Dish Network or DirectTV

[Nefarious]

Dish Network here for since 2006.

Love the service, The only service interruptions we get are huge Thunder Storms with torrential rains, which happens maybe a few times a year.

I have two DVR receivers, one is HD, I also paid the the 35 Dollar charge to allow me the ability to download all the programs off my DVR, which is nice.

[BoilerDown]

I've had Direct TV for 9 years.  The customer service is generally pretty good, but it depends on what you need.  For installations, they have a tendency to promise over the phone more than what the installers (who are locally contracted, not Direct TV employees) are willing to deliver, or at least deliver at the fee you were quoted.  Other than that, customer service is pretty dang good.

As for rain fade, it has to be raining pretty hard to disrupt the signal.  Thick clouds aren't ordinarily enough, there's gotta be big water drops in the sky.  Where I live, it fades about 4 minutes before a typical heavy rain storm arrives, its a good early warning system as long as the storm is moving in the usual west to east pattern.  If you absolutely can't stand rain fade, you can get a larger dish from the various vendors on the internet, similar to what a sports bar will have on their roof.

The cable company where I live is Comcast, a company I refuse to do business with based on their reputation alone.  So I use Verizon for internet via DSL and Direct TV for TV.  I've had the same two Comcast guys walking door to door three times ask me if I "want TV" in the past two months.  Had to tell them to get lost.  They were just doing their job... I hope: http://consumerist.com/5361564/comcast-contractors-caught-disconnecting-competitors-service-then-peddling-wares

[Spikes]

You must have an old reciever. I've have DirecTv and all my remotes are RF.

Both Dish and DirecTv are about equal in every category except customer service. Dish will not under any circumstances whatsoever admit a mistake or error on their part.

We just got a new HD reciever and new remote to go with it, 'll have to see.
Edit: Just tried...nada...odd.

[ZetaNine]

could not live without Direct TV........

I'm a long time subscriber to NFL Sunday Ticket.......and they're the only game in town...or in country for that matter.

[Sandman]

I have DirecTV. Used to have PrimeStar before it was bought out by Hughes and then later became DirecTV.

Cool thing is... I have both east and west coast local network feeds. It was something PrimeStar offered, but then I think they passed some law or something that doesn't allow them to do it anymore. As long as I keep the service, I'm under the existing contract.

[Maverick]

I have had Direct TV for over 5 years now. Since I was also a satellite installer I don't worry about installation. I bought the dish and receiver from Best Buy and set it up myself. Every time we move the RV the dish has to be pointed, same for the internet. I actually have 3 dishes for it, one auto seek on the RV, a ground mount that I can set up in case we are parked in the trees and the internet dish with a small piggy back TV antenna module on it. Now one dish gets both for us.

We don't pay the rental fee for the receiver since I bought it outright through Best Buy. Same one we have had for 5 years. The receivers are still available from the stores and the one time fee of $50 or $60 beats the $5 a month rental fee. The box we have now is starting to have minor issues so we'll be replacing it from Best Buy.