If I’m understanding your definition of PEG channels, then all of ours are broadcast over the air. In fact, they are still analog. If I was actually interested in anything that wasn’t already broadcast online or somewhere else, I could easily use an antenna to pick them up.
I am on U-Verse, having just switched from Dish about 6 months ago. No real complaints about DISH except for the outages. I have large trees in my LOS to the sattlelite, though, so it is to be expected. With U-Verse I got an overall break in my combined phone/internet/TV bill, so I chose to go with that. I also get more channels (200) as opposed to 100 with Dish for the same price.
The DVR is not as good as the Dish Network one, but it works well enough.
I definitely would switch to DISH over cable by someone like Cox, ComCast, or Time-Warner (Bright House? seems like they change their name every couple years due to allt he bad press). It was cheaper by far, and you don’t pay franchise fees (basically a fee so the local cable company can bribe your local municpal representatives into shutting anyone else out of your local market and thus restrict competition).
Switched to Dish from ComCast about 10 years ago, after the ComCast guy said that unless you upgraded to digital you couldn’t expect decent quality on all the channels. In that time we’ve had maybe 3 weather outages (I’m in the Bay Area, so no snow) and very few problems. We have one extra box and TV, for very little. Excellent picture quality, though we don’t get HD. They change the channel selections all the time, so you need to look, but all the ones I care about we get.
Best thing - Dish has the best customer service I’ve ever seen. When you call they start you off with an automated menu of things to try, which they have reordered to put the most likely solutions first. They don’t assume you are a moron, and let you skip stuff you’ve already tried. All the people I have spoken to from Dish have been helpful and respectful, and seem to be willing to take as long as necessary to get you back up. I once repointed one of my dishes to a different satellite - their instructions were very clear, and it took about ten minutes, no help needed, which I think was fabulous. (Now everything is on one.)
If you are on the West Coast there is one additional advantage - you can often get the East Coast feeds of cable channels. I get to watch the Daily Show at 8 PM, which is a big help.
I’m a former DishNetwork user (8 years). I very much enjoyed it, and I rarely had problems. Their customer service was generally very good, and the one time I had a real problem with them, I wrote to a higher-up and got treated like a king for their screw-up.
Heavy rain was the only thing that ever caused outages for me, and there were very brief. Of course, I live in the LA area, so rain is rarely a factor for much of anything here.
I’m with Comcast (which I’m pretty meh about - don’t love 'em, don’t hate 'em, they just are and their stuff generally works well for what I need it for), but my sister has DirecTV and talked my dad into getting it too. He’s out in the country, 4 miles outside of a small town in rural western Wisconsin. He’s also serious about his TV. He doesn’t watch a ton of shows - mostly sports, science, and history - but it better damn well be available when he wants to watch it.
DirecTV service was bad enough for him that he ditched it in favor of cable when the local area got big enough to get service out to him (which was recently). He’d lose the signal in thunderstorms and in rain, but also in simple windy weather. It also went out when it snowed, which is a not uncommon occurrence for 4-5 months a year. He hated it, and switched to cable as soon as it was available.
Since you’re in Vegas, you’d probably have better luck. Y’all get rain, what, for 20 minutes a year? 
I’ve been happy with DirecTV for years, up until recently. We frequently lose the signal for the local channels, and I have to reset the receiver three or four times a week. I called and asked if we could have a new receiver and they said we’re not due for one yet. The customer service rep had no solution to offer, so we’re just putting up with it.
My neighbor had a similar problem, and he switched to Dish. The Dish people came out on a Sunday (Mother’s Day) to install. The next day DirecTV called him and offered a new receiver. He declined.
My other quibble with DirecTV is that you can add but you can’t delete any programming on-line – you have to call them. Of course when you call, they’ll do everything they can to encourage you to keep whatever programming you don’t want. It takes some persistence to get them to drop something.
But in the past, we’ve had excellent service from them – free programming for being a long-time customer, quick delivery when something breaks, etc. They even sent us a free portable DVD player for responding to a survey.
We were thinking of switching over to either Dish or Direct, but declined both in the end. We get a better deal on Comcast’s triple bundle as opposed to either paying everything separately or just getting the internet and phone from Comcast.
Also, nobody in my neighborhood has satellite TV. It’s more common in the next town over, though, for some odd reason.
Are you homebound?
I can honestly say that there’s not a single video in that list that I would regret not seeing.
We dumped Comcast cable for DirecTV about a year and a half ago.
1. True about strong wind and/or clouds causing interruption in service? We have few clouds here, but wind would be a factor if that really made a difference. Never any problems with clouds. We’ve only lost the signal in very, very heavy rain (briefly) or once when snow piled up on the dish.
2. Obviously want the major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and even FOX) plus would like to have some of the other major cable networks (USA, FX, Bravo, HGTV) as part of the “basic package”. I assume those all come with every package, even the cheapest and most basic? I believe so, although I’m trying to remember if we pay a few extra dollars for local broadcast stations. You can go to the DirecTV / Dish Network websites to see their packages.
3. Other than hating Cox for lots of reasons, I am looking to save some money so price is important - best deal for lowest price; what is your basic bill for about 100 or so channels? Our monthly bill is <$100/month and we get way more than 100 channels, many in HD, and that also includes a dual-tuner HD DVR.
4. In the old days, multiple room hook ups cost more - we need to have four rooms with TV’s working - plus at least one DVR located in main living room. Is this included in base price now? I think we pay a few extra dollars for our second receiver. $5 maybe?
