Yes, the Dish is Satan's sweaty ball sack and we're going to hell for choosing it.

We had Dish Network installed today. I am very excited - we are not locked into a contract, we’ve done a lot of research, and this is what we want. One of the reasons we decided to cancel was the fact that we did NOT want digital cable - we didn’t have the money for digital cable (which is upwards of $80 for digital here, without any pay channels), and we were being price-gouged enough for basic at $52 a month. So after doing research and discovering that we could get Dish in four rooms with 180 channels, 2 receivers, and DVR on two TVs for an additional $4 a month (with the same channels we get on cable, plus 100 more), we decided to go ahead and go with it (after the promotion we’re in is up, we’ll pay an extra $10 for the 60 free channels we’re getting right now, but we’re still coming out way ahead of digital cable).

One of the reasons I’ve wanted to cancel Time Warner is because i called a few months ago to get HBO so I could keep up with Six Feet Under. I was promptly informed that we could no longer get pay movie channels without digital cable.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Fuck that. Digital cable was NOT in the budget, so they’d rather not get the extra $10 a month we were ready to spend on HBO and Showtime? We’ve been able to get pay channels for TWENTY FUCKING YEARS without digital cable (I remember having HBO and Showtime as a kid - my dad had them all), so why is now so different? That’s when we realized that TW no longer gave a shit about their basic subscribers and they only care about their digital subscribers. Well, sorry. We decided that when we moved into our house, it was away to Dish Network we’d go!

So I called Dish this weekend and scheduled an installation for today. He arrived early this morning, and set everything up. We now have a DVR on our two downstairs TVs - yay! We’re thrilled. So far, we love it. Our installer was great - he explained everything quite well, and without even asking him, he gave me a list of reasons why people usually have troubles with their Dish and what he did to counter that. Hell, he also told me how to skip the warranty provision for now, but then get it in case we needed it to save money on repairs.

However, my family is a pretty big satellite family. My parents have DirecTV, as do my brother and sister-in-law. My sister and her family have had DirecTV since it first came on the market years ago (and you could only watch one channel on all the TVs). No one has had any problems - my sister upgraded their dish to a newer model so that they could get all of the bells and whistles, but so far, I’m pretty impressed with everything.

So I called Time-Warner to cancel our cable service - thank GOD. I’m sick of paying an incredibly amount of money to them for shit service. Of course, when I spoke with the woman to cancel and she heard we’d cancelled to get satellite service, you would think that we had just promised our firstborn to train as Saddam Hussein’s successor!

“Well, you know that people have outage problems with cable because of the weather. EVERY TIME.”

Okay. Whatever. My family has had NO outages when there’s been bad weather - and shit, they had a HURRICANE without an outage. Our installer explained what he did so that this would be prevented (he said when you have outages, it’s because the installer didn’t do something to make sure the dish was properly secured - he said he did that with some kind of bolts.). I’m sick of hearing this excuse. And our cable goes out plenty - it seems to go out at least once a month, and usually when we’re trying to tape something in the middle of the night.

“They rope you into a contract.”

We’re not in a contract.

“They raise their prices. They raised their prices TWICE last year.”

Hmmm…well, I seem to recall TW raising their prices TWICE last year. And funny, I’m still paying the same amount to Dish Network for more channels than we paid to Time Warner for less channels. Explain THAT.

“It costs $200 to get a repair person out there!”

No. I checked our contract with a fine-tooth comb. $99. And if we choose the warranty, it’s $29. Still, no one in my family has needed to call a repair person EVER. I realize I’m going on a small sample size, but I’d still rather go with the Dish.

I had to sit and listen to this woman list all of the old, tired same reasons that no one should EVER GET A DISH! BECAUSE IF YOU DO, TOADS WILL FALL FROM THE SKY AND GOD WILL HATE YOU!

