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

I’ve had Dish for over eight years. One of the biggest loads the cable people will say to you to dissaude from satellite is weather related outages.

Yes, if it rains heavily, you will lose the signal (it rarely, if ever snows here, so I don’t know about that). In the past 8 years, I’ve lost the signal a total of maybe 3 days combined. However, if a utility pole is snapped and the cable is knocked out, it could be days before you get your service back.

I still have basic cable (local channels) that I pay about $8/month. Why? Well, I use Comcast’s high speed internet via a cable modem. It costs $42/month. If I didn’t have at least basic cable, it would cost $58/month.

Therefore, I have to spend $8 to save $16!

Stick with Dish and tell the naysayers to go fuck themselves.

Don’t worry about it. If you have a Dish 301 (their bottom-of-the-line non-PVR, non-High-Def set top box), it only has 3 days of Electronic Programming Guide data (the TV listings), and so needs to be updated regularly–this is probably what he was talking about. (This may be the same for some other Dish boxes.) However, at worst, if the box doesn’t update at night, then it will take three minutes or so the next time you hit the “Guide” button.

And your timers will fire whether or not the box is on.

Yes. The thing has an internal clock so it will be able to turn itself on to record something. You don’t need to turn the receivers off every night - every couple days is enough. If you don’t turn them off at least once a week, you’ll have problems with the guide - it’ll say that the guide is out of date and force you to wait for it to download.

As for warrantees - I’ve had Dish for about six years and haven’t had an equipment problem yet. Now that I’ve said that, my DVR will probably spite me tonight and go poof.

As for special bolts to prevent the signal from going out in bad weather? Sounds a little fishy, unless they’re referring to the dish not being blown off the house. Water (rain or snow) in the air absorbs the satellite signal. My signal strength is normally in the high 90’s and unless the rain is torrential, I’ve not had any problems worse than an occasional stutter or blockiness in the picture.

Okay, you guys make me feel better - we sleep with the TV on, so we’re like “We have to sleep with the TV on!”. We’ll turn it off at least every few days so that we can make sure it updates. Thanks!

As far as the ‘bolts’ - that wasn’t exactly the word he used, but that’s all I can remember. He said sometimes when it’s installed, the installers don’t properly secure the dish, and the wind moves it - which accounts for most of the outage issues. He said he uses something that REALLY secures it to the roof, so if there’s bad weather and wind, it won’t move. It sounded plausible to me - I’m kind of gullible, though:).

E.

You do have to turn the receiver off to get software updates, but if the guide gets out of whack, it will prompt you to download it without turning off the device. You’ll get this message if you try to go forward in the guide beyond the last date stored.

That’s why we got DSL - also to maintain our AT&T ISP account, which we’ve had so long our login is our last name, no numbers. My wife works from home, and this helps her.

I’ve had DishNetwork for probably five years, after the stupid cable company told us that we couldn’t expect both blocks of analog cable channels to come in with high quality. We have never had a weather outage. Never. When I did lose signal once, they answered their phone on the second ring, with a real person, not a recording, and gave excellent and clear directions. I have never dealt with a help line as good as theirs.
When we switched our second dish from TV 5 from Canada to the local channels, it required pointing it to another satellite. I was able to do it (after buying a compass) in 10 minutes, no hassle. When we got a second receiver for my daughter’s room they did it on time, and really well.

You’ll be happy with them.

Satellite internet access is available now, though it ain’t cheap. The problem is one of lag time. That’ll kill you in any online gaming.

I miss DishNetwork so much. I got cable when I moved so I could have cable internet. sigh I have digital cable, and the picture is still a little fuzzy on certain channels.

You’ll love DishNetwork. Incredibly helpful customer service, and I lived through three springs and three winters in the midwest (monstrous thunderstorms and nasty blizzards) without losing signal for more than a half hour. And that was extremely rare.

Now see I have digital cable (well, only on two tvs downstairs), and we’ve never had a problem with it. I love it-we get all the premium channels (except for Showtime), the music stations, etc. It’s great.

