All right. Mom is finally taking the HD plunge. She's had an HDTV for years now, but has never had an HD source. Her TV is capable of 480i, 480p, and 1080i. This is an older Sony Wega CRT, if that matters. Its a nice TV despite its older tech. She now wants HD and wants to know which service to use. Here's what I hear/know/think I know about each one: Dish: --I still hear people talk about weather interfering with Dish. True? --I also hear that you get more HD channels with Dish. True? --I heard something about additional programming fees. I have no idea what this is, what this does, or what this is about. Any info? --Seems that I heard something about no FSN, thus no Rockets games. True? Not that she watches the Rockets anyway, but I'd hate to schedule visits with mom around whether or not I can have the game on. True? Comcast: --Everyone hates them. --You don't get as many true-HD channels. True? AT&T Uverse: --I hear with you can only watch and record one thing at a time or something like that. Other than that, I don't know squat about them. Any info? She also wants DVR capabilities, which I think comes with each service listed above. She also doesn't care about ANY sports packages or anything like that. Now, I'm proud of my mother for going against her Luddite tendencies, but I don't know what direction to guide her in here. She already has expanded basic Comcast service and DSL from AT&T/Yahoo. I don't think she cares about DSL vs. cable because she isn't online that much anyway. I mention the DSL because she wants as few individual bills as possible, which gets her thinking about Dish or AT&T or whatever it is, but she already has Comcast anyway, which just seems easier on the whole to me. So. Can anyone of you fine folk offer a definitive answer as to which is the superior service/pros and cons of each? Thanks, y'all.
I have Comcast and don't hate it. The HD looks good to me, but I really don't have anything to compare it to so I'm not sure what I might be missing.
my cable and high speed is on one bill (comcast) I went from sat to cable just because of the weather dropouts, it kept happening during Rockets games, adn that simply would not do. I have had minimal problems with my cable service, and if I factor in the lack of interest in which sports packages and she probably isnt gonna be terribly picky over how many hd channels she gets since alot of the ones Dish/Direct use to show they have more are ppv and premiums...so dont forget to factor that in to the comparisons. Now...Comcast should be adding a few more soon since Dicovery just got all their HD versions online, and comcast doesnt have those yet, while dish does.
Do you ever get audio issues? Think streaming video on a dialup modem. My Nat Geo HD channel is a chronic sufferer. Every now and then mine will act weird like that, especially if I'm watching a show as it's being dvr'd.
Thanks for the input so far. Does Camcast/Dish/Uverse give you an all-in-one box that includes the DVR?
Comcast has an HD-DVR box that allows the following options: watch 1 channel (live or recorded) watch 1 channel (live or recorded) and record 1 channel watch 1 recorded and record 2 other channels
Comcast compresses some of their HD channels. TNT looked bad a few times so far this playoffs. ESPN always looks clear. If UVerse was available where I live (inside the loop!!!) I would at least try it.
From what I have read if you have more than 2 tv's in your house, you will start paying additional fees for each extra receiver you need for your Dish service. With regular Comcast cable, you can hook up as many tv's as you want for the same price. I don't know about HD programming though.
Cable is lame. You might as well start going into AOL chat rooms while you're at it. The truth is, you're gonna find people that are convinced whatever service they have is the best. I had cable for years and swore I'd never switch to sattelite because I'd heard so many horror stories about the weather dropouts. Well after finally getting sick of piece of crap cable, 8 years ago I switched to DirecTV.....and to this day I still have them. Weather interrupts my signal on average maybe twice a year, and it's never lasted more than a few minutes. More HD+Better Customer Service+100% digital. I will never go back to cable. And yes I get all of the Rockets games.
I switched to Dish from Comcast about six months ago. Overall, very happy. To answer your questions: 1-Very rarely. Only once did we lose all channels. Sometimes I'll lose a HD feed and have to switch to SD. Also, something that no one ever talks about is that if the lines in your house, to your house, or on the pole are bad, your picture is going to suck with cable. And I had several outages with cable over the years because they would switch my lines around when installing someone else. AND their feeds come from a big satellite dish too! 2-So far, there are more HD channels. 3-Not that I've seen, and I'm pretty particular about my bills. 4-Hell yes there's FSN. I wouldn't have gotten Dish if I couldn't get Rockets/Astros games. Also, I have a two room, two tuner HD DVR. I'll be honest, the DVR is inferior to Comcast's. You can't hit record and record from the beginning of the program if you're 30 minutes in, even if you can rewind to the beginning of it. This could be fixed with a firmware patch, IMO. Maybe it's patented. -shrug- Also, if you have a program scheduled to record, you have to watch it on the tuner that it's recording on. But I've learned to work with these issues. I think the picture is better, although your mom won't be able to see the difference if she's never had any HD. Another thing- Dish has a contract. This means that once you're signed up, the freebies stop. For example- I wanted another tuner for additional rooms. They want to charge me, even though I could have gotten the extra tuner right off the bat for free. So get your goodies at the beginning. The remote is superior, though. It's radio, so you don't need line of sight. In fact, since the tuners are two-room, the remotes have to be wireless. The customer service is vastly superior to Comcast. Everyone is nice and helpful. I still have Comcast for internet. I really don't see why it's such a big deal to get two bills. Who cares? Everything is electronic these days anyway. Overall, I'm glad I got Dish over cable. And the cost is about the same in the end (get the 250 lineup). But if I had access to UVerse, I'd probably try that out. Fiber is just too sexy to pass up.
I highly recommend u-Verse. It is not "cable" and it is not "dish", it's DSL and fiber-optic cable to the curve (it comes in through the phone line). I don't pay for extra high definition equipment, get a DVR at no additional charge, and get 3 rooms watching different feeds (only 1 at HD, thought). You can try their 30-day ALL-INCLUSIVE and see how you like it. The image is pristine and their website allows you to manage your payments, etc. I sound like broken *scratch* broken *scratch* broken *scratch* record.
