Cable or dish? Which dish?

[divemaster]

I close on a house in a couple of weeks. By the front corner there are two ( :dubious: why would I need two?) dishes that say "RCA Dish Network" or something like that (going from memory here). I am soliciting factual answers, personal experiences, and advice based on the below givens.


My cable bill runs about $50 per month.
I have expanded basic cable (no pay channels) b/c we don't watch hardly anything other than sports (me) and HGTV (wife).
I am generally satisfied with the cable service; it is very reliable.


On the face of it, the only thing I would like to get out of a dish that cable does not seem to provide is access to out-of-market sports. Especially college and pro football and Cubs baseball (now that WGN only shows about 2 games a week). The main thing my wife would like is the feeds from Korean TV. (I was at someone's house for a Christmas party and they had like 3-4 Korean TV channels).

I would not want to pay more than the $50 I currently pay. If I sign up for a dish sports package, do ALL the sports I want come with it like from College Gameplan or NFL Gameday or whatever they call themselves, or will I get tagged for "seasonal packages" at additional cost? Will a dish pick up the local Chicago channel (CLTV, I think, or perhaps Chigago sports net) for Cubs games? Can I add Korean TV by itself or have to sign up for an "international package" or something?

I guess if the cost is about the same, I could go ahead and get the 200 channels or whatever. I'm not against a whole slew of channels, but I have no reason to pay extra for them.

If a dish is the way to go, do I save anything by using the installed hardware for Dish Network, or is it no big deal to have Direct TV installed (if indeed that more fits what I am looking for)?

[Litoris]

I have DishNetwork and I hate it. I would have cable in a heartbeat if we could get it where we live. We can't. Dish services generally suck -- no matter how much they hype it, when the wind blows enough to ya know feel, the service goes out. It sucks. If you can get cable, get it.

[gotpasswords]

Dish services generally suck -- no matter how much they hype it, when the wind blows enough to ya know feel, the service goes out. It sucks. If you can get cable, get it.
My experience is exactly opposite - when we had cable, anything more than a light breeze would shake the cables and wiggle the connections somewhere in the neighborhood, making for lots of static and dropouts. And, the service would go out entirely for an hour or two at a time, at random times of day with maddening regularity.

Our Dish Network service has been rock-solid, and we get some pretty stiff winds here. The key is that the dish mount has to be properly installed so it doesn't move. No rocket science - just good carpentry.

[mbh]

I would have preferred cable, but roomate had already paid to have Dish Network installed.

The cable company only sent me junk mail. Dish Network seems to employ more salesmen than technicians. And many of their technicians seem to do sales on the side.

The salesmen are constantly hounding you to "Add this!" "Upgrade that!" "Fantastic savings if you sign up today!" Although, in order to get the fantastic savings, you have to fill out this form, mail in that coupon, etc., etc., etc. If you miss jumping through any of the hoops, the savings turn out to be much less fantastic than the salesman led you to believe. Technically, they don't commit bait-and-switch, but they come as close as they can.

The technical end of the company delivers a decent product, but I really hate their marketing.

[Voyager]

I would have preferred cable, but roomate had already paid to have Dish Network installed.

The cable company only sent me junk mail. Dish Network seems to employ more salesmen than technicians. And many of their technicians seem to do sales on the side.

The salesmen are constantly hounding you to "Add this!" "Upgrade that!" "Fantastic savings if you sign up today!" Although, in order to get the fantastic savings, you have to fill out this form, mail in that coupon, etc., etc., etc. If you miss jumping through any of the hoops, the savings turn out to be much less fantastic than the salesman led you to believe. Technically, they don't commit bait-and-switch, but they come as close as they can.

The technical end of the company delivers a decent product, but I really hate their marketing.
Interesting. We got Dish Network when the cable guy came and told us that we shouldn't expect both the high channel and low channel cables to give decent picture quality. That was at least seven years ago. We've never been hassled by salesmen. Our original installation went great, but when our DVR went out it took a couple of tries to get it working again. (And two new boxes.)

