Direct TV, Dish Network, or Cable?
Somebody help me. I have a Direct TV satellite hooked up to my TV which means that every time the wind blows I get the dreaded “searching for satellite” banner across a black screen. Add a rain storm like the doozy we had last night, and I was forced to spend the evening searching for a bottle and a satellite signal. I have reset the receiver so many times that the little red (why does it have to be so teeny?) button is now pink. For this anguish I pay over $100 a month. Am I alone here? Is Dish Network more reliable? Should I switch to cable? “How do I make my voice do this?”
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52 comments
rain fade is a way of life for all sat services. it usually only last a few minutes just before a large rain band approaches and better equipment and satellites are making it more bearable. My direct tv only lost signal for a minute or two, though I am farther south than you. Cable, while more reliable in rain overall, still relies on local dishes to receive there signals and can be effected too. plus, it can have localized outages when storms effect the lines.
That, absolutely, did not really answer your question.
I also would love to know the REAL dish vs cable argument. I have charter and it is pretty good but they have AGAIN increased their prices. Should I just go back to a bottle of red and a good book?
I’ve had both, Nancy. My cable was always out more than Dish is.
Get DirecTV out to realign your dish. I have the same service and only briefly lost the signal (maybe 15 minutes). That could be the problem. I have had both alternatives and think DirecTV is the best out there. Our cable had more outages than we’ve had with DirecTV, including all the rain fade. Dish is OK. Check and see if AT&T U-Verse is available in your neighborhood. We’re at Forest & Inwood and don’t have it yet, but our friends west of Midway do. I would never go back to cable. Horrible picture and very little High Def channels.
u-verse will be a great alternative, but its still hard to get and will have growing pains me thinks. it will run through your phone line . that seems to never go out.
Chris, do you have HD? What is AT&T U-Verse. I’m Midway and Walnut Hill. I lose HD transmission all the time with Direct TV. THey have been out to adjust so many times. Each new guy says the last guy did it wrong. Any installers out there reading this????
one other thing, hitting the little red reset button during rain fade make it worse, as the dish, rebooting, cant find the signal to reboot. dont do that, just wait.
Call DirecTV. They will walk you through the process of determining your signal strength. I had the exact same problem and they had to send out a contractor who remounted the mount as it had become loose. For Nancy: each repairman said the last guy did it wrong too.
Nancy, I live near you and have U-Verse. It has HD, DVR, all of it. My wife and I joked last night that our old Directv would’ve gone down during that storm.
I’ve had cable and satellite. DIRECTV is better, but annoying when it rains or is windy. Cable would go out for days, and they refused to credit the bill. I’ve heard good things about U-Verse and plan to consider it when we upgrade to HD.
U-Verse is so much better than Time Warner cable or satellite.
I’m not familiar with U-Verse, but DirecTV beats the pants off cable. And they are so committed to working with you to make it work.
I have DISH, it is currently working ok. and I have heard that U-Verse (if available in your hood) is the Shinizzle
I had cable in the past and was never happy, so I switched to DirecTv 5 years ago and I’ll never leave (only why did y’all have to give up the TiVo partnership, why?).
I’ve found that my signal is hardly ever knocked out unless my power is also knocked out – I live close to White Rock Lake, so the latter is generally a bigger problem. I didn’t have any problems last night at all. Making sure that your dish pointing is as close to perfect as possible will help greatly improve your chances. Do you have the 5 LNB or the 3 LNB dish? The larger one is so heavy that they bolt it to the roof, so it gives it much more stability.
As far as U-verse goes, I won’t even try it. They bother me constantly: phone calls, junk mail, and they even showed up at my door with some lame story at 10am this past Saturday about updating the wiring for the internet in my house (I asked if they were representing U-verse and he sheepishly mumbled that yes, he was with U-verse).
I’ve had uverse for a year and a half and its great. 70 or so hd channels, records up to 4 shows at once and you can watch the recorded show on the other tv boxes.
I’m on a 6 month promo right now for every channel, 3 hd-tv boxes and wireless internet for only $90 a month including taxes.
I have also had much better customer support than I had with Comcast/Time Warner but thats not saying very much.
Anyway thats just been my experience.
I left Direct for Dish about two years ago after months of trying to get them to address the dropped signal problems that were happening constantly. It took two visits, but after the second try I’ve never had to have the Dish guy back. Yeah, one high tech nightmare down only about a hundred to go!
check to see if your area has Verizon Fios or U-verse.
U-Verse rocks!!!!!!!
