DISH? Direct-tv? Local cable? Other? recommendations, watchouts?

[rurallib]

Dish has pissed me off after 15 years but I would stay with them if they were best.

Found some problems with local cable (truly local) but still possible.

Mrs. Lib and I want MSNBC and local channels. I would like sports. We want Comedy central, hallmark, TCM, USA, syfy.
Things like History and Discovery and TLC suck so bad I don't care if we ever see them again.
Would like HBO for Maher, Newsroom and True Blood, but not absolutely necessary.
and we do wish to record.

Suggestions? Cautions? comments

Currently pay @$100/mo but we did that and cut out movies. It is our guilty pleasure. Would like to save some money if possible

Thank you

[cliffordu]

1. Get HBO as well as the great series on regular tv right here:

http://www.couchtuner.eu

Getcher MSNBC fix right here:


http://www.hulkus.com/watch-msnbc-live-streaming/


FUCK COMCAST, THE DISH AND DIRECT TV. THEY ARE THE THIEVES, NOT US.

Fuck me, I paid them tens of thousand of dollars over the last 35 years.

When they allow alacart cable service, I'll start using them again, but I am tired of 60 cahnnels of infomercials, religionists spouting Satan's bilge, steroid addicts disguised as athletes and fucking cartoons.

Hey CoNcast, kiss my ass.

[rurallib]

2. Thank you much

I could not agree more.
Just got off the phone with direct-tv - what a fucking rip-off

doubt that will satisfy Mrs. Lib though

[UTUSN]

27. Got a "dangerous page" block from my anti-virus. The MSNBC streaming works. Thanks. n/t

[patricia92243]

3. I have had all three at one time or the other. There are always going to be problems with

any of them (or anything else in life.)


I personally like Dish best.

[GoCubsGo]

4. Antenna and Roku or some other streaming device.

You can stream many, if not all of those channels you mentioned through Roku, Apple TV, Boxee, etc. Movies, and many TV shows on Hulu and Netflix.

You can watch Maher here at your leisure: http://realtimewithbillmaher.blogspot.com/

[trof]

5. Hurricane Ivan: Why I got Dish

We lost electrical power for 3 days.
Folks with Dish got reception as soon as electricity was restored.

We lost local cable (which sucked anyway) for 3 weeks.
I understand that there were more important utilities which needed to be restored.
But for those 3 weeks, if we wanted to watch ANYTHING on TV it came from Blockbuster Video.

Fast forward to Hurricane Katrina a year later.
We lost reception on Dish for maybe 10 or 20 seconds TWICE.

I'll take satellite any day.

[rurallib]

8. One reason I am so mad at Dish is that we lose reception on cloudy days

or at least did - apparently the installers installed a piece upside down, thus causing it to fill with rain.
This was about 5 years ago. Eventually the piece rotted and we lost reception for a week.
The nice young man who found the problem fixed it and we haven't had a problem since. But a week of outage was a bit much.

I am thinking some combination of cut backs on dish right now and hooking up hulu or roku.

[Pab Sungenis]

6. Antenna.

Knocked $80.00 a month off my cable bill and don't miss it. All I want is out there for free over the air.

I don't need CNN or MSNBC; I get Rachel via podcast and have a CBS News channel on channel 3.2 out of Philly. Sports, weather, classic TV and movies, all free.

And what I can't get on the antenna I can get online. Even buying the few shows we watched on cable through iTunes will cost us less for one YEAR than we were paying for one MONTH of cable.

[AmyStrange]

7. Agreed...

-

that is so true Pab,

and it'll blow your sox off some of the classic old movies you can see, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, Night of the Living Dead (Original) and I just watched a Godzilla marathon last night on one of the local air channels.

Free TV is NOT dead,

d

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[rurallib]

9. Free sounds wonderful, but I think Mrs. Lib would not agree

she has some shows she must see on cable channels.

[AmyStrange]

10. Gotcha...

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libbie,

and I agree, but no matter which one you get of those others, the free stuff is always there and worth checking out.

