Ashburner

Ok, I've had it with my cable provider Sudden Link. They have to be the worst provider ever. I'm tired of the shitty refurbed Motorola HD DVR boxes which makes more noise than my PS3, even when the box is turned off. I'm tired of paying extra for HD and only getting 4 HD channels. I'm tired of when recording two HD channels at the same time, one of them drops the framerate in half (very choppy). I'm not sure if this is the cable companies fault, the DVR, or the channel.

So, now it is decision time. Dish or DirecTV???

Help me out here... I have listed pros and cons for each and please add your input.

Dish

Pro's:
No Startup costs for hardware
Cheaper Service for comparible channels
Free HD for 6 months
Only need 2 receivers for 4 TV's reducing lease fee

Cons:
Only 4 TV's. (I have 5)
TV's share tuners on a box. Not sure if this is good or not. Does this mean I can't record 2 shows at the same time???
Less HD programming
$20/month for HD content


DirecTV

Pro's:
Up to 6 TV's
Newly added HD content and up to 100 channels by EOY
Only $10 for HD content

Cons
They charge up front for hardware plus charge you lease fees. My startup costs would be $400 plus $20/month lease fees. This is absolutely retarded.


Ok, so with this, does anyone know which one offers a better HD DVR? Which one would you pick and why?

soopa

I'm thinking of making the switch to DirecTV from TimeWarner. So sick of cable.

Ashburner

So I sent DirecTV a question and here it is with their reply.

Customer: I'm trying to figure out why my startup costs would be nearly $400 and I would have to pay lease fees? Which one is it? Why am I paying for this hardware upfront and paying to lease it?Please enlighten me. I would like to order but cannot justify $400 upfront. Dish does not have any upfront equipment fees.

Response: Dear Mr. Ashburner-,

Thanks for writing and letting us know about the start up costs in getting DIRECTV. I am glad about the interest you have shown in getting DIRECTV service. Now is one of the best times to sign up: our current offer allows you to get 4 months of our best programming package FREE when you sign up for NFL SUNDAY TICKET at $69.99 a month. And right now, we’ll also give you the remaining weeks of NASCAR HotPass – FREE (a $49 value). That’s nearly $450 in FREE programming!

I understand that you have concern about the start up cost in getting DIRECTV service as well as leasing fee. Let me assist you on this matter. All new customer equipment offers are subject to credit approval. The fee is being assessed based on your credit history. As a reminder, with this offer, there's a $5 programming discount per month for up to 40 or 60 months depending on the equipment you activate, and as long as you keep your account active and in good standing. That's $200 or $300 in programming savings to you.

With regard to paying lease fee, customers who are setting up their DIRECTV service for the first time will lease equipment from DIRECTV instead of buying it. Leasing will offer you a substantial savings compared to the true cost of buying the equipment. As the technology in our receivers becomes more advanced, leasing allows us to continue to provide the latest equipment to you — at minimal cost. Leasing also permits affordable upgrades and free replacement receivers.

For information about the offer I mentioned earlier and everything you'll need to get started at our web site, just go to directv.com/getdirectv for more information or to place your order online in just minutes.

You can also call us at 1-888-777-2454 from 6:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. ET to get answers to your questions. Our call center is staffed with knowledgeable Customer Service Representatives who are ready to help.

I hope you find this information helpful and thank you again for writing.

Sincerely,

Jesscel F.
Employee ID 100113182
DIRECTV Customer Service



WTF, so are they saying they already know my credit history without me ever telling them???

soopa

i just went on their website and it's $498 for two HD DVRs. pretty insane for a "lease"

Ashburner

That's EXACTLY what I mean. I wanted two HD DVR but was willing to settle for 1 HD HVR and on HD receiver and it is still $397!!!

I guess you have bad credit too

SiGGy

DirectTV is going to be the King of HD for awhile. But I'd like to mention they run degraded HD. They reduce the resolution of 1080i HD. While I don't think it's a huge reduction; for anyone coming from TW with a large 1080p TV and HDMI cable connecting it you'll notice a quality drop. If your using component cables I doubt you'll notice much. TW 8300HD boxes aren't quite capable of rendering a full 1080i via the component outputs anyway.

