Direct TV?

[Olaf]

I'm thinking of switching from cable to satellite. I really want to receive BBC America and Biography, but our dumb cable company doesn't offer it to us in this area. They offer it to people a few miles away, just not to us.

I'm looking for input on this. Do I buy the satellite from the company or can I purchase it at a store? How has the reception been for those of you who have this? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

 

[RUDisney]

The reception is great, but I have a few words of advice... get a receiver with an RF (radio frequency) remote so you can change the channel on the receiver from a different room. We love that if we wake up in the middle of the night, we don't have to amble downstairs to find something we want to watch.

Remember, you can only watch one channel at a time from one receiver. This creates problems for us when we want to watch HGTV and the kids want to watch cartoons. Usually, for us, it's not a big issue because we don't get to sit down until after the kids are in bed.

We also don't get the networks over our dish. The local stations won't give us a waiver for the NY and LA stations so we watch them over the air. They come in better in our bedroom than they do in the basement or first floor. We went out and bought an antenna for over the dish that has improved this significantly.

I refuse to pay the cable company an extra $10 or so for basic cable just for the networks when I'm already paying a bundle to DTV.

Keep in mind, you can get a dish that allows 2 receivers to be plugged into it so you can watch more than one station at a time. We haven't gotten to that yet because we really don't watch much TV as a family or individually for that matter.

We installed our own dish and it wasn't that difficult, but now the ads offer a free dish and installation, so that would make it even easier. There is also a special coax cable that has to run from the dish to the receiver. I think it's RG6. The regular coax that you have running between rooms in your house is fine to bring the signal to the TVs, but you do need the special coax between the dish and the receiver. We bought ours in Circuit City about 5-6 years ago.

I love the program guides that the dish offers and that I can tell what will be on later in the day by using the remote's mouse. I don't ever need a TV Guide or the TV Times that they put in the Sunday paper.

 

[2disneywego]

We have DirecTV, because the cable company wanted $9,000 to bring the cable 1/2 mile down the road.

We bought our dish and receivers from Radio Shack when they were having a sale of buy one receiver, get the second one free. We have a 2-line dish and I have it set up so we can tape one channel and watch another at the same time. We only have one TV so it's a lot of wires. If you have more than one TV, you'll probably want to go with a 2-line dish.

The reception is very good.........except when it's raining. Then it's terrible or just not there at all!! Make sure the dish is not obstructed by trees either.

 

[TerriP]

We have DirecTv and have been very happy with it. We got it last April when we moved into the country and cable was not available. We purchased a two receiver system from Best Buy (I think it was around $100) and DH installed it himself. I can't remember the name of the program package we have, but it's the one that is $34.99 a month and then we pay $5 a month for the additional receiver. We *had* to have two receivers because DH loves sports and I love movies so we hardly ever watch the same televison. But with that $34.99 package you get sooo much to chose from...basically everything except HBO, Cinemax, and the other "extra charge" movie channels (both Biography & BBC America are included). But you also can get lots of pay per view choices that eliminate the need to rent movies...which is really nice.

We also have to have a regular antenna to get local channels because we can't get them through the dish, but that is okay with me...I really like to see local weather. But we just set ours up facing the South/SouthEast like it said and we've never had it not get good reception...rain, snow, even snow sitting inside the dish itself have never hurt our reception.

 

[s&k'smom]

We love our DirectTV the only thing is when it snows we can lose reception until it clears. We found a special and there was free installation. I would check around I'm sure there are specials offered all the time if you don't want to self instal. And BBCAmerica is great!

 

[Tina]

We've had Directv sinec 1996 and we love it. Its true that you can lose reception during storms, but for us, it only happens when they storm is really heavy and it usually will only last 5 minutes or so.

We've never had a problem getting the local channels through Directv. It all depends on where you live and whether or not the local channels are obtainable via a rooftop antennae. You can buy the dish just about anywhere and then call Directv for service. Depending on your needs you can get a one-receiver dish or up to a 4-receiver dish (they may come with more, but I don't know). It will cost $5 for each additional receiver to receive a signal (they first is included in your package). The package price is VERY reasonable compared to cable. You really get a lot for your money.

We installed and cabled our own, but there are always packages out there with free installation. As a matter of fact, you can get the single receiver system for free on the Directv website. Just go to http://www.directv.com then under "Get Directv" go to Special offers.

 

[pumba]

for three years and we love it......we did have to pay five dollars a month extra for each additional receiver.....and we had three at the time......now we are down to two additional receivers.......we have lost our signal maybe once or twice a year when we have a thunder storm or when we are in a total white out with the snow storm......the most it lasted was 5 or ten minutes ......we were losing cable left and right.......we are very happy and the reception is excellent......never had a problem......