I love Dish, too. I have the Dish 150 package, but I still get the Sirius stations (in additon to the older Muzak, even though I thought the Sirius stations were slated to replace them) and more than enough of the other channels to hold my interest and serve as background noise. (TCM is good for this, mainly because I think ads are too damned distracting. A light comedy from the 1920s is the perfect companion to 3 a.m. programming and web surfing.)

I’m going to upgrade to Dish 500 this coming month, and from what I’ve seen at a friend’s house I’m going to spend a lot of time watching The Science Channel. :smiley:

Be careful at installation time. I used to work for a Dish retailer, and the local cable company reacted like they were threatened by the installation of a Dish. Some of the things heard:

  • “You can’t put a Dish in here; the city has a contract with the cable company.” Given by a customer who tried to cancel their service.

-The cable company sent a guy out to disconnect the service, and he cuts the newly installed Dish line, without admitting it.

-Another cusyomer scheduled both the new install and her disconnection at the same time, and the cable people tried to block access to the place where the customer wanted the cable to enter the house (using the existing hole, so as not to drill anothe hole through the wall.)

-Outright lies about service, fees, etc…

After I left the business, the owner moved to a new location. There is a billboard at the entrance to his parking lot, and guess who placed ads on the billboard? The local cable company.

He probably used the term “lag bolt” or some such speak. A lag bolt is a long fat coursely threaded bolt that grabs lots of wood and would be able to anchor an elephant to your roof. If you so desired. He also might have used an L or a K bracket to stiffen the dish.

When we first moved into our house we had cable.

We dropped in a month later and got the Dish. We haven’t regretted it. Yes, there’s outages during storms, but not every time. We get a lot of choices for a lot cheaper than cable.

Besides, I have free cable in the bedroom. Employee benefits are wonderful. :smiley:

Is that a double entendre in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

We’re an anomaly, I guess – we switched from Dish to cable. Our house had a Dish on it when we moved in, so we tried to acclimate ourselves to it. Two years later, we gave up and got cable. Numerous outages, signal degradation, and we never could get the Dish to record programs the way it was supposed to.

We switched from TW to Dish probably three years back and it’s been almost overwhelmingly positive. Rain periodically caused our cable to go out almost as often as we now lose the satellite signal, only it would remain out for hours and hours longer. The only drawback is that instead of getting a local Weather Channel radar image on their Your Local Forecast, you get a more general one of the region instead that makes it harder for me to tell precisely when inclement weather might hit our neighborhood.

I’m curious though what made you decide to get Dish instead of DirectTV like the rest of your family. I’d considered switching again to Direct since that’s what the HDTV guys at the Home Theater store we’re about to buy from use and recommend. Plus, NFL Sunday Ticket! Was there anything about it your family members that have it counseled against?

Again, not to defend Time-Warner, but the reason the CSR didn’t tell you, may be that the CSR didn’t know. I only know this from reading my trade magazines. And a contact with HBO a couple years ago when my company was helping a small cable provider select their channel offerings and packages.

I loved my Dish when I had it (I don’t have it down here unfortunately) here’s the only problems I had in the 5+ years I was on Dish network

  1. Snow build up. I had to pretty constantly go out and knock it off during snowy days. I hear there’s a trick with saran wrap but never tried it myself.

  2. Lost signal a few times due to bad weather. We’re talking about once a year here.

  3. When I upgraded to their DVR I had one box burn out in about 14 months but when I called in they signed me up for the extended warranty deal for about 4 bucks and replaced it…then that one burned out in about 1 month (it never even sounded right from the moment I got it) they replaced that one for free.

  4. Was annoyed when they got into a legal battle with some content providers and we lost some channels for a couple of weeks. Basically the content providers were upping their rates and Dish Network wasn’t going to pay it. They gave a small (very small) refund on that month’s bill.

Compared to all the lies, constant outages, constant price hikes, crappy reception (some channels always had snow in the background! They never bothered to fix that in about 10 years), and measly channel selection that cable gave me Dish Network was heaven.

Do you get those annoying “The Dish is the Disease! We’re the cure!” commercials? I hate them so much. I even mentioned them in another pit thread about commercials that think we’re stupid. It basically has ‘GhostBuster’ Dan A. spouting a bunch of the myths about dishes then advises you to get the ‘truth’ about satellites by calling a cable company! Yeah that’s a way to get an unbiased review of the strengths and weaknesses of cable vs dishes.