Let’s see. Pros of getting Dish Network: We pay less, we get more channels, PLUS DVR. Music channels. Sirius Satellite Radio. And my favorite - I can buy Pay Per View episodes of East Enders. Score!

Cons of not getting Dish Network: We pay Time-Warner more money for less channels. No DVR. Basic cable. No music channels. I can’t get HBO. No East Enders.

Exactly WHY shouldn’t we get Dish again?

And I should probably Pit myself for being too polite to tell the woman just to shut the fuck up and cancel our service. I’m too nice on the phone and I need to stop it.

E.

Yep. This was your one and only mistake. Anytime anyone ever asks you why you’re canceling a service, the answer is “none of your business.”

Time Warner is a bunch of unclefuckers, but I’m keeping them for now because the cable modem service is excellent, if expensive.

What friedo said. Why did you feel you had to have any of this conversation at all? You don’t have to defend or explain your decision to anyone, least of all them.

However, you are considering paying for extra episodes of Eastenders, so are clearly totally mad, so we shouldn’t wonder. :slight_smile:

Yeah, that was my mistake. I’m a pushover.

But hey, I didn’t say yes to ONE thing she offered - like keeping the $12 basic service monthly. Before, I’d feel guilted into doing it. This time - NOPE. I’m improving;).

E.

And: several HDTV channels. If you plan on getting a high definition screen, you’ll be ready with nine channels, I believe, to choose from. At least that’s what we get with Dish, and I don’t believe we’re paying for a special package.

Don’t the cable people realise that UmptyBillion miles of cable and fiber network is many, many times more likely to fail then a satellite signal?
And don’t they get all their channels from a big satellite at the booster stations anyway?
I would go with satellite myself, if I could pry open my wallet enough to part with the monthly bill. I already have TW for the cable modem and that’s enough right there.

I have Dish Network and I am very happy with them.
I have had the signal go out on me twice in really bad weather. I used to have cable at on place where the signal would drop when there was rain - no matter how little the rain fall, the picture was gone.

…And glad to see I misinterpreted it.

You forgot another popular piece of cable company propaganda. “We offer local programming; Metro Weather, Metro Traffic, Public Access Channels and Local News”.
Traffic & Weather? I get that info every 10 minutes on the AM all news radio stations if I need it. Besides, I don’t have a 38 mile long cable that runs from my house to a TV set in my car.
Public access? The only difference between public access hosts and end-of-day doomsdayers, fringe lunatics and untalented hip hop artists that you see out on the street is the the fact former can afford to buy airtime.
Local News? Just what I wanna see. Live coverage of the little league parade in West Bumfuck.Personally, I can’t wait for the day when there’s the technology that enables satellite providers to offer inexpensive internet access. It’ll be the proverbial stake that gets driven thru the hearts of these blood sucking vampires that we euphimistically refer to as cable companies.

Oh, and Charles Dolan, after you’ve given me that blumpkin you still owe me, take that 70+ thousand west-side Jets stadium you’re so dead set against and shove it up your civic-minded ass.

They probably do realize it. Evidently, their hope is that if they get the customer distracted by an argument over dropping the service, the customer won’t notice.

We moved from cable to Dish Network about 2 years ago and have never looked back. I was just plain getting tired of having them raise prices and change the contents of their packages at the drop of a hat. Not to mention the frequent outages whenever someone decided to dig up a piece of cable with their backhoe.

The only weather related problems we’ve had with Dish is when a lot of snow falls and accumulates on the dish, then I have to go outside with a broom and sweep it off. I think this has happened 3 times since we’ve had the satellite, but hey! We live in the top of the Rocky Mountains.

Good luck to you, and happy viewing.

Yes, you are paying for the special HDTV package, and you have to have the HDTV receiver for it to work. I think it’s about $10 per month extra.

Oh, yeah, it was sarcastic - I forget it’s hard to translate sarcasm across titles.

Glad to hear about everyone having good luck with Dish Network. That’s a plus!

