Directtv or stick with cable?
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Well, I've been a cable modem user from the first day I could get it (dsl was not available in my area for a long time). Lately, my cable has been less then optimum. I switched my phone service from Bell gouge South to Vonage. Worked fine for the first week, but the IP phone is 50% hype. If you really need to make a call, even 10% reliability loss is an issue. So, wife went on a tirade, and I'm looking at switching back to the phone company for local service. Anyway... they have this deal - phone/dsl (3MBps)/DirectTv. Anyone here switched from cable to directtv and regretted it? Comments?
Charlie Gilley Will program for food... Whoever said children were cheaper by the dozen... lied. My son's PDA is an M249 SAW. My other son commutes in an M1A2 Abrams
I get my internet service through the local cable company. We first had DirectTV and we had a lot of issues with reception and TERRIBLE customer service. We switched to Dish Network and I really like them. Although I hated them for awhile thinking they kept calling me to sign up for new service--turns out the calls were fraudulent. My local phone company also offers the internet/Direct TV/phone package, but I wonder about bundling with a third party. I worry they would always be like, 'call the other company--it's not our problem.' Anyhow, if you really want to go to sattelite tv, I really recommend the Dish Network.
_________________________________________________________________________________ Some buildings don't have a Floor 13 because of superstition...yet every airport has a gate C-4.
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But what about for Internet access?
For internet, I don't use satellite. Satellite internet has notorious delay/lag and horrible upload. If you play any online PC games, it's definitely not a wise choice. Go with cable internet.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. I'm currently blogging about: Check out this cutie The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
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Well, I've been a cable modem user from the first day I could get it (dsl was not available in my area for a long time). Lately, my cable has been less then optimum. I switched my phone service from Bell gouge South to Vonage. Worked fine for the first week, but the IP phone is 50% hype. If you really need to make a call, even 10% reliability loss is an issue. So, wife went on a tirade, and I'm looking at switching back to the phone company for local service. Anyway... they have this deal - phone/dsl (3MBps)/DirectTv. Anyone here switched from cable to directtv and regretted it? Comments?
Charlie Gilley Will program for food... Whoever said children were cheaper by the dozen... lied. My son's PDA is an M249 SAW. My other son commutes in an M1A2 Abrams
I've used Dish Network, and know a few people who use DirectTV. Both are pretty good. I can think of nothing to recommend cable, with the possible exception of being able to hook up more televisions for basic channels without needing more boxes. I could go on, ranting about all the bad experiences i've had with cable companies, but i'm sure you already know what i mean...
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I had DirecTV for around 10 years and loved it. In 10 years we did not need to make a single customer service call but I would admit I installed dish and added the second dish when we expanded do 4 tuner with the extra channels. Since it's 100% digital the picture quality is excellent on every channel (unless you are in a very heavy storm which you probably should not have the tv on anyways...) With that said when I moved to a new house I got cable because I wanted to ditch the phone company as well and with DirectTV you need an always connected land phone line and then I also wanted HSI. In my area I had Adelphia which at times had serous problems with their HSI (very long delays between packets) so for a the first 6 months of service my VOIP did not work well and onling gaming was impossible. BTW, for VOIP stay very far away from broadvoice. Since they only have 7000 customers world wide when they experience problems (on their end) it takes a long time to fix. During my first few months with them they had a dispute with a phone company that all service off their network impossible and this was a ~2 week outage. After a year of dealing with this and other problems with them I switched to Vonnage and things are much, much better now. I do admit some of my problems were caused by my flaky HSI but not all as at times broadvoice only one person could hear while the other person had 100% silence and then every conversation had a chance of being dropped for no reason at all. Now that comcast has taken over my service is better as my internet speeds are 6M/768 but with powerboost I routinely get 10M to 14M down.
Last modified: 30mins after originally posted --
John
Like you, I have Adelphia (you sound close to me... are you in Atlanta by any chance?). Now that the acquisition is complete, I'm hoping things stabililze, but the VOIP phone just isn't what we want it to be. The 3 item package deal offered by Bell South for $100 looks like a good deal, and it would be cheaper overall with much better service. The DirectTV is the only unknown for me, never having had it. I have a phone jack next to the TV area, so this isn't an issue. Just new ground for me....