Comcast really pissed me off. They wanted to up my rates for the forth time in 3 years. Same basic cable package I got in 2001 for $35 was going to cost me $55. I called and told them that was unacceptable and cancelled my account. I had antenna TV only for about 2 months. This was tough, but most of what I watch is on the big four networks (House, Survivor, 24, etc.) plus it was NFL playoffs time and so there was lots of football to watch. I began looking around at what to do once that ended. I needed someway to watch my beloved Braves once baseball season kicked off. Thats when I found out how sneaky those cable bastards are. I called Knology…only they could not give me service because Comcast has the exclusive “contract” to my area. I tried Charter but it turns out they are owned by the same company that owns Comcast. How the hell is this not a monopoly? I suppose I answer my own question. I saw an ad for Dish Network. I called them, they came out the SAME day and hooked me up in a matter of minutes. It rocks. I have only had the reception go out once for about 2 minutes during a fierce thunderstorm, all those ads about crappy reception are a bit of an overstatement (to understate it). I love my dish and get 150 crystal clear channels for less than Comcast wanted to charge me for fuzzy ones. I’m never going back to cable.

All of next week I will be moving to a new apartment, closer to where I work, and I was very afraid I’d have to get sattelite, or maybe nothing at all. I work in a small town in the middle of nowhere, so I wasn’t sure if I could get cable, and the fact that in that town, almsot every house has a dish on it confirmed those fears. When I called Adelpia to cancel my current acble and start it there, they told me they don’t service that area! Ack! I have an apartment, I don’t think the landlard wants me putting a dish on the side of it. Plus, I need cable internet. DSL is not good enough for me.

Luckily, Time Warner services the area. Now, say what you will about TW, they are still better than Adelphia, I have noticed. Currently I pay over $90/month for basica cable and internet. I get a paltry 65 channels (I think…the numbers go to 72, but several are missing, might even be closer to 60.) That, to me, seems outrageous. I confirmed this when looking at TW packages. High speed internet and digital cable (over 200 channels) for slightly more per month (just under $100/month.) Still seems pricey, but much more of a deal. The only downside is I get the wrong local channels. Here, I get the same ones I did when growing up in VT, ones I know and love (because I know when they show syndicagted episodes of The Simpsons :smiley: ) When I move, I’ll get local channels out of Syracuse. :confused:

One thing I am still unsure of…when I get digital cable, will the HD channels automaticall be HD, or do I have to tell them I also want HD and pay more? (I already have an HDTV, so I don’t need a receiver, unless I want HD on my bedrom TV, which I don’t, since I never watch it.).

Here’s a link to my package

Now, it lists several HD on on-demand channels. Do I get those normally, or is it a “Every one you want is $5 more a month” deal? Yeah yeah, I know I’ll find out when they return my call to get it actualyl set up, but I was just wondering if anyone knew offhand.

Okay, so next time, I need to give things a day before I get all excited.

The receiver froze up last night before we went to bed - we couldn’t seem to fix it, so we figured we’d deal with it in the morning. And the TV in the living room kept changing channels on my husband - he was trying to watch a show I recorded for him and it kept going back to live TV and changing channels.

So I called this morning, and they had me reset the receiver. The girl said the frozen screen was called just that - Frozen Screen. She said now that we’ve reset it, we shouldn’t have that problem again. I hope she’s right. And she had me change the network address for the remote for the living room - it was the same as the remote in the den, and it was screwing it up.

So - we’re actually LOVING the DVR and Dish thing - for one thing, a lot of channels come in better - we couldn’t watch SoapNet, We or Oxygen through the regular cable and had to turn on the VCR to watch those because they were totally snowy and awful. Every channel comes in beautifully, and the whole thing seems a lot sharper than any of our cable channels. I think we’re really enjoying it:). So if the frozen screen doesn’t happen again and we don’t have channels changing on their own (I suggested to my husband last night that perhaps we have a ghost who doesn’t like MAS*H or Another World), then we’ll be totally good.

E.