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Author Topic: DirecTV vs Dish Network Greg Mueller Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1687 From: Port Gamble, WA Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-07-2006 09:10 AM                        I have Dish Network now and have constant troubles with the picture pixelating and freezing up and making screechy noises. So I either have to buy new DN equipment or switch to DirecTV. Has anyone been able to compare picture quality side by side? I think I like DirecTV's channel line up a bit better. I've been reading about their HD/Tivo receiver. Anyone played with that? Which of the two has better HD? I don't watch sports, so that's not a factor  |  IP: Logged David Stambaugh Film God Posts: 4021 From: Eugene, Oregon Registered: Jan 2002 posted 02-07-2006 11:16 AM                        Obvious question: Is your dish aimed as accurately as possible? Are the dropouts happening all the time, or only during "extreme" weather (like heavy cloud cover and rain). My dad has complained about DirecTV dropping out a lot during bad weather. He recently upgraded to a new dish and receiver though, don't know if that helped any. When I had DirecTV I was very careful about aiming the dish to get max signal strength, and it was very rare for the signal to drop out. As far as who has the best picture quality (meaning, who allocates more bandwidth to each channel), I don't know. There's a guy here where I work who has the HD DirecTV receiver with Tivo and he loves it. He's pretty picky, and I haven't heard him say anything bad about it at all.  |  IP: Logged Greg Mueller Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1687 From: Port Gamble, WA Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-07-2006 11:42 AM                        It's pretty mysterious. It's different channels at different times. Then they will be ok and it will be other channels that screw up. This system is pretty old and it's probably do to break. The idea of the HD/Tivo unit is pretty attractive as it has Component out as well as HDMI, so it will be good to have something like that when I upgrade the display, down the road I called the tech line at Dish Network and they had me check the signal strengths when it was screwing up and they pronounced it A-Ok  |  IP: Logged Mitchell Dvoskin Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1869 From: West Milford, NJ, USA Registered: Jan 2001 posted 02-07-2006 11:49 AM                     I have had DirecTv for over 10 years now: picture pixelating and freezing up Very rare, only during very severe thunder storms or bizzard snow conditions. making screechy noises. Never. On the other hand, I am thinking of switching back to cable. The way they transmit my local channels does not work well with my older boxes, and there attitude to the problem is that I should buy new equipment. My attitude is they can go f'ck themselves. As I was thinking of upgrading to HD service anyway, I priced Cablevision, and they offer more for much less.  |  IP: Logged Greg Mueller Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1687 From: Port Gamble, WA Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-07-2006 12:32 PM                        I'd probably go with cable just for the internet, but they don't have it strung up my road (long easement road) and they want $3000 to bring it in if all the neighbors down the road went for it too. Where I plan to retire will never have cable for sure and I'm trying to plan ahead  |  IP: Logged David Stambaugh Film God Posts: 4021 From: Eugene, Oregon Registered: Jan 2002 posted 02-07-2006 01:22 PM                        Greg, do you have the early first-generation RCA DirecTV receiver? That's what my dad had. It was like 10 years old. He called DirecTV last month and complained about the dropouts and said he was gonna switch to Dish. They offered him a new receiver and dish, installed, for free because he'd been with DirecTV for so long. I doubt you'd get the HD Tivo version out of them for free, but you might get a good deal on it if you threaten to switch to Dish. The value of their business is based on how many subscribers they have, and they HATE to lose subscribers.  |  IP: Logged Mark J. Marshall Film God Posts: 3188 From: New Castle, DE, USA Registered: Aug 2002 posted 02-07-2006 02:09 PM                    There was a time when I had both a few years ago, and Direct TV's customer support sucked major ass. It was next to impossible to get anyone on the phone. I ended up giving up the Direct TV and sticking with Dish. Again, that was at least five years ago, so it may be better now. About two or three years ago, Dish had their hard break commercials playing longer than they were supposed to be playing on the Fox News channel. The end result was that when the commercials were over, the programming was being joined "in progress." Trying to explain this to the front line customer support there was interesting. They all swore to me that Dish doesn't program commercials and that it's Fox News' fault. I kept pressing the issue, and kept working up the chain, and finally got in touch with their senior vice president of technical services - or something like that. He instructed the satelite uplink center to record Fox News and watch it that night to figure out what the problem was. It was fixed the next day. He then gave me his cell phone number and told me to call him anytime if I ever had a problem again. Really nice chap, although I don't have his number anymore. At the moment, I still prefer Dish, although I do wish that there was more HD programming. I agree with David... they always have special deals going on for new customers, and if you tell them that you're thinking of switching, they may offer you something to stay with them.  |  IP: Logged Sam Graham AKA: "The Evil Sam Graham". Wackiness ensues. Posts: 1431 From: Waukee, IA Registered: Dec 2004 posted 02-07-2006 03:25 PM                        If you went with a swap today, Dish probably has better HD. But DirecTV is in the process of launching their MPEG-4 service, and should leapfrog Dish this year both in quality and quantity of channels. Just make sure you get their MPEG-4 receiver (model ID H20) and 5-LNB dish (which I'm told you cannot self-install due to complications in aligning the dish). Historically, DTV has compressed less than Dish and had better picture quality. A friend of mine owned a chain of satellite/cell phone stores and had DirecTV and Dish set up and operating side by side. DirecTV was obviously better. Local channels are compressed higher and don't look nearly as good as the main "cable" channels, but I'm getting mine OTA anyway. I've been a DirecTV customer for about a decade. Happy with the service. Customer service is horrible. Glad I only have a reason to call them maybe once every other year. It should also be noted that DirecTV is apparently going to a leasing scheme with all equipment starting in March. So it'll be just like renting a box from cable companies. The upside is that this will allow for future equipment upgrades and receiver repairs at no cost to the customer. DTV will waive the first receiver fee and charge $4.99 for additional receivers. Since customers are currently charged a $4.99 fee for "mirroring" service to each additional receiver, and THAT cost is going away, you'll pay basically what you pay now without the up-front costs. (Customers who already own their equipment won't be affected by the lease deal...until they need new equipment, of course...)  |  IP: Logged Jeff Taylor Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 601 From: Chatham, NJ/East Hampton, NY Registered: Apr 2000 posted 02-07-2006 03:53 PM                     I have Direct and am generally very happy with it, having switched from a horrible RCN analog cable system, but one observation is that I virtually never have any reception problems at my NJ house, but at my other house at the end of Long Island we have more frequent weather related outages--especially in the winter. I've had the dish replaced and realigned and it helped but still happens to some degree. I guess it may be the result of shooting across open water where different weather conditions occur.  |  IP: Logged Greg Mueller Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1687 From: Port Gamble, WA Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-07-2006 07:27 PM                        David I have Dish Network and it's a pretty old system. I think it's a 4700 or 4900 series Also when I say it pixelates I mean it does so in big blocks and the whole screen will freeze for a second. Then it will skip to where it's supposed to be and you miss the sound during the skip. Some times it will let out a little screech while it pixelating/freezing up. I should record it and send it to them. I tried to update a couple of years ago to a DVR receiver (also Dish Network) but my plasma screen didn't like it. Everytime I pluged in the s-video connector the screen would lock into "zoom" mode and it wouldn't let me change it. I thought it was a bad receiver and they sent me a new one, but the new one did it too. So I sent both of them back and stayed with the old one. Now I've got this fancy shmancy Pioneer AV center/amplifier and I plug everything into it and it feeds the plasma screen through the component outputs  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 02-07-2006 09:08 PM                     I've