DirecTV or Dish Network

[AndySTL]

We are moving to a new house (yay!) next Friday and unfortunately I cannot keep AT&T Uverse service since it's not available at my new address. This really bums me out as I have had Uverse since 2008 and I've been quite fond of it. So I must choose a new provider. My other local non-satellite option is Charter, but their technology is way behind DirectTV and Dish with no option for whole home DVR. So I am basically stuck with DirecTV or Dish. I'm having a hell of a time deciding. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

 

[CMonster]

I really like the Hopper from Dish, no issues at all, other than weather and well, you're gonna be dealing with that either way. Our bill is $103 for America's Top 200 channel package, 1 Hopper, 3 Joeys, and HD Free For Life (can't remember how much that cost us up front but it's normally $10/month). I guess the one thing I find annoying is that you have to set your favorite channel lists on each Hopper/Joey; you can't set it on one and then copy to the others.

 

[AndySTL]

Yeah, I've read alot of good reviews on the Hopper. Are those Joey boxes wireless? I would like that flexibility as we may change the configuration of the rooms after we get settled in the new place. I know the DirecTV Genie has a wireless option.

Previously I was not interested in Dish because my brother in law has it and I've always thought the user interface was about the worst I've ever seen. However, his set top box was pretty old and I think the Hopper has an updated GUI.

 

[Towen7]

I work for the company that provides Uverse and has announced their plan to buy DirecTV.

Sooooooo .... Understand that my thoughts on this may be clouded by those facts. The only thing that Dish does better than DirecTV is the Hopper and the built-in ability to stream content over the interwebs through Sling. Those may be killer features for some but for me, I much prefer DirecTV's interface, menus, support, and access to the Sunday Ticket for NFL games.

That said I don't think you can go wrong.

 

[Huey]

We switched from DirecTV to Dish earlier in the year, not my choice, and have regretted it ever since. Dish does have a bigger hard drive, but the gui doesn't come close to DirecTV. They are slightly cheaper than DirecTV, but I would gladly pay extra. It's been a while since I've had cable, but I'm sure they both blow away cable, and like Towen stated, you can't go wrong with either one of them. But my vote would be for DirecTV.

 

[CMonster]

Yeah, I've read alot of good reviews on the Hopper. Are those Joey boxes wireless? I would like that flexibility as we may change the configuration of the rooms after we get settled in the new place. I know the DirecTV Genie has a wireless option.

It looks like they now have a wireless Joey. Although it doesn't official support it, I have one of my Joeys connected via ethernet cable instead of coax because the latter introduced a ground loop hum. Given that, it shouldn't be too hard to connect a Joey to a wireless bridge...

 

[Batman]

You're going to get votes for both for sure. IMO it comes down to how important is Football and the Sunday Ticket package? Of course that's a DirecTv exclusive. You're most likely going to pay a little more for DirecTv for similar/comparable channel packages. Since the whole home DVR has really taken off, I haven't seen or used the Genie, but have been VERY happy with the Hopper and Joeys from Dish. I think adding the ~$4/mo insurance against equipment failure is a wise choice for either provider. (Yes it sux to pay extra to protect equipment you're basically leasing) The DVRs (for either company) can fail at any moment and it's nice to have that piece of mind since they're expensive to replace entirely out-of-pocket. Although, I've had 2 Hoppers in my home for nearly two years without a hint of an issue, which that alone is a huge improvement over their older DVRs. The newer Hoppers are "sling loaded" meaning you don't need any outboard attachments to stream to a mobile device as long as the Hopper is wired into your network. Having just queued up a demo video on YouTube, the user menu and guide on DirecTv has come a long way and has been cleaned up a lot. Dish's guide hasn't changed much since I've been a customer, the graphics have been sharpened to a more crisp, HD like appearance but the layout is the same. The settings and DVR menus have changed and have an app-like appearance and the learning curve is small. I think the two companies are on par with each other in this regard and it really comes down to personal preference similar to preferring Onkyo's menu system over Marantz. With Dish, if you watch a lot of nightly network tv, the Primetime Anytime feature is nice to turn on as it gives you access to EVERY show between 8-11 on ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX for upto 8 days. Also 24 hrs after airing, you can activate autohop on these recordings to automatically skip commercials.

My opinion is that if Sunday Ticket isn't a factor, then the features/performance/operation of both whole-home technologies is so close that I'd go with Dish based on the larger DVR hard drive, and lower monthly bill.

 

[Akula]

We have DirecTV. I like it.

Our setup is for 4 TVs. One has the Genie (5 tuner DVR with a 1TB HD), one has a Genie client, and the other two have regular non-DVR boxes.

With whole home DVR, we can watch anything off the DVR on all the sets. The Genie client is kind of a mixed bag to me... it uses one of the 5 tuners on the DVR (so if you have a whole house outfitted with those clients you may run low on available tuners for recording shows if you use them all at once), but that also means it has the real time DVR rewind/pause/fast forward features that you'd have if you watched TV on the DVR-connected TV (which you can't do with the regular HD boxes). I have noticed that the Genie client box is less responsive than all the others; it's more finicky when it comes to recognizing button presses or when changing channels. I do not know if this is a result of having the DVR box do all its heavy lifting or what- they have improved it with firmware but it can still be temperamental at times. Maybe new ones are better than ours.