Hey, Futile Gesture, I’m one of them 'Merkins who doesn’t get EastEnders on regular TV! 'Sides, it took me six months to figure out those accents, and I am NOT wasting that time.

Besides, I really miss Alfie and Kat.

FatBaldGuy, the funny thing is - the Dish is on our roof, and yes, we do get a lot of snow (but hopefully, no more for six months or so at LEAST), but we’re in a really old house that has a door from the upstairs bathroom to the room - they must have been fire escapes in the '20s when the house was built. We can stick a broom out the door and knock the snow off the dish (or just go out on the roof - the installer used the door all day and didn’t have any problems). So if it’s necessary, that’s cool.

Ah, you guys are making me feel much better. And I feel even better knowing that I have over ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY CHANNELS to watch. Since we keep the TV on nonstop (we can’t help it - both of us like background noise), it’s all good.

Quick technical question - he told us that we had to turn off the receivers at night for updates. If we turn off the receivers and have something scheduled to DVR at 3 AM, will we still get that? My husband is addicted to his nightly reruns of What’s My Line, and we both like it. And what happens if we don’t turn the receivers off every night? We like to sleep with the TV on (I’m telling you, background noise), so we really don’t want to have to turn it off. But the installer said something about screwing things up if we don’t turn it off - is that true?

E.

Not to defend Time-Warner (those fuckers never give me any business anyway), but the reason you can’t get HBO without the digital package is that HBO has shut down their analog feed in some regions. They supply content in those areas in a digital format only now.

They also realize that a signal carried on a conductor is generally of a higher, and more controllable, quality; it is less affected by factors out of the control of the engineering staff (well, except backhoes and cars running over the poles). Not to mention has a greater data capacity.

Cable companies receive much of their programming via satellite. But they’re not collecting the signal on a little 18" dish like the ones available to consumers. They have large farms of large dishes; these aren’t nearly as susceptible to environmental variables as the little ones.

Probably because HBO discovered that some people could pick up the analog signal without paying for it. My brother was able to get free HBO for years and he didn’t even have cable!

And not to defend them further (Echostar Communications, DISH’s parent, has made me gobs and gobs of money), but reallocating the bandwidth that way is what allows them to offer something like 6 different HBO feeds plus HBO on Demand, so it is actually not a bad deal for people who really, really need their HBO fix. (Insert Channel Here) on Demand is the best thing evar.

That said, I’m surprised they won’t sell you just the HBO without the full digital tier – they should be able to do it just by leasing you a digital box and blanking the non-HBO channels, which would allow them to spam you mercilessly to take the digital tier later without an additional truck roll and collect $5/month on the box in the meantime.

There are many things cable companies do that surprise me. I wouldn’t mind paying them a few bucks extra for the box and the music channels, but can I? Ha!

We can still get analog feeds of HBO and Cinemax here, but they don’t give any deals unless you get digital. At $14.95 each, it’s not worth it.

I was considering switching from Cable to Dish, and you’ve pretty much made up my mind for me :wink:

The only problem: I still want to keep my cable internet service. When I spoke to Cable Customer Service, they said they would charge me to have someone come here and block the access to cable allowing only the ISP stuff through.

Bastards!

I agree with this 99% of the time. But once I called up to cancel a credit card and they asked why I was cancelling. I said “I was annoyed by the late fee I got hit with last month, and I have another better card anyway.” They refunded my $35 late fee and upgraded me to a % cash back card. Woohoo.

It might actually be cheaper per month for you to have cable TV service + cable internet service than satellite TV service + cable internet service. This is the reason why my brother finally got cable, otherwise he’d still be watching broadcast TV.

See, they never bothered to tell me that when I called. They just said “No, you have to get digital cable to get HBO now.”. That was it - I might be feeling a bit more politely disposed towards TW if they had bothered to tell me that instead of making me feel like it was just a ploy to get us to upgrade to digital cable.

E.