Now that Comcast Expanded Basic service has reached highway robbery pricing (they want US$45 per month! :mad: ), I'm definitely seriously looking at the DirecTV alternative.

Only one thing: trying to figure out pricing is like trying to figure out cellphone pricing plans. :rolleyes: Between rebates from DirecTV, rebates from receiver/dish manufacturers, and rebates from even DirecTiVo box makers, it's enough to drive you to reach for your favorite painkiller. :p

I'd like to know what are MousePadder experiences with DirecTV and how good is their service overall.

When we first moved into our house, we got them. About a month or so ago, though, we switched to Time Warner Cable. DirecTV is nice IF


You have no more than 3 TV's
You have a clear view of the southern sky
You don't mind a dish on your roof
You don't have cable internet



Also, it is probably gonna run you about the same price as your cable telvision per month, unless you don't want local news channel (They are an extra 5 bucks a month)

My advice to you, don't switch to Directv just because of price our cable bill was 102.00 a month and with Directv our monthly bill is 97.00 a month. Not a huge savings at all.

Keep in mind that a lot of the channels are east coast feeds like, TLC, scfi, Bravo..sometimes it's nice and somtimes it's a real pain. I would stay away from the Tivo/Directv combo as well. Shop around we didn't pay a cent for our system or installation there are plenty of places who offer such deals as long as you sign the 1 year contract (which you have no choice to do anyway)

As far as receivers go you can get the cheap ones that come with the systems or upgrade..we stayed with one cheap box but then upgraded to HDTV/dobly digtal box which cost us I think 549.00.

anyway, good luck!

I love my DirecTV and would never go back to cable. When I bought the system five years ago, there were no "free system" deals, so I ended up spending about $300 on the then top-of-the-line Sony receiver. We have the "Total Choice Plus" package, which includes everything except the premium movie channels (including all of our local channels) for $39.99 a month. The system paid for itself in the first two years based on the savings over an equivalent cable package.

I installed it myself in two different apartments, but when we moved into our house we took advantage of DirecTV's mover program. At the time (almost two years ago) it was free with a $10 shipping fee; I believe it's now $25. The program lets you take your receiver and leave your old dish installed (presumably so the next resident will be able to order service easily). They will send you a new dish and install it for free at your new house.

As far as internet service goes, DirecTV's two-way satellite service is available but really not feasible yet--the upstream latency is horrible. I have DSL through Speakeasy (http://www.speakeasy.net/) and it's better than the cable service offered by Comcast locally.

We have DirecTV and are happy with it (mind you, we're not big TV watchers). We went DirecTV mainly becasue we didn't like our Cable company.

The cost may be slightly cheeper, but wasn't really a factor. We also discovered that the 30 year-old antena on the roof pulled in the local stations just great. We also have DSL (Cable company took forever to roll out digital to our neighborhood, charged more, and didn't allow network connections).

Personally, I like getting the East Coast feeds, for most stations we get a few options as to what time we want to view anything - which is great for infrequent non-TIVO viewers like us.

We've had DirecTV for about 3 years now, and love it! We added the DirecTivo unit over two years ago, and love that even more. Especially with how often we get held up late at the office or I am sitting in an airplane or hotel, the Tivo has been one of the better investments we ever made. It really does change the way you watch TV. (We never watch live TV anymore. In fact, we were at my parents' house one evening watching TV, and we both reached for the remote to fast forward through the commercial - the problem was that they didn't have a Tivo.)

I was thrilled to give (then) MediaOne the boot. Watching the MediaOne/ATT/Comcast changes over the past few years, I am even more glad we made the change.

When you price the two out, make sure you are comparing apples to apples. If you get every movie channel and the enhanced sports packages, the costs can be equivalent. If you go with a package like Total Choice Plus with locals, you'll probably save ~$10/month.

The issue about the East coast feeds is generally valid, but check most channels. You'll find that they frequently repeat their prime-time lineup each night - so the three hour block starts at 4PM PDT and again at 7PM PDT. With that, you can usually catch what you are interested in. I know the Discovery channels (Discovery, TLC, etc) all do this.

My take:
DirecTV - $39.95/month
Installation - Generally free
Not having to deal with the cable company: Priceless!

Tony

If local network channels are important to you, before you switch, make sure that you can either-get them through DirecTV or that you can get them through the tv antenna.

Due to some federal law changes, when I tried to switch to DirecTV from Dish Network, DirecTV wouldn't let me have my local networks and despite what they say, our antenna only picks up CBS locally-NOT the other 3.

Thanks for the pluses and minuses in regards to DirecTV.

I'm still going to get it sooner or later for two reasons:

1. Comcast in my charging US$45 for Expanded Basic Cable service with lousy reception and nowhere near the channel choice of DirecTV.

2. The possibility of adding DirecTiVo PVR service for really cheap.

That way, my mom won't miss any episodes of Emeril Live! (her favorite show on Food Network) and I won't miss of my favorite programming on A&E, History Channel, Discovery Channel, and way too many sports channels. :cool:

Originally posted by RayChuang

1. Comcast in my charging US$45 for Expanded Basic Cable service with lousy reception and nowhere near the channel choice of DirecTV.



Basic Cable for 45 bucks?! That changes everything. For $45 Bucks we get:

Digital Cable (which is just like a sat. box)
HDTV and HDTV reciever (we rent the box for 4.95/month) on one TV
VOD Channels (kinda like a Tivo channel-you can watch shows, rewind, etc. It is free. It is pretty cool, because it has alot of the big networks, like CNN, Cartoon Network, TechTV, etc)
A rented TIVO on another TV
Over 1000 channels (heck, we even get the Japanese Golf Channel!)
And alot of other stuff I havn't even looked at yet
:fez:


So if you are only gettin Basic Cable for that, the you should switch to DirecTV! :|

We have DISH network because, like Tony, I was sick and tired of dealing with cable TV....

