I'm going back to cable

[BlueLemon]

This is purely based on my experience over the past 6 months. After experiencing both sides, I have come to the conclusion that (for me) Bright House Networks (my local cable company) is the better choice in regards to TV service. I’ve listed my reasons below. So once my contract is up with DTV I’m switching back to BHN. I’m glad I tried Directv so I know what it’s like on both sides of the fence so I won’t wonder if DTV is a better option. My mind is made up. I’m going back to cable.


Why Bright House Networks is better then Directv:

• Service is interrupted every time bad weather arrives. (Living in Central Florida makes this a MAJOR deal breaker.)
• HD service is not free. It’s at least $10/Mo. with Directv.
• Have more then 1 TV? You’ll pay extra for each additional TV.
• 'Local on 8’s' on Weather Channel is not local. It’s regional. (Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, etc.)
• Missing many HD channels: GSN, Oxygen, FX Movie, We, Logo, TVGN, Ovation, GAC, Fuse, Esquire, NASA
• ?No 'Central Florida News 13' (I actually really miss it)
• No SEC Network (Not a deal breaker, but still a big deal. Gotta have my Gator games.)
• ?Annoying ‘Cinema’ banner ads throughout the guide that cannot be disabled. (These seem SO pointless to me)

To be fair Directv does do some things better then BHN:

• Better Equipment (DTV wins this battle hands down)
• Better On-screen Guide (Fully customizable)
• Better iOS/Android App (DTV app is far superior to what BHN offers)
• NFL Sunday Ticket (One of the main reasons I switched to DTV, but I’m not watching it very much at all)

P.S. As for internet service… I still have BHN 60mbps.

 

[Jimbo]

Interesting .....

You DO pay for the HD with Brighthouse, it's just not an itemized line.
You get boxes with BH for as many TV's as you want with NO FEE to mirror them ?

Locals on the 8, yup, you got that one. D* can't cover 210 markets with LOT8s, but the local companies can do thier area.

I just looked at the list of HD channels you listed that were missing .... the ONLY one I have ever watched is WE, for CSI Miami. If you honestly watch the rest of them, you have a wide range of viewing, more than most.

Local Locals in Central Florida, I would have thought that Orlando would have locals, then again theres more than just Orlando in C. Florida. I don't know what DMA you live in and didn't look it up.

As for the outage daily ... really ?
Please post your Sat levels for the 99 and 103 Sats .... could be a simple solution of peaking the dish, or it could be legit, seeing you get the heavy rains, it is an issue in Florida from what some others have said.

SEC Network ... they will have it by the time it's needed. (football season) I would be real surprised if they didn't .... after all, you can see most of the SEC games on ESPN, seeing they are hijacking ESPN this year.

Banner annoyance .... I don't even see them anymore.

Btw, when the storm comes thru and your Brighthouse cable line to your house goes down, how many days till they get to YOUR ticket to put you back in service.

With D*, once the storm moves out, your back in business ...


Just my opinions, you may not want them or like what I had to say, but it shouldn't matter seeing you already decided to leave ...


Why did you post all this, just to tell us you were leaving ?

Normally people post here with ideas or questions on how to correct an issue, you did not.

I was just curious.

 

[BlueLemon]

You DO pay for the HD with Brighthouse, it's just not an itemized line.

That’s a fair point.

You get boxes with BH for as many TV's as you want with NO FEE to mirror them?

With Bright House you only pay for the bos) you lease. No mirroring charges.

I just looked at the list of HD channels you listed that were missing .... the ONLY one I have ever watched is WE, for CSI Miami. If you honestly watch the rest of them, you have a wide range of viewing, more than most.

It’s not that I watch all of them on a regular basis, but if a network offers HD, the service provider should carry it.

As for the outage daily ... really ?

Please post your Sat levels for the 99 and 103 Sats .... could be a simple solution of peaking the dish, or it could be legit, seeing you get the heavy rains, it is an issue in Florida from what some others have said.

99: All above 93
103: All above 95


I’ve talk to my neighbors about this and all say they experience the same. Most say that’s the sole reason they have cable.

SEC Network ... they will have it by the time it's needed. (football season) I would be real surprised if they didn't .... after all, you can see most of the SEC games on ESPN, seeing they are hijacking ESPN this year.

Most likely you’re right, but not willing to chance it.

Btw, when the storm comes thru and your Brighthouse cable line to your house goes down, how many days till they get to YOUR ticket to put you back in service.

With D*, once the storm moves out, your back in business ...

