Could you go 1 month w/o it...suspend your service, save some money? If a bunch of people did it (it's summer, afterall), do you think DirecTv would take notice?

I'm planning to take a few months off. I'm sure they won't notice just me, but the pricing structure and programming of their packages has really been bugging me, as of late. Maybe they should take note of the possibility of $0/month from me, as opposed to the largess they command just to get minimal programming?

I could not go w/o 1 month of Dishnetwork service.
*replace Dishnetwork with DirecTV, for your thread.

I was actually planning a move to Dish, but the nearby trees just would not have none of it, for the direction the dish needs to be pointed.

Good grief man, have you gone completely mad? :D

Could you go 1 month w/o it...suspend your service, save some money? If a bunch of people did it (it's summer, afterall), do you think DirecTv would take notice?And do what?

DirecTV is no more or less predatory than other multichannel providers.

If their packages work out for you, then more power to ya.

For my uses, they don't seem too intent to "compete". It's just my opinion on the matter.

Fair enough.
For folks who don't like sports, there are better alternatives. For those who do, there aren't.
If a provider doesn't, work for you, fine. Find one that does.
It seems to me time and effort is far better spent extolling the reasons you have found a provider who meets your needs rather than posting about the shortcomings you perceive in another.
Fix the things that bother you and then let us know how much more (and why) you enjoy life.

It's all idle discussion, anyway. Discussing it or not discussing it will have no impact on if I find the "perfect" service provider (which likely does not exist, in the first place).

I could (even though I have Dish). But I'm OTA, also.

If you think you can do it, then you probably can.

If you can receive OTA reliably, you could just go with that and Netflix for the summer. Lots of people around here get by with that.

I could not do it, not even during the summer months.

I could easily do it and have been considering dropping it when my contract is up (in March '10).

Right now I have content (that I can watch on my TV) through DirecTV, Hulu (now includes ABC!), CBS.com, ESPN.com, Youtube, Netflix (Blu-Ray, DVD, streaming), the Playstation Network, the XBOX Marketplace and that's just off the top of my head.

I could go without DirecTV, but would have to be content on either watching shows on non-HD Hulu, Streaming Netflix, or waiting for the disc.

That's a point I was meaning to bring up wrt if I could do it w/o much pain. Pretty much the only thing I am relying on satellite svc is to get Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Sci-fi (but not much since BSG is over), Comedy Central, and FNC. Dish actually has a pkg that includes all of those that beats DirecTv by $20/mos (which really gets under my craw that DTv doesn't even feel compelled to respond to that competition).

I've been keeping an eye on alternatives, and it seems I could still get my doses of Discovery and Comedy Central via psn downloads. I was pleased to discover that I would also be able to keep current on Whale Wars (courtesy of Animal Planet) via iTunes. FNC is really the only thing left out, and I would certainly miss seeing all of the hot-news-chicks for a little while.

I don't want to go through all of that, but DTv is really forcing my hand here. I'm sure there are some here who may feel like they have no obligation to chase after customers, but I would contend that is a rather poor outlook for them, if it is the case.

(Whatever happened to ala carte?)

Here's the real kicker- you cannot even call them today if you wanted to change/cancel/suspend your service because their customer accounts database is down! :mad:

$hit's all fallin' apart, I'm tellin'ya! :p

That's a point I was meaning to bring up wrt if I could do it w/o much pain. Pretty much the only thing I am relying on satellite svc is to get Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Sci-fi (but not much since BSG is over), Comedy Central, and FNC. Dish actually has a pkg that includes all of those that beats DirecTv by $20/mos (which really gets under my craw that DTv doesn't even feel compelled to respond to that competition).

You can't be everything to everybody (without a la carte, anyway) - so if a competitor has a package that happens to be limited to not much more than the specific channels you want you should jump all over it.

Life's too short to waste time trying to paddle the Titanic with a teaspoon. Even if you were successful, by the time you accomplished your goal, it's likely that the whole market will be completely different by then.

