Comcast, DirecTV, or Dish Network,

[jefferson_dem]

Greetings Friends,

We have just received word that Bellsouth is getting out of the cable TV business and wants us to shift to big mama bell - ATT's Dish Network. I'm not so sure this is the best option and might want to explore what others, DirecTV and Comcast specifically, have to offer.

What do you guys think?

:shrug:

[LeftyMom]

1. Comcast is overpriced and generally teh suck.

I used to have DirecTV and was quite happy with my service and the price.

[jefferson_dem]

2. I've heard Comcast is notorious for the cost and their shitty "customer service."

n/t

[Bryan]

4. I've had nothing but positive experiences with Comcast

The OnDemand is useful, and their DVR works well, but it's not the best deal. If your residence supports a satellite dish, DirecTV is great.

[jakefrep]

28. Customer service wise, DirectTV is worse.

[grace0418]

33. Comcast is the worst company I've ever dealt with in my life. I loathe them with

a passion. We cancelled our cable because we couldn't it anymore. Which sucks because I miss the Daily Show a lot, but it just wasn't worth the aggravation.

[suninvited]

3. Love, Love, Love

my Dish.

[GreenPartyVoter]

9. Me too

[AwakeAtLast]

17. Me, three!

:hi:

[AlCzervik]

5. i have comcast but i'm looking around to find a new provider, my bill from comcast

went up yet again and that was the final straw for me.

[KitchenWitch]

8. DirecTV!!!!!

Really.

[limit18]

6. DirecTV

no complaints sooooooo far.

[KitchenWitch]

7. We have DirecTV and are very happy with it.

[Corgigal]

10. We have DirecTV for over seven years

they have outsourced their customer service and the past two months they have been adding 8 bucks a month to the bill for a TiVo system what we had under contract with them for free. Hubby called them last weekend and asked them what they would do to keep us as customers,they said 50 bucks a month for a few months. When he went over to TimeWarner and got all the channels to include HDtv, Road Runner internet and it cost less then our one DirecTV bill. Hubby called to cancel DirecTV and then they said they would give us 6 months free. Too late, another thing they take out the last month out of your checking account/credit card without telling you or giving you a final bill.

They were the best ever for years, but they arent the same any more.

[latebloomer]

11. I believe Rupert Murdoch owns MTV

which was why we switched to DISH. We're satisfied with it so far, altho there were a few fuckups at the beginning.

[newmajority]

22. You mean Direct TV?

MTV is owned by Viacom or CBS or whatever name they are going by this week.

[latebloomer]

29. Oh right!

I meant DISH-- musta had a brain spasm!

[UTUSN]

12. QUESTION: What do you mean by "ATT's Dish Network"?

I have both escaped ATT and ended up with DISH by a LONG trail of steps over many years.


Regarding the satellite system, I started out with one of those humongous things, ECHO (Star?), TurnerVision. When the latter went kaput from business, cutting out Bravo and IFC, ECHO turned into DISH? All of this was to avoid the local TimeWarner cable. Throughout this, insofar as I know, ATT had nothing to do with it.


In both phone and in internet, I both battled and ran from ATT: First, from the bad old Ma Bell days. Then I went with Southwestern Bell, and when SWB got long distance, WHO was doing their long distance?------ATT!1 So Buh-bye to them both. So my first internet was with something regional/local that lasted a year or two. Then, it was bought by YAHOO. O.K., that didn't seem too bad. Then WHO bought Yahoo???-----SouthWestern Bell!!1 So Buhbye to them!!1 So I got an unknown internet service in a top 5 list from Readers Digest, and they were O.K. So then THEY got bought out by EarthLink!!1


So there I am, all because of running from ATT. But DISH has nothing to do with ATT!1 If you KNOW something, I will have to be searching out on the street again!1

[Chan790]

13. AT&T doesn't want to get into the cable business in most markets...

so they bundle services with DISH. I assume they're getting some sort of kickback for those bundles, but I think that's the extent of it. As far as I know, there is no ownership or deeper-partnership than that.

I've had all three and my preference was for DISH, but it's just that...a preference. I've had no problem with any of the three thus far.

Comcast offers "In Demand" (a mostly free VOD* service) which is useful but only offers CBS of the major networks, at least locally. Their channel layout makes no sense whatsoever. ESPN is channel 40-something and ESPNews is 261, for example. I have Comcast currently...I have had some (very few) service issues, mostly with my bundled phone service, but have had no-responsiveness issues, although that may be because I have the desk-ext. of the local supervisor.

My thing with DirecTV was this...again their channel layout was strange (My (unsubscribed) premium channels were in the middle of my non-premium cable-type channels...I think it was in the 200's, but it's been a while), but at least it wasn't completely random like Comcast's. They offered a lot of channels but most were strange or useless, so I ended up missing the first 5 minutes of everything when I was scrolling to find something to watch. Thus, I had to plan out my TV watching.

Like I said, my preference is for DISH. I'd still have Dish but AT&t couldn't offer me DSL in my area.

*-Video On Demand. Think DVR but it's not-locally stored and you can "order" virtually anything whether you taped it or not.

[supernova]

16. I have channel viewer on the guide w/ DirecTV

that is, while I'm guideshopping, I can still watch the station I was viewing. (My TV happens to be too old for picture in picutre, but the receiver can do that too. )

Premium channels start at 501 w/ HBO and go up through 547, Showtime and FLIX and TMC.