Some stuff though you do have to go to cable or dish to get them. Too bad really. I get Netflix too, so that kind of makes up for it maybe.

Oh well, good luck in your quest,

d

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[libodem]

11. I glad you asked

I need to know also. I've been paying for internet over the phone but Sprint does not support Adobe flash videos so I miss out on a certain amount of political commentary. I may not need cable tv if I can just have the internet for my lap top and I could hulu programs.

I don't mind rabbit ear tv, it gets me by. But then I'll hear something like the Junk Gypsies are going to do a room make over on Duck Dynasty, and I lose all that steely resolve. Gawd, I'd die to see that!!!

[Beaverhausen]

12. I like Dish

[femmocrat]

13. We have had DirecTV for several years and have been very satisfied with it.

We got rid of Comcast when they bumped MSNBC to a higher tier and wanted more money to see it.

We do pay extra for HBO. DirecTV has frequent free weekends for Showtime, STARZ, Cinemax, and Universal Sports. I record like mad when they have the freebies.

Unlike Comcast, their customer service has been fine so far.

[AmyStrange]

14. Can you get local channels?

-

always wanted to know. At one time you couldn't. Cable tried to stop that. Stupid idiots.

d

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[femmocrat]

15. Yes, we get the ABC, NBC, and CBS affiliates.

There is a local all-news station that we don't get though. I really liked that one and was sorry they don't carry it. It's a trade-off I guess. We don't get any small locals, like the ones that carry city council meetings, etc.

[AmyStrange]

17. Not the affiliates...

-

but actually local TV stations. Sorry, for the misunderstanding.

Cable does and it's been trying for years to block Dish and Direct TV from doing it also,

d

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[femmocrat]

18. We don't really have any "local" stations here.

Except for the one I mentioned. We only get the three main Pittsburgh stations.

[bigwillq]

16. I have Comcast and I love it

I'm like the only human in America that likes Comcast.

[AmyStrange]

19. Their prices suck...

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but if it was free, or a lot cheaper, it would be an awesome company,

d

Edit: In the Title: "They're" to "Their"
-

[one_voice]

20. LOL...

I liked them at one time...but their prices got to be ridiculous.

I switched to Verizon, and have more for less. I don't know if they're any better as far as customer service, I think they all kinda suck there.

They all charge too much cuz half the time something isn't working right.

And I really wish they still offered copper phone lines. Not this shit that goes out with the power. I have battery back up for twelve hours after that no more.

I want an old fashion phone line, hard to find that anymore.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

21. I switched to over the air HD TV in December and am delighted

When I bought my new digital TV, I found that Comcast wanted to charge me $10 a month EXTRA for HD channels, so I told them they could stuff their ripoff scheme.

Over the air, I now get 4 PBS stations instead of the two that Comcast was wiling to share, as well as ME TV, which is a great nostalgia trip for any baby boomer. I never realized how fantastic nature documentaries look in HD.

I also have a Roku streaming player and subscribe to several channels, but most of my viewing is on Netflix, Hulu Plus, or Acorn TV (British, Canadian, and Australian content).

For HBO and other premium channels, you know and I know that not all the programming is equally good. If there's something I want to see, I buy it on iTunes and watch it on my iPad.

[csziggy]

22. I've had both DISH and DirecTV - they're about the same

A few differences in what channels are offered, but I'm not up to date on that.

Customer service, quality of picture, cost, all were about the same with the two satellite companies.

I started with DirecTV way back when you had to buy the equipment and pay for installation. After a number of years, I needed to move the dish and wanted to upgrade my old receiver - DirecTV wouldn't make me any offers. DISH had DVR, free installation, free movie channels for six months, etc. so I went with them. When we moved into the new house, DirecTV had the better deal so I switched back. The major hassle was re-learning the channel numbers.