Rather than trying to send a negative message to D* for not offering what you want, why not send a positive message to E* for doing so? Should they not be rewarded for addressing your needs? By not switching, your lack of support for that E* package may be enough for them to scrap it entirely - then D* will certainly not feel compelled to offer something similar.

If you say that it isn't worth it to switch, or that there are other aspects to D* that prevents you from leaving - then apparently D* is doing the right thing by not revising their packages - because they'd lose $20 a month from you by doing so.

Certainly, I would switch, but as I mentioned above, the trees would have none of it! ;) So that plan was dashed. I would have got a sweet digital receiver with usb hdd functionality out of it, too. :(

So I am now taking a good hard look at other viable alternatives to get the programming I seek, that will also allow me to give DTv $0 a month. ;) It's probably a good thing for everybody to evaluate once in a while. Sometimes you are surprised how much things have changed and what things are now possible, since the last time you may have wondered if you really are hopelessly tied to your cable service.

http://images.lowes.com/general/p/poulan_gas_chainsaw.jpg

;)

Certainly, I would switch, but as I mentioned above, the trees would have none of it!Is there a spot somewhere around the grounds that's clear where you can put the dish on a pole and just run the coax from there (maybe bury it if you have to)?

Sorry, it's not my property! I can't just go cut down trees. It just wasn't meant to be for my unit on the facility (as I notice numerous other dwellers in the area with Dish with the dish oriented in manners I would never expect could work). It just wasn't meant to be for me- just can't change the physics of shooting through a tree.

Its DirecTV.

Do you know the Warehouse 13 thread guy ?

Huh?

If all you're wanting are those specific channels, then maybe a switch is what you need.

I left Comcast just a year ago and have not looked back. Their prices were getting so ridiculous. Even though I had the one-year pricing discount, the regular amount is still less than what I was paying with Comcast, who has since gone up after I left.

Each person needs to decide which provider and package is best for them.

Certainly, I would switch, but as I mentioned above, the trees would have none of it! ;) So that plan was dashed. I would have got a sweet digital receiver with usb hdd functionality out of it, too. :(

So I am now taking a good hard look at other viable alternatives to get the programming I seek, that will also allow me to give DTv $0 a month. ;) It's probably a good thing for everybody to evaluate once in a while. Sometimes you are surprised how much things have changed and what things are now possible, since the last time you may have wondered if you really are hopelessly tied to your cable service.

How high are the trees? Can you get a really tall pole? I assume you're out in BFE and have no access to Verizon or U-verse.

Right now I definitely could. Ever since they "upgraded" my H21 watching tv has become almost unbearable because of the long load-times changing channels and flipping through the guide (as much as 8-10 seconds at times. !!!). I don't feel like going through customer service hell right now (seemingly what a lot of people are going through with their system frakked), so while I wait I've been streaming a crap-ton of stuff through Netflix.

Last few days I've probably watched less than an hour of D*, and that's mostly the local news, and I haven't really missed it. Of course I'll run out of Netflix tv shows/movies to stream at some time, but probably not within a month. :p

How high are the trees? Can you get a really tall pole? I assume you're out in BFE and have no access to Verizon or U-verse.

I'm essentially "at the foot" of these trees. This is a no-go, unless I literally mount the dish on a tree. :p

I'm going to have to take tour through this "streaming Netflix" and see what kind of programs are available...

http://www.netflix.com/BrowseGenres/Watch_Instantly/gev?lnktrk=GID_WI

There's a lot of great content (and with a slew of tv shows, it's content that'll last a while). Just be sure you have something that could stream to your tv (360, Blu player etc). I don't know if it was just me, but the "HD" option for streaming content only appeared once I registered my BD370, and I can only stream HD content through the player, not through my PC.

Edit: Uh...I thought you'd be able to search for content that you could stream with that link, but apparently you can't. =\

Between Hulu and Netflix, I could easily go without TV for a month. But if that month were during the NFL season, I wouldn't do it. For all their issues, Directv is still the best around. No need for me to take a month off.

