Decision Made: Charter Fiber Optics or Dish Network?

[Spike]

I don't know if this will help anyone in here or not. But with Charter really going at it hard at my location, they stopped by and gave me a very handsome deal, which included buying out my 2 yr. contract with Dish Network to go with their Fiber Optic HD Television service. It took me a couple of days to weigh their offer seriously. I ended up listing the Positives and Negatives for going over to Charter, as I saw them.

I sent an email to the Charter Rep. that came to my home. In that email I listed those Positives and negatives. I've provided those same points here as well, just in case Charter might be coming to your door too:

I’m in the final stages of making up my mind about switching over to Charter. I’m going to kind of fill you in on where I am at by listing what I believe are the positives and the negatives of my possibly making the move.

Positives:
1 Many more Premium channels: HBO, Showtime, Starz, etc. in your offer than in my current Dish subscription.

2 Faster internet Speed (Huge upside in increased speed over AT&T U Verse)

3 Madison locals (I’ve always enjoyed Madison, and would love to be able to watch their local news programs, love U W Madison big upside)

4 The Ability to home stream and watch outside of the home some channels to a device is nice.

5 No more rain fade. HUGE

6 Charter is willing to buy out my Dish 2 yr. contract for a cost of up to $***. I hate 2 yr. contracts.


Negatives:

1 According to the article below, the new UI interface isn’t scheduled to happen in the next month or two as you had indicated, but looks to happen sometime after the start of the year 2015. OUCH

http://www.multichannel.com/news/tv-apps/charter-eyes-2015-wide-cloud-ui-rollout/382877

2 I can currently record up to 6 shows at once on two HD DVR Hoppers. I can then watch the shows that I’ve recorded from any room in the house. With Charter I go down to 2 per HD DVR box only. OUCH

3 The Hopper Programing Guide displays 3 hours of current and upcoming shows. The Charter guide is less.

4 No Primetime Anytime with Charter. This records all of ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC primetime programing onto the Hopper DVR hard drive automatically and deletes those shows after 8 days to keep the hard drive uncluttered.

5 Loss of each Hopper's large hard drive space. The Hopper will also allow me to add an external Hard Drive to each Hopper.

6 Cloudtv, Cloud based Program Guide, and Cloud Based Menu UI are vaporware as of now. For me it doesn’t exist yet. And I really have no idea about what it looks like or what it does. I’ve spent hours online looking for a Charter demo, and have found none. This is very frustrating. (not slated to come out until after 2015 nation wide.)

7 In order for me to record more than 2 programs at a time I would have to get at least one Tivo and more than likely 2 just to get close to what I have with the Hopper (though not quite), which I would sell after the New Cloud interface was released.

8 I would be paying for a phone service that I would never ever use. That is $**.** per month for an entire year.

9 I will lose the ability to stream in home and out of home any shows that I want to watch from any channel, whenever I want to! Huge loss here.

10 The monthly cost of both services is virtually the same after year one. I would be switching just to switch.

I will be making my final decision this afternoon.

Thanks

And then I sent out this email too:

Hi ********,

I finally found all of the fees, which took me some time to stumble across on the Charter site. As I looked everything over (the upfront fees, the hidden fees, the programing, the equipment, the internet speed, the software, and the HD picture quality for Charter’s TV service) I’ve made my decision.

I have decided to stay with Dish Network and also not get Charter’s phone service. I would still like to get Charter’s Fiber Optic Internet service. That looks really very good. But, if the installation cost is going to be too much, I’ll just keep what I have for that too and not switch anything over to Charter at all. Please let me know what the cost of having that installed would be.

Please feel free to either email me at this email address or phone me at ***-***-****. If I do not hear from you by the end of today, I’ll just phone Charter and cancel everything with them tomorrow.

I hope you have a great day.

 

[ChadT41]

I like the due diligence. Reasonable arguments on both sides. I don't know about fiber optic, but I do know here in Phoenix, my parents have lost tv more time throughout the year with Cox, then I have with dish. Every company uses satellites, advantage to dish satellite services, is you are personally responsible fr yours, where cable has a lot more fail points, IMO

 

[Juan]

I say switch..Dish has become to unreliable on what channels they carry. They always seem to have a dispute with someone. You can always switch back

 

[ChadT41]

I disagree, in 4 years, never had a channel dispute I cared about. It's all about personal choice. Even the AMC didn't bother me. Touch USA and I might get mad, but everything I watch would be back within a short amount of time.

 

[wallyhts]

That's an easy choice hands down Fiber. If your lucky enough to get TV, Internet and phone over light and don't choose that something is wrong with you



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[KAB]

With all your negatives vs positives, you made the right decision. And BS to the channels comment above.