Dont forget AT&T u-verse. At the moment their HD sucks ass, but only because they have early mpeg-4 video encoders to re-encode the video. By the end of November they will have new current mpeg-4 encoders installed and working! So the HD quality should go up 4 fold! Uverse is also adding channels like mad, 40-50HD channels now I think; with like 10 a month being added. Another major drawback to u-verse is it's so new. It has a lot of bugs, but it's boxes and features are *UNMATCHED* by any other provider. Another flaw is it's an IPTV service, so the # of channels you can "tune" to in your entire house is limited to the incoming bandwidth. Currently you can only watch 1 HD channel at a time, and up to 4 SD channels. Their DVRs are multi-room, web programmable, you can watch your DVR recordings on your phone, on your computer... again it's too new and not quite ready for power users... wait until they do the speed bosts on the service and it allows 3 HD channels and or 16 SD channels. I should add the DVR can record as many channels simultaneously as there is bandwidth for... so yes you can record 6 channels at once or more!... and then share the recordings to ALL of the boxes in the house. No need for multiple DVRs...

So for now... I'd pick in this order for HD content

1. DirecTV (quantity over quality)
2. Dishnetwork (quantity over quality)
3. Timewarner/Comcast (best quality)
4. U-verse

Once U-verse updates their VSDL to VDSL2 and can deliver 3 channels of HD or 16 SD channels to the house I'd switch to U-verse in a heartbeat. It just blows everything else away... Until then let the early adopters work out the bugs and deal with 1HD channel at a time...

Also, don't think the cable providers are asleep at the wheel! A lot of Time warners east coast has been upgraded to "SDV". Switched digital video. It free's up a ton of bandwidth they are going to use for HD channels. I know they have plans to add a bunch of HD channels in the next few months (20+)... It'll take awhile for all of TWC systems to be upgraded to SDV though So DirecTV is ahead of TWC; but not by much.

soopa

It's pretty ridiculous that I have a 35/15 FiOS line running into my house, but can't get FiOS TV.

SiGGy

Ya that's stupid, I wonder how long it'll be until Verizon goes with an IPTV type of service like U-verse. I bet they'll wait and let AT&T work out the initial bugs. Another thing is the ISO standards group just agreed on a IPTV standard. Making AT&Ts current roll-out proprietary now. So AT&T and Microsoft (who makes the software/boxes) are going to be going it alone for a bit... Although I don't know how far off the ISO standard is from the AT&T deployment. I do know now that there's a standard they'll be multiple companies making boxes for the technology...

Although now that I think about it; Verizon does like locking people into specific technology. So they might go proprietary too.

Ashburner

Thanks Siggy, I appreciate all of your comments!

At the moment, I think I am leaning a bit towards the Dish Network side just because of the pricing. My fiance pays the bill and I don't want her to kill me.

When it comes down to it, for comparable packages, Dish would be about $80 a month and Directv would be closer to $100 plus $400 upfront.

soopa

How is the Dish hardware? The main reason I'm considering DirecTV over TW is that their STB's are very nicely designed.

Ashburner

Does anyone know if I can just buy another reciever if I want 5 TV's? I see them on ebay for reasonable prices.

Damn this shit is confusing as hell and I supposedly enjoy this shit. I feel bad for the average consumer.

Ashburner

Ok, I said fuck it and decided to order the Dish network package. It's going to be about $48/month for 6 months and then $68 after that. Free HD for 6 months(-$20), Free HBO, cinemax for 6 months (not going to order). I also bought a 5th standard receiver for $99. No reoccuring fee.

They are coming tomorrow afternoon to install. So far, I am extremely happy. Presale, they answered in about 20 seconds... and were completely nice. I haven't had such a pleasant experience with someone in Bangalore in a long time. I'll update tomorrow after the installation.

SiGGy

Have you been "upgraded" to TW's new home brew "Navigator" box/dvr software yet?

