Hey all,

Man, it's been a while since I've been in here .

OK, I'm pondering a change to satellite from cable. I have never had any problems with my cable service, but I was at a friends house in Philly this weekend and he had DirecTV and I was amazed at the number of HD channels he had. Here are my questions...

1) Has DirecTV improved their HD service? I remember reading a while back that cable had a better HD picture then satellite due to compression (it was a long topic with tons of great info from either Scrib or Siggy, can't remember which).

Has this changed?


2) What happens to my other TVs which will not have a satellite receiver? Right now we only have 2 HD cable boxes (one is an HD-DVR), but we have 7 TVs... so the other 5 still get channels 2-79 (plus 98) without a cable box.. which is fine b/c they're in guest rooms. How does this work on Satellite?

I think that's it for now. Thanks for any help!!

 

I can't answer 1, but for 2 you will need to buy set top boxes for each TV that you want to have satellite on. It can add up fast in terms of cost, but some providers have cheap boxes for as little as $50 but many start at about $100 for their most basic box. Because your coming from cable though Direct Tv may have some deal in order to attract users.

 

Answer to question 2

You have to have a satellite receiver on every tv

 

Hmm... so even though all jacks will be active with the sat signal the TV will not show anything unless I have a sat receiver? That sucks...

 

^That's correct; you need a box for every TV you want the satellite signal on.

If you want to check out DTV's quality, let me know.

 

You will need a box for each TV. They should be free (you will lease them for about 5 bucks a month per box). You "might" have to pay for the HD DVR....but I think they are offering them for free for new subscribers.

The HD is "improved"....but versus cable...dunno. How did the HD picture look to you?

I have DTV HD....I think the picture is very nice.

 

^ Cable picture is awesome and thought it was better then the sat picture at my friends house (who has the same TV as my Sammy DLP), but it could have been that my TV is tweaked better. Not sure.

The regular boxes are free, but yes, they charge $5/mo lease fee. Maybe I'll just get one extra box that can be swapped from guest room to guest room. I'm not going to pay $15 for the 3 guest rooms to have a Sat box for the few weeks a year those rooms are being used.

This is the reason I never switched in the first place. May have to think about this some more

 

Junior, sounds like your mind is made up on DirectTV but I just wanted to throw in my

I switch from HD cable to Dish and have been nothing but impressed- to say the least. The HD DVR is awesome and like most of their HD receivers, you can control 2 TV's from one receiver. They are RF based.

My main problem with HD cable was when I was watching live HD, recording HD, and watching another live HD feed in the bedroom. I swear I was dropping frames. Anyways, I also had a shitty cable company.

Either way, prepare to pay for all those extra boxes.

 

^ Good info.

I've never had problem with cable, but seeing all of the extra HD channels on Sat got me thinking again.

What we'd probably do is just get 1 HD-DVR, 1 HD box, and 2 regular boxes (1 for the kitchen and 1 extra one for the guest rooms). I'm not going to go too crazy worrying about all of the guest rooms. Not worth spending the money to have those boxes used a few weeks a year.

 

Personally, I love the HD quality on my Sammy. It looks a lot better than my cable ever did.

the other TV's (CRTs) look great as well.

 

I just left TWC for DTV.

Best decision ever!


HD quality blows my cable out of the water.

 

I recently switched to Dish and I love it. Their HD DVR is awesome, the picture quality on HD content is great (I subscribed to their TurboHD service), and as Ashburner said each Dish receiver can control two TVs (the second TV only receives SD video). All the receivers they issue out have dual tuners. If you aren't using the 2nd TV, you can switch the box into PiP mode and utilize it that way.

Since I only have two TVs (one HD and one SD), I just have the one HD DVR receiver. I rarely watch TV in the other room (my bedroom), so that tuner is used to DVR programs. The only downside is that when I'm DVRing something, the 2nd TV is useless (you are forced to watch what is recording), but it's rare that things conflict for me.

 

7 TV's? I would recommend a couple HD boxes, a couple regular boxes, and maybe antennas for the other 3-4 TV's.

HD is $11/month, each box is $6/month lease, HD DVR will probably run you $99 before lease costs.

DTV is the only way to go for NFL or NCAA packages, if that is a consideration. Also, for any room with an HD DVR you will need 2 lines of coax from the dish, so that may necessitate running extra cable to some of your rooms. A normal SD box can use the existing pre-wired cable.

The picture is really fantastic, they use a lot less compression since they switched to the mpeg4 satellites. I don't think that's a concern anymore. Also you and a friend who currently has DTV would each get $50 if you are referred.

 

If you have a central termination point/splitter for all cable runs in the house, you could always install a good antenna in the attic or on the roof and then hookup the minor tvs to just OTA (but if you don't have HDTV's at all those places you would still in a converter box in a few months).

 

I will tell you that service is outstanding.

I have 4 hd boxes-dvr and 2 regular boxes. A couple of times the boxes broke and they overnighted replacements. One time I got charged but within 5 minutes it was off my bill and I got a month of free service.

I am big on the HD NFL package so I can watch my bucs play

During hurricane Ike I lost HD for ten minutes. It was unbelievable!!!!!!!!!