 

[ChadT41]

Which one. There were two???

 

[mdavej]

I have Charter, use my own 6 tuner whole home DVR and $3/month Ooma phone service. Beats Dish by a mile in every respect. OP should have considered cable card solutions in his analysis.

Don't know how 60% more HD on Charter could be BS. Just look a the charts on AVS, pretty cut and dried.

 

[Spike]

I have Charter, use my own 6 tuner whole home DVR and $3/month Ooma phone service. Beats Dish by a mile in every respect. OP should have considered cable card solutions in his analysis.

Don't know how 60% more HD on Charter could be BS. Just look a the charts on AVS, pretty cut and dried.

*GRIN*

Thank you Mdavej,

You are correct. And, believe it or not.... My scheduled appointment for tomorrow is still on!!! What I thought was a done deal ended up not being so. To be honest, I'm excited for tomorrow to come and have them install this. May I ask you, What 6 Tuner whole home DVR are you using? I already have Ooma, which ended up being a part of the negotiations.

 

[mdavej]

I currently use the Ceton InfiniTV 6 ETH tuner, the only 6 tuner device I know of (besides the PCIe version), and Windows Media Center. I have a Ceton Echo in each of 4 other rooms for a total 5 clients, including the main TV connected directly to the HTPC. PC boots directly to Media Center and works with a regular IR remote (but I never reboot unless there's a power outage). So to the end user, the DVR experience is the same as Dish or DirecTV or Tivo. For a long time, my wife thought we still had Dish.

Been running this way for a couple of years now (left Dish during their AMC dispute). Started out with a 2 tuner model, then 3, then 4 and now 6. Limped along with the crappy Charter DVR for a few days while I got my Ceton system up and running. Now I have no Charter devices in my house except for one tuning adapter which is free anyway. The ETH 6 has been running very smoothly. I just finished recording the Simpsons marathon on FXX. So my DVR was recording 24x7 for a week, that's over 500 shows without a hitch, all while recording the other stuff I normally record and playing back live and recorded content on 5 TVs.

FYI, when Specturm went live in my area a few months ago, I re-negotiated and ended up with 64Mbps internet for $40 and Silver tv package (expanded + tier 1 + HBO/SHO/MAX) for $60. Dish and DirecTV can't even come close to that package for that price. Charter's HD lineup blows satellite completely out of the water. Sounds like this fiber system is different than what's in my market. But I imagine the packages and lineups are the same.

Good luck

 

[Spike]

I currently use the Ceton InfiniTV 6 ETH tuner, the only 6 tuner device I know of (besides the PCIe version), and Windows Media Center. I have a Ceton Echo in each of 4 other rooms for a total 5 clients, including the main TV connected directly to the HTPC. PC boots directly to Media Center and works with a regular IR remote (but I never reboot unless there's a power outage). So to the end user, the DVR experience is the same as Dish or DirecTV or Tivo. For a long time, my wife thought we still had Dish.

Been running this way for a couple of years now (left Dish during their AMC dispute). Started out with a 2 tuner model, then 3, then 4 and now 6. Limped along with the crappy Charter DVR for a few days while I got my Ceton system up and running. Now I have no Charter devices in my house except for one tuning adapter which is free anyway. The ETH 6 has been running very smoothly. I just finished recording the Simpsons marathon on FXX. So my DVR was recording 24x7 for a week, that's over 500 shows without a hitch, all while recording the other stuff I normally record and playing back live and recorded content on 5 TVs.

FYI, when Specturm went live in my area a few months ago, I re-negotiated and ended up with 64Mbps internet for $40 and Silver tv package (expanded + tier 1 + HBO/SHO/MAX) for $60. Dish and DirecTV can't even come close to that package for that price. Charter's HD lineup blows satellite completely out of the water. Sounds like this fiber system is different than what's in my market. But I imagine the packages and lineups are the same.

Good luck

Well, I gave Fiber Optics a try, and their HD is very very good. In fact, it is the best that I've seen in years, I'm making the switch. I love it! Oh, and on a side note: I also have their Fiber Optics Internet offering now too. It tripled my internet connection speed for downloads. That's nasty good! Whoa!

 

[KAB]

So what will your bill be after the promo time expires...and how long is it?

 

[Spike]

The Promo offer is for one year. I got a reasonable price, not a great deal but reasonable for TV., Internet, and phone. But, at end of the year, I won't be subscribing to all three services. I will be dropping the phone service, since I don't even use it now. I use my very inexpensive Ooma service for phone.

