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Hi everyone! I'm disabled and living on a small fixed income. I live with someone who has a similar income. We have been using Cox Limited Basic service "for the reception," although we have gotten a couple of extra channels from it - particularly TBS. We got used to relaxing with some sitcom reruns or movies on the weekends from that station, but Saturday we turned on the TV and it was gone. Cox took it away. We already were part of a great majority of people that felt like Cox gives you pretty close to "nothing" for what you pay for basic service, and now we're downright offended.
We rent a place and have no intentions of moving, but yet, it's one of the reasons we're shy about making a commitment to a 2-year satellite TV contract. Still, we're looking into it. I am under the impression that the least expensive Dish package is less than the least expensive Direct TV package. I know that you get more for your money with a higher package, but that doesn't matter to us as the least expensive satellite TV package will still give us tons more stations than we got with Cox Limited Basic. We would be hooking it up in three rooms. I am under the impression that it will cost under $30 a month for the first year, and under $50 a month for the second year. The ads make it seem like it's pretty all-inclusive, though I have seen mention of a one-time processing fee. I was trying to research, but I eventually got overwhelmed by the lack of detailed straightforward information, the plethora of "authorized retailers.... So I started looking for comments from people online, and couldn't find much of that either.
I would like comments from people who have had good experiences with whichever one is ultimately cheaper, for their least expensive tier -- Dish or Direct -- not including Comcast, because that's not in my neighborhood. Even if you just KNOW someone who has had a good experience. I would like comments about price, installation, reliability, customer service, and anything else that you think I might need to know.
Oh, also, there are a million "authorized retailers" out there. Who is good? Do some charge more for installation or other charges? Is it better to put the order through the main toll-free number?? If you had a good experience, who did you purchase from -- dealer-wise?
For any guidance you can provide, I thank you VERY MUCH! :-)
Location: West of the Catalinas East of the Tortolitas
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I would start out by calling each satellite company at their 800 number, telling them what you want, what your budget is, and let them tell you what they can offer. There will be a low, introductory price which will increase in a certain amount of time. They will arrange installation, but before they come out, you need to have permission from your landlord for a dish; also know which way they need their receiving dish to face (Directv is SE) and there can't be anything in between the dish and the satellite it's receiving from (mountains, buildings, trees, etc.), or else they won't be able to install your system. So get their information about placement of the dish and whether you can have one on your railing, or if you need to have a special platform built (ours couldn't hang over our balcony railing, so we needed to build a special cinder block table for the installer to set it in to that was windproof, stormproof, etc. It took a lot of doing, but this is something you need to know before you commit to one dish or the other.
Just get all the facts, ask all the questions and then using their numbers decide which one, if any, will work for you.
A long time ago, I called about satellite TV and got pressured, but this time I called and it was fine. Not so overwhelmed now. Found out I do need a written approval from the landlord, though. So will have to do that first. Thanks so much for your response!
Having just switched from cable to a satellite dish, I understand that what you're trying to do is hard, especially when you're on a budget. I can't speak to either the lowest or highest levels of service. I had what Comcast called "Expanded Basic Cable," which is their second tier. In it, you get all the cable news channels, the free movie channels (AMC, etc.), USA, TNT, etc. You do NOT get HBO, Showtime, etc., and the service is NOT in high definition. I was looking for a similar package.
The reason I was looking was because I found the Comcast service where I live in NW Tucson to be very unreliable. The picture pixilated constantly and sometimes the screen went completely blank, sometimes for as long as an hour. Comcast sent a tech to our house to check our connections and the situation still didn't improve. So when our Comcast contract was up, we decided to switch to satellite, even though I was wary of satellite because I heard that it was effected by high winds, something we have A LOT.
My fears about the high winds were unfounded. We had DirecTV installed in December and we are very happy with it from a technical standpoint. The service is MUCH improved. DirecTV's version of Expanded Basic has many more channels than we got on Comcast. I chose DirecTV over Dish because of the channel selection. I accessed both channel lists online and found that a couple of the channels I watched most often were only in Dish's most expensive package, but were available in DirecTV's cheaper tier.
We also got a recorder with our set-up and that is what has improved our viewing the most. We record almost everything we watch now (except for news and sports that we watch in real time). The recorder allows us to watch things when we want to watch them AND to skip the commercials. That's a big life improvement. The two of us are on very different time schedules and the recorder allows us to watch shows when each of us would prefer to view them, not on the TV's time table.
I notice you said you would want the satellite hook-up in three rooms? Do you have that now with your Cox cable? Because that's where the money starts to pile up. Comcast charged by the room, so we only had connections in the living room and bedroom. We could have saved more with only one connection. The same is true of satellite. The more rooms, the higher the cost. DirecTV says they connect three rooms for one price, but you have to pay separately for the recorder boxes. We opted to get the recorder only in the living room to save money, so we can only watch the recorded shows in that room. The bedroom set is hooked up to the dish, but you can only watch shows on that TV in real time. So essentially, we're paying for three things monthly: 2 connections and one recorder.
