DirecTV, Time Warner, Dish or...
 

Which do you have, pros and cons of it and would you switch?

I ask because I had TW for a long long time, bought a new house a year switched to DirecTV. Like it but some problems with the equipment and wish I had my old Tivo back.

DirectTV is going to be offering TiVo sometime mid 09, so if your 2-year is up about then, you should be able to get in on one!

My hardware issue is that you pay up front, sometimes upward of $200 per receiver if you buy it from Direct or another retailer, then you have to pay a monthly lease fee on top of that up front purchase and you never own the equipment. I guess I can get over that, but the fact that they don't really care if the equipment works or not and you are on your own after the 90 day warranty that comes with the new receiver. You can call them and they will come out to fix THEIR box at $60-$90 for a service call, OR you can pony up an additional $5/month on top of your lease fee for THEIR EQUIPMENT and they will come out with no service call charge.

I have an HR21 model HDDVR and it has issues with recording shows that are just blank screens when you go to watch them, this is a nationwide issue, many people on the DirecTV forums, as well as DBStalk.com have this problem and they want to charge me $200 plus $99 installation fee to get the new HR22 model HD DVR and replace my old one. The HR22 does have double the HDD space too for recording more HD programming, then on top of it all, they say that I won't know what unit I get until I get it, it could be an old 1st generation HR20 unit!!!

How can they sell you something, make you pay a lease fee, as well as a protection plan and still not want to service THEIR EQUIPMENT. There has to be some kind of a consumer protection law or class action against this or something, or am I just being a pain in the ass about it?

Time Warner leased me a box too, I paid no up front cost for it and with me leasing it, if something were to happen to it (that I didn't cause) they would come out no questions asked and replace it with a brand new unit. This is the way it should work. I know I cannot be the only person who thinks this way am I?

Comcast works for what I need it too.

We are only paying for basic and the guy upgraded us to standard when he installed it for free.

No need to switch.

Sometimes I miss having a Tivo.

I originally had DirecTV, but the OS was bad and the hardware was slow. I switched to Dish Network back in 2002 and I've had it ever since. It's fantastic. I have DVR (for two tvs) now, and I'll re-upgrade to HD in the next year.

I have ATT U-verse cable and internet. I pay $100 a month for it. 200 channels and the additional HD programming. The DVR is nice, but their hardware is still too sketchy for my liking (picture freezes, HDMI issues for some people, etc). I've been lucky enough to have no issues other than when the lines were damaged from Ike, but they've acknowledged that it is a problem, and that they have no resolution for it.

Is OptOnline included in this?

Vote other.

I took the main ones I knew of, there will be other ones I am sure that are regional or even local that I don't know about.

In December my building (in Japan) is upgrading to "Mansion Hikari" DSL service. This is fiber-optic with speeds in the neighborhood of 125Mps. One of the options is to get digital TV on the line. Since my building doesn't support digital cable, I'm going with that. I'm looking forward to those stupid-fast downloads AND HD on one line! Oh, and the cost is about 40 bucks/month.

DirecTV isn't bad. I went to it after using Time Warner's first DVR offering, which was AWFUL, and the DirecTV DVR was glowing by comparison. I imagine that times have moved on a bit since then, but this is working for me, and I don't really plan to go HD anytime soon.

Honestly, the only reason I'd want DirecTV right now is for the BlizzCon coverage next week :(. It's exclusive to them T_T.

I use comcast because I want analog or unencrypted digital for my mythtv box. I'm hoping in the next year or 2 cable companies will allow us to use cable cards in tuners that can dump to my PC. Mythv is way better than Tivo and DVR and I don't want to loose the functionality i've gotten used to.

Had Comcast before I moved. Pricey but good. Suck-ass customer service.

I have something called Bright House cable right now. The most amazing customer service but they won't support my cable network (as an ISP) and I may drop them for that and because I need a non-VOIP basic phone line and they get pricey, too, when you're not on a bundle.

I started looking at Dish, but found that DirecTV now has the same price as Dish, so I may do that as I've had DirecTV in the past and loved it, except during severe thunderstorms.

I use three separate dishes. Dish Network, Bell/Bev and Starchoice.

The last two are out of Canada.

We have Comcast digital cable. There are four of us paying for it, so the $100/mo. for digital cable/cable internet is reasonable. We've had problems with charges a couple of times but they've always straightened it out. We've never had a problem with our box. We've had it for 2 years now. We had to call a service tech out once at our old place due to some reception issues we were having (apparently due to construction on the next street over, or so the tech said on his receipt ;)) and the guy checked all our cabling and connections, replaced our splitters, and didn't charge us (Comcast had said if it turned out to be an issue on our end, we would be charged for the service call). We've had similarly pleasant experiences with the cable guys that have hooked up our service. One of the factors playing into that might be that my guy used to be a cable guy, and so we're both extremely polite to the techs.

I don't really have a choice in service; Comcast is pretty much the only game in town.

I use Mythbuntu, and I have two HD tuner cards for over-the-air programming. It is perfect. It costs me $20/year for the schedule guide from schedulesdirect.com, and I have all of the TV shows I want to watch.

I have Time Warner. One word: don't.

I have a PVR-350, PVR-500 for 3 Analog Tuners. For digital I have an HDHomeRun for HD-DTV. The nice thing is that I can connect the HD-Homerun to the comcast line and get any of the over-the-air programming at full strength since it is illegal to encrypt those channels. Also a couple non-ota channels are not encrypted on the comcast line also.

I have never been able to get a decent signal through AST ota signals.

Cablevision - Optonline.... I think I could get a better price, but the service and quality is outstanding. Free HD, and my internet has been down 2 times in the past 8 years

DirecTV. I love it and don't want anything else.

I have ATT as well, but their Homezone service in partnership with Dish Network. $75 a month for 250 channels plus HD and a two tuner HD DVR with a web interface, but lots of bugs and problems like you mentioned with U-verse.