 

^

Definitely proof that the worry of reception loss during bad weather is nothing that should deter anybody from service!

 

Wow we would lose signal quite frequently with our satellite if the weather went sour. I guess DTV is significantly better than Bell ExpressVu

 

Keep satellite, getNfusion. $170 for a box for life.

In short, watch pay-per-view, and all brand channels...yep, for a $170 bux for life.

 

I just switched. Install is tonight. Wish me luck.

 

Like clockwork nobody showed. I called D* an hour before the time window expired and they confirmed and gave me the subcontractor's number. The sub even confirmed, tried the guy, left him a v/m, and then left a v/m for the supervisor to call me back in 10 mins. 30 mins later since nobody called, I called the sub again. Retard told me that I was having my install done the day after from 1-5 and it was always done like that even though 3 other people from both companies confirmed the original one. Best part was that he couldn't reschedule until next week So I called back D*, had them change me for the next day between 4-8 (it was already 8:30 by then), and then called back the sub to confirm since it shows "instantly" on their end. The sub (after holding 15 mins ) told me it was confirmed for 12-4. I told them that I just got off the phone and it's 4-8. Sub changed it no prob and told me to call today at noon if I hadn't heard from the installer to confirm. What pisses me off is that I had to call D* to get the appt. which set it up for tomorrow instead of retard sub who works directly with the installer. I verified my equipment with the sub so cross your fingers. Why are these installers/subs/providers all a bunch of shiteating, dumbfucking, lowlife, piece of shit, scumbag, inbred, inferior, swine?

 

Oh and one thing... if you have HD or Tivo pay the extra 5 bucks a month for the protection plan. I have replaced 3 or 4 $300 boxes.

My entertainment center heats up when closed.

 

+1

I'm not huge on insurance contracts, but we have more than gotten our $$$ from D*'s protection plan

 

I think now that DTV is leasing boxes, you really don't need the protection plan. It's like using a cable company. They own the equipment not you.

 

I think they'll charge you $18 shipping for a box. They'll charge you on service visits too. Anyways that's what I'm reading at dbstalk.com

 

wow... thanks for the all the replies guys. I am leaning towards switching.

My neighbor has DirecTV plus a cable modem, so he's going to try splitting off of his cable modem signal (just once as to not degrade signal) to see if you can get basic cable off of that. Screw the guest rooms... they can deal with basic cable

If it works I'm definitely switching...

 

that shouldn't work, they use line filters to limit the frequencies the house receives, in order for it to work where the cable enters the house on the exterior there should be a box and a filter inside it that needs to be removed, and another one where that line hooks up to a junction box for the street.

 

Make sure you're there for the satellite install so that you can see your signal strenght. My HD bands are in the 70-80s so when it rains I lose service for HD channels. I'm about to call to bitch.

 

you're talking about FTA. DTV is very different and i don't think we're allowed to discuss FTA

 

if you havent got an answer from your yet, Comcast uses "Free basic cable" as a selling point for their phone or internet service.

several years ago they wernt doing this, we had just canceled our cable service and went with DTV, but kept them for phone and internet. They had installed a filter on the line, which was right at the point where it went into the house. I took it off and the cable came back.

 

Has anyone else noticed that Comcast HD DVR's are noisy?

When we switched to DTV, their HD DVR's are whisper quiet. DTV was a bitch to set-up, and it took them six months to bill me correctly.

 

I had the Scientific Atlanta box and that shit was annoying in my bedroom. I don't know how many times I told the wife to shut it off.

 

Set up wasn't bad for me; account creation and installation were incident-free, for the most part...no worse than anything else. And it only took them three months to bill me correctly...but that's two more than it should have taken.

 

My first bill was correct. But for the initial install and the 2nd visit to re-align the HD channel signal they kept messing up the appointment. I'd set it for night but the guy would come during the day. From D* to the subcontractor it always got fucked up.

 

FYI, just wanted to update you guys to let you know I stayed with cable.

They ended up adding a ton of HD channels to the lineup, so with the exception of one or two, I now have everything I was looking for.

This isn't to say that I'm going to be on cable forever. There are talks of cable raising their prices... and should they do that, we will likely switch to Dish....

 

http://standoutdesigns.com/store/pc/...r-Kit-p261.htm

 

Does anyone know how the Dish Network dual tuner boxes would be hooked up into my house?

I have a central location where all the coax gets distributed. Basically, 5 separate coax cables (from 5 different rooms) come together in one of my closets. There is also a coax coming in from the local cable company that I will still continue to use since I have cable internet. The cable internet comes in and is split out by a 5-way splitter to each of the 5 rooms. Right now, I have a cable modem hooked up to my master bedroom, but i want that to be a location of HDTV.

How would the dual tuner boxes be hooked up? From looking at the Dish Network tuner box drawings, the incoming cable would go to the box...can they module the 2nd output back onto that same cable?

Any help would be appreciated so I understand what I would be getting into in terms of hookups or whether I can get a clean setup going.

 

^^

The installer will have to run two lines off your dish for two separate tuners. If only one coax cable line enters your closet, a second line will have to be run.