I have no idea what you were trying to ask here, but I can say that before I went to Directv I had cable tv for over 10 years and even grew up in a home with cable tv. The only time my cable TV has ever blacked out is during major hurricanes (not even during tropical storms) and once when lighting hit a BHN distribution hub. TV service was only out for about 24 hours. And once the hurricanes clear out, service is restored extremely quickly. I’ve never had cable out during our daily spring/summer thunderstorms though. That’s what annoys me most is a simple thunderstorm disrupts my service. No thanks.

Why did you post all this, just to tell us you were leaving ?

Normally people post here with ideas or questions on how to correct an issue, you did not.
I was just curious.

I posted to maybe a little to tell you all, but mostly to see what type of opinions come out. Good or bad.

 

[directv newb]

I don't get how after using the Genie DVR a person could go back to using the HORRIBLE cable boxes they give you. They are prehistoric pieces of crap. I could never go back to the old scientific atlanta they are still using. As for the weather outages, I very rarely ever get an outage, we had huge snow in Ohio this year and never one outage. I guess maybe you have some super heavy duty cloud cover that is doing it, I don't know. The Directv software is soooo awesome compared to the outdated cable companies. Good Luck to you though, and hope you have a better experience with cable. My parents live in Osprey, tell them hi for me

 

[Jimbo]

That’s a fair point.







With Bright House you only pay for the bos) you lease. No mirroring charges.







It’s not that I watch all of them on a regular basis, but if a network offers HD, the service provider should carry it.







99: All above 93
103: All above 95


I’ve talk to my neighbors about this and all say they experience the same. Most say that’s the sole reason they have cable.







Most likely you’re right, but not willing to chance it.







I have no idea what you were trying to ask here, but I can say that before I went to Directv I had cable tv for over 10 years and even grew up in a home with cable tv. The only time my cable TV has ever blacked out is during major hurricanes (not even during tropical storms) and once when lighting hit a BHN distribution hub. TV service was only out for about 24 hours. And once the hurricanes clear out, service is restored extremely quickly. I’ve never had cable out during our daily spring/summer thunderstorms though. That’s what annoys me most is a simple thunderstorm disrupts my service. No thanks.







I posted to maybe a little to tell you all, but mostly to see what type of opinions come out. Good or bad.

I'd say that 90% of those on this particular forum are well aware of the negatives, EVERYONE that gets Sat, D* or DISH knows that weather can cause issues, however, those well peaked rarely have issues.

I've had torrential down pours, normally won't be a problem, once in a while I'll lose signal for a few minutes, but thats about once a year.

I had 85 inches of snow this past winter, 10' at a time at times, more coming on Tuesday and NEVER lost signal this winter.

NO Provider carries ALL the HD channels, NO ONE.

So you can have 17 BH boxes and they are free ? interesting, whats your monthly charge for each box ?

 

[Jimbo]

I don't get how after using the Genie DVR a person could go back to using the HORRIBLE cable boxes they give you. They are prehistoric pieces of crap. I could never go back to the old scientific atlanta they are still using. As for the weather outages, I very rarely ever get an outage, we had huge snow in Ohio this year and never one outage. I guess maybe you have some super heavy duty cloud cover that is doing it, I don't know. The Directv software is soooo awesome compared to the outdated cable companies. Good Luck to you though, and hope you have a better experience with cable. My parents live in Osprey, tell them hi for me

Its the rains they get in Florida that do it, I guess people in Fla either accept it, because they understand how Sat TV works, or they get rid of it.

What a miserable winter we have had this year, but like I said, I never once lost signal !

 

[Bodo Fenrirsson]

So you can have 17 BH boxes and they are free ? interesting, whats your monthly charge for each box ?

I can't imagine ANY cable company providing 17 cable boxes(unless you were being sarcastic). My local cable company allows for a maximum of 4 boxes(1 HD DVR,1 HD receiver,& the last 2 being SD digital receivers). I couldn't imagine that Brighthouse would be any different. The ONLY way you could exceed the limit is with TiVo DVR boxes(do cable companies have a limit on how many cableCARDS can be used per household?).

 

[dishcomm]

Interesting .....

You DO pay for the HD with Brighthouse, it's just not an itemized line.
You get boxes with BH for as many TV's as you want with NO FEE to mirror them ?

Locals on the 8, yup, you got that one. D* can't cover 210 markets with LOT8s, but the local companies can do thier area.

I just looked at the list of HD channels you listed that were missing .... the ONLY one I have ever watched is WE, for CSI Miami. If you honestly watch the rest of them, you have a wide range of viewing, more than most.

