Internet has been down. Again. And again. Bastards. :wtf: I’m tired of it. I’m switching from my cable down-all-the-time-service (Charter) to DSL. And I have analog cable TV service and they keep taking more and more channels off analog and moving them to digital in an effort to make subscribers move to digital $$. They have ticked me off one time too many. So, do any of you have Dishnetwork or DirectTV. Do you like it? Which one do you have?
Talk to me about satellite TV. Was wiring your house a big deal? Did the installers do a good job? Do you lose your signal during storms?? Did you order from their website, or did you go to a retail outlet and get it from there? HELP ME!
Good luck with that. Wish I could help you, but I’m in a similar situation and waiting for the installer to get to us.
We had DSL – the dh and his brother installed it, didn’t seem to be a huge deal – but moved back to cable about a year ago. Rarely have any cable trouble – unlike you – but the DSL was out ALL the Time. Rain, wind, Rain in Other parts of the country, snow, it all made it go “Searching for Signal” :wallbash:. It was awful – and they kept raising prices and cutting channels. The day they cut off the Sci-fi channel so we could get More Sports Channels :angry: was the last straw.
But good luck getting internet ALL THE TIME. :beer:
We have cable, but it’s not down that often. I’m interested to hear about what you get re satellite TV though!
Unfortunately, I can’t offer much advice on satellite TV in storms, etc. — living in SoCal, we don’t have that many, but my friends who have satellite swear by it and haven’t voiced any complaints about outages. I think most of them bought equipment through Best Buy and subsequently dealt directly with the satellite company for any changes to their subscription.
Ah, DSL. For five years, I’ve had a lovely connection through Earthlink — up 99.9% of the time. Lately, though, SBC (whose lines my connection runs over) have been causing some problems, like the time they did an upgrade on something that caused all non-SBC connections in the area to go down for three days.
I am SO pissed at my cable company at the moment too. Bastards can’t get their crap straight. And I get cranky when I don’t have internet.
Problem is, satellite isn’t much better in the reliability factor. When it rains, it goes out, and it rains a lot here.
We’ve had directtv in the past (when we lived in BF Missouri and cable wasn’t available)
Was there life before DirectTV? To be honest, I don’t recall 😆 I’ve had satellite for about….hmm…almost 6 years and I could never go back to cable.
I’ll start with installation and wiring. It can depend. My house has 4 sepearate recievers hooked up. My husband insisted the wiring be run through the walls. DirectTV will run it from the outside to your tv. If you don’t mind seeing cable run outside your house from the dish to the room you are having the cable come into, then its no big deal.
Storms. Hmmm….I rarely had trouble at my old house which is about 4 miles down the hill from where I am now. I did have quite a bit of trouble this winter because 1) we had a lot more storms this year and 2) I’m really close to the mountains now. However, I still have less trouble than I did with cable.
Cost. I pay through the nose. I believe our bill runs about $100+ a month. However, I get all the channels including all the HBO’s (I think there are 7), Cinemax, Starz, TMC, Showtime, etc. and hubby gets the football and baseball packages.
I initially bought my system at the L.A. County Fair but we deal only with DirectTV. I’ve never had problems with them so I would work through their website. In this area they sub it out to independent contractors but at least they do the leg work.
Now, something else to think about is Tivo. I would rather lose my right arm than lose Tivo. I would suggest when you look into getting a receiver, you get one with Tivo. It takes an additional cable line, but it really isn’t a big deal.
I have DSL. DirecTV does have a high speed Internet service but is extremely expensive and I’m not tempted to switch over.
Sorry this long but hope it helps.
We had satelitte and it worked similar to cable. If there was a storm you’d loose satellite just as much as if you would cable. The only think I didn’t like about it was I could get channels in Japan but not from my local station. The other reason we went back to cable was because we have four TV’s in the house. You have to purchase a receiver for each one which can get costly. This might have changed since but not sure, since I haven’t looked into it.
As for wiring, it came into the house just like cable wire. There is the added dish on the house which can be an eye-sore, escpecially if you have no choice where to put it to get the best signal.
We have DSL for internet (love it!!) and cable TV now. We don’t have as many channels now with this plan as we had with satellite tv but more channels just leads me into temptation…..
We had satellite tv in Alaska. The satellite was wonderful when the weather was wonderful! When it snowed, we got maybe one channel! So I don’t know how often your cable is out but my experience is that your satellite will be out when it rains, snows and sometimes if it’s just cloudy.
I don’t know anything about DSL. We have cable (which sucks, thankyouverymuch Cebridge), but I wanted some channels we couldn’t get on cable so I got Dish Network for my bedroom. Wiring wasn’t that big a deal. He pretty much ran it through next to the cable wiring. I lose the signal sometimes but it’s probably not more than 12 times a year, if that. I bought my system from a local dealer/installer but I deal only with Dish Network themselves when there are problems.
See, in the past, I would’ve tried to convince you to stay with cable, because my husband WAS employed in the cable industry. Now, rock on, sister! Order that satellite!!! :angry:
thanks for the suggestions. DiretTV no longer offers TIVO. So you have to pay extra directly to TIVO for that now. Bummer. Supposedly the DirectTV DVR is supposed to have much of what the DirectTV TIVO recorder had. DirectTV you get up to 3 receivers free, and one DVR for $99 with a $100 rebate :roll:. Dishnetwork you pay a bit more each month and “lease” their equipment.
Sigh. So many choices. So many decisions. But I’m SO DONE with my cable company!
Ummm…I think I’m the only one that doesn’t have cable t.v. Or digital. Or satellite. Or ANYTHING but old fashioned rabbit ears. It’s not that I don’t have access to cable/digital/satellite, but we cut the expense of the t.v. out when we went through financial difficulties awhile ago. We never got it back and to be quite frank, I don’t miss it a bit. I never got very much done when we had it.
We have tons and tons of movies – we’d rather watch those than television.
I do want to get DSL or cable for my Internet, though – we’re still on dial-up. 😯
I’m still on dial-up and digital cable, but my cable doesn’t have many problems with going down. Hope the switch fixes yours.
I have cable, and I hate how they keep raising prices and taking away channels to force you to digital, too.
I feel like chewing them out half the time! :cursing:
We had Satellite it was great. Then wh had nothing for a looong time. Now we have a cable combo for TV and internet. Cable soooo beats that nasty dail-up.:mad2:
We have satellite. Most of the time it’s not a problem. But I would die if I ever lost my TIVO! :shakehead:
*shudders at thought of no internet*
Hope you get this figured out soon!