Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Direct TV Opinions?

Living in areas without any TV, we rely on the satellite tv companies for TV. Have had both Dish and DTV and if I had to pick one, direct tv would be my pick buttttttttttt.....

We change every two years to take advantage of there offers to new or returning customers and the one year of discounted packages.

Just barely lost out on a free iPad from dish just to sign up. Dtv now offers me to pay all early termination fees to dump dish.. There both crazy but I'll play there game and save doing so.

Jayco

There was a service problem with FIOS. We had the system fail after about 3 months & since both my wife & I had home based businesses needed an immediate repair. Sevice dept. advised a week to sent a repair man. I was told there was nothing I could do. After calls to the president of the provider & several faxes a repair man arrived.
We have Direct TV at our lake cottage & are satisfied. During summer service is disrupted frequently due to storms, but I'm not addicted to TV. One advantage is that we can have the service put on sleep mode during the winter when we are not using the cottage.

Direct is the best of what's out there. They always have the latest technology and they have the best looking HD. I have Comcast now just because I can use the triple play and get it all cheaper. Still thinking I may switch back.

My parents have Dish and personally, I think the guide and programming suck.

After getting married in 92, we had cable once and then signed up for DirectTV in 95, had a lapse from 07-08.

I had several long conversations over the years with DirectTV requesting better programming,lower rates, better equipment and pointed out that I was a long time customer. I was always told the best deals and equipment are for new customers "but, we can save you 15.00/month if you do this...." screw that!

I think it's a mistake to kick long time customers in the balls.

Earlier this year I told them to cancel it, I was tired of the BS.

Bought a Clearstream antenna for 79.00 and a ROKU for 99.00. I get a few local channels so I do have access to a few football games and local news. With ROKU there is a ton of options from free, to pay stations for a few bucks a month. I have found plenty to watch with the free stations and even found FOX News although the image quality, sound and consistency is not the same satellite.

I will save 1,380.00 a year over DirectTV, 6,900.00 in five years.

Does either Clearstream or ROKU do anything that a smart TV can't? We got us a new smart tv for Christmas and I don't know yet what all it can do. It can be used as a web browser (if you're really patient as it's slow) and it streams all the movie stuff, Netflix, Amazon, etc, straight off of our wireless router. We don't have a working DVD player any more so I just ran a HDMI cable to it from a laptop and we run DVDs from that. We also got a wireless keyboard and mouse for the laptop. My wife likes to sit on the couch and use the TV as a monitor while she browses the web and plays a lot of online videos. That runs the web from the laptop rather than from the TV so it's several times faster.

My opinion too. No matter how many channels you have, you still have trouble finding something that you want to watch. miles

Amen

Several years ago, I had DTV ,then switched to Dish. They are about equal, but I don't play the high tech game of DVR ,etc.I just want basic TV

I am thinking about switching to dtv too. I currently use a air card from Verizon for my internet, and dish for TV.
considering getting a package for both from DTV ?

Kevin

Rock Chuck,

The antenna just provides local channels and that depends on where you live. I don't get many and the reception is not good where I am, my buddy in Houston said he gets something like 40 stations but half of those are spanish.

I can't answer your question about the ROKU vs the smart tv, I suspect a ROKU would be redundant with a laptop connected to your tv.

Personally, I would never pay for TV. If the advertisers want you to watch it they'll figure out a way to get it to you. Record numbers of people are dumping their cable and satellite subscriptions in favor of what they can pick up with an antenna, and since the signal isn't as compressed as the cable companies the picture quality is much better.
Funny story, last summer a young cousin was staying with me for awhile before he started his first real job. Of course the first thing he lugged in the house was his flat screen HDTV. His jaw literally dropped when I told him I didn't have cable or any TV for that matter. This kid was lost without TV, as I imagine all of his generation would be.
Anyway, I made an antenna literally with cut up coat hangers and wire screwed to a board with an old antenna connector that had a coax connection on it. I could tell he didn't think it would work.
I told him to turn on his TV and he said it wouldn't work anyway as he forgot his remote at home! After he got off the phone with his mom asking her to ship the remote, I pointed at the buttons on the front of the TV, obviously he had never used them.
He powered it up, scanned for channels and got something like 18 channels.
He looked at me and asked in amazement, "Is this like getting TV for free?"
He had grown up his whole life with paid programming not even aware there was TV free for the taking, he felt like he was getting away with something.
Sad.

Thanks to all for the input.........haven't decided what I'll do yet but the DTV switch would save me about $250 over 2 years & the programming does look to be better than cable.

MM

Glad to hear they changed. I was with them for at least 10 years and they lost me to Dish because of no upgrade deals for customers. Got to say I'm happy enough with Dish.

I switched to Dish from direct a little over a year ago...I like Dish better, I get a bunch of free movie channels and my bill is about 20 bucks cheaper than it was with Direct.

I have direct-tv ......most dependable thing I have ...works in bad weather...works hooked to the genset 600+ channels at 77.00 a month (and I only have 129 on my watch list) I got another guy to get on it and saved 10.00 a month for ten months ...u can to ...i'll give u my account number!!

My son said that the Customer retention dept. at DirectTv offered him all kinds of increasingly better deals to not cancel his satellite service with them. Wanting to save money he still canceled anyway and went back with their old outside antenna, bought a Apple streaming device, and signed up with NetFlix.

We were with Dish for a number of years but a little over two years ago on a whim we decided to give DirectTv a try. When I called Dish to cancel our service and told them that we had decided to go with DirectTv the customer service person I talked with offered to match anything Direct offered.

After having both I can't say that I can tell much difference between either one. Both continue to get more and more expensive. Both have many, many more channels with programing that I know I never will watch than channels that I do watch. Both occasionally do loose service during heavier storms.

As always, YMMV.

I am curious if internet programming will take off making satellite more affordable?

Verizon tech came a day early, imagine. Fixed my problem in 15 minutes. $.10 China signal splitter caused the signal degradation. $6000 piece of equipment hanging on my house, $500 piece of equipment in my house and they installed that POS PRC equipment in the coax run. Go figure

Great picture, better than DTV, excellent service. Saving $1200 this year

I would say that video on demand via streaming video will force satellite to be more competitive, the problem will probably be having enough bandwidth available.

I have had AT&T U-Verse for over a year. The only thing that I can think of that is an issue with me is my tv screen can freeze when I'm busy on the internet, either up/downloading files or the like. It doesn't happen with the other tv, only the one that's in the same room I'm sitting in.

I am considering going back to DTV as when we relocated back to the city, we moved the DTV service to the ranch and took out U-Verse here in Edmond. I've not had good experiences with Dish.