Yeah, I did a search first but everything was from 2004 or 2006 so I thought I'd ask to see what those who have Direct TV think about the picture quality, reliability and price. Do you have high speed internet with them too or just TV?

I'm really pissed w/ Comcast. The price doubled so I'm thinking of switching. I've heard good things about Verizon Fios but I checked and it's not available in my area right now.

Warren

 

While many will follow up my post with glowing things about DirecTV, and the founder is a local guy, I had a nightmare experience with them and have vowed to never give them another dollar the rest of my life.

I have dish network now. Truth be told, the packages and prices are extremely similar between the two services, and picture quality and sound are pretty much identical to.

So now that I am out about being biased against DirecTV I will tell you that the equipment on Dish Network seems to me to be superior. Both the DVR and having two-room tuners. Dish network requires an 18 month commitment for HD, DIrecTV a 24 month.

With sat systems, they make you pay about $5 a month for each additional reciever you get. Dish network makes ones that have two internal tuners and can run two TV's at once. One can be HD and the second must be standard def because the secondary output is 75 ohm. Since my house is a little newer with a central cable junction box and two 75ohm cables on each outlet, I can run the sat signal in to the room and then the secondary out to another. I run four tv's off two recievers and save $10 a month over DirecTV. Their service has been excellent as well. I had a couple minor problems like the dish coming loose in high winds and they took care of it promptly and without charge.

When I had direcTV the install guy did a shoddy install and I would lose signal often, even just with minor cloud cover because the installer did a poor job after the battery on his signal meter ran out. I signed a one year contract at the time. I asked to have them come out and fix the install inside of a week and was told the only way they would do it was with an $80 or so service fee. They would not budge. After about a 14 month time I called to cancel and go with a cheap long term Comcast package that came with a promotional discount. I called to cancel and DirecTV said "What can we do to keep you? " I said fix the install and they refused.

Then they threatened to charge me an early termination fee because I had not fulfilled my TWO YEAR commitment. Because I had an HD package, DirecTV had switched to requiring a two year commitment AFTER I signed up. I was not bound to that, my contract, which I had in hand said one year. The customer service person said "we have the option to enforce 2 years." I tried to explain a company can unilaterally form a new contract without my consent the guy had no response. They charged my credit card $200 or so dollars without my authorization. After several phone calls and a threat of a lawsuit, they finally credited my $200 back two months later. Before they relented, they offered to kindly drop the fee they had no right to if I signed up for another two years.

I also get the dish/cable for local sports. DirecTV blacked out 3 games during my contract that were not supposed to be blacked out. Two were big games, one was a stanley cup semifinal. DirecTV denied it was their fault on two occasions even though COmcast and Dish network neighbors were recieving the games on their TV's. The Stanley cup game they owned up to as their fualt after they got thousands of angry calls and credited some people a whole month of service. I called and tried to get the same consideration and was told, "We don't do that." Even though the news reported many people who had complained got a free month. I had three guys over to watch the game on the big screen only to get nothing.

They call me once in a while and I get a telemarketer asking "What will it take to win you back?" I respond with something like "If all the people at DirecTV go F themselves I will think about it." Can't stand em. While this might sound crass, I understand customer service people are not responsible for installs and technical issues. I have always called with concerns in a polite manner and been very calm, but I was still never treated very well.

 

Ive had Directv for tv only for 12 years. Just got a HDTV and they upgraded my dish and installed it for free. Picture is great. I live on a hill 1500 altitude and get winds and rain over 50mph often. Never had a problem losing picture.
I'm happy with them. I had Dish TV when I lived in the city and at that time I thought the programing was not near as good as directv, but that may have changed.

 

I've had good luck with DirecTV. Good reception, lots of HD channels.

 

i have direct tv, but i prefer Dish Network 100X more.

 

I've had DirecTV since 1994. Installed it myself. Reception is great. Lost signal 2-3 times since I've had it, but not in the last 4-5 years. The extra receiver for each TV sucks, but my wife and I watch TV together, no kids, so we only need one receiver.

 

I had Dish network and I decided to try Direct TV when I moved. I really really really miss Dish nework. vader1 is spot on.

Also they promised me a free portable DVD player when I signed up and when I called to check on it they reffered me to some law firm regarding a class action law suit against them. I tried to contact the law firm by mail since they only gave me an address and didn't get diddly squat.

 

DTV has been the *only* way to get the NFL package. So that's been a huge factor in our choice, but there are some other considerations as well.

We had DTV for a few years (only SD), then moved and went with TW cable, but did a minimum sub + NFL using our old SD receiver (and simple tripod on our deck for the dish) for just the 3 months of football season. We had nothing but constant outages with cable (highly affected by weather).

So we went back to DTV with a pro installed LNB5 dish, perm roof mounted, HD DVR, HD Receiver (and even reactivated our old SD receiver for my office). We have WAY fewer issues in bad weather than we did with cable (weird huh?) The price is also better and we still have access to the DTV NFL (and now Superfan) packages.

My complaint with DTV when we switched back that final time, was their lack of local HD content, but that's all been resolved (having to juggle an antenna was painful).

We've had excellent service - basically it just works 99% of the time - no service calls, no outages, good pricing, exclusive content and some nice features (like realtime scores and status, multi-view, remote DVR programming, network DVR content streaming, etc.).

 

I've had both and prefer Direct. Billing issues have been less with Direct than with Dish.

The HD DVRs are better with Direct and once upon a time you got more HD with Direct. I haven't looked recently so I don't know if Dish has caught up or not.

In both cases the picture was rock solid and it took near tornadic winds and rain to cause any drop outs. My down time with satellite has been much less than the down time I experienced with Comcast.

The big downside to satellite over cable is you don't get a high speed internet with satellite and you do with cable. Of course you can just order the internet with Comcast and use Direct for the TV.

 

This is what I do. I have Dish Network, however. My in-laws had DirectTV and I much prefer the interface of Dish Network. The HD dual-tuner is the way to go. If you keep internet through Comcast, it is actually less expensive to get 10 cable channels + internet than it is to get internet by itself.