Dish Network or DirecTV?

I realize Direc is owned or soon to be owned by MURDOCH. Been with Dish for several years. They don't have contacts for the local channels. Direc is offering the locals, two years' free warranty, and more. A few months ago somebody posted here that unions are boycotting Dish. What to do, what to do.

I don't get any local channels. If I want them, I can put up an antenna. I won't support Murdoch. Nothing is worth that.

cause they have the YES network.

I cannot in good conscience own Directtv anymore. I am much happier with Dish.

I'm curious.

For that reason, I wished we'd picked Dish.

I think they are systematically going to add local stations across the US.

good deals ,very good customer service, and local channels. plus they carry rfd tv , worldlink ,and free speach. wouldn`t you miss "charlie chat"? screw murdoch.

and the customer service would keep us on phone for hours per week on hold and jumping throught their bogus 'diagonstic' tests time after time. They would finally decide the converter box was the problem and send us a different one, which was a used one someone else had traded back due to problems! This happened 4 times!

Looked into Dish. They said they would send a tech to set it up. (Direct didn't in our area). As we ar very remote, we sorta giggled, but they insisted they would send a tech. We figured if they sent someone to set up, it would be a local contractor whom they didn't really know and had no supervision of.

Boy, what service! They sent their trained guy in their truck. We live 3 hours from anything! They called and told us when he would be there, not the standard "Oh, sometime, the day of..." and he was right on time! He set up per my prefrences and made it work correctly. He stayed a couple hours to make tests and be sure he had the best angles for the dish, showed me features, was comfortable that I really understood how to address any problems and how to use customer service to my best advantage. While he was here, the office called to make sure he arrived on time, and was doing things the way we wanted. They left numbers for me to call as a new customer for any aid in understanding the system. They called the next day to allow me to speak honestly about their service tech without his being in the room.

As far as their continuing customer service, can't say... we have never had to use it in three years! And I love the music stations we get with it. We live where the only radio reception is a counrty western station which comes in sometimes (and we have to take the radio outside, can't get it in the house!) There is a wonderful variety of music stations on Dish. I hooked the TV to my reciever and pipe the music through my stereo speakers. Wonderful to have music again here in this place at the edge of nowhere!

Oh, and Havocdad loves the online payment feature. Never had any trouble with it. We did have perpetual problems with Direct and their bookkeeping. Dish still calls about twice a year to see that we are doing OK with the service. No sales pitches, just followup.

Direct didn't offer Amimal channel and Dish does. Havocdad saw why I loved that channel the first night we had Dish.

You can now have 2 TV's that share one receiver. Both can be on different channels, and both TV's have the on-screen guide, but only one has the receiver attached. The other just plugs into the cable outlet in the wall.

So if you have 2 TV's, you only have to pay for ONE receiver now. And they told me that if you keep that receiver pluged into a phone line, they waive the $4.99/mo. receiver fee.

:)

go Dish.. PM me if you are interested :) I only have 2

They are each for $50.00 off Dish Promotions and/or instatllation cost.. (sometimes it's free)

I found the best deal for us was

http://www.vmcsatellite.com/channels/about.cfm
1-877-998-DISH


They hooked it up in less than 3 days, and we love it.. we got the 4 tv pkg with the PVR (waaay better than vcr) it's got 100 hours of recording time.

However, I only use it now for the NFL package and no other service

until we learned Murdoch was buying. If we have problems as a result, we'll switch.

One of the big selling points was local channels -- how else to get local news & weather? (Mrs. V.'s a news junkie -- devours the Washington Post daily and watches the local NBC affiliate's 6 PM broadcast.)

Now Dish has iTV or something. Letting you get weather, movie listings, news stories, etc of the satellite through the menu. Very convineint when wanting to know the weather (5 day forecast) in seconds.

Also you can buy local channels for $5 in my area. They also offer local channels in other bigger cities to everyone I thought.

...and by far, Dish kicks the ass out of DirecTV.