While I am very happy with DirecTV from a technical standpoint, I find their billing service to be inadequate. We signed up during a time when they had special pricing, free Showtime for a limited time, and a $100 gift card after your service was connected. As I said, we connected in December. We didn't get our gift card until June, and that was after three separate phone calls to complain. The free Showtime did appear as advertised, but it's up to the viewer to make a call to cancel it after the free period, otherwise it's yours to keep and you're paying for it. We rarely watched it, so we disconnected, but you have to be careful to do that. We were also billed incorrectly for the first months of our service. We got NO rebates and were forced to pay full price at first. DirecTV DID make it right by extended our rebate price to later months in our service, but again it took multiple calls to them to correct their mistake.
They have all kinds of hoops you have to jump through to get their special pricing, but even when you do it, they make it impossible to complete correctly. I had forms I had to complete online on a certain day to get my rebate, but when I went online to do it, their website was "down." So, of course, I was unable to do what they told me to do, hence the delay in getting it until June. I eventually got everything I was promised, but it was a time-consuming, infuriating job. I believe they do this on purpose because many people will give up and then they don't have to honor their commitments. This seems to be a typical behavior in business these days, which you'll know if you've tried to redeem an appliance rebate, for instance.
In the end, the financial cost to me for my expanded basic dish service is about the same as my cable bill was, but the service is better and I get MUCH more for my money. I had to work hard for it, though!
Thank you for taking the time to respond in the way that you did! We were going to get Dish to save money. Then we were thinking of getting Direct TV, because, not only does it have a better channel selection (which we were willing to forgo to save money), but there's already a Direct TV satellite dish on the roof (we think someone my have just left it there). We were given permission by the property management company to have Dish, but not connect it to the building. Then, when they heard about the dish that's already on the building, they said that it would be OK to use it, so we were going to check on the status of that dish with Direct TV. Along the way, we've still talked about how we don't want to mess with a satellite TV company and a two year contract. But it galls me to consider paying more for cable, after they took a station away. -- That's just what they'd like us to do! So we haven't decided yet, but your response was terrific and touched upon much that I have suspected and expected. The part about their customer service and honoring their commitments was definitely appalling and discouraging, but not surprising.
We will keep mulling it over a bit.
Thanks so much. I really appreciate your thoughtful response and all the time it took!
Why not use the FREE cable on the internet? That is what I do. I thought nearly $60 was way too much to pay when I found myself mostly watching HGTV re-runs so I cancelled my expanded basic cable. Now I can watch live HGTV plus dozens of other channels on www.tvpc.com. I also use www.channelsurfing.net especially during March Madness to watch college basketball. There is hulu.com and others and it is FREE! Occasionally a channel that you might want to watch will be down or smething but there are always others up and running.
Why not use the FREE cable on the internet? That is what I do.
That a great idea, depending on one's viewing habits. But in my house we have a news junkie, a sports junkie, and a granny who watches practically every talk show on TV. The set in our greatroom is on almost 24/7. I'd have to have a computer dedicated just to running the TV and I would have to be the one to run usage tutorials for Grandma (which judging by how many times she crashes just surfing the net, may or may not be successful). To me, my ~$80/month is the bargain of all my utility bills.
Also, I applaud you for taking advantage of free TV as long as you can, but I find it hard to believe it's going to be as widely available forever as it is now. I understand HULU's already getting ready to switch some offerings to a pay system. Telecommunication companies make it their business to get all the cash they can out of everyone. My hat's off to pirates everywhere, but I don't have the time or patience.
That a great idea, depending on one's viewing habits. But in my house we have a news junkie, a sports junkie, and a granny who watches practically every talk show on TV. The set in our greatroom is on almost 24/7. I'd have to have a computer dedicated just to running the TV and I would have to be the one to run usage tutorials for Grandma (which judging by how many times she crashes just surfing the net, may or may not be successful). To me, my ~$80/month is the bargain of all my utility bills.
Also, I applaud you for taking advantage of free TV as long as you can, but I find it hard to believe it's going to be as widely available forever as it is now. I understand HULU's already getting ready to switch some offerings to a pay system. Telecommunication companies make it their business to get all the cash they can out of everyone. My hat's off to pirates everywhere, but I don't have the time or patience.
I really like TVPC.com and channelsurfing.net. I've been using them both for over a year. The good thing about channelsurfing.net is you can watch out of area sports that you might never be able to watch even with the most expensive cable sports packages. For example they show the more obscure team games (Atlantic 10) that are generally only shown locally. If you live across the country, even the most expensive cable stations probably wouldn't even carry them.
The reception isn't always gorgeous but for the price, one can't complain.
It's a good idea, but I just don't enjoy staring at my computer screen (laptop) to watch television. Someday we may be able to feed our internet television shows into our regular TV screen, given enough extra adaptive hardware, but not now.
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Thanks!