We’ve had AT&T U-verse for about a year now and are thrilled. It’s much better that Comcast or TW and it is super reliable. We watched TV all night last night – HD – without issue. We’re at Beltline/Preston. If U-verse is available in your neighborhood, I’d urge you to try it.
get uverse or FIOS if either is available.
for reliability:
over the air>fiber/cable>satellite
for picture quality:
over the air>fiber>>>>>>>>>satellite>>>>>>>>>cable.
tivo and Direct TV have kissed and made up. big time.
Get U-Verse as fast as you can. I’ve tried every alternative (except Fios) and it is by far the best. I do miss the Sunday Ticket.
Uverse or FIOS. We switched from several years of DirecTV and our beloved Tivo, and other than a few Uverse growing pains, haven’t missed the dish. Our TV would have been out last night, regardless of alignment of the dish, but instead we were watching our 100 channels of nothing that really interested us.
@Eric’s buddy – The main reason we got rid of DTV was picture degradation. DTV is shifting all of it’s resources to HD, so you could see the compression artifacts on the SD channels. The picture difference between the fiber and the satellite was amazing.
Another vote for AT&T uVerse.
Nancy-Run, run, run fast as you can away from U-verse….I tried to get it installed; all the technicians did was partially install it and then say the signal strength wasn’t good enough. Fortunately, I got an old AT&T tech who knew what 6 other U-verse techs didn’t (i.e. take the partially installed equipment away when they leave). I was so disgusted, I went with Direct TV and have had only a few problems (Time Warner was atrocious). In talking with the old school techs, U-Verse is growing out of proportion, techs only have a few weeks of training and don’t know what they are doing. Combine it with lousy AT&T customer service/tech support and that’s what you have. That being said the word on the street is FIOS is light years ahead of U-Verse and is not only a better system, but better supported as well. Now id only there was an alternative for AT&T DSL now we have Direct TV I would be set. Good luck!
My vote goes to any option that’s NOT Time Warner Cable. They can die in a fire.
8 years cable, maybe 3-5 outages. Cable hands down.
Including TW – not a single problem in 2 years.
Your results may vary.
Cable has the worst customer service on the planet plus they have the worst channel and HD options so let’s throw cable under the bus and not look back.
Now that cable is out of the picture let’s look at satellite. DirecTV is the large of the two companies and has a higher customer service rating than Dish. DirecTV has a larger line up of HD channels than Dish as well.
DirecTV and Dish will both suffer from “rain fade” but, these should last only a minute our two as the storms blow in. If they are lasting longer than this you have one of three issues: 1. Your dish is loose and moving around when the wind blows, 2. Your clear view of the southern sky isn’t so clear and trees maybe blowing around in front of your dish, or 3. Your disk is aligned poorly and needs be fixed by a pro.
Now for the new kid on the block: U-Verse – AT&T’s U-Verse is getting rave reviews on here as well as on message boards around Dallas. If you want to ditch DirecTV U-Verse is the way to go. They offer up close to the same channel line up as DirecTV but they can save you some big dollars with their bundled cable, phone and internet. The U-Verse DVR allows you to record up to four shows at once (two in HD) and then view those shows on any TV in your home. This is the first company to use the “server / client” model for TV. We should be seeing this model more and more from other providers in the future. The one draw back for U-Verse is the HD quality. DirecTV broadcast all its HD in 1080 while U-Verse only provides 720. This is a small draw back and depends on your TV if you will notice. 720 is the lowest form of HD and if you are used to watching 1080 you will notice a difference. If you don’t care that much U-Verse is the way to go in terms of cost.
What ever you do – DON’T CHOOSE THE EVIL THAT IS CABLE!
I was a Time warner customer for 9 years…hadn’t had many issues…but then they started the price hikes, the reduction of channels, poor reception, billing issues, etc……I had received a U-Verse flyer, and decided to try it out…
I’ve been thrilled. They not only have decent pricing, but offer rebates on almost everything…the picture has been clear, internet has remained up and stable and i LOVE that i can watch my DVR’d shows on any boxed TV in the condo….you can also access your DVR and set up recordings from any internet connection or even your cell phone. pretty darn cool….
I have DirecTV and couldn’t be happier, it’s all about having a properly aligned and secured dish, I’ve never lost signal for more than a second or two because of rain.
