Cable vs Satellite Dish - and Internet Providers

I am in the same situation as you. We are moving to a new house in two weeks and we now have DirecTv, Comcast Hi speed, and Vonage (VoIP). Comcast is not available where we are moving to. I just signed up two days aggo to get At&t services based on a recommendation from a friend who has the services. They have a great deal right now!! We are going to get AT&T phone with unlimited calling 24/7 in the continental us, the top tier DSL package which appears to be close to Comcast speed, and Dish Network with two DVR's(one of which splits and can be watched on two tv's at one time meaning I can be recording two shows and watch a tivo'd show on another tv at the same time)as well as a third receiver with the top 250 channel package with 3 months free HBO for 153.87 a month! There are several rebates to fill out but worth it!!

I have Comcast & absolutely love it. No outages. No lost signal, no problems with wind, snow, or rain. I recently added phone & internet. They have an anniversary special which is cable with every pay channel,(HBO, Starz,Cinemax & Showtime), phone, and internet for $159 per month. I wouldn't trade the "On Demand" service for anything. 24/7 access to movies, tv shows, cartoons, cooking, etc... included with the price of cable. We watch on demand more than anything else. The kids can watch movies or their favorite cartoon any time they want.

I've had relatively decent luck with Dish Network myself, although the main problems I've had with the dish have been on extremely windy/snowy days, when the dish loses signal due to too much snow on the dish or it waving about too much. You don't get that with cable, but generally cable is about twice the cost, in my experience.

I had cable internet before and hated it. Comcast has crappy customer service when you have problems, and they tend to have unexplained outage problems from what I saw. It's been a few years and I've heard they are better now, but my Father-in-Law recently seemed to be having exactly the same problem a couple weeks ago as I experienced before. I have DSL and love it.

One tip with DSL - try to get it through the same service as your phone company. I've had problems with the line in my house that caused signal problems with the internet. Because Earthlink is the only DSL service that serves my location, SBC (who has my phone service) won't look at the lines. Each company blames the other and no one will look at my phone lines, even though I have line-backer service. I did get one nice tech from SBC that DID help me out, but it's a real drag. I hope to switch to SBC when we move, as it's also a lot cheaper than Earthlink DSL service. I know quite a few people with AT&T/SBC DSL service who are very happy with it.

Hope that helps!

I have Comcast internet and cable. I used to have DirecTV and had nothing but bad experiences. My dish went out in every rain/snow storm, and everytime they needed to send someone out it was a minimum of $60. When the tech would get out he would try to convince me my house would need to be rewired and it would be at least another $60. I finally got fed up and when my 1 yr contract ended I switched. The only thing I say is that with Comcast they have a lot of contracted employees (much like the dish companies) and have had many issues with them. They are paid for 1 hr of time and rush to get out even if the job is not completed by then. I have learned that if you have to call back for the same problem within a month, that the employee does get docked pay on the job. I though have learned that if you ask for a Comcast employee they are willing to accomodate your request. They have been great over the phone as well, and you can qualify for new promotions every 6-12 months woth Comcast. With the promotion Im under, I pay $75 a month for my internet and for Showtime and Expanded Digital with 2 boxes. I also have the cable guard so that covers all the rewiring at no extra cost.

Can't tell you much about cable/satellite since we don't have it, but we had AT&T DSL, and then just recently switched to "the new" AT&T (aka sbc) because their speed was a little faster and it was a little cheaper and so far we have been very happy with it. We have the second to fastest plan they have and it is only 24.99 a month. We very rarely have any outages and play online games and it is more than sufficient for that.

I know the new AT&T also has a dish network that you can sign up for and you can bundle all your services together and it is cheaper that way. If you have Cingular cell phones you can even get all of that put on the same bill. It is very convienient! I can tell you we have reg phone service, DSL internet and our two cell phones all together and with taxes and everything it is about 140.00 a month.

