Satellite TV Providers

[Fushigi]

Comcast is raising their rates again. This is pretty darn annoying so my wife & I are switching (back) to satellite. I'm posting this to solicit opinions on DirecTV vs. Dish Network. The packages we are considering would include an HD-DVR (or a regular DVR now & plan for upgrading later). We don't have an HD TV set yet, but hope to get one in the next couple of years. Monthly cost is not much of a factor since either provider will be cheaper than Comcast, which will be about $70 a month without a DVR. The plans:

DirecTV Total Choice Plus with HD DVR.

Dish Network America's Top 180 with Player-DVR 942.

Movies channels: Don't care.
Phone line requirement: Preference given to service w/out a phone line requirement (we don't do PPV) as there's no phone line in the family room.
Free vs. purchase for the satellite dish & installation: Free is better, but merely cheap is OK either way. I know the HD DVRs aren't free.
DVR recording capacity: 6 hours is probably plenty. Anything more than that is more than we'd use.
Multi-tuner capability: We have just one TV so this isn't much of a factor until we buy an HD set.

As I see it the big strike against Dish is having to return the equipment when we terminate service. Otherwise there doesn't seem to be much difference between the two.

 

[P5-133XL]

Can't say anything about Dish - Never subscribed to their product.

My experiance with DirectV is several years old now and may be invalid. Regardless, I have opinions. First, their programming was very competative with cable. Second, they were more expensive than cable - Specificly, for more than one TV (Those $5.99/month per extra TV ( not including the extra recievers one has to buy) really adds up when you have 4 TV's) and the extra fee to get local stations didn't please either. Third, hope you never have to actually call them: 15-30 minute waits were not uncommon. Fourth, their internet service was abysmal and incredibly expensive for what I got: For example they would promise BW, but if you used it then they would cap it at dial-up speed...

All-in-all, I was very unimpressed with Directv. I'm much happier with cable.

 

[Pradeep]

Both Dish and DirecTV are in the process of switching to MPEG 4 compression. This will render any MPEG 2 HD DVRs such as the DirecTV box and the Dish 942 useless. That's why you see the DirecTV box at such low prices currently.

The good news for you is that if you aren't going to be using an HDTV, just stick with whatever SD DVR they provide (usually free). In a couple of years everything will be MPEG 4, and you can buy an HD-DVR at that time.

Dish has more "odd" channels, such as PPV cricket etc. I'm going to switch to them next year, once they've done the MPEG 4 thingie. I can get the OTA channels in HD via my PCI tuner card.

 

[Fushigi]

I actually had DirecTV a few years ago when we first bought the house. For a subdivision built in the late 90s it was rather strange that we weren't wired for digital cable (and broadband) from the get-go, but that's the way it was. Eventually Comcast offered broadband & upgraded to digital cable and offered $25 off a month for 16 months for people switching form Satellite. The combination was too good to pass up.

So far the vote is 1 against DirecTV and 1 slightly favoring Dish.

Thanks for the info on the MPEG4 migration; it would make sense to go ahead and get a normal DVR now & upgrade later after we buy an HD TV.

 

[Mercutio]

Compared to Comcast I was very happy with DirecTV when I had it.
I like the UI on current DirecTV hardware much, much better than current Dish or my Comcast box.

I'm guessing that money isn't really the issue here, but FWIW I had a cheaper DirecTV package that actually had channels I want, as opposed to Comcast, which is making me pay for a metric assload of things I don't want so that I can get HBO.

I'm inclined to stick it out with Comcast, though, just because Comcast has a contract to turn all their existing cable boxes into Tivo hardware (via software updates). This is absolutely the only point in comcast's favor at this point.

DirecTV dropped Tivo support recently. Bleh. Glad I sold my HDDirectivo when I could.

Both DirecTV and Dish have substantially better picture quality compared to cable. Or at least aren't so miserly with MPEG2 bit rates.

My parents have Dish. I don't know why. I can't see any compelling reason to get it.

 

[Fushigi]

Compared to Comcast I was very happy with DirecTV when I had it.
I like the UI on current DirecTV hardware much, much better than current Dish or my Comcast box.

The UIs seem to heavily depend on whose box you have. A friend's Sony DirecTV box was pretty different from the RCA box I had back when I had DirecTV before. The Comcast UI is not too appealing to me, even after the recent upgrade. It's still slow. There's no live view of a channel while looking through the listings, you still can't block channels from being listed, and outside the guide, pressing channel up/down is painfully slow.

I'm guessing that money isn't really the issue here, but FWIW I had a cheaper DirecTV package that actually had channels I want, as opposed to Comcast, which is making me pay for a metric assload of things I don't want so that I can get HBO.

Less the actual cost than the constant increases in cost. Satellite will be cheaper, and that matters, but it's more the savings in aggravation over the annual Comcast increases that never seem to come with better services.

Now, I will keep Comcast for broadband and as such I'll lost the bundle discount. Normally this would matter and make it more expensive to go separate routes, but work reimburses my Internet so I don't have to care.

I'm inclined to stick it out with Comcast, though, just because Comcast has a contract to turn all their existing cable boxes into Tivo hardware (via software updates). This is absolutely the only point in comcast's favor at this point.

? My box has no internal drive. If you're talking video-on-demand, that already sucks. It's a broken 'feature' that barely works at all.

Both DirecTV and Dish have substantially better picture quality compared to cable. Or at least aren't so miserly with MPEG2 bit rates.

This is another sore point with Comcast. The compression artifacts are seriously bad and can easily cause dropouts. Especially with OnDemand programs, but it happens often enough on normal programming.

My parents have Dish. I don't know why. I can't see any compelling reason to get it.

Didn't you mention having Dish + Comcast in your opening sentence?

 

[Mercutio]

I've had Samsung and RCA DirecTV units with Tivo. The UI was the same for both. Guess that's the Tivo UI. Whatever. It's nice. Other things are not so nice.

I have a Comcast/Motorola PVR. I don't know the model number. I hate it but supposedly Comcast PVRs will be turned into Tivos. This will be worthwhile.

Comcast non-PVR cable boxes, at least where I live, have S-video and TOSLink jacks that are disabled. This is yet more evil.

I've used Dish enough to know I don't care for it. I've never personally had it.

 

[Fushigi]

When I looked at the Comcast PVR at their kiosk in the mall I wasn't really impressed. Speed was marginally adequate but it still didn't address my main gripe: being able to not display the channels I don't want to see.

I have a Comcast non-PVR now. For it's speed, I think they wrapped an old Timex-Sinclair in a Motorola box and added AV jacks to the back. I know the optical outs don't work; I don't recall if I'm using S-Video or composite. I'll look when I get home.

I think I'll have to visit retailers for both & see which units have the better interface. In the end that'll probably be the decision-maker.