Dishnetwork or Directv?? looking for advice

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cncpro said:
It also could be that you're on a different generation of DVR box too ? MAybe one generation is OK then another is bad.

Very possible.

One thing is for sure... With the Dish Network problems if we kept the DVR storage nearly empty it would be OK but if we let the memory get half full the crashes would start up. It was really strange. If a show crashed at 3min and 15 sec into a program it would crash at that spot every time without fail. Then once you learn where the bad section is on that episode you could fast forward through it and watch your show... Until the next freeze. At it's worst I've had 5 or 6 crashes in a 30 minute show. Somehow I managed not to smash it into little bits and pieces (just barely).

Oh, that happens to me too. When you say crash I figured something more like the whole system went down and you had to pull the plug out of the wall to reset it. Interestingly my wife and I have noticed similar behavior during some recorded shows, but by no means all of them. I find that I have enough recording timers set that I am constantly deleting shows just to keep any open space on the thing...rarely do I have less than 100 recording available to me. Lots of kid shows, stuff the wife likes, stuff I like, the occasional movie or two when they run the free HBO or SHowtime promos for a weekend, etc. I was very frustrated by a particular show that experienced this signal dropoff problem and one day we hppened to be at home and just watched the show...sure enough, the live broadcast dropped off at the exact same time the DVR cuts out temporarily...the problem was signal loss on one channel and further investigation led me to conclude it was always that same channel...I don't recall which one.

For awhile I figured the hard drive was going out on me and it had a few bad sectors, but it was the broadcast. Might indicate I need to take down a tree or two since it doesn't happen at all this time of year when the leaves are down, or maybe the house has settled a bit more and I should get the crew out to realign the dish again.
 
Well for me Direct TV solved that issue completely. The dish is mounted in the same location as Dish Network's was but the Direct TV box hasn't crashed at all. I'm lovin' it.

Man, it takes like 4 or 5 minutes for the thing to restart... I can't believe you don't think it's a big deal but I'm glad you're happy with your satellite service.
 
Tarmsolo60 said:
Everything here is satellite including our internet, No companies come to town when there are under 3 people per square mile.

We had dish network at first but have had directv for the last 6 or so years and find we like it better. Pricewise I'm not sure which one is cheaper, but dish didn't have some of the channels we wanted.

There are no OTA channels available so a converter box would not help us. I do wish you could buy channels ala carte from the satellite companies, I could get by with about 5 channels.

About the only channels we still watch are PBS and sometimes CBC. The rest is drek. If we want to catch up on the Daily Show we just watch it via the internet.
 
We have had Directv for ten or eleven years. Since my wife is an invalid it is her only entertainment so it is pretty much a necessity. Pretty reliable and for a few years the price kept going up just enough to piss me off since price increases were why we never got cable. I bought her a third party DVR made before the TIVO lawsuits killed them off and it works pretty well for her. We have the basic package with no locals and it costs us around $53 a month. I haven't turned on a TV since the digital switchover. I have the boxes for the sets but am too wobbly anymore to do the work on the roof and don't miss it anyway.
 
I think I owe it to myself and my wallet to hook up an antenna and check out how much I get over the air before I make a 2 year contract decision. I have netflix and cable internet. I think we could "get by"...lol. I just hate paying the huge cable bill.
 
I have almost completely stopped watching conventional TV. I have seriously thought about dropping my cable TV altogether. In my opinion, it's just that bad. My cable provider (Charter) is also my internet provider, so I don't know how big a pain that would be. I think they charge a bit extra if you don't have TV with them.

I'm on Netflix and mostly watch shows through a Roku box. I don't have a high def TV yet and don't feel justified in purchasing one until TV improves.

In the not to distant future, I think most TV and movies will be viewed through the internet. Sorta like cell phones replacing land lines for most people.
 
cncpro said:
Well for me Direct TV solved that issue completely. The dish is mounted in the same location as Dish Network's was but the Direct TV box hasn't crashed at all. I'm lovin' it.

Man, it takes like 4 or 5 minutes for the thing to restart... I can't believe you don't think it's a big deal but I'm glad you're happy with your satellite service.

Glad your solution worked for you too. I dropped Direct because I couldn't get local channels, DISH could and DISH was a few bucks cheaper and no 2 year contract. Bottom line is whatever works best for your particular circumstances is what you do.

To clarify though, I never have to restart my box...the only time I restart it is when I rearrange the living room or the power goes out... I think I've manually restarted the box twice in 5 years. Our only issue is that the occasional recording of Frasier or Little House on the Prarie was recorded during a poor signal time. The hardware has been utterly reliable.
 
Clarkbar2311 said:
I think I owe it to myself and my wallet to hook up an antenna and check out how much I get over the air before I make a 2 year contract decision. I have netflix and cable internet. I think we could "get by"...lol. I just hate paying the huge cable bill.


www.antennaweb.org is a great resource for figuring out what you might expect as far as OTA reception.
 
I live 35 mi from the Phila PA transmission towers and use a new-style antenna hung in my attic and get great reception, about 30 channels. ( 3 PBS with 8 of their sub-channels) Lots of them broadcast in Hi Def at least part of the day. The antenna cost about $100 ... after that, all is free.

I got mine from this place http://www.antennasdirect.com On their site they have links to pages that tell you how far you are from local towers, what direction to point in, etc.
 
I had dish for about 5 years until they just cancelled my locals one day and couldn't figure out what happened. I went to direct and couldn't be happier. I have no cable or DSL availble so Im stuck with satellite service for both tv and internet.
 
Had Dish years ago...no problems. Changed to Direct about 6 year0s ago for other programming we wanted. Getting HD dish installed next week w/Direct. No problem with them except it kinda irks me that I have to spend $99 for the "upgrade" to HD yet new customers(w/both companies) can get all hardware free. I even tried to convince Direct that I may change to Dish since I would be a new customer and basically all they wanted to know at that point was what date did I wnat to terminate my service with them!
 
muncybob said:
Had Dish years ago...no problems. Changed to Direct about 6 year0s ago for other programming we wanted. Getting HD dish installed next week w/Direct. No problem with them except it kinda irks me that I have to spend $99 for the "upgrade" to HD yet new customers(w/both companies) can get all hardware free. I even tried to convince Direct that I may change to Dish since I would be a new customer and basically all they wanted to know at that point was what date did I wnat to terminate my service with them!

Today! lol
 
For what it's worth,

1. I ditched our cable service several years ago and have been using free Over-The-Air service. I live northwest of Baltimore and am able to get 54 digital channels including all major networks in both the Baltimore and DC markets. Located in the attic, I have Channelmaster HD-4228 antenna (about $50) with a Winegard AP-8275 pre-amp (about $35) from solidsignal.com. Using Google Earth to get the orientation of my house relative to the location of the transmission towers (antennaweb.org), I was able to position the antenna to maximize channel reception. I couldn't be more pleased; cable, satellite, and fios are simply too expensive for the average household and I simply got tired of going deeper into debt. At this point, I wouldn't go back unless they lowered the price to $20/mo simply because there's little I miss; maybe ESPN and CNN at times (thinking more about it, they aren't worth $20 to me). I never really watched PBS until the last few years and they have some of the best programming around. Now, if I can just figure out how to make my truck run on water...

2. I bought a Samsung LN55C650 TV with an ethernet connection. This set has an Internet source which includes several apps including Netflix and Hulu. As someone else pointed out, we watch plenty on Netflix these days; reasonable at $10 a month. Someone mentioned sports channels through Netflix. If someone has more info on that, please tell us more.
 
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