Charlie Gilley Will program for food... Whoever said children were cheaper by the dozen... lied. My son's PDA is an M249 SAW. My other son commutes in an M1A2 Abrams
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Well, I've been a cable modem user from the first day I could get it (dsl was not available in my area for a long time). Lately, my cable has been less then optimum. I switched my phone service from Bell gouge South to Vonage. Worked fine for the first week, but the IP phone is 50% hype. If you really need to make a call, even 10% reliability loss is an issue. So, wife went on a tirade, and I'm looking at switching back to the phone company for local service. Anyway... they have this deal - phone/dsl (3MBps)/DirectTv. Anyone here switched from cable to directtv and regretted it? Comments?
Charlie Gilley Will program for food... Whoever said children were cheaper by the dozen... lied. My son's PDA is an M249 SAW. My other son commutes in an M1A2 Abrams
Well, in chatting with Bell South, the offer is interestingly bundled. The phone and dsl service has no contract, so if it is terrible, I can toss it. The Direct Tv has a min. commmitment of 12 months, but I'm guessing that if performance is terrible - I can toss them for cause. Comments?
Charlie Gilley Will program for food... Whoever said children were cheaper by the dozen... lied. My son's PDA is an M249 SAW. My other son commutes in an M1A2 Abrams
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But what about for Internet access?
Satellite internet blows. It's worse than dial up. Constant timeouts, random disconnects. Even with clear skies. Your ping is obviously horrible (1500-4000ms) and throughput is very inconsistent.
Found on Bash.org [erno] hm. I've lost a machine.. literally _lost_. it responds to ping, it works completely, I just can't figure out where in my apartment it is.
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Satellite internet blows. It's worse than dial up. Constant timeouts, random disconnects. Even with clear skies. Your ping is obviously horrible (1500-4000ms) and throughput is very inconsistent.
Found on Bash.org [erno] hm. I've lost a machine.. literally _lost_. it responds to ping, it works completely, I just can't figure out where in my apartment it is.
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Well, I've been a cable modem user from the first day I could get it (dsl was not available in my area for a long time). Lately, my cable has been less then optimum. I switched my phone service from Bell gouge South to Vonage. Worked fine for the first week, but the IP phone is 50% hype. If you really need to make a call, even 10% reliability loss is an issue. So, wife went on a tirade, and I'm looking at switching back to the phone company for local service. Anyway... they have this deal - phone/dsl (3MBps)/DirectTv. Anyone here switched from cable to directtv and regretted it? Comments?
Charlie Gilley Will program for food... Whoever said children were cheaper by the dozen... lied. My son's PDA is an M249 SAW. My other son commutes in an M1A2 Abrams
Do not know how well the DSL works out (have had cable broadband since 1998 and where I am located, DSL will only get me 400k download while cable gets me 5mb down and 512 mb up), but DirecTv is pretty cool. Also, if you would like HD there are I IIRC 70 HD channels available on DirecTv. The DVRs that DirecTv uses are not too bad and the cost is trivial. I personally like TiVo's interface so I use the TiVo DirecTv DVR which has a dual tuner (which you can usually pick up a used one on eBay). Be warned though, if you live in an area that gets freezing rain or snow, they can cause issues for dishes.
Rocky <>< Latest Code Blog Post: SQL Server Express Warnings & Tips Latest Tech Blog Post: Scratch: fun for all ages for free!
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Well, I've been a cable modem user from the first day I could get it (dsl was not available in my area for a long time). Lately, my cable has been less then optimum. I switched my phone service from Bell gouge South to Vonage. Worked fine for the first week, but the IP phone is 50% hype. If you really need to make a call, even 10% reliability loss is an issue. So, wife went on a tirade, and I'm looking at switching back to the phone company for local service. Anyway... they have this deal - phone/dsl (3MBps)/DirectTv. Anyone here switched from cable to directtv and regretted it? Comments?
Charlie Gilley Will program for food... Whoever said children were cheaper by the dozen... lied. My son's PDA is an M249 SAW. My other son commutes in an M1A2 Abrams
We switched from Comcast to DirecTV a couple years ago and haven't regretted it one bit. Just recently, we picked up 1.5 mbps DSL and haven't had any issues with it. It was really easy to set up and integrate into our Wi-Fi network. :D Flynn
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Like you, I have Adelphia (you sound close to me... are you in Atlanta by any chance?). Now that the acquisition is complete, I'm hoping things stabililze, but the VOIP phone just isn't what we want it to be. The 3 item package deal offered by Bell South for $100 looks like a good deal, and it would be cheaper overall with much better service. The DirectTV is the only unknown for me, never having had it. I have a phone jack next to the TV area, so this isn't an issue. Just new ground for me....
