Direct Tv or Cable

[Bullit]

Hey Guys,

Need some help. I saw a tread on this but it was from 2005 and I know things have changed a bit. As some of you know I have been home for a bit now and my cable company has been driving me nuts.

So while I have been home I have been doing some research online about Satellite tv. We can save almost $100 buck a month by switching from our cable company. But I have also heard all of the horror stories about how they always go out in bad weather and a lot of reports and reviews of bad customer service.

I live in southern Virgina and was just wondering if any of you all have an opinion one way or another. Any advice would be appreciated, I just have had way to much time on my hands lately.Thanks

[k_mac]

Re: Direct Tv or Cable

I just switched from Dish to Direct TV about a month ago, and I like it so far. If it's going to save you around $100 a month, I'd say go for it.

[Bullit]

Re: Direct Tv or Cable

I just switched from Dish to Direct TV about a month ago, and I like it so far. If it's going to save you around $100 a month, I'd say go for it.

Do you have any of the problems with loosing the signal or things like that?

[k_mac]

Re: Direct Tv or Cable

Do you have any of the problems with loosing the signal or things like that?

I haven't really had Direct long enough to get a feel for it, mainly because the weather has been pretty nice. But with my experience with Dish Network, the signal wasn't too bad. I only had problems during the really hard rains, or hard snows. It would occasionally go out during some of the lesser rains, but after it did sort of a reboot and reacquired the signal it was fine.

[gerg1234]

Re: Direct Tv or Cable

My parents never have problems with DirecTv losing signal (Well, unless it snows heavily. You have to go remove the snow from the dish) They are angry with them over the lack of Comcast Sports NW (Blazers) and The Pac-12 Network (Beavers). Other than that they've been happy for a while.

[cubsfan203]

Re: Direct Tv or Cable

Ours will lose signal occasionally during really bad storms, but that's it. I'm not sure if Virginia has the same kind of storms we do here in Texas though so you might be safe from that.

[Herky]

Re: Direct Tv or Cable

I am currently living in a out of market are for Minnesota Viking games so I have Direct TV for Sunday Ticket. I've also never had my dish go out more than 3 times in 5 years, and both times were during very heavy downpours. Overall it's cheaper than cable for me as well, and I get more HD channels.

The only thing worse is the internet through CenturyLink. It's a lot slower than my cable internet was.

[killerx2]

Re: Direct Tv or Cable

had it a couple years back, it was really bad imo. i saw some local ads about direct tv users losing some of the popular channels including a local channel, but this was a local ad, and my friend has confirmed the ad to be true for him atleast.i have atat and its not bad at all, all of them jack up the price, but i remember direct tv doubling it, and atat also raising it drastically but not as much.if you are completely sure about direct tv and cable and not willing to get any other service, i think direct tv would be the best for you.i like their sports choices as well and imagine thats important to you since you are on OS.i also made my first switch from cable to direct tv and saw a huge improvement.

[SuperBowlNachos]

Re: Direct Tv or Cable

The only time we have lost signal since we got it in May was when the storm was bad enough to drop hail. The 3-4 times I have called I never had a problem with customer service. The only bad thing when compared to cable is how the on demand works. For the cable company I had at least it just worked because it came through the line the internet was on and it was the same company. For DirecTV you have to have a special box which is like $100 unless you can swing a deal.

You can also save $10 a month if you get a friend's account number and say that they referred you.

[bigbob]

Re: Direct Tv or Cable

I'd go with DirecTV.

Like gerg said, you may lose it in a heavy snow, and that's because it sticks right to the dish. If you get it put where you can just take a broom and brush it off lightly, it won't really bother you. We got a foot of snow once last year, the signal went out. As soon as I brushed the snow off, it came back on.

Having worked for DirecTV, I will say this. If you get it, do NOT get it installed on a weekend, or a holiday. Those particular guys are contractors and those are where you start to see the poor signals.

[bigeastbumrush]

Re: Direct Tv or Cable

I have cable (TWC) but why the big deal of outages with DirectTV when cable companies have outages as well in bad weather? Bad weather causing outages is not just a dish problem. The cable companies suffer the same problems.

[Bullit]

Re: Direct Tv or Cable

Thanks for all of the help guys, I really appreciate it. I have decided to go with Direct TV, they will be here tomorrow for install. :wink:

[Dirty Turtles]

Re: Direct Tv or Cable

I had no problems with DirecTV in the time I was with them. We just recently made the decision to get rid of our TV service because our lives don't allow us to watch enough of it to justify its price.

[FlyingFinn]

Re: Direct Tv or Cable

I have had DirecTV for 16 years and still love it... Actually my account is now hibernated because I moved to Germany but I will definitely re-activate when/if I move back to the States. In the summer time in Florida with the heavy rains, the HD channels sometimes would go out but 99% of the time when that happened, I could watch the SD channel. I just knew to set the DVR to record things in the middle of night rather than the late afternoon in the summer time to avoid the storms all together.

[roadman]

Re: Direct Tv or Cable

We've had DirectTV for 14 years and I can count on two hands how many times the weather affected it. We live between Milwaukee and Chicago, so, we've had snows, but I learned from someone to put a large garbage bag over the dish and that should prevent the snow from accumulating on it. Honestly, we haven't had that much snow in the winter to interrupt the service. Sure, we have lightening now and then, but it doesn't bother us, usually those summer storms are in and out.

We are due for a new TV and bullit, maybe you can chime in here or anyone else. Our last TV was HDTV, but the receiver from DirectTV wasn't in HD. How much does it cost to upgrade to a receiver with HDTV? We only have one LNB on our dish. Do we need two?

Any other type of special cables you need to upgrade or will DirectTv provide that.

Thank you.