My biggest peeve was that MediaOne/AT&T, etc, whatever they were called back then, was charging us rent on inferior equipment. Junk. They were even charging us monthly rent on our remote controls!! Our monthly bill did go down because we no longer had to rent equipment.

When we got our DISH system, we not only got good equipment, but we own it (we did pay for our receivers but figured out that compared to rental costs, we were ultimately still saving money.)

There were a few reasons we chose DISH over DirecTV including: we don't care about sports and the CEO of DISH actively lobbies against cable monopolies. Go, Charlie!

Adrienne

I have just recently gotten rid of my DirectTV. The DirectTV itself was wonderful and I loved it. But I told the guys that came to install it that I was leaving for England in a couple of months after my husband and I got married. They told me it would not be a problem for me to take my satellite with me and use it over there....well I didn't know any better, I thought the satellite might be able to reach. Wrong! When I called to change my information and cancel my plan in the states they wouldn't let me without paying 250.00. I spent hours on the phone with them trying to tell them that my husband and I were being deployed to England for three years. They informed me that the only military they served was the "active duty" people. Um can you define "active duty"? They said active duty were only the people in Iraq, so I told them he had already been there for five months and now he is home....but they said that wouldn't work. So after I told my husband he called and ate someone's rear off. And all worked out and I believe they eventually ended up paying me 6.00. So that was good....but if you are anywhere near the military and you plan on going with DirectTV fair warning that you are not considered "active duty"! lol So yes DirectTV is better than cable but their customer service wasn't the best.

We've been running DirecTv for several years, and don't miss Time Warner Cable one bit.

Time Warner (bought Valley Cable TV) was constantly changing their pricing (up, up, and awaaaaaay!) and cutting their basic channel choices. They always had plenty of Premium channels, but their basic lineup was always getting worse instead of better. They were one of the last companies to change the Disney channels over to basic service, years after everyone else - they were still making money by charging even though they weren't paying for it, so it stayed on the Premium tiers...

(They were like crack dealers, they would put a channel on basic service for a while to give you "free samples", then throw it onto a premium tier where you had to buy a bunch of nothing channels to keep watching it.)

Mom wanted to watch some of the odd channels like Learning and History Channel, and we found out that TWC was buying 8 or 12 hours of the channels' programming for overnights, and running their own 'sponsored programs' during prime time. Then the TWC people lied and said that History Channel only broadcasts 8 hours a day, and they were running Ron Popeil's shows as a filler... Or they would complain that they had no slots left to put things like DIY Channel - but they just didn't want to add any more basic channels.

DirecTV works fine - we bought two "Dual-LNB dish/two boxes" kits for less than one kit, two additional boxes and a splitter, and put up one dish at each end of the house. When one dish died, we spent the $100, bought the 4-way satellite splitter and took down the bad dish. They charge IIRC $5 to duplicate the programming on each additional box.

Works rock steady unless it's pouring rain by the truckload, which doesn't happen much in SoCal. In Portland, that could be a problem, but it is surmountable by using an oversize dish to get more signal.

You will be changing your smart card every year or two if you pay the big bucks to get all the premium channels, those seem to be the ones that get hacked, cloned and resold. We have a lower package, and have only had to do it once.

And when you get the local channels, they often get the ones in your region that you have a hard time getting with an antenna. In Los Angeles they throw in KDOC and some of the Orange County UHF channels whose transmitters aren't located on Mount Wilson where your roof antenna is aimed.

If they give you any trouble about getting the local channels, you may have to fib a little. Either tell them you live in a canyon where you can't get a usable antenna signal, you have CC&R's that prohibit TV antennas (CC&R rules that are trumped by the FCC requirement that satellite dishes are always allowed) or that you turned off your cable long ago. (Put the DirecTV account in the other spouse's name.)

:fez: --<< Bruce >>--

We have DISH network because: a) cable costs kept going up and quality of customer service down and b) I can get France's TV5. Understand that in rural Wisconsin you cannot get any channels without cable or satellite.

DISH is better in every way and the first satellite was free. The second is for the French channel. I think we paid $120 for it.

I guess it depends on what programming you are looking for or are missing with cable. Like a lot of posters on Mouseplanet, we watch a lot of Disney and Travel channel, but we're also huge sports fans. Our local cable only provided FOX Sports Chicago, and we wanted FOX Sports Midwest out of Saint Louis (Cards & Blues). After rebates and discounts were applied, the system cost $5.00. The monthly service was $37.99 + 45.00 a mo. during NFL season for Sunday Ticket. All worth it and the dish actually looks a lot nicer on the back of the house than the old cable running from a pole at the street over the front yard.

We have had DirecTV for almost 2 years and we love it!

For the same service/channels for digital cable, we pay $35 less a month. And other than a couple of small screen scrambles, we have never lost reception or service.

I like having the channels on the East Coast feed. One of the things we like the most is having 2 Disney Channels, one East Coast, one West Coast. That way, if we miss a favorite cartoon (ours or the kids) we can just watch it later.

The one thing I do not like is during a live program, say like the Oscars, our DirecTV feed is 2 seconds behind my mom's Time Warner Cable in the San Fernando Valley. So we have learned that she cannot call me saying "Ooh can you believe such and such won" so as not to spoil the surprise.

I would highly recommend DirecTV. It is infinitely better than cable. And most times I forget that we pay for the local channels.