Charlie Gilley Will program for food... Whoever said children were cheaper by the dozen... lied. My son's PDA is an M249 SAW. My other son commutes in an M1A2 Abrams
charlieg wrote:
Like you, I have Adelphia (you sound close to me... are you in Atlanta by any chance?).
No, I'm not that lucky (I hate the cold). I live in a Pittsburgh, PA suburb very close to the Airport which is around 20 miles southwest of downtown.
charlieg wrote:
The 3 item package deal offered by Bell South for $100 looks like a good dea
Ahh, That was what I was looking to pay for all 3 but no such deal was available in my area. Comcast does offer all 3 for $100 for a year but after that the regular rates apply. Right now my Cable bill is $56 for standard analog cable (no digtial) with $46 for 6M/767 Internet and ~$17 (after tax) for the Vonnage 500 minute plan. All added together it is around $120 with tax.
charlieg wrote:
The DirectTV is the only unknown for me, never having had it.
Knowing how the satellite works I would say that there are three things you must have to avoid signal problems that cause others headaches. One is a good unobstructed view of the southern sky (as the satellites orbit over central America) and the second is a stable platform to mount the dish that is on the roof or at least high on a wall so it is unlikely to be knocked out of alignment. And last but not least the dish must be pointed correctly which is actually pretty easy as the receiver tells you were to aim and there is a signal meter also on the receiver that helps you fine tune once you get a detectable signal.
John
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DirecTV blows away cable TV. You won't regret getting it.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. I'm currently blogging about: Check out this cutie The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
You're gonna have to be a lot more specific than "blows away cable". How does it "blow away cable"? I currently have (Time-Warner) cable, and recently upgraded to HD/Digital service for the time being. I gave up on their inetrnet service because they couldn't fix their crap lines/nodes so that I wasn't intermittently loosing connectivity. I'm considering switching to satellite, but here are some issues: 1) Digital cable still allows my other TV's to work without an additional set-top box. (a BIG plus) 2) DirecTV say free installation, but if you don't read the fine print, you're royally screwed. It seems they only make cable runs up to 125 from the dish, and they only go through ONE wall. If you exceed either of those two things, you will get charged for the installation, and the charges are pretty steep. Not only that, but they won't tell you about the extra charges until they're DONE WITH THE INSTALL. I've established that I'm going to have run the cables myself (if I want a decent looking installation) so that the installers only have to put connectors on the coax. Yeah - the install will be free for them, but not for me. 3) Their channel lineup for the $49/month package says 155 channels. However, 55 of those channels are RADIO - NOT TV. Further, you can't shave the radio stations off the channel lineup to save a few bucks on crap you won't use. On the other hand, I don't think I have all of the channels I'm supposed to have on cable. I think I have to call those idiots - again.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001 -
That was one of my problems that forced me into cable. The second is that DirectTV requires a land based phone line whioch I did not want (well at least with verizon)...
John
The phjone line is only required for the pay-per-view stuff.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001 -
charlieg wrote:
Like you, I have Adelphia (you sound close to me... are you in Atlanta by any chance?).
No, I'm not that lucky (I hate the cold). I live in a Pittsburgh, PA suburb very close to the Airport which is around 20 miles southwest of downtown.
charlieg wrote:
The 3 item package deal offered by Bell South for $100 looks like a good dea
Ahh, That was what I was looking to pay for all 3 but no such deal was available in my area. Comcast does offer all 3 for $100 for a year but after that the regular rates apply. Right now my Cable bill is $56 for standard analog cable (no digtial) with $46 for 6M/767 Internet and ~$17 (after tax) for the Vonnage 500 minute plan. All added together it is around $120 with tax.
charlieg wrote:
The DirectTV is the only unknown for me, never having had it.
Knowing how the satellite works I would say that there are three things you must have to avoid signal problems that cause others headaches. One is a good unobstructed view of the southern sky (as the satellites orbit over central America) and the second is a stable platform to mount the dish that is on the roof or at least high on a wall so it is unlikely to be knocked out of alignment. And last but not least the dish must be pointed correctly which is actually pretty easy as the receiver tells you were to aim and there is a signal meter also on the receiver that helps you fine tune once you get a detectable signal.