Hey N.! We have the DISH network, AT&T DSL, AT&T local/local toll, AT&T long distance, and Cingular. We've been with DISH and the DSL service for almost 2 years. ALL FIVE are combined into one bill...which gives us an added discount, and one bill. We are totally happy with all five services...a few little snarls with Cingular, but no big deal. I know that a major complaint with the DISH network is the frequent outages. We HAVE had outages, but only during two big snows and one heavy rain. And even then, each outage lasted about 10 minutes. What's ten minutes of no TV? We have the 120 package...and there is always something on to watch, if that's a concern. (We're not a super-huge TV family...but when we want something to watch, it's there.) One thing that caught my eye was the music/radio channels - how great! We were with Comcast for several years, but we felt that the charges were outrageous. We had the TV service as well as the internet service...and we were paying 95.00 a month for just those two things! Now, we pay $50 for DISH w/local channels, $27 for local, $20 for long distance, $20 for DSL, and $70 for three Cingular phones. That's not including the awesome rebates and free months we received when we signed up. I'd say go for it!

we have directv, too, and have been extremely happy. we pay about $60/month for the total choice package plus HBO. our internet service is through our phone company, AT&T. We only pay $19.99/month for DSL and my husband usually has his company pay for that since he works from home sometimes. good luck with your move!

We also recently moved and kept our internet with Comcast and kept our tv with DirecTV. We have been very happy with DirecTV and it was a lot cheaper per month than cable.

We've been pretty happy for a couple of years with AT & T DSL, which is pretty cheap with the phone service, and very fast, but a word of caution if you have macintosh computers....they are just starting to have tech support that are knowledgeable about macs. The initial set-up was a big pain, but I suspect it would be better now.

As far as the Dish, we've had it for a few months now, and I have nothing to compare it to, as we've never had cable before, but it's been great. I especially love the DVR. We had one outage in a pretty serious blizzard, but even in other blizzards and storms we have been fine. And you can't beat the price, basically free for a year through AT & T as long as you remember to fill out the form (which you get on-line) to enroll in the program. I think they don't make this so easy in order to try to discourage you, but I am persistent. We had a good experience with the installation, though I have heard that varies.

Have you checked to see if WOW was available in your area? WOW is a digital cable provider, offers identical service as Comcast (cable, phone, internet) for half the price. It is worth looking into. They are extremely reliable and we've never had any issues with our service in the year we've been using them. Check them out and see, because I know they aren't available everywhere as of yet.

http://portal.wowway.net/index.php

We used to have dishnetwork and now we have DirecTV. We prefer DirecTV, in addition to the optional sports packages, we have much fewer outages with DirecTV than we did with Dish.

We just recently switched from Comcast cable to the Dish - we are saving a TON of money by switching. We went through one of their packages and now have our satellite TV, home phone, cell phone and Internet all through them for slightly more than I was paying for Comcast cable alone! I definitely recommend the Dish especially since Comcast is supposedly raising their rates again.

We have had Dishnetwork and Directv and comcast. I prefer the dish- I felt like Comcast was a rip off, although things may be different now. Between the two- Directv and dishnetwork I notice only a few minor differences, my husband, however, tells me that we will switch back to directv because dishnetwork does not have the baseball package. we have our internet from att and i believe att and dishnetwork are forming some sort of partnership.

We had DirectTV and had many problems with the signal on many occassions. I live with no protection in the back of my house because we are on a pond with no homes on the other side, so the wind was a problem as the signal gets scrambled with rain, snow and especially when there are high winds. If you do choose a satellite, a word of advice, don't buy it, rent it per month because then if anything goes wrong with it or it needs to be upgraded, the company has to fix it, whereas if you bought it, you have to pay for service calls and any damage or upgrades. I recently called Comcast to see if I could downgrade my cable as I am sick of the huge bill every month and they gave me a bundled package including cable/internet/phone all for $114.00 per month including HBO free for one year. I was paying more than that before without their phone service. If you contact Comcast and are a current customer, they will give you a discount off of your bill if you ask them, usually $10 per month off of cable for 6 months or 1 year, and an addlt. $10 per month off of internet service, they will do this especially if you tell them that you are thinking of switching. My sister told me to try it and it worked, my co-worker also did it. They want your business. My co-worker told them she would switch to Comcast phone service but refused to pay for installation of the modem and they spoke to a supervisor and they waived that as well. There are ways to negotiate. At the very least, you can make it easy by sticking with Comcast after calling them to negotiate your bill and you are locked in for only one year. that give you time to concentrate on moving in and in the meantime, you could save $20 per month from what you are paying now($240 in one year)! Good Luck!

