I did a quick search and saw a number of threads touting FIOS over cable, and touting satellite over cable, and possibly touting a sharp poke in the eye over cable. But I didn’t see any threads discussing FIOS v. satellite, which is what I’m considering now.
I’ll be living in the DC area, which (at least compared to my experience in LA) gets its share of storms, so I’m vaguely concerned about how often reception will be impacted by the weather. I’ve had Dish Network in the past and been very happy with their service, but it seems like DirecTV is the runaway favorite these days. Anyway, I have a generally favorable view of satellite from my past experience.
Then there’s FIOS, which the house I’ll be living in is already wired for. I had their internet service years ago when it first became available and thought it was great. Speeds are obviously much better now. But I’ve never had their TV service and know almost nothing about it.
DirecTV, Dish Network and FIOS all offer the channels we care about if we go to the higher-end packages, which is fine. They all seem to be priced at or below what I’ve been used to paying with Time Warner. So I guess I’m mostly interested in feedback on reliability, customer service, and any other thoughts about all three. And I also have the option of having FIOS internet combined with satellite TV, of course. Bonus points for people who have had both FIOS and satellite.
IME, FiOS TV has far fewer problems than cable (Comcast in my case) or DirectTV satellite. FiOS TV does not seem to or have to compress signals to cram them into limited bandwidth of copper coax systems or limited transponders on satellites.
In six years with FiOS triple play I have had only one outage of about 2 hours.
You’ll get a better deal if you get all three (TV, phone, internet) from one provider - FIOS or perhaps the local cable company (Cox serves our area).
As a new customer, they might even have a financial incentive for you to sign on for a 2-year rate lock / commitment; when we went with FIOS we got a gift card for 350 dollars. Sadly, they only do that for new customers (and many of the really cheap plans are also only for new customers).
I don’t know how internet works when you get service from a satellite provider - how do uploads work?
Anyway: we used to have Cox - our service did not require a cable box, and the signal wasn’t great. We had them out several times and they said they would have to run a new cable through our neighborhood but wouldn’t we really prefer to switch to their digital version. The new cable was never done, and we jumped ship to FIOS as soon as they were available.
Pretty much any provider requires you to have a cable box, which I find immensely frustrating. It’s mandatory, but it’s not included in the price, and adds a minimum of 9-10 bucks per month per box especially if you go with HD.
I’m in the same area and I’ve had FiOS for years (internet + cable) at three different locations. The service has been extremely reliable; I’ve experienced no outages at all (that were not related to a general power outage). I’ve only had to call them a couple of times for service-related issues, and against everything I’ve ever heard about their customer service, the people I spoke with each time were friendly and helpful, and my problem got resolved quickly.
I’ve got the “Prime HD” cable package with no premium channels and 50/50 Mb/s internet, for $89.99/mo plus taxes and fees, my monthly total is $111, with 7 months left on a 24-month contract (most of your package discounts phase out over the life of the contract; during the first few months of the contract I was paying $15 less than I am now, and for the last few months my bill will go up another $5).
I’ve been researching dumping the cable, and FiOS internet alone is $55 for the same 50/50 speeds.
I had Dish from 2006-2010 and have Fios since 2010 - present.
Service wise - In my experience Fios has more reliable equipment. With Dish I went through 3 DVR/decoder boxes in 4 years. I’ve never needed to replace the Fios box. Never had a problem with losing the signal during a rain storm with either, but I’m in southern California, so I never had to deal with snow accumulation in the dish.
Dish had a better on screen guide. Fios makes it a pain to filter out the channels you don’t subscribe to.
Customer service seems about equal. Replacing the defective set top boxes was easy. They emailed me a shipping label, I sent it in, and they sent out a new one. Of course, each time I lost everything on the DVR and went without TV for a few days.
Price-wise, Dish has much cheaper loss-leader sign up packages, but Fios lets you bundle with phone and internet. After the sign up deal is over, cost is fairly equivalent.
I don’t know about DIsh, but Fios is taking baby-steps towards a la carte packaging. They have mini-bundles of channels that you can pick and choose from and not pay for 200 channels you never watch. I also like the fact that Fios let me opt out of the local sports channels - which really really pisses off Time Warner who forked out $8 billion (yes, with a B) for Dodgers TV rights with the expectation of passing it on to all pay TV customers whether they watched it or not. (Time Warner insists that the Dodger Channel be in the basic tier, but they also insist that other providers pay them $5/subscriber - Fios said fuck that, we’ll let people have it a la carte if they want it, but we’re not jacking up everyone’s rates. Time Warner kept Dodger baseball off TV all last season, the other providers said 'Oh well". Turns out most viewers don’t give a shit)
The advantage that Dish seems to have over DirecTV and FIOS so far is that I can get pretty much all of the channels I care about from Dish for significantly cheaper than the other two. FIOS is offering me a discount for already being wired, and they’re offering the gift card Mama Zappa mentioned previously. But I think that’s only with a triple play package, and I’m probably going to keep Vonage for phone service.
The advantage of DirecTV for me seems to be that the packages I’m interested in include all of the regional sports networks that I don’t need, but that I would probably be happy to have. But I was surprised at how quickly DirecTV’s equipment costs started to add up (we’re planning on having four TVs connected).