Ok..Time Warner screwed me big time. And not in the good, hair-rumpling way. I lived in an apartment complex at the time, and one of my neighbors moved and had their cable disconnected. Only the person who came to do it disconnected MINE instead. When I called to get it fixed, they gave me a day and time (well, between 11 and 5, we’re only ringing the doorbell once so don’t plan on peeing or showering). Didn’t show. Called again, was told it would need to be another two weeks. Two weeks later, no show. Then I’m called and told that I have cable, why am I bitching?
I had to convince them I didn’t. This basically consisted of me holding the phone to the TV, turning up the volume, and switching channels whilst yelling, “Static! Static! Static! Snow! Snow! Do you HEAR that? Does that sound like I have cable??”
In short, I hate Time Warner, and I’m fairly positive they fornicate with goats.
i’ve had directv, dish, tw, and currently charter. Dish is definitely last place. DirecTv was fine but the DSL internet was annoying as it requires a land line. I was highly pleased with Time Warner. Charter is my only cable option in UP and it is good except that they do not have OnDemand in this mkt, I assume bc it is so small (limited to park cities). From everything I’ve heard about U-verse I would sign up for it today if I could…Fios also supposed to be good where available.
I have had U-verse for a month and I regret it.
1. You cannot recover the last couple of hours or even minutes of a station that you left your TV on… like you can with Direct TV. In other words if you turn on the TV and you were fortunate enough to leave it on a certain station it only gives you what happened when you turned the TV on.
2. The “Guide” is totally inferior to Direct TV.
3. For techies…it doesn’t have a loop back on the router if you want to see any websites you have on your server.
I had Direct TV and Roadrunner Cable for Internet. Both offered me almost a 1/2 price discount if I didn’t cancel the service….my mistake for not taking it…on top of all that a GD squirrel chewed into my CAT 6 cable last night that was outside…. they can’t use the existing coax!!
UniversityMeadows gave some good advice, and some of it was wrong, too. DirecTV sends out, in MPEG-4, it’s HD content in the native form it receives it. That is 1080i for NBC, CBS and others. It’s 720P for Fox and ABC. You will NOT see the difference, even side by side, on any set less than about 60.”
Rain fade can always last more than a minute or 3. Like last night. If the storm is big and moving from the southwest, it can last for 15 minutes. Like last night where we are near WR Lake. You will often get rain fade a few minutes before you get rain if the storm is slow moving and coming form the SW – it blocks the signal coming from that line-of-site on the horizon.
You say you have HD. Do you get the local stations in HD also? If you do, then you have the 5LNB dish. It MUST have 2 slim, side-pole mounts on it in addition to the main dish pole. These form a triangular, solid mount. If high winds drop your signal, then it is NOT mounted correctly.
Dish is no better than DirecTV. U-verse I would not touch with a 10 foot pole. They have all sorts of tech issues still. Cable sucks.
Call Directv and tell them that you lose signal in high winds. They will not come out for rain fade. If you do not have those 2 side-pole mounts, tell them that, too. A properly mounted dish should only rain fade in the worst storm. Good luck!
PS… hitting the red reset button will not do any harm during a rain fade event. The machine will just wait for the storm to pass and then continue on with the download.
And, DVR some stuff so rain fade won’t affect you…
I have had AT&T Uverse for over a year. I have never had an outage. I have never had a complaint. Much cheaper than cable or Dish (I’ve had both) and the high speed internet is wonderful. Hopefully it is available in your area.
Based on TK’s post I called DirecTV just now and mentioned that I was thinking about switching from DirecTV to U-Verse and that I needed some serious savings to stay with DirecTV. Their Customer Service Agent was able to cut my bill in half all for a 15 minute phone call. Thanks for the tip TK!
Billusa99 – Good point about FOX and ABC, if the native resolution is lower that is what you will get from DirecTV. I do find it interesting that you have outages longer than 3 minutes or so. We are not right on the lake but, we are in the University and Skillman area pretty close to the lake and do not have outages that last more than a few minutes?
Uverse has bandwidth limitations most places due to their legacy (telco) infrastructure. Until recently, they could only send a single HD signal to your house at any one time. Now they can do two but the change caused a degradation in picture quality.
Since Time Warner upgraded their infrastructure in Richardson and Plano there are nearly zero outages. I’m still contemplating a switch (back) to DirecTV because TW is not adding HD channels quickly enough to suit me, even with the upcoming changes in December.
The picture quality is probably better now with DirecTV, too, after the move to MPEG-4. TW’s PQ isn’t bad on their high def channels but the PQ on their digital SD channels is crap, which is why their slow rollout of HD is so irritating.
Nerdy is hot, IJS.
