Satelite Television for the shop.

[Tman]

Who has dishnetwork TV, Direct TV etc? I am looking to add it to the shop (and house)

If you wanted to pay $30 per month, which one would you choose?

Are there any other variations of this genre?

What are your thoughts?

 

[Red Green]

If you are in a area of the country that has snow mount the dish somewhere you can take the snowbrush or a cup of hot water to the dish.

 

[sam 8]

I have Dishnetwork, I am happy with it. We went to them about 10 years ago after 5 years wth a big C-Band dish.
Their VIP 633 unit has provisions for operating two TV's, one viewing HD and the other viewing SD at the same time, different channels. We have the TV house HD and the one in the shop is SD.
$30.00 a month will buy you their very basic package. I am not even sure ESPN is in that package.
DirectTV is in the lead right now for High Def. Channel #'s, it seems to swing back and forth every year or so. They are competitive, many people think Dish has better hardware.
I like to watch/listen to the news, sports and racing when out in the shop. Check with people locally and see if either system has problems seeing the birds in your area, other than that, it is 6 of one half a doz. of the other.
For me, due to the time I spend out there, it is worth the $ for the two-set capable box.

 

[autoist]

DISH for me...same dish as for the house but has its own receiver & handles 2 TV's...so its not much monthly on top of house cost (just cost of 2nd receiver)

 

[chrisexv6]

DirecTV all the way here

So far the one experience Ive seen someone have with Dish is not encouraging. Not to say its a bad service, I think most of their issues come from the hardware. And as long as you get a good one, you'll be OK. My wifes uncle just got Dish, and I think ended up with a bad receiver. Unfortunately it left a bad taste in his mouth, and was talking about cancelling after the first couple weeks. Havent found out if it ever got resolved.

I would go any form of satellite in a heartbeat, especially with my cable option (OPTION, as in ONE, as in not really an option). Im partial to DirecTV, been with them for almost 7 years with no problems and they were always quick to come out and fix anything (dish out of alignment) and give me some freebies after being with them for a while (2 good deals on an HD-DVR).

-Chris

 

[skip3342]

I am not sure if you already have satelite in your home, but I recently was informed by a Direct TV installer that all I had to do is install another dish and pay the five bucks a month for an additional receiver. Dishes are easily available on Ebay and I am told it does not matter how many dishes you have since they charge only for receivers. Similar to a people who have campers or motorhomes and take the service with them. I plan to install the extra dish on my shop and have the same package there that I do in the house.

 

[Fueler]

Direct TV here for 6 years. No complaints. Did all the wiring and setup myself. Pretty easy stuff for a car guy.

The only snow that bothers mine is the big fluffy, wet stuff that falls without much wind. I just walk out with a big ole squirt gun filled with windshield washer fluid and give it a rinse. I chose Direct initially because they had some channel that dish didn't. Pretty predicatable around here. Car stuff and races, home fix it, sci-fi and the history channel. The rest of it...well.

 

[BoCRon]

Dish here. I hate that Direct charges extra for recording. With Dish you get a receiver with DVR (like Tivo) and there is no charge, or limit. I have 6 receivers in my house, all with DVR and about 90 hours record time on each. Direct only lets you have 2 receivers with recording options and then charges you an additional $5.00 per month on each of those 2 receivers to use the record option.
For the garage and exercise rooms, it's great to record relevant shows to watch (AND SKIP THROUGH THE COMMERCIALS!) while in those areas. I record a bunch of car shows (my favorite is Top Gear) to watch while detailing or cleaning up the garage.
Annette

 

[CraigFL]

I've had Dierct TV for the last 15 years and wouldn't have anything else.

 

[cw_racefan]

We have DirecTV and have been very happy. As far as the receiver fees/etc I think it's about the same as Dish. Both charge a DVR fee, and both charge for additional receivers. For us, the decision came down to DirecTV's satellites (at least their main SD satellite) are a little higher above the horizon for us and we have trees that are close to blocking the signal.

 

[chrisexv6]

Dish here. I hate that Direct charges extra for recording. With Dish you get a receiver with DVR (like Tivo) and there is no charge, or limit. I have 6 receivers in my house, all with DVR and about 90 hours record time on each. Direct only lets you have 2 receivers with recording options and then charges you an additional $5.00 per month on each of those 2 receivers to use the record option.
For the garage and exercise rooms, it's great to record relevant shows to watch (AND SKIP THROUGH THE COMMERCIALS!) while in those areas. I record a bunch of car shows (my favorite is Top Gear) to watch while detailing or cleaning up the garage.
Annette

Dont know when you asked DirecTV about that, but its not the case currently.

