I’m interested in hearing from Dopers who use Dish Network service, and their opinion of it. (DirectTV is not an option, so for this discussion, I’m not interested in them.)
I currently have Time Warner cable for TV and internet. I’m considering switching, since my local telco bundles my regular home phone service with Dish Network.
How is the service? Do you use it for internet too? Can you compare it to cable?
Any information would be useful. Thanks!
I’ve had Dish for several years and have been happy with them. I only get TV programming through them - my phone and internet service are through other providers.
For video, they’ve been far more reliable than the local cable service. At my location, it takes a significant rainstorm to interrupt the signal. Service interruptions are pretty rare - maybe one short hiccup every two to three months. When we had cable, a good day was one that had less than 15 minutes’ outage. My neighbors say the cable’s gotten more reliable, but still not as reliable as our satellite service.
I don’t think you can use Dish Network for internet.
The only satellite internet provider I know of is HughesNet, but I understand that their only selling point is that they cover areas that DSL / Cable internet does not. If you are covered by these other options, they are significantly more cost effective.
I have had Dish Network for a while here in Sacramento. I’ve had Comcast and DirectTV before in Atlanta.
DirectTV and Dish Network have been okay from a customer service perspective, Comcast was a complete nightmare that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy (especially cable internet, it took over seven scheduled service appointments to get that back working), but what drew me to Dish Network here in Sacramento was their TurboHD packages. A 100% HD package at a pretty reasonable price. With Cinemax and the DVR it is actually quite a nice little package.
Here is a link to a previous thread I started about Dish Network, with an emphasis on HD quality.
I’ve had DishNetwork for at least 8 years, and have been very satisfied. We get DSL and phone from other places - I doubt Dish has an internet service, since they’ve never bugged us about it. We had Comcast before, and it was miserable.
Customer service always answers quickly, and I have even debugged problems with their automatic diagnostics system.My biggest problem was when our DVR lost a disk. It took a few times to get it right, but the repair guys showed up on time (they are locally contracted,) it never cost a penny, and the help desk guy didn’t treat me like an idiot.
We used to have two dishes. When we shifted to one I had to repoint it. There instructions were clear, and I did it with zero problems. Their set top box is actually a lot smarter than it used to be, which helps.
We’ve never had a picture quality problem, but I live in the relatively benign Bay Area. Service is getting more expensive, but isn’t everything? My wife is a weather channel fan, and minded giving up local forecasts - but now they broadcast them on another band, and you can get it when the Weather Channel goes to the city by city forecasts, so even that is good.
We’ve never considered switching back.
We don’t do pay per view, so I can’t comment on that, and we don’t do special HD either.
Thanks everyone. I was incorrect about the internet service. They bundle with my telco here, so internet would be DSL through Windstream, not Dish.