Anyway, I've long been a fan of DirecTV's interfaces... while I could save $ by using Charter for TV, I do not like the lack of whole home DVR (they used to have it but dumped the feature) and the antiquated interfaces (they still list their HD channels separately from the SD ones... really, guys? It IS 2014, you know...). If they'd update their hardware I'd look at switching over to them, but until they do, nope.

 

[AndySTL]

Yeah, it's seems like there is no clear cut winner unfortunately.

I'm pissed that I can't keep Uverse. I think their whole home DVR system works very well.

 

[Huey]

Batman, I've never used the primetime anytime feature, but reading up on it, I thought all programs were available after 1 A.M. the night of their showing to use the commercial skip feature? Have they changed this or was what I read wrong?

 

[Batman]

That may be correct, if so, even better.

 

[AndySTL]

I placed a call to AT&T to see if they would be adding service to my new street any time soon. They didn't have a service available date but they opened a case request indicating that I would like service at the new address. So maybe I'll get lucky.

 

[heeman]

We have had DirecTV for 6 years now and love it, never had Dish, but hated cable!!

:twocents-mytwocents:

 

[scubabob]

We have had DirecTV for 6 years now and love it, never had Dish, but hated cable!!

:twocents-mytwocents:

Pretty much the same here, but have had DirecTV since the 1999-2000 time frame. DirecTV partnered with TIVO was the best. The current DVR has a decent interface, but still lacks the thumbs-up/down and fine tuner swapping control that the TIVO box had.

 

[Botch]

I'm paying $46/mo for Dish (first year), Hopper, no Joeys, and no bundling. I'm fine with the interface but never had DirecTV. Comcast had a website where I could set my favorites, then click on the channel on my laptop to change the channel, Dish doesn't have that. However, this is my first DVR and I'm loving that! :handgestures-thumbup:

 

[jomari]

when we moved into our apartment complex years ago, it came with free directv with us only paying 6 bucks a month for the box. i dont know how but hey, i dont ask when the apartments got that for us.

anyways, we moved, we got directv transferred over, and love it. its the best (again, this is based on limited personal experience) service we've had for a while.

we currently are using uverse, nothing bad against it, its just not as cost effective as directv. we couldnt have a dish outside.

we might have lighter needs than you do tho, all i want is my local news, a couple of channels, not much if any, sports.

the most inexpensive but well worth it service imo, aside from going antenna based. (which we canat do here anyways)

 

[Yesfan70]

I placed a call to AT&T to see if they would be adding service to my new street any time soon. They didn't have a service available date but they opened a case request indicating that I would like service at the new address. So maybe I'll get lucky.

Good luck with that. I've done the same thing for the last five years. I would turn in a request about once a year. My city has it everywhere except for the neighborhood I live in. Hopefully your luck is better.

 

[Akula]

I placed a call to AT&T to see if they would be adding service to my new street any time soon. They didn't have a service available date but they opened a case request indicating that I would like service at the new address. So maybe I'll get lucky.

Good luck with that. I've done the same thing for the last five years. I would turn in a request about once a year. My city has it everywhere except for the neighborhood I live in. Hopefully your luck is better.

Every 8-12 months we have AT&T coming through our neighborhood trying to convince us to sign up with Uverse/DigitalLife/whatever they call it all now, saying they've put in new fiber. Funny, I've never once seen anything actually being installed... the line down our street is spliced to hell and gone and last time we were with AT&T nothing worked right- lots of noise on the POTS phone, switched that to UVerse VOIP and it was unreliable and the DSL wouldn't stay connected. They never would give any attention to anything outside the house. I've told them that until I see somebody physically putting fiber up to my house I don't really care what they have available.

But every year or so, they're back trying to convince me they've magically upgraded things and everything will be wonderful. When I tell them I pull down over 100Mb (125Mb or so, now) speed tests on Charter the sales reps try to tell me I'm not really getting that. I laugh in their faces.

 

[AndySTL]

Well the house that back up directly to our new house has Uverse service available, so I really don't quite understand how they can't bring it to my house. There may be a valid reason, but hopefully they will look at it again and figure out a way.

I guess mileage may vary but we've had flawless performance from Uverse for the past 6+ years.

 

[jomari]

Well the house that back up directly to our new house has Uverse service available, so I really don't quite understand how they can't bring it to my house. There may be a valid reason, but hopefully they will look at it again and figure out a way.

I guess mileage may vary but we've had flawless performance from Uverse for the past 6+ years.

i dont mind it either, its just a tad, tad expensive for me. once you start off with 6 bucks a month, its difficult to go up to about 200 a month (until i renewed recently and locked it in for 2 years at 100/month)...

when we used directv in the house it was around 60 i think, three boxes, so it aint that bad.