I've heard it's a major step back for some people (who once ran the pioneer software) and a baby step forward for the guys who ran the Sara software. They delayed the launch of Navigator in KC until they get more bugs fixed. I'm lucky I hadn't been "upgraded" yet. I know some people are stuck with it...

I've heard nothing but complaints about the DVR not recording some shows, slow guides, still only 1-3 days of guide data, big software bugs...

I hope they get it right eventually... I think when I get the Navigator "upgrade" and lose all my DVR programming I'll be looking for a new service provider. But I'll probably just wait AT&T's U-verse out. That might be a year though before I consider it usable... it's so Beta now...

Scrib

Ash, I would have gone Direct over Dish, after having both I enjoy DTV's programming more (NFL Ticket, etc). And DTV is investing quite a bit into their technology. Not sure what Dish is up to.

I have been on the rail for a while trying to decide what to do. I have an HD Tivo (mpeg 2) that is perfectly fine, but old hardware and won't get me the latest programming. I am going to install a flat screen in the bedroom in the near future, so I'll need a HD STB for that.

I'll need all new equipment and I'm just wondering if I should go to cable and be done with it. I negotiated a HR20 box from DTV for $100, but that was last October and I'm wondering if they'll honor it. I'd like another for the bedroom. That's $269 (sold at Costco).

As Soopa said, that a lot of money for a lease and hence my thought to go somewhere else. Not to mention a rather large dish on my roof which would require more holes.

yunginTL

i just switched to directv from comcast, which switched from time warner. Cable tends to keep going out and their HD DVR boxes, I've switched out countless times...

They gave me a pretty good deal being a new customer. I signed up about 2 weeks ago, they offered the nfl sunday ticket for 69.99-20=49.99 and include premium service for free for the first 4 months because it was halfway thru football season. They also offered me a $50 visa gift card, as well as an $10 bux off a month for the 12 months after the first 4 months. Seemed like a pretty sweet deal, although it did take some convincing because i said i was going to activate at circuit city instead and get $300 off a tv. They also said they would not charge lease fees on the extra boxes. They did send me an email confirming all this as well. We'll see as soon as i get my first bill.

Install is setup for Tuesday, we'll see how it goes because the first time they fucked up and showed up 4 hours past their window; subcontractors blow.

I ended up gettin an hd dvr, hd box, and digital box, for $32X.XX. Their start up cost is high, but compared to comcast which just raised their rates in our area, I'm paying about $80 bux anyway, with only about 10 HD channels.

soopa

Were on Sara here. It blows.

Mandi's uncle works for TW and is running Navigator at his house (he's been testing it for well over a year). It definately looks better, but certainly doesn't work any better.

SiGGy

Huh, ya. I decided to go update myself on it today. Looks like the last release of it fixed a ton of stuff from the posts I see on AVS forums.

faster guide
holds 7 days of guide in memory all the times
Fixed video glitches

So there's some hope for us. I'm running pioneer passport software. While it's not perfect either it sounds like with the latest fixes navigator is almost equal.

let me know when you get "upgraded". I'll be sure to let ya know when do and what I think of it. Knowing my luck KC will "upgrade" everyone with an old version of Navigator...

mltk53

im also interested in gettin satellite. and im looking at dish network right now. and i have one question. so it says 1 receiver for 2 tv's. how does that work? so is it one physical tuner box for 2 tv? where would i place the box? im pretty much set on getting dish but can some one please explain this to me? im coming from a long cable customer so its kinda new to me

SiGGy

Newer receivers for dish have 2 tuners. It also has 2 video outputs... one for tuner1, a 2nd for tuner 2. You can control the tuners separately with the remote...

The receivers also use RF based remotes. Not old school IR (infrared) line of sight . So the remote will work through walls in other rooms... i.e. the receiver can be anywhere in your house and the remote will still work.

mltk53

^^
ohh. okai thanks. so i live in a 2 story house. and say i want satellite in my room upstairs and in the livingroom downstairs. and i can place the receiver anywhere in between and just watch tv with the given remotes?