been a Dish Network customer since 1999. My receiver is the 4700 model, the first in the "Dish500" series. The unit has worked pretty well until just recently. For some odd reason I get some hiccups with HBO East and HBO West. It's rare, but sometimes the picture will freeze for a moment while the audio still plays. Then it unfreezes. This problem only happens when I have Dolby Digital 5.1 output selected in the receiver. I have not seen the glitches occur running the audio in PCM. But I like the 5.1 thing enough to keep that option selected. The other problem is a bit bigger. Sometimes the stupid thing will just switch off by itself, switch on, then off, then back on and finally re-establish the satellite link. Meanwhile, I'm sitting on my couch with a dumbfounded "WTF" look on my face. My plan about this is a bit more long term. I'm not going to go through the pain of replacing this receiver immediately. The glitches don't occur all that often. And I plan to buy some kind of HDTV monitor with true 1920 X 1080 native resolution sometime within the next year. When I buy the new TV I'll consider a receiver upgrade or consider DirecTV's offerings.  |  IP: Logged Daryl C. W. O'Shea Film God Posts: 3977 From: Midland Ontario Canada (where Panavision & IMAX lenses come from) Registered: Jun 2002 posted 02-07-2006 09:39 PM                        The problem with Dish Network 4700 receivers are caused by the (not-so-now) new Narga scheme they are using. Apparently the processors in those receivers can barely keep up requests from the CAM, resulting in the glitches. I haven't looked at the specs for the processors to compare them with current models, but this is what an old class-mate that works at Bell told me (Bell uses the same European equipment that Dish Network does).  |  IP: Logged Brad Allen Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 688 From: Evansville, IN, USA Registered: May 2000 posted 02-07-2006 09:46 PM                     I've had Directv since their beginnings. No problems. No problems anytime I called customer service either. My dad has DISH, and has gripped about it since day one. Locksup, pixelates, you name it. Horrid menu structure.  |  IP: Logged Don Anderson Master Film Handler Posts: 312 From: West Bend, WI, USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 02-07-2006 10:24 PM                     I had Directv for over 5 years, within that time frame I had maybe 3 signal interruptions due to weather. Picture and audio quality was awesome, nice menu, tons of channels. Best source for HDTV programming.I gave up Directv and switched to Charter Cable. Big mistake on my behalf. Tons of audio and picture problems, no signal for hours upon hours. The same goes for their internet service, slow then fast, or no signal at all. I'd switch back to Directv, but I pulled my home phone and went cell only. Directv requires a landline connection for billing purposes. My sister has Dish Network, I wasn't impressed at all with their service. Fewer channels to choice from, crappy program menu. She constantly has a problem with the menu opening up during a show, seems to lose the signal. I'd stick to Directv, I never had a problem with their Customer Service in the 5-6 years of subscribing. Plus, they would issue credit for signal failure, if you bug them, that's something that Charter Cable will not do. Oh, by the way. In all the years of service with Directv they raised their package price twice, and around 5.00 total. Charter Cable has raised their prices every year. I started out paying 59.00 for digital cable and high speed internet at the beginning. Its now at 85.00 plus tax.I've only had cable for 2.5 years. Crooks!!!!!!  |  IP: Logged Nate Lehrke Master Film Handler Posts: 396 From: Denver, CO Registered: Oct 2002 posted 02-08-2006 02:58 AM                     I used to work for Dish Network & I guess my advice to anyone that is having problems with their recievers or rooftop equipment is to call & say you're going to cancel. Get transferred to "WinBack". They will authorize up to $300 in free service calls or equipment upgrades to keep you as a customer. They always told us that it costs about $350 to get a new customer, so fixing or giving a free upgrade to an existing customers is well worth the cost. With the HD upgrade though, sometimes a 12-month contract was needed to get it free. It's amazing what you can get by just continously complaining. Call around 10:54 eastern, right when the customer service rep wants to get off the phone to go home, they'll give ya anything! Side note, while under their employ, I liked Dish Network & thought they/we were fair to the customers whenever possible.  |  IP: Logged

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