However they have the best technical support of anyplace I know. I've never had to wait more then three rings to get it picked up. They have a reasonably good automated troubleshooting menu, which has even improved. I've never dealt with anyone clueless there - in fact they even believe you know what you are doing some times.

I actually repointed one of my dishes when we went from a French channel to local channels, and the instructions were clear and correct. It went amazingly well.

The satellite may have gone out once for a second in all the time I've had it, though I do live in California, and the dish is in a protected area. I'm not happy about being forced up to a slightly more expensive package by their rejiggering of the channels, but I suspect Comcast is worse. Since we have automatic bill pay, we hardly get any junk mail from them at all.

[Jophiel]

I'm in Chicago west suburbia and we have DirecTV and are happy with it. We actually have their High Def package now and haven't had any problems of note. We had their standard before that.

My sister has Dish and I've always hated it. Seems like it is much more susceptible to the weather than mine is. Also, I like their remote less but that's just me.

My mom has Comcast cable and the basic cable works well enough for her. I don't remember ever having issues with it when I lived at home years ago. But, if I had to move somewhere new, I think I'd stay with the DirecTV.

[Eric Halfabee]

I have DishNetwork and I hate it. I would have cable in a heartbeat if we could get it where we live. We can't. Dish services generally suck -- no matter how much they hype it, when the wind blows enough to ya know feel, the service goes out. It sucks. If you can get cable, get it.

Another exact opposite experience. I have Dish in an apartment complex. Nothing short of a hurricane will knock it out and it isn't even attached to the roof (apartment rules). The dish itself is mounted on a sheet of plywood and held down with cinder blocks. We had a severe storm a few weeks ago and the signal was out for maybe 15 minutes.

Comcast's digital cable service sucked hard and long. Every day the quality of the signal would change. The digital channels would get blocky and pixelated 50% of the time.

[Khadaji]

I hate hate hate Comcast. Every year they raise the price and take away more channels. I have been so tempted to switch to the dish. The only thing preventing me is that I also have the cable broadband.

[Tastes of Chocolate]

We had Charter Cable until we moved last month. Now we've got DirectTV. My beef so far with dish is that I have to pay a monthly fee for every extra TV. With cable, I could plug in as many TVs as I wanted, and get expanded basic on all of them (no boxes required on a cable ready TV). With the dish, I have to have a box for each TV, and every box past the first costs me $4/month. On top of that, I'm limited to 4 boxes with the dish I have.

[Belrix]

I hate hate hate Comcast. Every year they raise the price and take away more channels. I have been so tempted to switch to the dish. The only thing preventing me is that I also have the cable broadband.
This is why I switched to Dish Network. In a head-to-head comparison, they seemed about $10 cheaper than DirecTV service for about the same channels.

No weather problems, our disk is mounted on a platform held down by cement blocks (on our flat garage roof)

You probably have two dishes because, early Dish network was one satellite. Later they launched a second with more programming. Early adopters added a second dish for the second satellite.

New installs use a "Dual-LNB" dish, has two antennas in the horn opposite the dish itself. Gets both satellites with one dish.

You can probably get the installer to pull down the old dish and add a new dual-LNB one on the same post. Leave the mounting bracket for the unused dish post, if you remove the bracket, you leave holes behind in your roof.

Oh. And comcast marketing filled my mailbox with a new advertisement every three days trying to get me to add new services, including services I already subscribed to.

Not having cable TV does not affect my ability to get Comcast internet, though. I still subscribe to that (and only that).

To some of you with constant problems, is your sky clear to the south? Are these light winds blowing a tree branch in front of your dish? It's very sensitive to solid objects in the way.

[ASAKMOTSD]

From what I hear, the satellite fade problem is a fault primarily with the installation. I have had zero problems with the second satellite connection I have had. The first had all kinds of drop outs due to weather.

Cable has never been reliable around where I live. As someone else said, a slight breeze or a drop of rain & Comcast would leave me hanging.

