Just cancelled Direct TV and maybe moving

[YardApe]

to Dish... Comcast Cable is many more $$$ for same service... don't know about ZOOM...

My beef with DTV was that they didn't notify local customers of a dish and receiver upgrade requirement for local channels and all of us in Richmond, VA are missing the Olympics.... unforgivable...

Can I get your opinion on Dish signal clarity, DVR choices (our TIVO with Direct TV is VERY slow with channel surfing), and overall thoughts on customer support...

Thanks for your opinion...

BTW... Dish tells me they can install in 4 days, Direct TV told me they couldn't upgrade me for a MONTH... they have gotten to big for their britches...

 

[SimpleSimon]

Welcome aboard YardApe!

By Dish, you mean E* - we do that to avoid confusion with the generic term "dish".
And by ZOOM I assume you mean VOOM - or V*.
And DirecTV is D* - DTV mean Digital TV.

Regarding "signal clarity", that could be 2 questions: signal strength/reliability and Picture Quality.

As for the first, D* and E* are even - for the main birds. E*'s 105 & 121 are weaker - 121 can usually be brought in reasonably well, but until the new 105 bird is launched, it's not good. Do you care? Depends on where you live - where your locals come from. Check out this site: http://www.dishchannelchart.com/ for that info.

Opinions on D* vs. E* PQ vary - they use different methods of compression, so the degradation that both of them have appears differently - I'm happy with E*, others aren't.

Both D* and E* customer service pretty much sucks - but you can generally get any question reliably answered here in pretty short order. We're good. Think about it - there's 10,000 members here. Now of course, most are not posting answers, but where else can you go and have say 50 people look at your question.

As for installation - ya gotta watch them like a hawk to make sure they do a decent job. Most especially, lots of hack installers like to skip grounding the gear - that's VERY bad. If you need a SuperDish (to get 105 or 121), those are hard to mount and aim - most guys out there can NOT do a decent job of it (or just won't take the time). Do some reading in the forums here regarding grounding. We have arguments about the details, but ALL of us agree it MUST be done.

 

[YardApe]

Thanks, SS... I appreciate the nomenclature

lesson... got it now... Voom, not Zoom (LOL), D*, E*... and so on...

I am particularily sensitive now to DVR/receiver choices because of my current, turtle-like D* TIVO/receiver (slow channel changes, slow screen menu refresh, cumbersome program management (hard and slow to delete programs)...

Also, with D* incompetence with their dish and receiver upgrades (I have a D* vent about losing local channels (no Olympics) and the fact that it will take a MONTH to upgrade... I want to make sure the I have the best possible dish installed...

BTW... I'll keep future questions more precise... this is a blend of moaning and E* learning...

Lastly, thanks for grounding advice... I'll be looking over tech's shoulder...

 

[boba]

DISH ought to be perfect for you,their DVRs are faster than TiVo and never fail and you can surf to your hearts content on Super Dish.

 

[SimpleSimon]

YW on the acronyms. Someone was going to pull together a good list, but it never happened. Maybe if someone does it, Scott will post it as a page.

Oh yeah - I forgot to talk about DVRs.

What boba said.