Oh - another hassle was the AFTER I had committed to DISH and called DirecTV to cancel it, they tried to make me an offer. I had called them before I made the change and told the what DISH was offering. DirecTV would not match the DISH offer, even for a long time customer, at least not until they had already lost me. Later I was told that if I had asked for a supervisor, they could have made an offer. Idiots!

I changed to Prism about 18 months ago. The package I have with CenturyLink for Prism TV, broadband, and telephone saves me some money compared to what I was paying before and my broadband is twice as fast. I find the Prism DVR easier to operate than either the DISH or DirecTV ones. Customer service is pretty good, about the same as I got from the satellite companies.

Frankly, I haven't seen a significant different among the options I have used. Cost is not that much less for any of them, customer service is about the same, quality of picture about the same, outage rate not very different.

See who gives you the best deal. Play them off against each other and don't be shy about asking to talk to a supervisor for a more competitive offer.

[RedCloud]

23. Check out which ones offer FSTV and RU.

They bite the right.

[rurallib]

24. one of the big reasons I signed up with Dish is FSTV

to begin with. Directtv has it now also.
Not sure what RU is - Russia Today? If so I know Dish has it.
I can watch FSTV on the computer which I am planning on hooking in to the main TV.

[UTUSN]

25. Me, too: 15yrs with Dish AND disgusted

Actually, never had problems with the reception. Outtages have been rare and brief. But their phone peeps and their billing department are crappy. They couldn't tell me the yearly expiration date for years. The last few years I had decided to quit them but at the last minute was too much hassle and the math was a few bucks less than cable.

The way I got to them was with EchoStar and TurnerVision that took each other over then got taken over by Dish. A few months ago I found an article about Dish's owner, a SWARZZENNEGGER type from Austria who reputedly browbeats employees and I think attended fundraisers for Hillary then voted Rethug.

But Dish has gotten screwier. I was on a yearly payment plan and paid up 3 months ago. Then I started getting a bill each month for $3. When I called, they said it was some new tax. Then they sent an e-mail saying the yearly payment arrangement has been done away with and they moved the payment to a credit account from which they will be drawing a monthly payment.

As for the local channels, I use an air antenna for those.

Thanks for the posts (above) giving links to free internet t.v. I was about to start looking. There's supposed to be something to get 600 channels free on the internet.

[Bertha Venation]

26. FiOS works for us, but it took a long time for it to come to our neighborhood.

Is it available yet where you are?

[rurallib]

30. no plus we are on the fringe of the over the air locals

we are @ 45 miles from Cedar Rapids and 42 miles from the Quad Cities. HD is supposedly good for @ 38 miles. I have tried and on a good day can get some pictures. PBS and the CW are closer than that and come in very well.

I still think my answer will be some dish setup and computer input and over the air

[d_r]

28. we are lucky

our local electric company has tv and internet through fiber optic and it is great. So much better than the big cable companies, and I've had dish and directv before and it is much better than those. Look around to see if there is anything local like that in your community.

[In_The_Wind]

29. I really like Direct TV.

I record a lot of shows. If the weather is bad enough to knock it off the air there is still something to watch.

[rurallib]

31. well we did that when it was out

but the particular problem eventually caused us to not be able to open recorded programs.

[Locut0s]

32. Do the research for your area. There is no one answer for everyone...

For us here our local cable company is far and away the best service we have on offer. But that certainly isn't true everywhere. Write down a list of all your options in your area and research customer satisfaction with each in your particular area. Look for message boards and forums connected to each service as they can be treasure troves of information on potential problems.

[rurallib]

33. been doing that -

and so far when it all shakes out all have their fans and detractors
strangely, adding up all the extras, the prices come out about the same.

[Raven]

34. I have Direct TV and have never had a problem

with it. The dish is out in my yard at the edge of the woods. The picture breaks up for a few minutes when a bad t'storm is coming from the west but I seldom have a problem with it durning snow storms. I have the basic package and it's fine with me. Satellite is all I can get up here in the woods so it's either Direct or Dish and I have never heard a good thing about Dish.