On the other hand, I use Wide Open West (WOW) for my cable modem. It has been super reliable.

[Khadaji]

Thanks for the info Belrix. I might just go ahead and switch after all.

[Belrix]

Thanks for the info Belrix. I might just go ahead and switch after all.
Note, in my area, having cable & internet together gets you a "bundle" price on internet. I think I pay a bit more for internet now than I did before.

[gaffa]

The problem is the company installers are paid by the job, not the hour, so they have little reason to spend the time maximizing the signal level. I've installed dishes for sports bars, and they'll gladly pay me my hourly rate for however long it takes to get the signal level as high as possible and the mounting as solid as possible. They'll even pay for extra large dishes (1 meter single-sat and 36" wide triple sat) to avoid rain fade.

[shelbo]

Call to TimeWarner cable means about 20 minutes on hold before you can talk to anyone.
I've never been on hold with DirecTV for more than a few minutes.
I love it, overall, but it's probably more $ than your basic cable.

[Asimovian]

Just chiming in to say I've had pretty much nothing but good experiences with DishNetwork in the nearly seven years since we first signed up with them. Again, I'm in the LA area, so I'm less affected by weather issues. I've never had rain knock us out for more than a couple of seconds. I have seen a little bit of the wind issue, but as with others, that turned out to be an installation problem on one of the satellites.

The only other problem I've had is that a couple of the receivers have gone out after several years, but this is where Dish's customer service has shined. On each occasion, we got replacements within two days with free shipping back to them on the defective unit. Yeah, it sucks to lose whatever you had on the DVR, but it hasn't been a common occurrence, either.

[carlb]

I've had nothing but good experiences with DirecTV. I can't speak to the pricing of the channels you want; you'll probably have to speak to someone at whichever company you decide to go with. As for all other areas, DirecTV has been great. Their customer service has been fantastic; everyone I've ever dealt with on the phone has been helpful and knowledgable. I have only very, very rarely had reception issues - only during very strong winds here in Chicago (we are on the top floor of our building, and the dish is on the roof). In Florida, reception has been rock solid. The only times we lost the signal was because the power went out, not because the dish moved out of position.

[whatami]

I used to love DirecTV and recommended it to several people. I got several $50 credits for referrals, and their service was mostly good.

Now I hate them, and would pay friends $50 not to use them. I'm going to be initiating arbitration against them next month.

[Stuffy]

We had Charter Cable until we moved last month. Now we've got DirectTV. My beef so far with dish is that I have to pay a monthly fee for every extra TV. With cable, I could plug in as many TVs as I wanted, and get expanded basic on all of them (no boxes required on a cable ready TV). With the dish, I have to have a box for each TV, and every box past the first costs me $4/month. On top of that, I'm limited to 4 boxes with the dish I have.


My Dish Network receivers control two tvs each, and yes I can watch different programs on all of them. The cool thing about this is I can watch programs I’ve DVR’d on either TV controlled by that box. It's kind of like having four DVRs.

[Qwisp]

I used to love DirecTV and recommended it to several people. I got several $50 credits for referrals, and their service was mostly good.

Now I hate them, and would pay friends $50 not to use them. I'm going to be initiating arbitration against them next month.
Can I ask why you loved them and what caused you to change your mind? I am considering switching from cable to dish and am very curious about your answer.

[mazinger_z]

I've had Time Warner (blows ass), AT&T (massive rip off) for cable. I've also had Dish and more recently Directv. I like Dish way more than Directv. I find Dish's Tivo to be more user friendly and more options. I also get this crappy gray screen from my Directv DVR, instead of, you know, regular programming.

[Apocalypso]

Why don't you call the dish people, tell them what you're interested in getting, and ask them how much it costs?

FWIW, we switched from cable (Comcast) to the Dish Network late last year.
Good: More channels. You do get more sports channels than cable, and you get a lot of premium movie channels (multiple HBO's, etc).

