Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Dish or Direct TV

Love-hate relationship with Direct TV. Expensive, hit or miss customer service, but superb picture quality and lots channel options for sports which is why I have them. Never had Dish, but Direct TV blows the doors off all the local cable TV providers, no contest. If I wasn't a sports fan I would probably look towards a streaming service.

I have DirectTV NOW. It's different than Direct TV. I use it for streaming with a Roku stick. There is a ton of channel selection. Has all the channels I need including locals. They add more channels all the time. $45/mo includes 2 devices. More are $5. HBO is $5. Can stream anywhere there's wifi. I cut nearly $200 off the cable bill. We have internet anyway, so I don't include that in the price. From my research, it's the best deal out there.

We've had both. Dish first for several years and now Direct also for several years.

Not a nickle's worth of difference between them as far as service and reception in our experience.

You can expect regular rate increases about every year or two with both too.

You can expect temporary loss of signal during heavy rain, thunderstorms and heavy snow / ice storms

I'd advise to watch your monthly bills closely too as both have been known to make "mistakes".

If you get any 'new customer' freebies like X months of premium channels (HBO. CineMax, etc.) or sports channels that you don't intend on keeping or you decide you don't really want you must contact which ever service provider you signed up with and cancel yourself before the free period expires or else they will be automatically added to your bill.

I was with Dish for 20 years, recently in order to bundle internet and SAT-TV I jumped to Direct TV.

Without any hesitation I can say the DIRECT TV equipment is miles behind Dish, if not for the bundle savings I would be back with DISH, but at this time Dish Does not offer Internet in my area. But my opinion is that the hardware and software format of Dish is much better that DT.

And customer service for DT is In India, however if you ask for “on-shore help they will transfer you to somebody in the states.

Neither - IMO TV generally sucks no matter the provider. In our house, the wife and I gave up on the 'idiot box' decades ago, and we probably don't watch more than a couple of hours per month. Books and magazines work just fine. But what in the heck do I know, I don't even own a dumb 'smart' phone...LOL!

An antennae on top of the house to catch 50 plus channels of free broadcast TV, and Netflix for $5.99/mo.

Had dish for a few years, till their antenna quit working. They wanted me to pay for a new antenna and installation. Screw that.

Switched to Direct for two or three years, then got tired of paying for schitt. NBC, ABC, CBS is mostly still schitt. But at least they are not debiting my checking account for $100 or $150 per mo anymore.

If you have the internet speed to stream I have Direct TV Now and am very pleased. I have the AT&T fiber optic unlimited for $50 a month.

Have had Direct TV for about 8 years now, have to tell them I can not afford it every couple of years due to cost and they lower it for 6 months.

That said I am looking to change to sling tv and a local basic provider to lower it even more.

This. Just switched to dish after directv pissed me off. Equipment went bad and they said two weeks with no t.v. til they could get here. Called dish, said they could come next day. So similar it's not funny.
Started Netflix and Hulu and only need it for live sports, news and a few other things now. Nothing but DVD/Blu-ray at the cabin and doesn't bother me at all. Get my news on xmradio.

I have both. DirecTV for my home and ranch house and the Dish Tailgater for my RV. If I had to choose only one, it would be DirecTV and the race isn’t close.

I will never go back to any bundled tv service. If you have HS internet, just stream. Pay for what you want, watch when you want. Not a dime goes to CNN, Disney, ESPN, or any of those other sh*tbirds.

Amazon Prime, which I'd pay for anyway, and a $25 Firestick makes it easy-peasy, but most tvs have apps built in for streaming already.
We watched GOT for free by waiting for the last season to air, then signed up for a free week of HBO. Youtube has tons of HD shows now too.

Direct TV is what we have

Thanks for taking the time to give me your help. Still thinking about it but you gave me more to think about.

We have had Direct for about 20 yrs,not alot of problems
just upgraded to hd equipment,kids say the picture is alot better for sports,idk
Right now Direct-ABC are in a pissin match,so if you watch any programming on ABC/Cw and such,keep that in mind cause it doesn't sound like they can get along.

p/s we have never had anything but Direct,so can't say if there are better options.
Ron

If you live in an urban area that has good broad ban service you can take advantage of the various options like roku, etc. Otherwise it's Dish or Direct. We have mostly had Dish so storm and strife like it because she knows where the channels are that she likes to watch. We got Direct for a short time in a package when we were able to get phone company broad ban instead of the satellite mess. We had a hell of a fight getting rid of it. The Direct remote was cheezy and hard to navigate. We've had pretty much all of it.

I don't watch sports and detest ESPN. They both bundle the crap you don't want to watch with the stuff you do want. As for movies, they pretty much roll the same flicks over and over week after week forever. If I ever win the lotto I'll sue DISH for subjecting me to a waterboarding of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" for the time I've had DISH. I don't watch it but wish they'd at least offer something else. For the most part they both subject you to cruel and unusual punishment with their programing.

Direct has One America News. Dish does not. Honest news.

Spot on. If you want the latest and greatest equipment, you have to switch. Direct pissed me off so bad when they kept raising the rates and then when I would have them out to service our outdated equipment, I would tell them to just give me the new stuff they are yakking about on TV. The response I would get from the tech would always be "sorry, but we are told we can only install that for "new customers."

They treat long time customers like schidt. The very second our contract was up, I cancelled DTV.

Our phone company ran fiber optic to our house so I went with their cable service for awhile. Same deal. Raised rates. Broken promises etc.

DISH sent us an offer for 2 years at $49.99/mo. and a $200 pre-paid credit card to use for whatever we wanted so we went with them. I'm happy but I'm sure I'll be switching to something else once this contract is up.

TFF

Also, even with the most current iteration of High Definition television, and even though a network broadcasts programs in HD quality, you still won't be able to watch them in HD quality with either Dish or DirectTV unless you upgrade and subscribe to their HD service at additional cost.