I'm essentially "at the foot" of these trees. This is a no-go, unless I literally mount the dish on a tree. :p

Like this? :p
http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/4182/dsc0028q.jpg

Not a dish of course. That's a 70' redwood and it still was only good for few stations, needless to say that was the end of my OTA ventures.

I'm curious, has dishnetwork caught up to D* in the PQ department?

That tree is wired for sound! :D

How long do you think the leadtime is for the new Whale Wars episode to appear on iTunes after the official airing? Anybody know? Looks like they are keeping current (up to the last one I saw 2 wks ago). So I wonder how long the wait is for tonights episode to show up.

I'm curious, has dishnetwork caught up to D* in the PQ department?

I think you got that backwards. ;)

I'm curious, has dishnetwork caught up to D* in the PQ department?

No....dish is 1480 X 1080....directv is 1920 X 1080....thats why directv PQ is better.

Its also the reason dish can keep adding channels because they keep jamming more & more channels onto the same transponders.

But again, coming by end Q2-10 directv will most likely be killing dish (& everyone else) in HD channel count as well, once D12 is live.

I think this "resolution talk" gets far too much focus. :p After a point it is just specs-chasing. They could spec it at 2000p (if such a thing existed), but would that automatically make it "twice" as good as 1080p? If only enough bitrate/bandwidth is there to accommodate 720p (for instance), then it really doesn't matter what the native resolution is spec'd to you as. The encoder is going to throw out whatever it needs to, in order to fit what it can into that "720p-like" bandwidth.

The short version of this is- who knows what we are really getting, but you can be assured it isn't "locked at 1080p" just because a number says so. ;) That goes for all sources of digital programming, not just digital satellite or even one brand of it.

Generally, it seems that dispassionate viewers give a slight edge to DirecTV for HD picture quality and a wider edge to Dish for its DVR.

I think this "resolution talk" gets far too much focus. :p After a point it is just specs-chasing. They could spec it at 2000p (if such a thing existed), but would that automatically make it "twice" as good as 1080p? If only enough bitrate/bandwidth is there to accommodate 720p (for instance), then it really doesn't matter what the native resolution is spec'd to you as. The encoder is going to throw out whatever it needs to, in order to fit what it can into that "720p-like" bandwidth.

That's not how it works. It doesn't "throw out" resolution, it tries, but fails to send out a "clean" picture free of artifacts. Lower resolution from the start requires less bandwidth to get that clean picture, but even more bandwidth won't bring that resolution back.

At some point, a higher resolution may just be "specs-chasing", but that point is not between 720 and 1080. The PQ difference is very noticible at those levels.

I'm not saying you won't notice the difference. I'm just saying that it is silly to get hung up on the spec "1080p", especially when it comes to digital satellite. If the bandwidth isn't there when you need it, that 1080p detail isn't going to "survive the trip" to your dish. You will get something less than that, whether it is blocking artifacts or smudged out blocking artifacts. Either way, it is no longer the same material that sets on some broadcast master before it gets multiplexed and sent up to a satellite. Hence, fighting about "1080p" from business x vs. "1080p" from business y is kind of silly, when everybody's dealing with some varied levels of cut heroine, in the first place. ;) (the analogy, for those who are not catching on yet, is that nobody is really getting "clean 1080p", in the first place, so it is silly to point fingers at somebody else's "1080p")

Let me understand.

How many channels are being sent out by anyone in 1080p?

I understand there is an occasional movie (PPV?) in the format.

Broadcasters certainly don't use 1080p. I am unaware of any cable nets that do. And even on those occasions, only those with sets of 50" or more, who are still a tiny minority based on sales figures, could possibly notice any difference

So why the emphasis on 1080p if it is being transmitted only on the most rare occasions and very few could notice the improved quality??

I understand there is an occasional movie (PPV?) in the (1080p) format.

Apparently, on any given day, I have about 10 of them (PPV) waiting on my HR21's harddrive. In theory, more are available via DOD, but I'm not about to take upwards of 24hrs to download a 2 hour movie. I need to save my bandwidth for AVS. :)