area (I see a lot more Dish than DirectTV).

If you go with Sat, shop Around, a lot of independant dealers have all sorts of deals from free equipment, to Upgrades, to X months free.

I also think I have some coupons for 5 bucks off/month for 12 months if I recommed someone to Dish (I think it is I get 5 off & the Receiver gets 5 off) I'd have to check.

To stress,

If you have Charter DROP THEM RIGHT THIS INSTANT, Your sanity will thank me later.

I've actually got Mediacom currently, but I've had Charter in the past. Both seem to be equally bad IME. At least Mediacom doesn't go out once a day liked Charter seemed to.

The main thing with cable is, I've had to drop down to non-digital basic just to get a reasonable price level. Pretty much all the satellite options I've seen give me more channels for less money.

 

[Marchen]

I have Dish Network. I just have to pray it doesn't storm.

 

[Sharon Macguire]

We have Dish, and its never been a problem. We get clear signal through most storms, fast and friendly customer service, no startup cost, 2-year contract. We got it as a package through Frontier, including our phone and DSL. Every time a small issue has come up, its been resolved quickly.

 

[grimwell]

I live in the sticks. It's Satellite or rabbit ears where I live.

I started with DirectTV to get the NFL Sunday Ticket package and loved it. When my contract ended and I moved to a new house I switched to Dish to get a free DVR (TiVo) thinking the channels couldn't be any different. I was wrong -- they are. While the quality is the same, and I love the DVR -- DirectTV offers a better channel package for the same buck. I like the brain channels (History, Discovery, Biography, etc.) and DirectTV gave me more of them.

Mind you, both rate higher than any cable experience I've ever had. Even with the rare outage -- it's no different than the rare cable outage. The one time I was dropping constantly, I placed a service call and the tech realigned the dish, it was dropping because it wasn't pointing right. Because I pay the $6/month insurance -- the call was free. I've also had a receiver replaced 'free' on the insurance, so I'm a bit fond of it and suggest it to others.

You should be able to get either service for 'free' to start. DirectTV had a 12 month contract in exchange for free when I signed up, Dish Network had an 18 month contract.

When my Dish contract is up in June, I'm going back to DirectTV -- I'll buy a TiVo -- the channel packages are better with DirectTV.

My only complaint? Due to federal law I can't get rid of the local channels. When I first got the NFL package I got a special where for the entire season I had EVERY channel (trying to hook me in), so I had the major networks local, and East/West... so I could catch shows on NY time or CA time.. that was a great bonus.

I recommends Dish over cable any day. Even when cable is an option. Since cable gets their signal from a dish, the signal loss risks are the same... ;p

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'll just jump in on the other side...

I live in D/FW, and I have had friends who have had dishes of various kinds- and currently, none of them do.

It is very embarrassing to host a football watching party only to have high winds knock out your dish. The commercial dishes are MUCH better anchored, at least around here, and almost never go down.

By way of contrast, the only times we've lost signal were in the fiercest of storms- I mean tornado watch/warning, area blackout type stuff- and that is usually only a few hours worth of loss. I've seen people lose their dishes in that kind of weather.

We just changed from Comcast to Time-Warner to Verizon. Comcast was bought out by T-W, but our ISP (Earthlink) gave us such bad service over the course of the last month (only 1 weeks worth of actual connectivity in 4 weeks) that we had to jump ship. The only other options for high-speed internet access were Verizon's and high-speed dialup.

Verizon's package of cable (with 2 DVRs) for 6 TVs + Internet for our LAN (hardwired AND wireless) was cheaper than anything else we could find...so we ditched T-W along with Earthlink.

Not that T-W was much of a loss. They were making some boneheaded decisions too- like moving the "TV guide channel" out of the channel band for basic extended cable that you didn't need a box for into the higher channels you needed a box AND additional services for.

 

[Gilladian]

Here in Central Texas we tried DirecTV for a year. It went out in every major storm, and had many staticy/interrupted signals at other times (whenever there was high wind). We went back to Time-Warner cable and have been reasonably happy ever since.

No, it isn't cheap, but we also get our high-speed internet from them and we have no service problems at all. We've never had a cable outage, including this spring when a pair of tornadoes went through the south side of town and knocked out 2 of the 3 local TV stations.

DirecTV was always rude, hard to deal with and would never try to correct whatever the problem REALLY was - they'd just say "we can't understand your problems" and give us a minute discount for "signal loss time".

 

[JRRNeiklot]

What kind of start up costs did you have with Dish Network? Any service complaints?

IIRC, $50 installation fee, credited back on your first bill. First month free, pay for two months straight up. I have the top 160. Only complaint I have is that when the receiver went out - likely due to lightning - I couldn't order ppv with the remote. I called to complain and the tech support idiot wanted to charge me 5 bucks more to order the movie over the phone instead of fixing the problem. I called back the next day and got someone who knew their job and had my new receiver in a few days.

 

[Harmon]

Harmon- I'm curious what set off the problems with the move (since I might be doing that, eventually). Was it that Dish didn't want to transfer the equipment, or was your mother trying to switch over to cable and having problems getting out of the contract?

They moved from his place out in the country to a city situation, he left his satalite set up down at his place, and wanted satalite at her place. He purchased the system, and when he tired to get it set up found that customer service was not- they had his money and could not care less.

He eventually took the system back to the store and got some of his money back, how much I do not recall.

It and the threats I recieved are the standing reasons why I will never suggest to anyone that they get satalite.


Dish Network's employees threatened my wife, and insulted me- when I attempted to report it I was attacked again. I would like to meet them face to face, because I think the phone line gave them some courage, much like these forums do.

 

[Banshee16]

I have StarChoice, and love it, from the actual TV service, to the customer service. They handle it like it should be handled by everyone.

Satellite *is* more expensive to get into, but often cheaper over the long run. And being able to get many of the main channels in multiple time zones makes it far easier to watch the programs I want, when I have the time to do so.

The picture's pretty good, though I do notice some graininess on my big screen. And now that I have an HD receiver for one of the TV's, it's pretty much crystal clear. However, it's still not as much grain and pixellation as I had when I was on digital cable. Haven't had many problems with interrupted service either....occasionally if it's a really heavy storm, rainfall, or blizzard, but that's about it. And if it's a storm, I've usually turned off the TV anyways. And I found with cable that heavy rainfall soaked the ground so much that the signal was often disrupted anyways.

Overall, in any instance where I had a choice between dish and cable, I'd choose dish any time.

Banshee

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Basically, you just need to do your homework. For some people, Dish is clearly better, for others, Cable will win hands down. It all boils down to your particular details.

One of the differences in costs between the 2 systems is in how they charge for multiple TVs.

Around here, the various Dish systems charge in such a way that is very good if you only want a few TVs hooked up...but if you have multiple rooms you want connected, it can get very expensive very fast. Cable, OTOH, is usually one price for the house, so the per TV costs drop the more TVs you own.

Also, as others have pointed out, Dish systems can often reach places cable is simply absent.