SiGGy

yup, just run either coax or video cable to the 2nd TV. Coax is probably easiest since it's already there. Just need to patch it in...

mltk53

kool. thnx for the clearification

Type Sun

I have DirecTV (with the old HD hardware) and I'm trying to decide whether or not to upgrade to the new HD hardware or switch to Fios TV. The costs are about the same, but do you think the picture quality would be better with Fios? (I have an old HDTV with component inputs, no HDMI/DVI)

soopa

I haven't seen/used it myself, but from everything I've read FiOS TV currently has the best picture quality available.

Being as DirecTV's PQ is low on the list, and you have older hardware, yes... you'd definately see a PQ improvement, old HDTV or not.

Many videophiles still swear by component so far as PQ is concerned, so I don't think that'll be a limiting factor (so long as your cables are decent and run without interference)

Scrib

Ended up sticking with DTV and got them to discount the HD DVR. They wouldn't discount two, so I'll go to Costco at some point and pick one up for $269.

Ended up getting HD programming free for a year and no DVR fee for 6 months.

goose25

Don't believe the hype my brother, i recently upgraded to DIRECT HD service and got their $299 offer for HD DVR down to $49. It all depends upon the Customer Service Rep (CSR) and your willingness to lie about cable or other satellite deals that you have been offered

Lister00169

Hmm, we have Dish Network and we have never paid for the equipment, outside of the lease fee they add onto our monthly bill for the additional boxes.

I know if I want to "upgrade" to the HDTV service, I would have to pay an equipment upgrade fee of $299, but if you are a new customer, the hardware is free.

joerockt

I called DTV back in August when I still had the Tivo HR10. They wanted to charge me $299 for the upgrade. I called back, said "Cancel Service" which got me to a retention specialist and ended up just paying $19.99 for shipping. Free install of the new dish and the DVR.

Its pretty awesome having all these HD channels now...

Type Sun

Well, I decided to switch from DirecTV to FiOS TV! They're gonna install tomorrow. The install will be free, I found a package that will be cheaper than what I'm paying now for DTV, which will include HBO package and Spanish package (plus HD channels are included).

The final deciding factor aside from price and pic quality is a multiroom dvr. Now I will be able to record in HD, watch whatever I've recorded on any tv in the house, and listen to music files and view pictures from my pc to my home theater. Another cool feature is that I can pause a program that I'm watching in my living room, go upstairs to my bedroom, and continue watching the program without missing a thing. I can't wait!

joerockt

Unless its changed, you cannot watch an HD recorded show on another box in the house. Only SD shows.

And unless its changed, good luck with the DVR, because the interface is complete garbage. I tried it out this past January and quickly got rid of it and kept my DTV service.

yunginTL

just got dtv installed yesterday couldn't be happier, the dvr box has alot more features than the bullshit hd dvr rfrom comcast. FUCK comcast

soopa

the addition of multi-room viewing to TiVo HD has just made this decision more difficult.

why can't DirecTV still use TiVo?

Scrib

Because they wanted out of royalty payments.

Sucks. I hate to lose my Tivo interface, but in order to keep up with the latest programming, I'm forced to.

Billiam

I have no choice but Comcast at my place.

Ashburner

Well, after just about a week with Dish, I must say that I am very happy. The only thing I don't like is recording on the second tuner means my daughter has to watch what we are recording. A couple nights a week, we record two shows at once so this was never a problem with cable. Fortunately, i can just tell my 3 year old there are no cartoons on at that given time and she will watch a movie. Forunately, it does record both channels in HD.

Ashburner

You can't go Sat?

I only had one cable company too. and they were the lowest rated in the country

Billiam

Nope. My townhouse association has a rule that you can have a dish but it can't touch the building in any way. Unfortunately, that's simply not possible with my unit.

soopa

cant you record two shows while watching a recorded show?

joerockt

He's talking about if the DVR is recording 2 shows at the same time, you can't watch any live shows, other then whats being recorded...

soopa

ah ya but you can't do that with cable either (or any other DVR for that matter), right?