Hi N.! I am a Dish Network person. To me, COMCAST is a bad word - haha - we had such a horrible experience with them. So bad that I suffer with dial up internet (AT&T not available in my area yet) versus giving them another penny. If I can give you one word of advise, if you decide to drop COMCAST, make sure you get an invoice that says PAID IN FULL and save it...2 years later they are telling me I still owe them moeney...which was paid at the time I turned in the box.

We have had cable (Combast) and dish (AT&T). From a reliability standpoint, cable is better. Whenever it rains or snows the dish usually goes out. Sometimes it stays out and sometimes it goes on and off. But it can cause panic :) We didn't have the dish for 4 hours on Oscar Sunday (my husband and I love award shows) and thankfully the storm passed or clouds passed enough and it came back on. Phew. But cable typically costs more and seem to have more rate increases.

We use TIVO and we have compatibility issues with TIVO and the Dish (it was a bear to get it to work, still has kinks once in a while and on our dual-tivo we can't use it's function). So something else to keep in mind IF you have a TIVO. If you go with the providers DVR you won't (shouldn't) have troubles.

It's most ideal if you have a phone line with the Dish (for downloads/ordering movies) otherwise you have to pay a monthly non-phone fee (as I like to call it).

From a cost perspective, it's best if you go with one provider for all. We use AT&T DSL (have for years) and have had few problems and usually have an excellent connection. So by having DSL, Dish and phone bundled there are some nice discounts. And if you have Cingular/AT&T for your cell, you can combine those bills as well and save another $3 bucks.

Personally, I'd love to get rid of my expensive LAN line but you need it for DSL.

Good luck with your decision.

I have no experience with Direct TV, but I had a terrible experience with Dish Network, and wouldn't recommend them to anyone. The relatively small amount of money you save with Dish Network is absolutely not worth it - I lost reception countless times, and on perfectly nice, clear days (not due to bad weather). Also, be aware that Dish Network will charge you for sending a technician to your home, even if you are did not cause the problem that requires a technician's visit. The bottom line is their customer service leaves MUCH to be desired.
Also, I have had SBC/AT&T dsl internet service for over two years with zero problems. Their prices for internet service are very reasonable, too (somewhere around $20 a month? I cannot remember offhand).
While I am not crazy about Comcast's pricing, their customer service, and service in general, is far better than Dish Network. Hope this helps, and I really hope you haven't gone with Dish Network in the meantime!
Good luck!

Hi N.,

I switched to Dish Network when we moved last fall and was really unhappy with it. It was definitely less money monthly, but I found it to be awkward to use and when I phoned for tech help on simple things I got the run around an no resolution to my issues. Also, if you "bundle" it with your Internet service they can't "find" you when you call for Dish help without a lot of hassle - something about the way they access "bundled" clients info.

I did have Direct TV when I lived in Wisconsin several years ago and was happy with it for the most part. I did have trouble with service when the weather was bad...not sure if that's still an issue these days - and not up to speed on their rates.

Comcast...my old friend is back in our house. It is more per month than The Dish, but I would rather pay more and have user friendly products and techs that can walk me through issues on the phone. They have always been able to resolve my issues over the phone and I love On Demand and the DVR we have with our monthly service.

FYI, you could probably call Comcast and tell them your considering switching to another provider and I bet they'll offer some sort of insentive to stay. They gave me a nice deal when I called to switch back w/o me even inquiring.

Good luck!

I've had cable tv, dishnetwork and directTV, all are about the same except for cost. DirectTV is MUCH better in my opinion. We have satellite tv and cable internet, so you don't *have* to go the dsl route if you don't want to. We love our cable internet and our Vonage phone service

Hi N.!
We have directv and have been extremely happy with our service. I know directv offers internet service, but I don't know anything about it. As for service with dtv, its been excellent - a few outages when it storms really bad, but nothing major. We have WOW (wide open west) for our phone and internet (its a VOIP service . . .like vonage). We have been pretty happy with our wow service as well. There have been a few outages, but not too much.

When we moved about a year and a half ago, we checked on prices on phone and internet and this seemed to be the best price for the area we were moving to (we have 2 phone lines and internet and pay about $80/month with wow and our directv - with tivo - is about $90/month).

Good Luck with your decisions and your move!
B.