Local Locals in Central Florida, I would have thought that Orlando would have locals, then again theres more than just Orlando in C. Florida. I don't know what DMA you live in and didn't look it up.

As for the outage daily ... really ?
Please post your Sat levels for the 99 and 103 Sats .... could be a simple solution of peaking the dish, or it could be legit, seeing you get the heavy rains, it is an issue in Florida from what some others have said.

SEC Network ... they will have it by the time it's needed. (football season) I would be real surprised if they didn't .... after all, you can see most of the SEC games on ESPN, seeing they are hijacking ESPN this year.

Banner annoyance .... I don't even see them anymore.

Btw, when the storm comes thru and your Brighthouse cable line to your house goes down, how many days till they get to YOUR ticket to put you back in service.

With D*, once the storm moves out, your back in business ...


Just my opinions, you may not want them or like what I had to say, but it shouldn't matter seeing you already decided to leave ...


Why did you post all this, just to tell us you were leaving ?

Normally people post here with ideas or questions on how to correct an issue, you did not.

I was just curious.

Don't forget that invariably, some idiot will drive off a road, strike a power pole and guess which provider is the last to be permitted to fix their lines? Cable. Why? Because cable tv is NOT a public utility. They go LAST.
Cable is a wire line monopoly in areas where there is no wire line telco TV service

 

[Jimbo]

I can't imagine ANY cable company providing 17 cable boxes(unless you were being sarcastic). My local cable company allows for a maximum of 4 boxes(1 HD DVR,1 HD receiver,& the last 2 being SD digital receivers). I couldn't imagine that Brighthouse would be any different. The ONLY way you could exceed the limit is with TiVo DVR boxes(do cable companies have a limit on how many cableCARDS can be used per household?).

Yes, the 17 was sarcastic, trying to make my point that the boxes are paid for by the box. You can't just tell the Cable Company you have x amount of TVs that need boxes and they are all free, no programming fees at all, unless as I mentioned, it's built into the package alrady.

These fees on a Cable Company are often by the box, it's like $17 per HD DVR for my local cable company, I have 4 HD DVRs on my account, no way on earth I would pay $68 JUST for the boxes before they add programming fees on top.

As I tried to explain to him , that D*'s not like that, but he seemed to think it was $25 per box with D* which it is not.

 

[Jimbo]

Don't forget that invariably, some idiot will drive off a road, strike a power pole and guess which provider is the last to be permitted to fix their lines? Cable. Why? Because cable tv is NOT a public utility. They go LAST.
Cable is a wire line monopoly in areas where there is no wire line telco TV service

I don't know about that, I go out on trouble tickets all the time working on the poles and Cable is there sometimes before us and other times after.

It all depends on when the sub calls it in to the particular company, and how busy/backed up they are on service calls.

 

[MVPinBoynton]

We live in south Florida and the signal will go out on occasion with heavy rain. But I have found that the heaviest rains are normally in the afternoon when I am not watching TV. Of course that does affect weekend football; but not the prime time stuff I am most interested in. Signal loss was a major concern when I signed up for D a year ago; but I have been pleasantly surprised that it is a minor issue for us. I would never go back to Comcast without a Genie type system. We had to have 2 full monthly cost SA DVR's and it was such a programming pain; and that was an issue every day.

 

[gadgtfreek]

I always laugh when the rain thing comes up. Sure, maybe the dish isn't peaked, but I live in Mobile, Alabama which is generally one of the top 3 rainiest areas in the country every year. People throw out "I live in Florida", but look, you don't have the lock on rainfall.

I just don't have rain issues. Sure, once a month a gullywasher might drop it for 5 minutes, but that's it. Its such a non issues it's amusing. Rain vs satellite is FUD IMO.

 

[MVPinBoynton]

I always laugh when the rain thing comes up. Sure, maybe the dish isn't peaked, but I live in Mobile, Alabama which is generally one of the top 3 rainiest areas in the country every year. People throw out "I live in Florida", but look, you don't have the lock on rainfall.

I just don't have rain issues. Sure, once a month a gullywasher might drop it for 5 minutes, but that's it. Its such a non issues it's amusing. Rain vs satellite is FUD IMO.

You got that right! I lived in Fairhope before moving to south FL and the rains were just as bad; but I will say not quite as frequent.

 

[Tampa8]

Most everything on the list can be debunked - I can tell you from first hand experience with Brighthouse when you say they only charge you for the lease - a lease that costs $12 each and includes the first box. $24 whole home. They have a few other charges sometimes small like for remotes, but bottom line - no matter how the figure is arrived at, when compared as best as possible package to package and equipment to equipment Satellite costs less or at the worst the same with overall better equipment. I never include new customer rates for either. In Ct Cable is lost far far more than I ever lose a Satellite signal.

