directv vs dish network

Yes, that's right. 24 month commitment to DirecTV or a $250 early termination fee (and I don't think they pro-rate it but I haven't checked.)

Stopped by the DirecTV office on STX. First impression is that it looks pretty sparce and temporary. FYI This is the 3rd location and 3rd reseller on STX in less than 2 yrs.
Asked about HD and was told they don't know how many or even what channels will be available but she thinks 8 HD channels. She informed me that the HD will require a slightly larger dish and people with the little one will need to upgrade the dish and receiver. At your cost. How much? She didn't know. DVR $200 add on. $250 early cancellation fee with no prorating indicated. Credit check is $9.99.
Second reciever costs extra..................
If FREE installation is important to you this might be better than Innovative cable but......You may want to compare the programming costs and channel lineup to Dishnetwork before locking in for 2 years. $700 divided by 24 months is less than $30 a month or about $7 a week.

Does anyone know if you can get internet with either of these sat services?
Did the new sats launch?

My (other 1/2) goal is to get DSL speed over the sat w/ better(or at least cheaper) cost than Innovative...
What new, (if any) is going on.
We spoke w/ a man @ Cost u less yesterday who was selling Direct TV.
I`m in STT.

Would it be possible to just have the directtv dish installed and keep the programming package I have on the mainland? I will still have a mainland address where the bill goes (installation address).

No internet service wi. with DTV or Dish. Consumer/small biz service is available thru Hughesnet. Lowest monthly service for Hughesnet is $59.99 for 700kbps down and 128 up, for $10/m you get 1MB down and 200kbps up.

No word on new sat launch.

It is not possible to use your DirectUS service here. The signal does not reach. DirectLA looks at a different satellite from DirectUS.

Sloop

The 119 replacement satellite has been delayed.
It's scheduled to launch in March now instead of Jan 2010.
Estimated to be operational in May 2010

Just have to share a laugh. I've been without cable since Choice went out of business in June. After a particularly good sales commission hubby and I decided to bite the bullet. We ordered DirectTV since the initial outlay was so much less. At a cost of NOTHING we had the midlevel {($36.95 per month) installed within 24 hours. After a 48 hour intense review of all news stations we can find nothing we want to watch. Too funny.

Pamela

Not many news channels on DirecTV here. The CNN channels are there but for some reason the Fox News channels aren't and BBC news coverage is spotty. We get networks except ABC but they aren't local so we don't get to laugh at shoody journalism every night as we grew fond of with Innovative cable (we now have Innovative basic along with DirecTV so we can get our laughs again.)

We started out with Innovative cable several years ago, then switched to Choice. When Choice discontinued cable service we watched our DVD collection ... over and over and over and over ..... and overrrrrr.

We missed seeing the news and knowing what's going on in the world, so we signed up for DirecTV ... what a mistake. We were told there were a couple of Spanish channels, we don't speak Spanish, but figured we could watch the English speaking channels. Very disappointing to find that it's more than a couple of Spanish channels. I think I learned a little bit of Spanish during our short experience, but it just wasn't what we'd been expecting, the salesman completely misrepresented their service. My husband canceled the service after a couple of months of trying to adjust to it and paid the $250 or whatever it was. SHAME ON DirecTV!

We're now back to Innovative cable and will purchase Rosetta Stone when we're ready for a full course of learning Spanish. 😉

Just do DISH TV and be happy; you can keep basic cable for the networks.

Skys the limit can help on STX--see his posts

"the salesman completely misrepresented their service"

I hear that all the time.

It's not DirecTV ! They advertise it as DirecTV but ........It's DirecTV Latin America. Huge difference.

The Direct TV salesman told me the Spanish stations had SAP...not true???

If the Direct has SAP, the salesperson should be able to demo the capability on a showroom TV.
I don't recall seeing it in the setup menu.

sloop jones

There is an option to change language in the settings menu. Mine is set to English but I still get a LOT of Spanish channels. My total English channels is probably around 25-30 or so.

If the Direct has SAP, the salesperson should be able to demo the capability on a showroom TV.
I don't recall seeing it in the setup menu.

sloop jones

Our total English channels is about 350 of them.
Gold 250 pac, all the movie channels and networks etc combined.
But we seem to watch the same few.
Dish offers more in HD than Direct offers in English.

Some of the movie channels have SAP and several language choices on Dish. Spanish, french...........

Dish also offers DishLatino pacs and most international language pacs.

As I recall the language option in the settings menu is the language of the onscreen display for commands from the remote.

I don't think it has any thing to do wi. the audio track. Find a program in english, then change the language setting to spanish and see if the language changes.

The last time i cked Direct offered about 40 channels and half were in spanish.

Sloop

For those that hack or consider hacking Dish. The courts are cracking down on piracy software. Someone on STX even got busted recently and is in jail.

"It’s another free-to-air piracy award as a Florida federal court issued a $51 million judgment against free-to-air player Robert Ward. The judgment on behalf of DISH, EchoStar and NagraStar ruled that posting of pirate software constitutes a violation of the Federal Communications Act and that statutory damages should be calculated based on how many individuals downloaded the pirate software. Both represent significant victories for the plaintiffs.

The Florida ruling comes on top of a $106 million judgment awarded to DISH, EchoStar and NagraStar in free-to-air lawsuits by the U.S. District Court of Northern California last August.•"

I guess this will help Dish pay the $400 million awarded to Tivo for patent infringement.

I suppose.

I am moving from Michigan to St. Thomas in 2 weeks. I have Dish now, but not sure about which is best in St. Thomas, for service and price, cable or dish? Just wondering...

Dancer,
You could move with the receivers and buy a dish when you get here or just cancel the Mi. account and start over. If you are moving with someone they may qualify as a "new" customer and qualify for promotions. The dish you have now is most likely too small. Only ship your receivers.

Which is best for service and price? Read the posts on this board and you should be able to make that decision. Some areas have better cable reliability than others but Innovative seems to be getting worse. So I hear.