Digital Cable, Dish Network or Direct TV?

[lecach]

We're moving into our new house on Thursday. We cant decide whether to get cable again (what we've had - with the DVR - for the last few years), Dish or Direct. Cost is a consideration. We plan to have 4 TV's hooked up. We HAVE to have a DVR/Tivo. Can anyone give their advice? Help us choose?

Thanks!

 

[barkley]

we have direct tv and love it. they have great customer service (i appreciate talking to real people who are very patient in walking me through a process). when we moved a few weeks ago we upgraded so the kids now have tivo's in both their rooms-no more junky cartoons being recorded on the family room tv! i would suggest looking at their protection plans-it's a few dollars a month, but in the event your tivo goes out it is replaced, and it also covers the cost of any repairs to the satelite dish.

direct tv has some realy good deals for new customers on their website-and you usualy have the choice of paying for everything up front or having it broken into 3 monthly payments which are included on your bill. oh-and don't bother signing up/paying for the "direct tv guide" (their version of tv guide), once you get used to using the channel guide and search functions you'll never pick the channel guide up again.

 

[ChristmasElf]

Direct TV all the way!!!!!

 

[ThePhantomsGirl]

I LOVE TiVo!!! (we have THREE of them in our house!!)

There is a special TiVo for Direct TV though - so if you already have a stand-alone TiVo (a non-Direct TV one) you'd have to get a different TiVo. Of course the benefit of D*TV and TiVo is that they have dual tuners, meaning you can record two programs at once. Watch out with both cable and D*TV - they'll try to get you to get their DVR's and they just aren't the same. Almost...but not the same!

 

[porterbl1]

Dish Network all the way!!! I just posted my reasons on another thread. Check it out. I have had all three. I hated DirectTV.
-Becca

 

[golfgal]

I posted about this a month or so ago because it is so confusing. We ended up getting cable simply because we could bundle some services and it ended up being about $20/month cheaper. Our current cable/phone/internet is wonderful. We have had wonderful service, no outages, etc. in the 8 years or so that we have had it. Hopefully the new company will be equally as good.

 

[bicker]

I recently got a new HDTV and so went on a search for the best option. I was pretty darned surprised to figure out, in the end, that cable was the best option. The satellite services compress their video, reducing their picture quality versus the unprocessed HD signals passed along through the cable company. That was a major factor. Combine that with the fact that I didn't have to have any holes drilled into my siding, didn't have to mess with permits and such from my condo association, and didn't even have to buy the DVR equipment, it was a no-brainer for me.

This was Comcast. I do know that many of the other cable companies aren't quite as good, so the best decision in areas that don't have Comcast might be to go with one of the satellite companies.

 

[LoraJ]

I used to have DirecTV until my boyfriend moved in. He was addicted to On Demand. I'm glad I switched. I love On Demand and plus our cable internet is a ton faster than the DSL I had.

 

[Quinn222]

We had Dish Network for a year. It was great as long as it didn't rain. We live in FL and it rains every day for months. It was awful. Every single day you'd lose the picture. We'd pray it didn't rain when something we really wanted to see was on TV. We finally gave it up and got digital cable.
Oh, and when the dish got blown off the roof in a hurricaine it was six weeks before they would send anyone out to fix it. We told them to forget it and hired someone to do it. Then they sent their guy anyway (six weeks later and four weks after we got it fixed ourselves) and charged us $75 for a call we didn't even want and told them not to do.
Next storm we had digital cable. We lost power but as soon as the power was back up or a TV was on generator power we had cable.