Having a hard time deciding

[jmcslob]

I'm out of contract for Dish Network after this month and I just can't seem to justify $130 a month for what amounts to The History Channel, Bill Maher and TRU Tv....

I can Literally get everything else we watch on TV in this house from Netflix, Hulu and Broadcast TV.

and I have to say Broadcast HD is 2x as glorious as Dish or cable.
So what do you think?

[MT Alex]

I say drop them.

The thing that pisses me off most about Dish or Direct is they offer all the great prices and deals to the new subscribers. If you have been a loyal customer for several years, paying them thousands in subscription fees, they say: Fuck you! How about we raise your rates? Seems totally backwards to me. I rant about that a bunch.

Another thing to consider: I know that you have friends and family around the area, and Dish never specifies that a reciever has to be under the same roof when "adding another reciever for $10." We wouldn't have one if it wasn't for this creative idea.

[twilyth]

That's what I'm paying and I get every premium channel they have. If they raise my rates at the end of the 2 year contract, I'll just go back to cable. They'll cream their jeans for the chance to add a subscriber and have already offered a better rate than I get from directv.

[JC316]

Been a member of Direct TV since 2000 and I gave then the finger for trying to tack on $20 extra bucks a month. Basically my DVR died on me, so they sent a new one, then started trying to charge me for HD channels and other shit that I wasn't even getting. Tried twice to resolve it over the phone and it never worked out, so I told them the cancel. Then they had the nerve to say that I owed a $200 cancellation fee. They claimed that when I ordered the DVR that I signed a new contract, which never happened. They went back to the phone and account records and discovered that I was right, so they "waived" the cancellation fee.

Fuck em.

[jmcslob]

Yeah we get all the channels...but we don't watch em...specially not in summer..
The wife suggests we just drop down to the lowest possible package and keep it so that way we wont have to go under contract if we decide we want it again but that's still $50...

But at the same time we have cable internet.....I use that same coax wire for my antenna and run them into a splitter then into my dish wires and into the rooms and I gotta say I have a really good antenna I do pull in a lot of Channels without the need for a box....

[Fourstaff]

Why bother with TV when you have the internets?

[twilyth]

As far as entertainment programming, I would just use Usenet. Every serial on tv can be found there plus movies, anime, anything you can imagine. You'll need a premium account with someone like Giganews though and that will cost $25-$40/month. It doesn't pay if you have cap on your monthly ISP usage though. Of course that's going to be an issue with any streaming service too.

I spend a lot of time watching the financial news, mainly Bloomberg, so there's really no alternative there.

[MT Alex]

I was going to bring up Usenet, but I figured it was like fight club. I've only been doing the use for two months, but I don't know how I got along without it. The only trouble is that HDDs fill up too fast. I get an SSL unlimited plan with 20 connections for $15 a month.

EDIT: I use SickBeard in conjunction with SABnzbd+ and my NZB engine. It is like a DVR for your usenet. You tell it what programs to look for, and the quality you want, and it sniffs them out and downloads them for you.

[twilyth]

Originally Posted by MT Alex

I was going to bring up Usenet, but I figured it was like fight club. I've only been doing the use for two months, but I don't know how I got along without it. The only trouble is that HDDs fill up too fast. I get an SSL unlimited plan with 20 connections for $15 a month.

EDIT: I use SickBeard in conjunction with SABnzbd+ and my NZB engine. It is like a DVR for your usenet. You tell it what programs to look for, and the quality you want, and it sniffs them out and downloads them for you.

Wow. That's pretty slick. I wonder how it does it when all you have to go by is the subject heading. Some archives have an nfo file, but that's still the exception rather than the rule.

I've been using Newsbin for so long that I just don't feel like trying out a new program. I generally search with binsearch.info and then use the nzb file it creates based on your selections.

It sure is a lot easier now that back in the old days when you had to scan each newsgroup yourself and hope you could dl something over your dialup connection before it rolled off the server. Yeah, those were some good times. Oh, and fishing around for missing archive parts or parity files. That was all kinds of giggles.

[yogurt_21]

hd over air wave here and it looks awesome, is free, and doesn't cause me to sit on the couch all day long.

[Wile E]

Originally Posted by MT Alex

I say drop them.

The thing that pisses me off most about Dish or Direct is they offer all the great prices and deals to the new subscribers. If you have been a loyal customer for several years, paying them thousands in subscription fees, they say: Fuck you! How about we raise your rates? Seems totally backwards to me. I rant about that a bunch.

Another thing to consider: I know that you have friends and family around the area, and Dish never specifies that a reciever has to be under the same roof when "adding another reciever for $10." We wouldn't have one if it wasn't for this creative idea.

It goes beyond even down the street. My father in law lived in Florida, and used his father's DirectTV service based here in PA, so he could get the local Pittsburgh channels to watch Steelers football.

Penguins hockey, Discovery and BBC are about the only reasons I keep DirecTV.

[remixedcat]

My parents have been with dish network since the beginning of the company's formation. I'm not sure what they are paying but they have specialty channels that my gramma watches like the 3 Polish channels and another few international ones. My mom mostly watches crime/medical dramas and some sci-fi. HGTV and Discovery channels are her favs though.

Now as for me I had cable TV a couple times and ended up not keeping it for long. it added like 60/mo to my bill and we would rather buy a decent game or software for that 60/mo we were throwing away on cable TV.

[jmcslob]

We dropped Dish Network.
The only thing that I will miss out on is Bill Maher on HBO other than that we aren't missing anything... We did add 2 Hulu+ subscriptions we already have Netflix and I bought an Aver Media dual tuner so we can record Network Broadcasts....

So all in all we dropped $110 a month....We already have a PC in every room....so we are completely covered....Plus I was able to use the Dish network wires to my Cable Internet ti pull in Clear Qam

[CyberDruid]

Smart move. This is why why we have nice things.

[twilyth]

I pay about $130/month and I still really like directv - especially the ability to stream from any recorder (have 2) to any pc using their directv2pc software. When I'm in my office, I stream to the 22" Sony Bravia I have mounted on a 3M VESA 100 monitor arm and run the audio through my sound system (RX-V675, NHT classic 3 R-L and center channel with NHT zero and sub zero surround speakers). It's fantastic.

Plus I love the VOD stuff. For example I had to catch up with the HBO series The Borgias and was able to dl the first 4 episodes without tying up any of my cable bandwidth. Very sweet.