Satellite service vs Comcast (or other)

Parent Cafe
1

<p>So who’s good? Direct TV or Century? Anybody else? Unfortunately we have limited avenues where I live. Heard bad about all of them. Any good?
I’m at my wit’s end with Comcast and I’ve had them for 25 years. I’ve lived through all of it. Call me “slow to boil.” Their new “update” (for them not me) is about to put me in the nut house. All I want is some decent TV reception at a decent price with some decent service.
Not sure that even exists anymore.</p>

2

<p>Okay, 222 views and no opinions? Oh my goodness! Are they ALL that bad?</p>

3

<p>OK, I’ll bite.
We have had Directv for about 10 years. Switched when our cable company would no longer provide me the YES network so I could watch the Yankees.
So, you might not value my opinion on criteria for selecting TV provider!</p>

<p>Anyway. we love the reception with Directv. Beautiful pic, rare outages, DVR works great.
BUT I do think that the cost is high for our kinda basic channel selections, no HBO etc.</p>

4

<p>don’t need HBO. We rarely watch premium channels. I need reliable reception. Comcast always wants to sell premium channels when I can’t get the basic stuff reliably.
Comcast just did an “upgrade” for themselves, charged me more and I can’t get what I used to have. I’m pretty much done.</p>

5

<p>well, if you have an HD TV, and dont mind losing all those cable channels-take a look at this recent post from the NYTimes gadgetwise blog. </p>

<p>"Q.</p>

<p>I tried to buy a high-definition antenna and antenna cable for our Samsung HD TV, but B&H sells cable in only 12-foot sections. What are the basics of going to antenna and ditching cable? What are the gotchas? The antenna needs to go on the roof.
A.
[Your</a> Tech Questions Answered, Part 5 - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/05/your-tech-questions-answered-part-5/]Your”>Your Tech Questions Answered, Part 5 - The New York Times)</p>

6

<p>We’ve also had Directv for about 10 years and have been happy (except with the creeping prices). You can renegotiate every couple of years for some discounts, but never as cheap as when you first purchase. Picture quality is good (HDTV with DVR). Went to them after cable hassles and haven’t really had any problems. On rare occasions we lost the picture with a bad rainstorm, but I could count the times on one hand. Of course, I live in LA. Not a heck of a lot of bad rainstorms. Had pretty decent customer service–got a new internet TV this year and had some issues and they walked me through how to fix it. We are happy enough that we wouldn’t leave them for U-verse even though U-verse is practically giving it away for the first year.</p>

<p>Hope this helps.</p>

7

<p>We have DirecTV with just about every imaginable channel. I’m not ashamed to admit that DH and I love to watch TV. The HD channels are very nice and clear. My only complaint is that the HD channels occasionally have reception problems when it storms. If we’re watching live TV (rare) and it storms, we just change it to the non-HD version of that channel but, if we’re recording when not home and it storms, we usually have to find it online somewhere and have DH download it to watch later. Based on previous problems with cable, we’re thrilled with DirecTV.</p>

8

<p>thanks for the responses!</p>

9

<p>At our house we dumped cable TV and satellite TV years ago. We have a big antenna on our roof and get about 50 broadcast stations free, most HD. Too, we have a Roku hooked up from our internet service which gives us up to 700 channels to choose from–95% of them are free. We just pay $8/mo. for Netflix streaming, so our monthly TV subscription expenses are about $8. This set up isn’t for everyone, but it works for us.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.catastrophegirl.com/rokuchannelcount.htm[/url]”>http://www.catastrophegirl.com/rokuchannelcount.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;