Who is your TV program provider?
 

Mine is Directv of course.

DirecTV.

I used to have Dish Network, and it sucked.

Is a poll coming?

We don't need no stinking polls. What didn't you like about Dish Notwork?

No NFL Network. No Sunday Ticket. Not as many movie channels.

DTV seems to have alot more non-package sports stuff, too. I can watch most of the Rangers games down here on one of the FOXSW affiliates usually.

DirecTv but of course you already knew that.

You own 10% of the company don't you?

Mediacom. Cable and internet are included in my rent. I'm looking to move, though. I priced how much it would cost to pay for what I've got now. $46.95/month for the Family Cable (same as I've got now, all extended channels minus movie channels) with a $25 installation fee (since the hookups are already there). The internet would be around $45/month (and that's with a $10 discount for having the Family Cable as well). Geez!!! Any cheaper alternatives? I know I want the cable internet. I could get Basic Cable for $9.95/month, but then I'd have nothing to watch except local programming.

I must admit they take good care of me just not quite that good.

Speaking of which a couple of buddies are on their way with the pizza and it's almost time for kick-off.Time to go enjoy my DTV.

I have Dish. They now have NFL Network and the ESPN College Channel.
Still no Sunday Ticket.

Comcast. It blows.

Sunflower Broadband. Pretty affordable, reasonably decent customer service and short hold times. They seem to have a hard time keeping some of their channels at 100% up time. I wouldn't mind so much, if the down times didn't always happen during sporting events.

Either way, I'm looking at nearly $50/month for my cable internet. How much is DTV vs. Dish vs. cable?

Commiecast at home.

We bought a 46" big-screen TV for work yesterday. We'll be ordering DirectTV for that, and I'll dig deep into my pockets to get the Sunday Ticket package.

Why do you need that at work? Does this mean youll be spending Sundays at the office?

We do focus groups, and we pipe the camera feed into another room so clients can watch it live.

And yes, I'll definitely be at the office on Sundays from now on.

comcast.....

Very nice. I am sure the wife loves that.

had SBC dish and All the SBC services

Now have Time Warner and Road Runner.

I like it better

And its about $50 Cheeper for me

Well, she's the one who said we should get out of the house more.

Have an extra receiver (or two) installed at the office. They only cost $5 each per month. Then take them home, put up a dish, and voila!, you have Directv at both places.

Isn't that illegal?

Yes, it's highway gawk with intent to mope.

dsl through the phone company is pretty much the same thing if you're just surfing the net and reading cp...

i've had it for 2 years, but i didn't like having to make a commitment for a period of time...

so when my 2 years were up and i had started to download a lot of music (i didn't really mean that, record co. executives, really), i went to cable...

no noticeable difference, for browsing cp and the net...

In Springfield, I have Mediacom. Only reason is bc the apartment complex, satelitte is a pain in the butt. SBC for the internet, its cheaper than Mediacom.

Back home, we have Directv. Its the best for tv by far. Some of my family have Dish, but it blows.

comcast

Apartments are a bit tougher than houses but most of the time we can do it. We put them on chain link fence posts or in a 5 gallon bucket of concrete. Call a local dealer, they'll come look at it for free.

Mediacom.

Cox cable and SBC DSL.

Time Warner

Okay, so I'd have to get a home phone, too. How much is basic phone service plus DSL? I was trying not to get a phone put in since I use my cell for everything. One less bill, the better. If it's cheaper for a phone line plus DSL than it is for cable, I might consider it though. And which is cheaper, cable TV or satellite? I'll be moving into another apartment.

Have your dad add a receiver to his account. Then take it to your place. It'll only cost him $5 per month.

What good is a receiver w/o a dish? I don't have a dish at my apartment, nor would I at my new apartment. That, and I'm not doing anything that might be considered illegal. Dad wouldn't either.

Duh.........yep, you'll need a dish. Illegal? You mean like unlawfully moving receivers from one house to another ? I don't know of any law like that. I think you can also move vcr's from one house to another. Maybe TV's too.

That's why you're the expert on this, and I'm not. :) Sounded like stealing cable or something to me.

Anyway, how much is a dish? And how much to have it installed?

Skip is right on this. We have a second home and we did that with our DirectTV.

What he said. Worst at customer service EVER. Even worse that the DMV, as unbelievable as that might sound.

COMCAAAAST. I love it too :) Sorry Skiippy, but the ONDEMAND does it for me.

You're a girl, what do you know? Does Comcrap bring you the Sunday Ticket so you can watch your Chiefs? And you said you live in a small town. I'll bet your picture is crap compared to Directv. It is in most small towns.

Direct TV is my primary provider. I also have Bresnan cable so I have local stations and local weather station.

Nice thing is I got Bresnan Cable for my internet access, and get my cable TV for free for the next 6 months. After the 6 months expires I'll probably drop the local cable, even though it's only $16 month for the basic service that gives me my local channels.

UGH!

Most dsl providers will let you get it for a few dollars more per month without wasting money on a phone line.

In the last two cities I have lived the cable and dsl providers offered pretty good specials. If you have one of the major ones in your city you could probably find deals on the internet for around $20-25 per month for internet.

Nope.. but my dads house is all of one mile away and he has s.t. and picks up the bill.

Okay dad, I hope you see this. Wanna pick up one of my bills? I'll give ya rent. ROFL

ps. I know that's not what she meant. I'm twisting the meaning to my benefit. :p

Yeah thats what i have as well. Ondemand is really nice. Great for watching HBO shows and has a decent selection of free movies.