I don't watch any of the sports channels, that's a waste for me. XM radio starts at 800.

[newmajority]

23. AT&T used to be in the cable business.

They sold it to Comcast. If I remember correctly, part of the deal was that they wouldn't start up another cable operation in the future to compete with Comcast.

[Orsino]

14. I love Dish.

Switched many years ago from DirecTV, which offered fewer channels. Dish moved us for free last fall, and gave us twenty-five bucks on top of it to keep us.

[NMDemDist2]

18. AND they have both LinkTV and FreeSpeechTV

I love my DishNetwork

:bounce:

[Orsino]

26. Yeah. RFDTV was an attraction for me. n/t

[BeachBaby]

15. I miss Comcast.

I had to go with Direct TV when I moved to a rural area. I didn't think it was going to be any big deal.

BUT....

Comcast has some kind of deal with the MLB - so, for every 10 Phillies games, I may get to see one of them when it's televised on my local channel. Otherwise, it's on CSN or CN8 - and the only way for me to be able to see the other games is for me to pay something like $189 for the season - ON TOP of my monthly bill. :mad:

[NV Whino]

19. Based on my recent experience with DISH network

go with anything but DISH.

The horrors are too numerous to go into at this time, but let me just say that they fucked up everything they could possibly fuck up and then fucked up some more. Oh yeah, they outsource their installation scheduling to India.

[latebloomer]

32. ha!

We had a horrendous start with them, too. I set up an installation date, and in the meantime someone-- DISH later said it was the contracted installer- called up, pretended to be me, cancelled the service, and then took over the contract!?! (Yeah, it made no sense to us, either). Dish called us, asked if we had cancelled, we said no, then the contractor AGAIN cancelled, pretending to be me-- this time they didn't check with us.

SO--the installer came over. I could tell from the giddyup that he didn't know WTF he was doing. He could only make 2 of the 4 TVs work, and when I questioned this, told me I needed to buy 2 new TVs. Plus he left w'out installing HBO or the DVR.

I kicked up a fuss and they finally sent over a bona fide DISH employee, who had no trouble putting everything to rights. They gave me a small discount on service and a free year of MAX. We haven't had a problem since.

Moral-- INSIST on an installer who is actually employed by DISH!

[NV Whino]

36. The most recent dust up with DISH is over the first bill

Mind you we are not paying for the month it took three different install crews to get the service up and running. But in order not to pay them for that month, we have to get the bill in the first place.

We sent them, in the beginning, every ounce of information they could possibly want or need: the site address; the billing address; who to contact for billing; who to contact for installation (me); phone numbers for everybody. They consistently called the wrong person for the installation, who then called me or set up a conference call. So for the last few weeks they have consistently called me for the billing problem. Oh yeah, they sent the bill to the wrong address. I won't even mention how badly they mangled my client's name.

when I pick up the phone and hear nothing, I simply hang up. I figure it's the damned political robocallers. Finally I pick and find out that they are going to cancel the service for lack of payment. I call the 800 number, which routes me through India, chew them out, give them the right billing address (again) and ask them not to cancel the service. Nope, they cancelled the service.

Then I get another robocall. I answer. The robot puts me on hold for five minutes before the "pre-collection" person comes on the line. We "converse" for a few minutes before he tells me he can't discuss the bill with me, it has to be my client. I say, "If it's okay for your robot to call me and put me on hold for five minutes, it's okay for me to discuss this bill. Not only that, we already went over this "authority to discuss" thing and you will see my name as authorized to act on my client's behalf. Now discuss."

Oy vey! There's more, but I'll spare you.

[grasswire]

20. no problem with comcast OR directv

I found the customer service at comcast to be superior. Never a service problem on either one.

[BlueJazz]

21. Dish Network has been very good to me. I like them.

[cbayer]

24. I get all of my TV free AND it's mostly Hi-def.

I get about 15 PBS stations out of Los Angeles and all of the major networks (though I rarely watch those).

I do have the advantage of having a 52 foot mast that the antenna is attached to, but if you live in the right location and have a roof, you might be able to get it too.

[Adsos Letter]

30. Nobody want to move to an island and live with an Englishman...

in order to get free TV :rofl: (I Kid, I kid) :hide:

:hi:

[cbayer]

31. You are just green with envy, aren't you?

Free TV is just a little lagniappe!

:hi:

[csziggy]

25. Just moved from DISH to DirecTV

I prefer DirecTV - DISH wants to limit the number of receivers and only wanted to lease us one HD receiver - we wanted two. DirecTV will lease as many and whatever kind we want to pay for.

And a BIG difference I was just commenting on today - DirecTV does not have as many "Bob" commercials. You know, Bob, the guy with the erectile disfunction and the big grin when he orders their product? DISH had Bob on every channel at really inappropriate times. DirecTV has other ads on during their advertising slots and the only place I've seen Bob is on Spike Channel. :)

[jakefrep]

27. Meh

The programming is pretty much six of one, half a dozen of the other.

It doesn't seem possible, but I found DirecTV to have worse customer service than cable. Anytime I wanted to make a change to my service (including cancellation) they asked for a PIN number or password that they NEVER provided to me.

[rurallib]

34. DirectTv is Murdoch - DISH has FreespeechTV

And that is why we have DISH

[NewJeffCT]

35. George Soros is an investor in Dish Network...

Rupert Murdoch owns Direct TV.

Our last experience with Direct TV was terrible, so we switched back to Dish.