@University Meadow. My pleasure. You can also make the same threat with the DMN and most any other subscription except for probably D Magazine!!
The DMN is notorius for offering deep discounts…..which kinda makes you feel like a chump when you faithfuuly pay full price each month and they almost give the paper away to everyone else.
Rain fade is entirely dependent of where you are and where the storm is. Always. Directv will ALWAYS do a deal if you want to switch. Just be nice.
We have not paid more that 10.97/mo for the DMN for 2 years now. There are ways. Sometimes, it’s not even worth that!
Oh, and only DirecTV has the hotness of Margaret Easely
http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee248/msanto/Celebrities/MargaretEasley.jpg
Your main question is should you switch to cable. No. As to another service, that depends on what is available to you. Any sat. provider will have similar problems (DISH, DirectTV, etc.) If you are able to switch to ATT U-verse or Fios then I would go with Fios. It is capable of carrying a little more than 100Mbps of unshared data. The increased bandwidth means the video is not compressed and this makes the signal clearer.
Fios runs fiber straight to the home whereas ATT U-verse runs it to the neighborhood (to the node) and then uses existing copper to run it to your home and uses Microsoft IPTV edition software. The problem is that the copper can have problems with weather and electromagnetic interference which means Fios is more reliable which it appears is your main concern. Fios plans are much cheaper than U-verse as well. U-verse is about $20-30 more on most plans.
I’ve always liked DirecTV, but my current living situation doesn’t have an unobstructed view of the southern sky. U-Verse isn’t available yet, so I was forced to sign up for Time Warner Cable a couple of weeks ago.
As I already knew, what a piece of ****. Service/programming/company. All just terrible. And, it’s frickin’ expensive.
I’d gladly try U-verse if I could.
And as someone said, cable still gets the national network feed via satellite, so they aren’t immune to issues in rain. Really, it doesn’t rain in Texas enough for this to be a pain. Seattle, maybe.
Forces me to read a book. Or throw rocks at squirrels.
Good lord, people. Thank you. I think. I am totally confused. But thankful. Anyone care to handle the issues I have with my ex-husband???
For my money it doesn’t get better than U-Verse. It’s the best system, ever. The DVR is great you can record up to 4 channels at a time and watch record programs on any TV in your house.
I’ve had it for over a year, never had any problem with it. Every once and awhile I’ll reboot it and that’s all. I’ve never missed a program. One time back in the summer there was a news story about how AT&T was having problems because they expanded faster than they were capable; but, I never experienced any outages, even at that time.
U-VERSE IS THE GREATEST!!!!!!
I’m not even going to read the other 47 posts.
Simple: you will continue to have this problem as long as you have satellite TV. You won’t get around it by realigning the dish, going with another provider, or buying a new receiver. You’re just going to have this problem if you have sat tv. It’s really that simple. EVERY friend I have that has sat tv has this problem. Most of them just “live with it.” It would drive me insane.
Go with cable. If you can, get Verizon’s Fios TV service. It has excellent picture quality, pretty much every channel you could ever need and a good price. I hear that AT&T’s U-Verse is good too, but I have not tried it myself so I can’t make that judgement.
Good luck.
Good review. I prefer Dish network.
buy dish tv
I have had u-verse for about 2 years, and I have had problem after problem. If you ever move, they can not transfer your boxes to your new address. They have to close that aco**** and open you a new account. They never sent me the boxes to return my old stuff even though I verified my new address with them and called every few weeks to see when I could get rid of the eye sores. As a result, they charged my bank account almost $500.00 because I failed to return the old boxes. Once I complained enough and to the right people, the boxes were at my house in TWO days. This was in August…I am still waiting for that refund. I call everyday and no one seems to know how to cut a freakin check and get it to me.
U-verse was installed in the house next door and they disconnected our phone service in the process. I even told the technician when it happened. I had never heard of U-verse until then…not a good first impression. FWIW, we’ve had good luck with Dish for about 10 years.
Direct TV has turned into a monster with nasty customer service reps, outrageous fees, ridiculous contract terms and no way to reach the corporate offices or online communication to file any kind of true customer experience.
I have been a loyal customer for over 10 years, have 5 receivers, HD, DVR (which has been defective and they keep sending me the wrong replacement), NFL, all the movie packages, and they would not even work with me when my payment was late when I was traveling. Nasty. I will now spend countless hours finding a replacement for their service. You would think they would not want to loose my business.
Lynn in Florida
PS: You have to make sure the dish base is cemented in securely. Many of the subs they hire don’t do this. They just dig a hole.