DishNetwork, DirectTV, Verizon Fios?

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Can you guys give me a little feedback on these two Sattelite companys, and Verizon Fios? My Dad is thinking of getting one of these because he is sick of Comcast cable and the price increases.



How good is the service? Customer service? Value vs price?

Thanks for any info.........
 
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I've been a DirecTV customer for 7 years, and have had the best time with them when it comes to customer service. They are usually pretty good about helping out if you talk with them and have been very nice. The price for what I get is cheaper than anything Comcrap offers, and about the same as Dish.
 
Apparently my experience differs from most people I talk to about Dish Network, but I finally got fed up with the bad weather performance of this system and went back to cable. Even the lightest, smallest thunderstorms caused scrambling and complete outages at my house. Big gully-washer? Put in a DVD and wait it out. Not handy if you're wanting up-to-the-minute severe weather reports. It was professionally installed, and I confirmed that the dish was tight and facing the southern sky. After a long spring full of thunderstorms and unwatchable TVs, I switched to Verizon FIOS and Love it with a capital L.
 
I can't wait for FIOS to get to my neighborhood so that I can kick Comcast to the curb. What you'll probably lose with anything other than Comcast is that Comcast has a lot of the sports locked up or so my son, a satellite Verizon subscriber, says - he too wants FIOS (I forget which it is - The Dish or Direct TV).

I'm never going to pay Comcast to rent a box so that I can qualify to pay more for a bunch more channels that I don't watch anyway. I haven't watched premium channels since they stopped filtering them out at the pole (HBO and Prism/Stars) and scrambling them along with the rest.

Cable internet is too expensive for the added speed when compared to DSL (FIOS-FIOS-FIOS
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) ..at least after the 90day teaser period.
 
I didn't have a good experience with Dish Network either. Like Virago, my signal would go out in all kinds of light weather. What really irked me was when they upgraded all their HD stuff to MPEG4. You had to "buy" a new receiver to get the new channels. So I paid $200 bucks for a receiver that I didn't own and didn't have a DVR. On top of that, I was never truly happy with the picture quality. You could see alot of compression artifacts.

I went back to Comcast and couldn't be happier. Yeah it's more expensive (not by much) but at least if a butterfly farts in front of my cable I don't lose my signal.
 
Originally Posted By: MiniTransAm
I didn't have a good experience with Dish Network either. Like Virago, my signal would go out in all kinds of light weather. What really irked me was when they upgraded all their HD stuff to MPEG4. You had to "buy" a new receiver to get the new channels. So I paid $200 bucks for a receiver that I didn't own and didn't have a DVR. On top of that, I was never truly happy with the picture quality. You could see alot of compression artifacts.

I went back to Comcast and couldn't be happier. Yeah it's more expensive (not by much) but at least if a butterfly farts in front of my cable I don't lose my signal.

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I have dish, but if the smallest weather event occurs (or if a butteryfly farts) it will lose signal.
Custemer service isn't bad, but 200 channels (not HD) will cost you at least $45.00.
 
DirecTV since 1998 except for one month when we moved. Cable held nothing to DirecTV. One month on cable & we went back, it was awful.

We only see satellite go out when really BIG storms block the signal or heavy/thick snow.
 
Verizon completely [censored] up a FIOS install at my rental property and, since it's vacant, won't fix it. (My ex-tenant had it installed without my consent about 2 months before I started eviction proceedings against her)

What did they do?

1)Failed to bury the fiber cable up to the house, instead running it between the slats of the shadowbox fence. This begs the question of how exactly one is supposed to replace the fence since it now has a cable in it? I suppose one could just cut it.

2)Failed to caulk any of the holes where they drilled to run cables into the house.

3)Installed the power supply (which is huge) on the wall of the laundry room, right in front of the dryer, making it impossible to move the dryer out if it should be necessary. They also plugged it into the only available outlet in the laundry room. I guess you can just find an extension cord if you need to iron anything.

4)Cut the copper cable connecting the house to Verizon's network, making all this [censored] a necessity if someone just wants plain old telephone service in that house.

I'm done with Verizon. I got sick of their telemarketing calls every [censored] day for DSL and DirecTV, so I cancelled them and switched to Comcast phone which is cheaper and I now have caller-ID (Verizon wanted $7/month for that!), plus my Asterisk phone system works better with it (I was getting echo with Verizon, no echo with Comcast).

It also didn't help that I called them asking if they would fix their jackleg installation and they said they'd call me back and never did. I have a ticket number. I could call them back. Or I could just fix the problem myself. It'd be far more satisfying that way. I'll even be kind enough to dump the FIOS [censored] in the parking lot of the nearest Verizon CO, because they haven't any other local presence.

Paying my final bill with them was even a pain. I tried to get the total amount due and their automated system is incapable of telling you your account balance after hours--they have nobody in the billing department outside the hours of 8 to 6, Monday-Friday. They sent the final bill a full two weeks after I canceled service with them, and now they owe me $24 because I paid the previous bill and the final bill (which showed up 2 days after I paid the previous bill) had credits on it for amounts on the previous bill.
 
Originally Posted By: MiniTransAm
I didn't have a good experience with Dish Network either. Like Virago, my signal would go out in all kinds of light weather. What really irked me was when they upgraded all their HD stuff to MPEG4. You had to "buy" a new receiver to get the new channels. So I paid $200 bucks for a receiver that I didn't own and didn't have a DVR. On top of that, I was never truly happy with the picture quality. You could see alot of compression artifacts.