This site may have something:

http://www.btcpl.net/

You mean there is actually another choice besides DirecTv?

News to me!

DT

Like I said, you're a girl. Daddy's girl.

If I watched the games with anyone else in my area chances are they would be a faider or 9er fan... But good ole' pops brought me up on KC so it's always fun to catch the games with him.

DirecTV
RoadRunner
Vonage

Ask your dad if he has two dishes, one for regular channels and one for the locals. IIRC that is the case where you live. If so, I can come up with one dish and maybe two. I think your dad can do the install since he's familiar with Directv. This would be by far your cheapest route to go.

Cox. I wish they'd hurry up and get ONDemand, though.

When DirecTV starts giving away the HDTV+TIVO Receiviers like Cox does, I might switch.

Cox knows what its equipment is worth.

Direct TV and Comcast.

Dish Network with KC stations for the Chiefs games, get some other games on the LA and NY stations. If my receiver with UHF remote ever explodes I might switch.

I had Dish and Comcast together. That was several years ago when I could still get the KC local channels thru Dish. Then ther FCC stepped in after lawmakers put there braintrust together and thought that it was an unfair advantage to local advertising . ( Stupidest things I have ever heard of,Like I'm going to drive to KC to save money on a purchase ).

So I had to switch to Direct TV.

What was costing me about $ 840.00 per year to watch the Chiefs, Royals, Jayhawks now cost me about $ 1400.00 per year, and this is minus the Royals part. Pay more, get less.

Of course I remember you saying at one point the reason that DTV used Tivo is that it was the best out there by far, but then after they dropped their deal with them you told us it was a good thing because they had shitty reliabilty. So who knows...

Mediacom Cable.

So what's the problem? It can be the best out there and still have shitty reliability. Ask Herzig about them. I know he smoked a couple of them.

Best interface and crappy hardware then?

I guess I'll look more closely at DTV when they bring down their HD stuff to be the same as the rest of their stuff, becuase right now with 3 TV's I would pay more using DTV then I do for Comcast, but I don't pay for digital cable because the extra cost and having to actually use a PoS box on my TV's pisses me off.

Time Warner, but if I had a choice, I'd tell them f***ers to hit the road. I had an issue recently with my High Definition that took them a month and a half to fix. I was getting about three of the twleve channels and the rest were either badly pixelated or didn't work at all. Problem was, I had to keep calling them to find out when the f*** they were going to take care of the problem. Every time, I had to explain again what the problem was to yet another customer service rep. I bet I made over two dozen phone that time. Every time, of course, I had to wait on hold forever. I demanded to have a single point of contact until they resolved the problem, but actually speaking to someone in charge there is like pulling teeth. I finally did get a hold of the supervisor in charge of the contractors and within three days they fixed the problem (it was water in a trap, whatever a trap is). It pisses me off to no end that a huge corporation like that, knowing that there are no alternatives for the consumer, can dick a person around like that. The worst customer service experience I've ever encountered.

I considered switching to satellite, but an HD receiver with Tivo was going cost me $500 plus I had to install an OTA antenna to get the local channels in HD. I'm glad that ordeal is finally over, and all my HD channels are working.

I wish I'd known this was going on so I could have laughed at you. hehe A trap is a device that either enables you to get subscription channels or prevents you from getting them. I watched the Iggles game at a sports bar that had the game in high definition. It's picture was no better than my SD picture. I have mine hooked up with the "S" video cable and AV cables rather than coax. Makes a hell of a difference.

Huh, I can sure see the difference on mine. But then again, I'm not a senile old man with failing vision.

Maybe we should laugh at you. :D

Seriously, when you say the S-video cable makes that much difference over coax, think about the difference between RGB (component) cables and S-video.

The difference between HD and normal TV, especially for sporting events, is STRIKING. Your setup is preventing you from seeing it.

I wouldn't pay $10 for HD and yes it could be my 60 year old eyes. But I've had customers express disappointment with HD also so maybe not.

Mediacom. They keep me in the tv and pron.

Never in a million years could I imagine that a large group of people wouldn't all feel the same way about one thing.

High speed been treating you well?

Time Warner.

Never had any issues, except that my digital cable pixellates sometimes, when there are CG intensive/flashy or very dark scenes.

It's makes me go...hmm, that was pixellated. And then I forget about it.

Something shiny or bright show up?

Ooh.

Where?

DirecTV does the same thing.

They all do the same thing sometime or another

its the MPEG 2 ENCODING that causes it the Compression of the Video Causes artifacts (Pixilating) to appear

Just the way it is

Yes, thank you.

I was trying to IMPLY that artifacts were indigenous to digital TV, not just Time Warner cable, without actually explaining codecs.

:thumb:

As I've stated before, I don't know much about Tivos. But i'm told that Tivo has the best features of the available equipment. Also, I know Herzig has blown some of them up. And, from reading D* message boards I see they have had some reliability issues. Directv is now making their own unit so Tivo will probably sell out or sink.

Yes, I get pixelation on my digital and HD channels too. But the problem I was having until recently wasn't just random artifacts. It was some seriously bad pixelation. Totally unwatchable.

Would the sound skip out too when it got pixellated?

Yes, badly.

I don't now much about it but I do pick up stuff on message boards. I've read that "digital cable" is actually compressed analog as opposed to digital. i wonder if this could be part of he pixillation problem?

How did they fix it? Re-run the lines?

I know. I dabble in TV work. File compression is not my friend.

I don't care about the pixellation all that much anyway. It's not a show-killer. I consider it a fair trade-off for the joys of DVR. I don't know how I watched TV before DVR.