Bad: Sometimes the dish loses it's signal and we have to wait for it to re-calibrate. Doesn't happen that often, but it's an annoyance we didn't have to deal with under cable.
Closed Captioning SUCKS on the dish. Garbled text, repeating the same lines over and over, it's bad enough that some stuff is unwatchable if you depend on the CC.

Dish is mind bogglingly complex with multiple television setups, and we've had to spend quite a bit of time on the phone with their support people.
Cost is a little higher than cable.

We'll probably wind up switching back to cable....

[JackofHearts]

I have had DirecTV for a few months now and am quite happy with it. One of the main reasons I love it is for the same reason I love the return of AT&T wireless and the debut of the iPhone in Alaska...we finally get pricing even remotely in line with the rest of the country. For mobile phone service (pre-iPhone) and cable, local companies have been pretty free to charge whatever the hell the felt like charging for services. And of course they felt no need to stay caught up with the game in terms of HD channels, etc. The DVR and the selection of HD channels on DirecTV are superior in every way to GCI, the local cable purveyor.
The only weather related issue I've ever had with the dish was when it was covered, quite literally, by 2-plus feet of snow in a day...the signal faded for a while but was back within hours. The biggest thing keeping me from switching before was the myth (perpetuated by DirecTV themselves even) that you NEED a home phone to have service. My installer assured me that this was not so, hooked me up, and then "look ma, no cable!"

[enipla]

Can I ask why you loved them and what caused you to change your mind? I am considering switching from cable to dish and am very curious about your answer.Me too.

Tech support seems pretty good.

I've had DirecTV/Way since it's inception when they where selling them at Sears.

Pretty happy overall.

[robardin]

I've used Time Warner Cable in NYC and DirecTV in Baltimore.

DirecTV was very nice at the time (1997-99), it had features like on-screen menus and out-of-area channels way before cable did. But, it was very prone to weather conditions. Rainstorms (not windy conditions) had the biggest impact, the signal would drop out for up to 5-10 minutes at a time during heavy rain or snow.

On the other hand the picture quality seemed better than cable was at the time.

Coming back to NYC in 1999, I looked into getting DirecTV but had trouble getting the "clear line of sight to the south" that is required to install a network dish. Too many tall, old-growth trees in my part of Queens, it seems. Well, good. I certainly value the trees more than satellite TV service!

So while satellite TV is not an option for me now, a friend of mine has DirecTV service at his house nearby. He loves it but admits that he is subject to dropouts when it storms. So that problem is still there.

By now, I'm quite happy with digital cable with HD programming (and bundled internet service). I've never had problems with their customer service; on the contrary, the guys who come to run new lines have been prompt, quick, friendly and knowledgeable. The few times I've had to call on the phone I've only had to wait about 5 minutes, about what I'd expect. Best of all, they have a store location in a mall about 10 minutes away from me, so I can run in and get cable box upgrades (like when I first got HD service, or upgraded my DVR box) and swap in the box myself without making a service appointment.

If/when FiOS comes into my area I'll check it out. I have noticed more pixelation in the HD channels since they've expanded their HD channel offerings, probably due to increased compression to fit more HD signals on the same bandwidth.

[gotpasswords]

Dish is mind bogglingly complex with multiple television setups, and we've had to spend quite a bit of time on the phone with their support people.
Cost is a little higher than cable.

We'll probably wind up switching back to cable....
Who did the installation? You or one of their techs?

I have done a Dish Network self-install and only had trouble with the key step of getting the dish mount perfectly plumb. The wiring was no worse than a stereo system.

My current hookup has one "DishPro 1000" dish on the roof with multiple LNBs and two dual-tuner DVR receivers, each feeding one local HD set and one remote standard-def set. The hardest part was getting the remote TVs to auto-scan and find the channel that the PVR transmits on.

Cost per month for the two dual-head DVR boxes feeding four TVs, the Top 200 package, HD "essentials" and the local channels is just under $80 a month.