 

[Scherrman]

This is all going to come down to personal preference no matter what. Just by looking at your pros and cons I'd stay with Dish. There really aren't that many HD channels out there that I would need. Everything that I watch is already in HD. The best benefits that Dish has for me far outweigh what any other provider offers. I would not give up the tuners and HD space that two Hoppers gives me. I also would not want to give up my Dish Anywhere or Dish Transfers features. One of the biggest reason I went to the Hopper was to have HD on every TV and have access to all my recordings, I don't plan on giving that up either.

Like I said before, it's all personal preference and your needs may be different than mine.

 

[Spike]

This is all going to come down to personal preference no matter what. Just by looking at your pros and cons I'd stay with Dish. There really aren't that many HD channels out there that I would need. Everything that I watch is already in HD. The best benefits that Dish has for me far outweigh what any other provider offers. I would not give up the tuners and HD space that two Hoppers gives me. I also would not want to give up my Dish Anywhere or Dish Transfers features. One of the biggest reason I went to the Hopper was to have HD on every TV and have access to all my recordings, I don't plan on giving that up either.

Like I said before, it's all personal preference and your needs may be different than mine.

Very well said. As for me, I am the kind of person that wants the best possible in picture quality. And this is the best that I've seen. So, it gets my vote. As far as tuners are concerned, I bit the bullet and went with TiVo DVRs. So, I'm good there for now. The one thing that I will miss is PrimeTime Any Time. That is an exceptional feature that will be missed. And the commercial skipping feature was also very nice. I won't miss rain fade, which around here happens a lot though. And, since my contract was bought out by Charter, I won't miss the drudgery of having a 2 yr. commitment to endure. I really hate those 2 yr. commitment deals. Hate 'em. There are both good and bad points to the change, but overall I'm very satisfied.

 

[mdavej]

This is all going to come down to personal preference no matter what. Just by looking at your pros and cons I'd stay with Dish. There really aren't that many HD channels out there that I would need. Everything that I watch is already in HD. The best benefits that Dish has for me far outweigh what any other provider offers. I would not give up the tuners and HD space that two Hoppers gives me. I also would not want to give up my Dish Anywhere or Dish Transfers features. One of the biggest reason I went to the Hopper was to have HD on every TV and have access to all my recordings, I don't plan on giving that up either.

Like I said before, it's all personal preference and your needs may be different than mine.

Regarding Promo price, mine expires in a year, TV goes up $20, internet goes up $10. TV is still much cheaper than Dish, even at the regular price.

As far as Dish benefits, I don't lose any. I've got 6 tuners, transfers, unlimited space (I have 4TB at the moment), and can also watch anything from anywhere. All TV's have access to all recordings. Plus I have a lot more: burning to DVD/BD, Netflix, Spotify, Hulu, streaming radio, full web browser, streaming any local or remote media. Since it's a PC, the sky is the limit. The only things I lose are blacked out channels due to disputes, rain fade and tons of fees. I don't miss any of those things.

Regarding comm skipping, that's not an issue either. I can run a service (if I want) that strips all the commercials from all my recordings, not just the big 4 networks. I choose not to do it, as I don't mind pressing a button to skip and have the option of watching a commercial if I want.

I don't think you can do all of that with Tivo.

I really liked Dish and the Hopper when I had it. But cable is a better, cheaper option in my market now. Six months before I dropped Dish, cable would have been a terrible option, as they hadn't yet rolled out those upgrades that came with the all-digital transition. So the timing worked out perfectly for me.

It was fun while it lasted - 7 years with DirecTV (10+ years if you count the times I had satellite back in the 90's) and 2 years with Dish. But unless cable goes up by a huge amount, I don't see myself ever going back to satellite.

 

[ncted]

I say switch..Dish has become to unreliable on what channels they carry. They always seem to have a dispute with someone. You can always switch back

Unlike DirecTV, TimeWarnerCable, etc.?

 

[Juan]

Unlike DirecTV, TimeWarnerCable, etc.?

Dish takes it to another level..

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[ncted]

I currently use the Ceton InfiniTV 6 ETH tuner, the only 6 tuner device I know of (besides the PCIe version),

I assume you mean non-Tivo 6-tuner device, or perhaps 6-tuner WMC device?

 

[dlsnyder]

The equation for whether to switch services varies greatly depending on your personal needs and the services offered by your local incumbent carriers. I have been with Dish for 15 years now and just signed up for a Hopper system and new two year commitment. The reason I did is that the only high speed internet service available to me is from Time Warner Cable. They recently upgraded the internet service here, boosting my speed from 15/1 to 50/5, but did nothing to make their TV offerings more compelling. I live in a strip in the middle of my city where FiOS was not deployed, and they tell me now will not be for the foreseeable future. If FiOS were available, that would change the equation for me. As it is, Dish is the best available option for TV, given the price and ease of use vs. a home brew PC based DVR system, Tivo, or TWC's crappy DVRs.