John
Well, my wife would say it's freezing today (temp's will hit around 50f). :) The interesting thing is that Comcast seems to be upgrading network infrastructure - I believe there is a new ups hung on a pole down the street. The sky view is not a problem - at the top of the hill and house faces SE. Not a problem at all...
Charlie Gilley Will program for food... Whoever said children were cheaper by the dozen... lied. My son's PDA is an M249 SAW. My other son commutes in an M1A2 Abrams
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Well, in chatting with Bell South, the offer is interestingly bundled. The phone and dsl service has no contract, so if it is terrible, I can toss it. The Direct Tv has a min. commmitment of 12 months, but I'm guessing that if performance is terrible - I can toss them for cause. Comments?
Charlie Gilley Will program for food... Whoever said children were cheaper by the dozen... lied. My son's PDA is an M249 SAW. My other son commutes in an M1A2 Abrams
You have a 72-hour return policy on satellite. Otherwise, you pay the disconnect fee.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001 -
You're gonna have to be a lot more specific than "blows away cable". How does it "blow away cable"? I currently have (Time-Warner) cable, and recently upgraded to HD/Digital service for the time being. I gave up on their inetrnet service because they couldn't fix their crap lines/nodes so that I wasn't intermittently loosing connectivity. I'm considering switching to satellite, but here are some issues: 1) Digital cable still allows my other TV's to work without an additional set-top box. (a BIG plus) 2) DirecTV say free installation, but if you don't read the fine print, you're royally screwed. It seems they only make cable runs up to 125 from the dish, and they only go through ONE wall. If you exceed either of those two things, you will get charged for the installation, and the charges are pretty steep. Not only that, but they won't tell you about the extra charges until they're DONE WITH THE INSTALL. I've established that I'm going to have run the cables myself (if I want a decent looking installation) so that the installers only have to put connectors on the coax. Yeah - the install will be free for them, but not for me. 3) Their channel lineup for the $49/month package says 155 channels. However, 55 of those channels are RADIO - NOT TV. Further, you can't shave the radio stations off the channel lineup to save a few bucks on crap you won't use. On the other hand, I don't think I have all of the channels I'm supposed to have on cable. I think I have to call those idiots - again.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001It blows away cable for the live guide info alone. I'm not talking about the "what's currently on"/TV guide thing; with DTV I can hit info and see what show is currently on the channel I'm on, whether it's a re-run, who stars in it, and at what times and what channels it will be playing later; all with a single click of the info button. I can schedule shows to watch or record, purchase PPV right from the remote, a whole host of things I wasn't getting with cable. Also, where I live, I get more channels (real ones that I watch, not the XM radio channels) for the same price. So, for me anyways, it blows away my old Comcast cable setup.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. I'm currently blogging about: Check out this cutie The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
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Well, I've been a cable modem user from the first day I could get it (dsl was not available in my area for a long time). Lately, my cable has been less then optimum. I switched my phone service from Bell gouge South to Vonage. Worked fine for the first week, but the IP phone is 50% hype. If you really need to make a call, even 10% reliability loss is an issue. So, wife went on a tirade, and I'm looking at switching back to the phone company for local service. Anyway... they have this deal - phone/dsl (3MBps)/DirectTv. Anyone here switched from cable to directtv and regretted it? Comments?
Charlie Gilley Will program for food... Whoever said children were cheaper by the dozen... lied. My son's PDA is an M249 SAW. My other son commutes in an M1A2 Abrams
We got called about switching to a phone(at&t)/directv bundle as well. I'm on the west coast. Install is tomorrow - switching from time-warner (formerly adelphia here). The cable was fine as long as there was no wind (it's funny how they advertise that they're better than satellite because weather DOESN'T affect it :rolleyes:). The price of cable was a ripoff (always has been, always will be I suppose). If only I could get faster DSL :( I'm 20ft too far from the nearest CO apparently. I have to have my static IPs though :) Mark
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Well, I've been a cable modem user from the first day I could get it (dsl was not available in my area for a long time). Lately, my cable has been less then optimum. I switched my phone service from Bell gouge South to Vonage. Worked fine for the first week, but the IP phone is 50% hype. If you really need to make a call, even 10% reliability loss is an issue. So, wife went on a tirade, and I'm looking at switching back to the phone company for local service. Anyway... they have this deal - phone/dsl (3MBps)/DirectTv. Anyone here switched from cable to directtv and regretted it? Comments?
