Who has Dish Network?

[mcneguy]

And why?

I have Time Warner now and thinking of making a switch.

[jkane]

I've had DiSH since 1996.  And that's why I still have it!  It's an investment.  I dropped cable when they sucked.  Cable may be a little better now than it was, but it's too late in my mind.  They should have stepped up to the plate 9 years ago.  I see no reason why they won't just go back to their old ways if I were to convert back to them.  Who has time to sit at home waiting on a technician to show up.  Outages on DiSH are minutes instead of days.  The audio has been much better on DiSH than cable shows.

As for HD, I live without it until the cost goes down and just take the OTA stuff that's here instead.  I watch a lot of DVD's, so my HT gets it's value from good sound tracks and a picture that is bigger at my seating distance than a movie theater.

The only thing cable has is a HD recorder at a reasonable "rental" price.  There is nothing else they have that entices me at all.

[RS922]

I have Dish Network and subscribe to their Superstation only package.  It runs me about $11.50/month for KTLA, WSBK, WOR, KWGN and WPIX.  I have TW with the 8300 HD DVR for the cable networks and premium channels.

Having been an early adopter of Dish, I went to Columbia Audio Video in Highland Park, Ill. in 1996 to buy my first system, as there were no dealers selling Dish Network in Milwaukee.  Since that time, I have had 3 receivers fail.  The last one was this month, when my 501 DVR failed.   Dish swapped it when I agreed to sign up for their warranty service, so now I have a refurbished 501 and an extra $6 or so per month added to the bill.  Otherwise I would have had to buy a new receiver.  No free equipment once you are a subscriber.

I have had several converters from TW fail during the same time, but that is included in the monthly service.  I have had to move my dish once due to trees growing, also once an animal chewed through the satellite cable and I had to replace that as well.  I've had no experience with Dish service, so I don't know if it is as good or worse than TW.  

As has been written in the forum many times before, both services have pluses and minuses.  I'm glad we're all free to choose, as I think we get better service from both as a result.

[Ralph Kramden]

I've had Dish for about 2 years, and I agree with everything Jeff said. Before Dish, I had Directv for 5 years, but they didn't want to keep my business bad enough when I switched to HD, so I went to Dish HD. Dish has great customer service and are cheaper than Directv. I lease an 811 HD receiver for $5 per month and the picture quality is great.

[AndrewP]

I have Dish since 2001 with 9 month Voom interruption.
Why?
Because they had more HD before Voom, and they have more HD now, after Voom demise. I liked Voom more (again, because they had more HD).
Now I have 942 HD DVR and the unit is just outstanding.
If DirecTV will have more national HD with decent PQ it will be not a problem for me to switch. Whoever gets more good HD will get my bussiness. Right now it is Dish.

[naimbeg]

Here's a good reason for Dish over TWC... Channels 1~99 are in analog and they look like poop!....
If you have a tv 32 inch or smaller, might not be a big deal.
When we switch from Dish to TWC (had the two services overlap) for a week I nearly cried seeing the picture quality of the Sc-Fi channel (channel 55 on TWC)...
It was like watching a very old VHS tape that has been watched a hunred times on a two head VCR...

Channels 1~99 are the worst I have ever seen. Even the TWC installer agreed they were poop compared to Dish...

TWC should be ashamed... And currently I feel they should not be allowed to say their channels are as good as satellite providers until they bring 1~99 into the digital spectrum.

[faulkner]

We're dish people, they've given us little reason to leave.  We had Time Warner cable for a few years in the 90's, service and signal was poor (to be nice).  We've had dish since 1996, started with a single tuner and Americas Top40, National channels package, HBO and Showtime ($50/mo) for $10/mo less than what we were paying TWC.   Upgraded to 301 tuner (better stfwr) in 2000, added a DVR 501 in 2001 (burned up 2 of these in 4 years; disk fragmentation pblms), added DVR 810 and HD 811 tuners and upgraded antenna to 4-LNBs in 2004.   The whole family loves Dish, especially the UHF remotes; 2 up stairs and two down, HD in basement.   TV's in the whole house get dish DVR signals on SD UHF38 and UHF53 and SD/HD locals via Channel Master Signal Injection box and a single RG59 cable.  We now have Top180, Superstations and HD pack w/o extra movie channels ($80/mo).  No dish locals, since we get locals via a chimney mounted antenna (Milw+Madtown).  I listen to dish music (52 chans + 65 Sirius) only at Christmas, these are a waste of bandwidth.  Telephone (helpdesk) support is std helpdesk level, but once you get to the 2nd tier the problem gets fixed.  I'm looking forward to 2006, for more HD content and MP4 compression (new hardware's coming soon).

[gparris]

Outside of my Hitachi set with its 1080p upconversion processor (which drops it back to 720p native display) it does a great job of cleaning up most of the analogue mess that is TWC channels 2-99, you folks are right on target.

My 32" Sony Wega I got several years back does not show much detail to begin with, so the basic cable input works well enough, but not for today's digital sets with line doublers, bigger screens and so on. Again, right on target.

So my friends are "stuck" with Directv since '99 and have 2 boxes, both basic ones and wanted to have Directv upgrade their boxes, at least the one attached to the 65" HD-ready Mits set they bought in '01 and got the runaround with a box that cost $299 out of pocket, new dish install, new OTA from the CSRs that they  talked (fought with) again and again, so screw that. :mad:

Since they will not try out cable, even though it has changed (somewhat, IMO) I wonder if you Dish Network folks could tell me what they could get from Dish, now, as new customers to these satellite-only friends of mine?
They do not have a lot of upfront cash for installation, etc. and the most they will probably want to buy is a optical audio cable for their HD box audio output to their A/V receiver...so what do I tell them to do?

[murdoc]

Well as you know TWC doesn't have 18-1 and 24-1 on their lineup.  TWC refuses to pay Sinclair for broadcast rights.  I have also seen that DISH is negotiating to keep 18-1 and 24-1.  I have not heard a timetable, but you may want to wait a few weeks or months until DISH and Sinclair get things sorted out.  Of course, this only applys to you IF you actually watch 18-1 and 24-1.  I personally only watch 24-1 at 5:30 for the Simpsons.  If I had DISH it wouldn't really bother me.

[StarvingForHDTV]

If I had TWC, I would pick up a cheap OTA HDTV STB and an antenna to get 18-1.  Smallville in HD and Lord of the Rings in HD + other miscellaneous stuff would make it worthwhile in my opinion.

[faulkner]

------SBC Bundle------
If you are a SBC residential customer, extra discounts may be avail
http://www.sbc.com/dishnetwork
------All Digital------
Dish Network: 1-888-732-dish (6402)
$20/3mos $32/mo Locals+HBO+Showtime+Top60, 4 tuners, DVR
http://www.dishnetwork.com/content/getdish/offer1/index.shtml
Install fee $50, $50 rebate on 1st months bill
------HD Add-on------
$0/6mos $5/mo HD Pak & $10/mo HD Voom Pak, HD tuner $5/mo
http://www.dishnetwork.com/content/programming/hdtv/index.shtml
Voom requires 2nd antenna; sat signal not at superdish locations