I do however agree, in Florida that even a well aimed Dish is more likely to lose a signal than in many/most other areas of the Country. But I too would say that happens mostly in the Afternoon, so it depends I guess if you are recording/watching then. I have always thought Satellite isn't for everyone just as Cable isn't. For you Cable may be a better choice.

 

[zim2dive]

I guess I've been unlucky.. I've had Dish and DTV... I have always lost sat, frequently, during storms (central NC.. we get some real gems for T-storms).

So for anyone who claims it's a non-issue, I have to call BS.

EDIT: I've had my dish installed/reinstalled 4 times during my life (moves, swtiching service, re-install after shingles) .. so that would be 4 out of 4 installs without getting a single one of these mythical "well aimed" results.

EDIT2: Is it true that you are more susceptible to this the further east (or west) you are ? ie. the angles to the satellites are worse vs. those more in the middle of the country.

 

[lern4483]

You DO pay for the HD with Brighthouse, it's just not an itemized line.

That’s a fair point. [/QUOTE] With Bright House you only pay for the bos) you lease. No mirroring charges. I just looked at the list of HD channels you listed that were missing .... the ONLY one I have ever watched is WE, for CSI Miami. If you honestly watch the rest of them, you have a wide range of viewing, more than most.[/QUOTE] It’s not that I watch all of them on a regular basis, but if a network offers HD, the service provider should carry it. As for the outage daily ... really ? Please post your Sat levels for the 99 and 103 Sats .... could be a simple solution of peaking the dish, or it could be legit, seeing you get the heavy rains, it is an issue in Florida from what some others have said.[/QUOTE] 99: All above 93 103: All above 95 I’ve talk to my neighbors about this and all say they experience the same. Most say that’s the sole reason they have cable. SEC Network ... they will have it by the time it's needed. (football season) I would be real surprised if they didn't .... after all, you can see most of the SEC games on ESPN, seeing they are hijacking ESPN this year.[/QUOTE] Most likely you’re right, but not willing to chance it. Btw, when the storm comes thru and your Brighthouse cable line to your house goes down, how many days till they get to YOUR ticket to put you back in service. With D*, once the storm moves out, your back in business ...[/QUOTE] I have no idea what you were trying to ask here, but I can say that before I went to Directv I had cable tv for over 10 years and even grew up in a home with cable tv. The only time my cable TV has ever blacked out is during major hurricanes (not even during tropical storms) and once when lighting hit a BHN distribution hub. TV service was only out for about 24 hours. And once the hurricanes clear out, service is restored extremely quickly. I’ve never had cable out during our daily spring/summer thunderstorms though. That’s what annoys me most is a simple thunderstorm disrupts my service. No thanks. Why did you post all this, just to tell us you were leaving ? Normally people post here with ideas or questions on how to correct an issue, you did not. I was just curious.[/QUOTE] I posted to maybe a little to tell you all, but mostly to see what type of opinions come out. Good or bad. [/QUOTE]

I have no issues with you leaving and telling why.
I find it interesting.
No service is perfect.

 

[lern4483]

Its the rains they get in Florida that do it, I guess people in Fla either accept it, because they understand how Sat TV works, or they get rid of it. What a miserable winter we have had this year, but like I said, I never once lost signal !

My sat service on dish and Direc do go out only
With severe storms. Usually come back fairly quickly.
I live in south east Florida.

 

[TheTechGuru]

Put up a CBand dish for free NasaHD lol.


Posted Via The FREE iOS SatelliteGuys Reader App!

 

[mccoyrj]

I've had my dish "tweaked to perfection" more than once, but when those severe rain storms roll up the Ohio River Valley, signal outages will happen. Snow storms? That's a different story. I cannot remember ever losing a signal in any snow storm, even with the entire dish covered in several inches of ice or powder. Funny things those satellite signals.

That said, I'll take signal losses over antiquated cable boxes any day. Guess I've gotten spoiled.

 

[Mr Tony]

I cannot remember ever losing a signal in any snow storm, even with the entire dish covered in several inches of ice or powder.

you're lucky. When I had Directv in Minneapolis if there was a heavy wet snow it would kill the signal. Thats what sucked when I was in the apartment. Seemed like we had more heavy wet snowstorms than regular ones so we'd lose signal for hours at a time (until the stupid dish heaters kicked in)