Dish Network vs Direct TV

So I've had it with Comcast and don't want to do the Hulu/Roku/etc.

Which is better? Dish or Direct TV?

While I hate satellite with a firey passion, from the people I know who have it, seem to like DirecTV better.

8 years with Dish here, very happy with them. In fact, after a few-week dalliance with Comcrap, we just re-activated our Dish subscription today. I don't have hands-on experience with DirecTV, but Dish has a few nice unique things with the Hopper like Prime Time Any Time and Autohop. From what I've heard, though, DirecTV has the edge in picture quality, though Dish is still very good in that department, IMO.

DirectTV is generally considered a bit better (I had it for a while), but I am sure Dish is fine. DirectTV has a much better sports package (or used to), if you are into that. Lightning will be an issue, if you have a lot of that. DirectTV does seem to have rather good customer service. Be careful with the installers though, they will do it the easiest possible way, which may not be what you want.

For picture quality, I have FIOS, which has a very high data capacity, but they still compress the video, so image quality is pretty much the same from DirectTV to FIOS (amazingly enough).

We have Dish. It's trouble-free. We just have a fairly basic package, mostly to watch football and occasionally an F1 race. Picture quality has never been noticeable - which means it's at least good enough that I watch the content instead of the picture.

I've had Direct TV for almost 3 years. Very few problems. It will go out during very heavy rain or snow. Also during snow season you have to keep the dish swept off as needed.

I selected Direct over Dish simply because the phone rep. with Direct was much more pleasant to talk to than the Dish rep.

Used to install both systems. Dish network definately had the better setup back then.

Currently sis has the most current DirectTV and mom and dad just upgraded to the top end Dish system. I'm still more of a fan of Dish. Though, if you can deal with the prices and get used to using the system DirectTV isn't bad.

Both systems will lose signal with poor weather. Use both, play with the remotes, personally I will stick with Dish.

10+ years with Directv.Love, love, love it!!! Parents have dish. seems to be good as well, but they don't get as many channels as we do (could be a package thing).

10+ years with DirecTV and have always been happy. However, we are looking to drop it for something like Amazon Fire as it has just become too expensive for what we watch. I can say the dish picture quality was light years better than cable, and at the time we switched was less money.

Had Dish, switched to DirecTV after Dish kept dropping channels without explanation or price reduction. DirecTV seems to have a more polished setup than Dish, though it's been more than a few years at this point, so Dish may have improved their stuff.

As long as you can get the channels you want it probably doesn't matter which you choose. Consider, however, that DirecTV has more subscribers than Dish, which seems to buy it more leverage in disputes with various channel owners (i.e., channels don't disappear as often or for as long, at least in my experience).

I had Comcast for a good 15 years and when we just had our new home built, Comcast lines hadn't been dropped there yet. So we reluctantly signed up with DirecTV. I have to say we're very pleasantly surprised with it. We've had no real issues and it costs a heck of a lot less than Comcast. Yes, the signal may drop in a really heavy t-storm, but that happened sometimes too with Comcast.

Which one has the most motorsports programmimg for the least monthly cost? I am a road racer myself, but I will watch anything from Kid Karts, to IRL, Baja, NASCAR, IMSA, to Formula 1. So which one is best deal for motorsports junkies?

If you are a car guy Directv is the answer. Not cheaper but lots of HD and all the car show channels in one package.

I like the Direct interface better than dish. For instance, A search on Dish is a waste of time.

If you get the sports package with DirecTV, it has a lot of the channels where motorsports are. MSNBC, MavTV, etc...

bentwrench wrote: I like the Direct interface better than dish. For instance, A search on Dish is a waste of time.

?? It's always worked great for me. In fact, one of the reasons we dumped the Comcrap box and went back to Dish was the nice one-button search functionality. If, say, you're watching a show or movie and missed part of it, you press the search button and it brings up all the future showings on all channels, as well as on-demand if it's available there. Pretty nice, IMO.

Miata. Buy a miata.

IIRC if you're a Costco member you can usually find a decent deal on DirectTV via Costco.

I've been looking at switching from Charter to either DirectTV or Dish but in the end we decided that dropping the Charter cable boxes and building a Tivo-based whole-house DVR solution was actually more cost effective. Well, at least as long as we can live without the on-demand service.

We switched from Charter to Direct and its been fine. My daughter went with Dish, because Direct was going to ream them over the installation charge. She is happy with Dish.

Well, Direct is now owned by AT&T, and the latter seems to be making an attempt at unseating Comcast for the worst customer service title.....my folks actually just cancelled our DISH service and went the smart TV route. During the cancellation phone conversation, they tried reducing our monthly bill by 80% before they finally cancelled it. LoL

WOW Really Paul? wrote: Well, Direct is now owned by AT&T, and the latter seems to be making an attempt at unseating Comcast for the worst customer service title.....my folks actually just cancelled our DISH service and went the smart TV route. During the cancellation phone conversation, they tried reducing our monthly bill by 80% before they finally cancelled it. LoL

If AT&T can actually get with the program with some competitive internet speeds around here, I'd be tempted to drop Comcrap altogether and go with an AT&T/DirecTV bundle. Right now I'm sending money to Comcrap for internet and Dish for TV, and it's almost always cheaper if you bundle with one company.

BoxheadTim wrote: IIRC if you're a Costco member you can usually find a decent deal on DirectTV via Costco. I've been looking at switching from Charter to either DirectTV or Dish but in the end we decided that dropping the Charter cable boxes and building a Tivo-based whole-house DVR solution was actually more cost effective. Well, at least as long as we can live without the on-demand service.

Hmmm. Just dumped Sam's and bought a Costco membership. I may have to look into that. I'm ready to kick Comcast to the curb.

In reply to Tom_Spangler:

I have a few friends that worked for Comcast but went to AT&T due to a chunk more money, they have all said the AT&T tech is 5+ years behind what Comcast is doing.

I have dish, it is bundled with our land line with Frontier. Inlaws have direct. As far as remotes go, the direct one sucks. We have had different remotes with dish over time but they have been much more intuitive.

What about Slingbox?

15 years with DirecTV here, no complaints.