Well the time has come for my family to upgrade to a new tv provider. We have had the big BIG dish ever since I was a kid but with so many channels switching over its time to change. We cant decide between Direct TV and the Dish Network so any help would be appreciated.

so based on price, fees and channelm availability etc. which is better?

Dish Network offers more outdoor related channels, the military channel, speedchannel, Outdoor Life Network, etc. My mother-in-law has Direct TV and I'm not impressed with it at all. Dish Network's channel menu's and format is much easier to figure out and use.

Quoted: Dish Network offers more outdoor related channels, the military channel, speedchannel, Outdoor Life Network, etc. My mother-in-law has Direct TV and I'm not impressed with it at all. Dish Network's channel menu's and format is much easier to figure out and use.

I have Military, Speed and OLN.

:unsure:


I hate Dish's TV guide....and the way their channels are setup.  With DTV, most channels are together in a row, like USA/TBS/TNT/Comedy Central/FX/SciFi are within 10 numbers of each other.

Discovery, Travel, History, Bravo, and a few others are within 10 of each other.

That sorta thing.

Six of one, half dozen of the other. I have DirecTV and love it. Most Dish Network customers like theirs too.

Best advice: Don't get Sat.

When it rains or gets cloudy, you WILL loose your tv reception.

Biggest mistake for a Floridian: getting satellite TV.

Besides, I only get a few more channels that are worthy of watching, majority of the 500 channels you get are crap or stations that only use reruns.

DirecTV here for several years, really like it.

Dad works for the local DirecTV provider so that's a + for me.

Danny

My sister has DirectTV with TiVo.  I like it but the sat. signal tends to go out when it heavily rains.  

My family has comcast btw.  

I've experienced both - Directv is better IMO. I can't preview a channel on dish in the left hand window. You have to press enter on the channel clicker to watch a channel, so flipping through many channels and stopping on one won't allow you to see it live.

Also Directv has an integrated Tivo unit which gives you more features than an addon retrofit unit, which is all you can get from dish.

Also, the numbering of channels on Directv is MUCH simpler 100's are your PPV, 200's are your discovery and news channels. Your 500's are the premiums, etc. 600's are sports. 800's are music, etc. Dish has four digit channel numbers and it's more difficult to keep track of what block of numbers correspond to what types of channels.

Plus with directv you have competing companies driven to make better receivers with more features b/c of competition. With dish, you get it from them and you get what you get.

Directv is far ahead of dish on HDTV and especially sports. I'll take DirecTV over dish anyday of the week. BTW, don't worry about a torrential downpour cutting out your satellite. I had cable and it was down for days at a time everytime I turned around. Adelphia really sooks.

Two Words:  NFL Ticket!

Direct TV wins!

f you get the lowest cost package, Dish is about $10 per mo cheaper.  

As far as rain/clouds interfering with reception that is a setup problem, not a technology problem.  In the PacNW we get rain and clouds as good as anyone - so long as you have the dish aimed right and get your signal power dialed in you should not lose signal.

Of course I did have a friend who was complaining about the same thing.  We went out and birds had crapped all over his dish and knocked about 10-15% of the power off (heavy ocean seagull stuff).  Sprayed the dish down and found it was still low, so I guessed the birds had also landed on the dish - We re-aimed it and no problems.

Quoted: f you get the lowest cost package, Dish is about $10 per mo cheaper.   As far as rain/clouds interfering with reception that is a setup problem, not a technology problem.  In the PacNW we get rain and clouds as good as anyone - so long as you have the dish aimed right and get your signal power dialed in you should not lose signal. Of course I did have a friend who was complaining about the same thing.  We went out and birds had crapped all over his dish and knocked about 10-15% of the power off (heavy ocean seagull stuff).  Sprayed the dish down and found it was still low, so I guessed the birds had also landed on the dish - We re-aimed it and no problems.

Yep. If the weather is knocking out your signal very often, your dish isn't aimed correctly. Mine loses signal only once or twice a year, and it requires a hell of a storm cloud to get between the dish and the sat. Mine could probably even be better aimed (I did it myself using the built in tone system). Rain and snow have had no effect, but if ice forms on the lens of the LNB, it can kill the signal. Mine is mounted at ground level so if we get a good freezing rain storm and I lose signal, I just go out and wipe the ice off the lens with my finger and give it a spritz of silicon spray, then wipe again. No more problems.

If you have a electrical/thunderstorm of any size, it will frequently knock out cable for hours on end. Not so with satellite systems.

Dish network...