5.99 DVR fee is charged once, no matter how many DVRs you have. Then you pay the 5.00 mirroring (lease) fee on any box, including DVRs (or non-DVRs). There are no limits to how many DVRs you can have (I currently have 3). So basically the only thing extra the DVR costs you is the 5.99 DVR fee. And as far as I know, Dish also charges a fee for DVR service too, as do most cable companies (cable co around here is even worse.....10.00 DVR service fee *per DVR*, so my 3 DVRs would cost 30.00 just in DVR service fees alone).

-Chris

 

[RPH]

Just got rid of Dish about a month ago. Mainly due to poor service from the locals and corporate. No attention given to problems. Billing issuies, tried 3 times to have HD hooked up. they blow the appoints or show up and demand cash for what corporate said would be done. It has taken all this time to get them to ship the boxes to return equipment. This is after phone calls and emails. Had Direct before and there not the greatest either. There boneheaded moves pushed me to Dish to begin with. I think every couple years you have to change just to keep on their toes. A very competive industry. Direct has been great so far.

 

[BoCRon]

I talked to Direct less than a week ago. I was going to switch out all 6 boxes (actually I have one box that does 2 different TVs, 2 seperate remotes and can watch different things on those 2 TVs) I currently pay $119.00 per month for 7 TVs, all with recordings capabilities. I have all the movie channels plus satellite radio, the only channels I don't get are the adult ones and the spanish networks. For the same thing on Direct (not quite the same since they only allowed 2 recording receivers) I would pay $169.00 per month, plus they had no dual TV boxes for me to add my exercise room.
I couldn't see paying $600 more a year for less, so I cancelled the appointment that was scheduled for yesterday.
Annette

 

[chrisexv6]

Thats weird, Ive never heard of any limit to "recording receivers". Like I said, I have 3 right now, each TV has its own DVR.

Your 7 DVRs should cost 5.99 (DVR fee) + 6*4.99 (6 mirroring fees, 1st box is free) = 35.99

On top of the 35.99 is the programming package, Premium would be 99.95/month I think. So ~136/month. Not counting having to pay any upfront costs for the hardware.

The 2 recording receivers only is beyond me, maybe call another CSR? Some of them arent the most brilliant people alive.

 

[D KRAGER]

Directv man here..... I have a separate dish on the garage, but just add the reciever to your acount $5 per month. Buy another dish off of ebay. It will even work if your garage is in another town, just don't hook the reciever up to a phone line...

 

[6768rogues]

I have had Directv for about 10 years. The dish is on the garage with a wire run to the house, box in each building. My wife decided to change to Dish TV a year or so ago. Their "professional" installation was supposed to go on the garage and use the existing wire to the house. I got home to find two wires on the ground from the garage to the house and they cut all my existing wire off. I had ok service in the garage and a total of one channel in the house. I called them and told them to get their **** out of here immediately and I never paid them a dime. I had to rewire and get the Directv back up and running. We are still married.

 

[Tman]

Thanks! To clarify the shop IS the house. So, we are looking at 3 TVs, one shop, one office, one upstairs with a 4th to add later when we add on to the house.

We are in the open rolling foothils so "view" is not an issue, I am up on a hill.

Direct TV seems to be the leader here but the rates I saw were 12mo teasers that bumped up 20 bucks or so into the $50 range after a year.

Dish had less channels but a nice stable $30/mo price. i would like Speed but refuse to pay for all the BS channels just to get it. Adding "Horseracing TV" as a premium bonus to the sports package makes me ****** laugh!

Cant wait until they pass legislation allowing us to chose Ala Carte what channels we want to pay for.......it is close to passing.

 

[bahamasair]

Well if you go with Dish network you can get all the channels free if you do some reading and are the unscrupulous type. We cant legally sub here and I have 3 Dish receivers. Its also not illegal to program the cards to get all the channels here so I don't have to worry about that side of it either. I used to hack DTV back in the day before the last card change but they are pretty secure now .
Another thing you can do if you want cheap sat is to get a friend who already had it set up and add a box onto their account. You will only pay the $5 or $10 a month they change for an extra box

 

[VDubJoe]

Direc tv. 4 dual tuner dvr;s with 160 hours rec time. Dvr fee is only 4.99 for all receivers. 9.99 for hd.

Joe