Charlie Gilley Will program for food... Whoever said children were cheaper by the dozen... lied. My son's PDA is an M249 SAW. My other son commutes in an M1A2 Abrams
I agree with previous posters that DirecTV blows doors on Cable for tv. For the internet I use CableModem from Comcast. No problems. I get the tv I want, and the internet I want. Be wary of the bundled deals though. Often times the billing for DirecTV isn't in sync with the billing of the phone company, I assume the phone company is doing the bundling, and you'll find times where you aren't billed for DirecTV but then billed for two months at one time. If you happened to upgrade to HD and do the Football subscription, you might find yourself with an unexpected $500 bill like I did. I finally removed the bundled offer. It was worth the 5 bux savings to remove it.
What's in a sig? This statement is false. Build a bridge and get over it. ~ Chris Maunder
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That was one of my problems that forced me into cable. The second is that DirectTV requires a land based phone line whioch I did not want (well at least with verizon)...
John
As said before that's only used for pay per view, which can also be ordered online. But also for Tivo, they require it only to setup. After the initial setup you can unplug it and just ignore its complaints that it needs to make a daily call to report your habits. Heh...
What's in a sig? This statement is false. Build a bridge and get over it. ~ Chris Maunder
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You're gonna have to be a lot more specific than "blows away cable". How does it "blow away cable"? I currently have (Time-Warner) cable, and recently upgraded to HD/Digital service for the time being. I gave up on their inetrnet service because they couldn't fix their crap lines/nodes so that I wasn't intermittently loosing connectivity. I'm considering switching to satellite, but here are some issues: 1) Digital cable still allows my other TV's to work without an additional set-top box. (a BIG plus) 2) DirecTV say free installation, but if you don't read the fine print, you're royally screwed. It seems they only make cable runs up to 125 from the dish, and they only go through ONE wall. If you exceed either of those two things, you will get charged for the installation, and the charges are pretty steep. Not only that, but they won't tell you about the extra charges until they're DONE WITH THE INSTALL. I've established that I'm going to have run the cables myself (if I want a decent looking installation) so that the installers only have to put connectors on the coax. Yeah - the install will be free for them, but not for me. 3) Their channel lineup for the $49/month package says 155 channels. However, 55 of those channels are RADIO - NOT TV. Further, you can't shave the radio stations off the channel lineup to save a few bucks on crap you won't use. On the other hand, I don't think I have all of the channels I'm supposed to have on cable. I think I have to call those idiots - again.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001More selection, and I get eastern times in the pacific time zone. They've got decent HD content. But mostly I guess my bias stems from the time zone deal. There are also a few channels that aren't available from Cable. But I ordered everything. 90 bux a month. All channels and all movie channels. Plus I like to watch the NFL Sunday Ticket in HD on a 60" screen. Even with 8 channels displayed at the same time I can see what's going on.
What's in a sig? This statement is false. Build a bridge and get over it. ~ Chris Maunder
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I had DirecTV for around 10 years and loved it. In 10 years we did not need to make a single customer service call but I would admit I installed dish and added the second dish when we expanded do 4 tuner with the extra channels. Since it's 100% digital the picture quality is excellent on every channel (unless you are in a very heavy storm which you probably should not have the tv on anyways...) With that said when I moved to a new house I got cable because I wanted to ditch the phone company as well and with DirectTV you need an always connected land phone line and then I also wanted HSI. In my area I had Adelphia which at times had serous problems with their HSI (very long delays between packets) so for a the first 6 months of service my VOIP did not work well and onling gaming was impossible. BTW, for VOIP stay very far away from broadvoice. Since they only have 7000 customers world wide when they experience problems (on their end) it takes a long time to fix. During my first few months with them they had a dispute with a phone company that all service off their network impossible and this was a ~2 week outage. After a year of dealing with this and other problems with them I switched to Vonnage and things are much, much better now. I do admit some of my problems were caused by my flaky HSI but not all as at times broadvoice only one person could hear while the other person had 100% silence and then every conversation had a chance of being dropped for no reason at all. Now that comcast has taken over my service is better as my internet speeds are 6M/768 but with powerboost I routinely get 10M to 14M down.
Last modified: 30mins after originally posted --
John
You don't have to have a phone line connected. I don't.
What's in a sig? This statement is false. Build a bridge and get over it. ~ Chris Maunder