[StGermain]

I have DishNetwork and love it. My mother has Comcast and it drives me crazy not to be able to see program listings a week in advance. Her on-screen program guide is hard to use and customize, and her remote is very unwieldy. I've seen the DirecTv program listing and wasn't thrilled about them, either. Their C/S is great - easy to get on the phone and always pleasant. I've lost a receiver once, and they had a new one to me in a couple days. The only con is that very rarely I will lose my signal due to weather. It has to be pretty bad out for my picture to go out, though. Once I had a branch grow right in front of the receiver, and I had to cut that back, but otherwise it works wonderfully. And how did I live without a DVR?

StG

[MentalGuy]

We have DishNetwork and have been fairly pleased. I was considering switching to DirectTV (we do not have access to cable) because of more HD channels, but Dish just added several yesterday including Sci-Fi, USA, ESPNews, and some others. They also announced they would be adding more this year.

The only time we have had a problem with losing the signal is during very heavy rains.

I think those sports packages are sold separately (I don't subscribe). So if you subscribe to the NFL package for example, you get all the NFL games, but you would have to subscribe separately for the college gameplan or the NBA.

[Apocalypso]

Who did the installation? You or one of their techs?

I have done a Dish Network self-install and only had trouble with the key step of getting the dish mount perfectly plumb. The wiring was no worse than a stereo system.

My current hookup has one "DishPro 1000" dish on the roof with multiple LNBs and two dual-tuner DVR receivers, each feeding one local HD set and one remote standard-def set. The hardest part was getting the remote TVs to auto-scan and find the channel that the PVR transmits on.

Cost per month for the two dual-head DVR boxes feeding four TVs, the Top 200 package, HD "essentials" and the local channels is just under $80 a month.

The techs.
The setup just seemed insanely complicated compared to cable. Oh, one of the tv's is HD. It has a massive group of wires going in and out of the television, to 3 - 4 small boxes, and in/out of a coax cable AND a telephone jack. I can hook up any video or audio device, stereo, computer, or what have you, and lemme tell ya, just looking at all that crap needed for high def gives me a headache...

[scr4]

We switched from Comcast to DirecTV last year, and we are not very happy with it. Some reasons are:

No localized Weather Channel. We have to contend with a regional version (i.e. "South").
TiVo doesn't have a satellite tuner (at least ours doesn't), so it needs to be hooked up to the satellite receiver box. Our satellite box doesn't have a serial port so we have to use an IR controller. Works OK, but not as elegant, and need to be careful not to change channels manually.
Severe weather can affect signal.
The antenna installer drilled holes in our roof, which may be causing a leak. (We're still not 100% sure where the leak is, but the stain/mold on the ceiling is right below the antenna.)
Our satellite receivers (we have 2) are very unreliable - they'd crash and need to be reset. One time I lost several days of scheduled TiVo recordings because the receiver had crashed and I hadn't noticed it.
Need to get broadband Internet separately. We have DSL, which is noticeably slower than cable.

[Suse]

We had Dish Network up till two years ago, when we switched to Mediacom cable.
The number of channels was better on Dish Network although it ticked me off that we had to take the America's Top 200 to get SpeedTV (turned out to be the same way for cable - we had to upgrade the selection to get the channels we wanted).

Reliability was better on Dish as well; the cable channel consistently futzed up one of our local channels. With Dish we would occasionally have outages during storms but when we upgraded our antenna it stopped that issue almost entirely.

Cable was a better price for the first year, as we had our internet service with them also, but when the special price expired and we were due to renew, I called and asked if they had any specials for renewing customers and they told me no. Meanwhile our cost for TV and cable internet had doubled. So we changed our internet service to DSL, dropped cable TV altogether, and then started getting calls from the cable company about a month later asking us to resubscribe and offering discounts. After I've gone through the hassle of changing everything over? Not a chance.

So now we have DSL and no pay TV at all. But we have decided that once we do get pay TV again, we'll go back to Dish Network. Screw Mediacom.