*5. Would like to get the German station, but not a deal breaker. Would also like to get some free movie channels - not necessarily Showtime and HBO (I know those usually cost extra), but it would be cool to get IFC and Sundance. What “free” movie channels come with basic service. * I don’t think we get any German channels but I think we do get one or both of these channels. You’ll need to check their website to be sure.
6. Lastly - any other comments or suggestions welcome; both good and bad experiences with Dish or DirecTV. Dropping Comcast and getting DirecTV was the best thing I ever did. I hated Comcast. Now I have better service, more channels, a better DVR, and pay less per month.
PEG channels were created by the FCC for cable networks only. There is no such thing broadcasting over the air or thru satellites (no reason why there couldn’t be, but there isn’t – low power stations are technically feasable, but the FCC pretty much killed those in the radio world and the Internet will probably take over for many TV stations eventually, anyway).
You watched all 500+hours of them to make an informed decision?
Considering many of them are recent recordings of popular concerts and community events attended by hundreds to thousands of spectators, it looks like your taste doesn’t match our community’s. Glad you don’t live here, or my job would be in jeopardy, and you would be bored.
Thanks to this thread, I’m actually considering a switch to Dish from DirecTV. I’ve been happy with DirecTV, but I’m afraid of calling them for anything because of all of the hype over how they extend contracts without telling you.
What really intrigues me about the Dish is the dual receiver. That would take my home network to a whole new level. Anyone have any experience using these with MythTV?
Also… my cable has crappy Spanish packages, and if my wife can watch Mexican football, then things aren’t good. So cable’s out. As for DirecTV, I can’t use multiple receivers without a home telephone line, so that’s out.
I beleive with Dish Network you will still pay a fee for your receiver if you don’t hook it up to a phone line so it can dial home every so often.
I subscribed to Dish within the last year and there is no fee on my plan for not hooking it up to a phone line (or internet, the receiver also has an RJ-45 jack). I think you just can’t order Pay-per-view at all without hooking it up.
I assume the dual receiver thing you are talking about w/Mythtv is that you want to hook one set of inputs up to the TV and the other to the MythTV box directly ? IE essentially two “rooms” of TV in one room ? That would work but only if you wanted standard definition only - because the set of outputs that use IR and can be controlled by the MythTV box would be the set of outputs that includes the High def outputs - the standard def only outputs on those boxes use the RF remote and the channel can’t be changed by Myth AFAIK.
From the little bit that I’ve been able to get from “simulating” a subscription to Dish, I can get a “dual” box that has (a) two remote controls to independently control the two tuners, and (b) has two outputs: (i) 480i, i.e., plain old television service (to steal an old telephone term), and (ii) an HD output (1080i or 1080p or something good enough). I don’t recall the output bus, maybe (i) is S-Video and (ii) is HDMI (I’ll research this, hopefully over coax).
What I’d like is that the low-res crap go right to the main TV in case someone really, absolutely must watch live TV. My MythTV box, then, currently has an HD tuner card with an RG-6 input (currently unused, but there!). The thing is, you call the 800 number and it’s staffed by non-techies.
Next, I’m assuming that because the Dish boxes are multi-room, they use RF instead of IR for the remotes, which makes purchasing an IR blaster for the MythTV backend complicated, since, IR is a heck of lot different than RF.
If you want standard def to the TV and High def to the MythTV box I think you are in luck. The remotes are IR AND RF - the High def (room where the box sits) is or at least can be IR, and the “second” standard def room is RF, AFAIK. So an IR blaster could control the high def outputs.
The bad news is that if you have a Coax (RG-6) high def card in your box it almost certainly won’t work with satellite (or a cable box for that matter). You probably have one that works with ATSC (antenna over the air high def) and Clear QAM (cable company unencrypted channels only high def). You need a card with component inputs to take the Component HD input from the cable box (1080i or 720p both are available from components and are selectable from the dish box’s menu) and an IR blaster to control it. The only Mythtv card that uses components that I know of is this one: Hauppauge HD-PVR - MythTV Official Wiki
I believe the Standard def is actually hooked up via Coax, if the box is the same as the one my brother had - I think it modulates the signal so it can be send to another room over existing wiring (ie like an old VCR- turn to channel 3 to watch tv). There might be other output for the standard def available though.
I’ve never had a phone line anywhere near to my Dish box, and have never paid a fee. I believe that you can order pay-per-view on-line, but I have no interest in that and have never tried it.
Paying a fee to not hook up seems to be a persistent legend.
Ah, yes, great point. This in fact is the case. But I can get another card! Of course, I need to follow the link and make sure it’s still sold.
Former subcontractor for DirecTV (and Dish) here. I guarantee that this is a dish installation/signal calibration problem, not a system problem or an unavoidable issue related to regional weather. (The problem with wind suggests that the dish was simply loose.) The only locations where you just can’t maintain a good signal are where thick trees or tall buildings are actually blocking the view of the right part of the sky. Snow, heavy rain, clouds, even typical thunderstorms should be no problem, I mean none, if the dish is installed well and carefully adjusted to get the strongest possible signal. I think I only suffered one total loss of picture ever, during a truly titanic pouring rain and lightning storm, and only a couple quality problems (moderate static) during heavy snowfalls.
You can call in, or do what I do. When I moved here, the phone company ignored my instructions and didn’t put a phone line in the room where my receiver is, so if I order something PPV, I just run a cord to the nearest jack for the few minutes it takes to order the movie. This setup also sometimes causes the receiver to have to update the guide, but it’s rare, takes 2-3 minutes, and doesn’t require the phone cord.
I forgot to mention the weather thing. I live just outside of Stockton in an area known for high winds. I’ve never lost a signal for that reason.