I went back to Comcast and couldn't be happier. Yeah it's more expensive (not by much) but at least if a butterfly farts in front of my cable I don't lose my signal.


Hmmm, I had Dish for over 10 years, and only had trouble with losing service ONCE - it wasn't on my end it was on Dish's end. It lasted about 10 minutes. We've had very strong wind and rain here in the wintertime, and I've NEVER lost the signal. Especially if you have HD, the sat. dish has to be RIGHT on and properly installed. Because you pay someone to install doesn't necessarily mean they did it right! I've install several of them myself and never had any trouble.
On the other hand, I don't really like some of Dish's business practices.

But I agree about the artifacts with Dish. I tried Cox Cable, and they are expensive and their picture quality is not that good and in the 6 months I had it, there were several outages. A close friend who has Cox Cable in another city is constantly having trouble too, and has had to replace several receivers in the past couple of years.

I currently have AT&T UVerse and so far I love it. The DVR is great, the picture quality is absolutely fantastic. The internet has been very consistent - no slow down like cable at peak times.
 
I installed Dish Network/DirecTV for 9 years (hence my name on here) and installed properly neither system should lose reception except in the worst of weather conditions.

As a previous post mentioned about a hack installation on Fios, sadly you can get this type of installation from any one of these services. I would recommend being home while the tech is doing the install, before he begins walk through the entire installation with him and be pretty clear about what you expect and have him explain how he plans on mounting the equipment, the path he plans on running the wires, etc. Let him get to work and check up every 10-15 min or so and make sure the installtion is progessing as expected. If there is anything you don't like, nicely bring it to his attention and have him reroute it in a manner that is acceptable to you.

Personally I have DSL and Dish Network. I like the fact that they have a DVR that will feed multiple TVs, so I can watch the same recorded show in the living room and bedroom. I also find that this combo is much less than cable, and is very reliable. Fios is supposed to be coming to my area, and when it does I plan on trying it.
 
I couldn't have been happier with my FIOS install. They buried the cable in my yard, and put the indoor equipment on the wall in the garage and ran the cables through the attic. My biggest gripe so far is that when they send programming updates to the boxes overnight, it changes the clock setting to display the channel number instead of the time so I have to go to the menu and fix it manually. Seriously..that's the worst problem I've had with it for the 2+ years I've had it. Picture quality is fantastic and it can rain and blow all it wants to and my TV stays on.
 
Be aware that Verizon runs FIOS on the cellphone model, with a contract and early termination fees(if you want the lower price--you can go "month to month" for a higher price). So make sure you really like it before you sign up.

I wonder if they ever collected the early termination fee from my ex-tenant....
 
Im fairly rural, DTV or Dish are the only options. Had dish for a few years then started having problems, switched to direct about 8-9 yrs ago, no problems at all. HD is top notch, only lose signal during really bad weather.
 
I've had DirecTV for about 10 years. I've lost the signal maybe 5 times. All during snow storms where the snow sticks to the dish. A quick blast with a garden hose and a shot of Pam cooking spray and the snow doesn't stick anymore.

My mom has Dish and biatches about it all the time. I guess because its a couple dollars cheaper than DTV they'll live with poor customer service,and frequent loss of signal.

My step dad thinks he is smarter than everyone else and refuses to go with DTV. I guess he knows something nobody else does.
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Originally Posted By: oldmaninsc
Originally Posted By: MiniTransAm
I didn't have a good experience with Dish Network either. Like Virago, my signal would go out in all kinds of light weather. What really irked me was when they upgraded all their HD stuff to MPEG4. You had to "buy" a new receiver to get the new channels. So I paid $200 bucks for a receiver that I didn't own and didn't have a DVR. On top of that, I was never truly happy with the picture quality. You could see alot of compression artifacts.

I went back to Comcast and couldn't be happier. Yeah it's more expensive (not by much) but at least if a butterfly farts in front of my cable I don't lose my signal.


- it wasn't on my end it was on Dish's end. It lasted about 10 minutes. We've had very strong wind and rain here in the wintertime, and I've NEVER lost the signal. Especially if you have HD, the sat. dish has to be RIGHT on and properly installed. Because you pay someone to install doesn't necessarily mean they did it right! I've install several of them myself and never had any trouble.
On the other hand, I don't really like some of Dish's business practices.

But I agree about the artifacts with Dish. I tried Cox Cable, and they are expensive and their picture quality is not that good and in the 6 months I had it, there were several outages. A close friend who has Cox Cable in another city is constantly having trouble too, and has had to replace several receivers in the past couple of years.

I currently have AT&T UVerse and so far I love it. The DVR is great, the picture quality is absolutely fantastic. The internet has been very consistent - no slow down like cable at peak times.



you must of not had a butterfly fartin' problem

Sorry wrong quote
 
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One caveat I've seen this past week or two as the weather has been darn near CONSTANTLY rainy/thunderstormy (new word):

HD will lose signal easier than SD. SD never lost signal during the worst storms. HD did lose signal clarity. Seems that the extra bandwidth HD needs is in jeopardy when it gets really nasty outside.
 
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