I've had Comcast for years and am looking to leave. While paying around $135 a month for tv and internet Comcast decided to remove 13 movie channels. And no they aren't lowering the rates. I have to make sure Verizon has DSL in my area. While Comcast internet has been great the tv packages are getting worse. I guess they think they are the only game in town when it comes to cable and people won't make the switch to satellite.

So who here has Satellite and what do they think of them? Anything I should know about? Hidden costs?

Thanks

 

I had Dish Network, wasn't happy with them from day one and disconnecting from them was a nightmare that actually just ended.

I went to Mediacom digital cable, for the following reason. I was paying Qwest almost $80 a month for basic phone (no long distance) and DSL internet 1.5KB, and about $59 a month for the dish.

Through cable I get virtually the same channel package as dish, VOIP with unlimited long distance and 5KB internet service for about $119 a month and I haven't had any problems since switching.

 

We have Dish network, have been looking at maybe changing to Direct becasue we want to upgrade to a DVR and add 3 more rooms. Direct is cheaper up front but comes with a 2 year contract. Dish is a little more upfront and is an 18 month contract. I've owned my equipment for ever, and really don't want to enter another contract, but also dont want to pay $400 for a DVR reciever. If I had Direct then I could pick up a DVR reciver at Circuit City right now for a penny. So future upgrades was not something I thought about when we started with dish several years ago.

So we are asking ourself the same question right now too.
Continue with Dish or go to Direct.

 

We have had DiercTV for years. About four years ago we decided to give Dish a try. We had both running and decided which one would stay. After about three months it was time for dish to go. It just plain sucked. The only problem we had was that D/TV didn't offer UPN, so we decided to hold onto dish. We called them up and told them to drop everything but UPN, and WB. Well to make a long story short they took everything off our bill but forgot to turn off the channels. They just finally caught it a couple of months ago, and turned them off. Now D/TV offers UPN so we called Dish and told them to drop our service completely.

The only way I would go is D/TV. I have 5 TV's in the house right now all running D/TV and it is great.

 

I did see that you have to sign a 1 or 2 year lease. But I didn't know that you are leasing the equipment. It's like $5 per receiver. Is the equipment yours when the lease is up? Do you continue to make lease payments after the contract is up? Generally have the prices for programs been the same or has there been some price increases. It seems to me like the pricing has gone down from when I last looked into it.

 

comcast

...zap!

 

After your term is up the equipment is soooooo outdated that they just pull the access cards out of the boxes and leave everything else behind for you to do as you wish.

 

Lets say my 1 or 2 year contract is up and I wanna stay with them. Do they bring new equipment, keep using what I have or what?

And what about taxes on all this? It seems like there all kinds of taxes on utilities.

 

I am exceedingly happy with DirecTV... Excellent service, it has all the channel options that I want, and it's priced fair in my opinion.

As for my cable ISP -- insightbb.com -- that's another story. I really wish SOMEONE had DSL available here. I'd drop them like 2nd period French.

 

I've heard the Dish companies are close to offering internet service. Years ago you could get dish internet through Radio Shack for $150 a month. I guess that didn't last long.

 

Direct TV for three years ... Have not had any issues, besides having to change a couple of boxes. I like being able to change my packages online.

 

Had cable and went to Dish. Was ok until it rained, wind blew, it snowed, or an airplane came with-in 5 miles of my house! Ripped it off the roof and went back to cable. Fortunately the cable company failed to shut off my cable when i switched to Dish, so its been 5 Months woth free cable!

 

We had direct TV at our old house but went with Dish network for this house. 2 room DVR for 4 rooms total is the greatest. Going on 5 months here and no problems at all.

 

I think this mostly depends on your location. We have some local and state taxes and stuff but it insn't anything outragous.

You just keep using what you have. We had our last boxes for 6 years with no trouble at all. It was only when we decided to upgrade our service to get our local networks that they brought us new boxes (AT NO CHARGE) because ours were too outdated for the service. They even gave us a new dish, and and did a professional install (AGAIN ALL FREE OF CHARGE). I guess they didn't like my quick install method with wires blowing in the wind.

 

DirecTV has been offering sat link for a couple of years now. It is still a little on the $$ side but if DSL doesn't get out here soon I may have to get the sat connection.