#11

Member
Seattle
The MLB and NHL sports teams in Seattle are on Root Sports, which is only carried on Comcast cable, Direct or Dish satellite services.  MLB and NHL networks block home games for local teams.  Root has a monopoly.  Currently, Root is carried on only one streaming service, which is "Fubo".  Therefore, if we want local game broadcasts we are stuck with only 3 options, since cable is not available in our area.
If you watch certain sports teams, it is highly recommended to make sure you can access their games, before you sign up for a streaming or satellite service which may not offer your local sports teams.
Lastly, Dish has been notorious for not negotiating in good faith to keep local channels.  Last year we lost CBS for 6 months and yesterday we lost NBC.  I expect it will be many months for NBC to return to Dish, if ever.
None of the pay TV companies care about their customers. As with everything else in the world, only the bottom line dollar is important.  This means that we will always be changing services and having to continuously be inconvenienced.  Welcome to the unstable world we live in now.

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#12

Scentsless Shaver
Oakland, ME
(09-27-2021, 05:56 PM)keto Wrote: Can't speak for DirecTV, but I did use Dish for many moons.
    The Dish service pretty good with the programming being a lot of channels that were never used, as usual. Of course the price kept coming out so I kept cutting down my channels as time went on. 
It was always exciting when in a storm was heading my way and the weather alerts from local channels when the satellite would drop out, yep that was fun.
   Cancel Dish a few months ago put up a couple of antennas with a splitter-pointed different directions and streaming too.
   Right now there's only a couple of channels on this and I could get them online.

Resurrecting my old thread. We are trialing YouTube TV and Discovery+. We have a Roku, high speed internet, Netflix and Amazon Prime. For the last month we have mostly been streaming, as the new DVR does not have anything recorded yet!

Anyone have a recommendation for a digital antenna, or are they pretty similar?

Thanks all!
- Eric 
Put your message in a modem, 
And throw it in the Cyber Sea
--Rush, "Virtuality"

Overloader of brushes, Overlander fanboy, Schickhead, and a GEM in the rough!
#13

Member
Seattle
Follow up to my last post in early October.  2 days ago, Dish returned NBC (Olympics) to our local channels.  They came to an agreement with Tegna, after 18 weeks..  Unfortunately, Root Sports is still not available to Dish customers...which means no NHL games or MLB games in Seattle.  I agree that streaming is the future, if you can get internet service with a reasonable speed.  In our location we are dependent on copper wire phone lines for internet service, and with boosting the best we can get is 70mbps.  Fiber optic lines provide faster service, but no company will provide them in our neighborhood.  We do stream with a firestick, but it is not as smooth and reliable as satellite service at this time (Amazon, Netflix and Hulu). Currently, 5G internet service is more expensive than satellite and speed is location and provider dependent.  In the future, 6G streaming will be the best option for us, since the reliability and speed  (100 times faster then 5G) outpace fiber optic or satellite services.  I hope I live long enough to see it.

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#14

Member
Los Angeles
We have had DirecTV since 1992.  It was OK while it was owned by Hughs.  Then Hughs spun them off and they were still OK. Until AT&T purchased them.  AT&T is the WORST company I have ever had to deal with.  And as usual AT&T not only destroyed DirecTV but recently sold 30% of them to an investment firm.  Like many of you we considered go to Dish TV.  So we did research and determined we will stay with DirecTV for now.  Anyone who considers going to Dish be very careful and do the research such as pick a plan and check out all of the channels many of which I do not want and then read the fine print at the bottom of their web page.  Then Google Dish and will probably be surprised.

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#15
I was just about to ditch DirecTV when I moved in more people. That includes my mother and my wife’s mother, who are house-bound and watch a lot of TV. To preserve some of my limited DSL bandwidth, I’m keeping the ladies on satellite.

Speaking of satellites, I signed up for Starlink (and paid a deposit) in early 2020, which was expected to be ready in Fall of 2020, 2021, 2022, ….

No political (etc) comment intended, but I wish Elon would meet his commitment to me before taking on any more new projects.

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#16
(This post was last modified: 03-31-2023, 03:04 AM by keto.)
(03-31-2023, 02:12 AM)sgarnett Wrote: I was just about to ditch DirecTV when I moved in more people. That includes my mother and my wife’s mother, who are house-bound and watch a lot of TV. To preserve some of my limited DSL bandwidth, I’m keeping the ladies on satellite.

Speaking of satellites, I signed up for Starlink (and paid a deposit) in early 2020, which was expected to be ready in Fall of 2020, 2021, 2022, ….

No political (etc) comment intended, but I wish Elon would meet his commitment to me before taking on any more new projects.

I had a wait for Starlink of over 1 year with the Deposit payed, as you know about. Well from my stand point the speeds were all over the place sometimes download of 5 but others over 100.
Never saw any speeds close to 300.
It really didn't work all that good even when the speeds were good. They raised rates about as quick as I got the service. 
I sent the equipment back, sold the adapter part on eBay and was glad to part. 
   Hopefully you'll have better experience as they might have more  satellites now and service has caught up with sales.
Edit: sorry I got off track from sat tv.

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            Keith
#17

Member
Seattle
Another Dish update...
Dish dropped our CBS local station last November, which is significant.  It may be months to never, before Dish renews the contract.  So we had to sign up for Paramount+ to get our local CBS station (at Dishes recommendation for more expense).  During the same week, our Centurylink (Lumen) internet went out, which meant no internet or Wifi in the house.  With the labor shortages, they could not get a repair dispatched for 8 days, with no guarantee of a repair!  So I signed up for the T-Mobile 5g Tower to get something that might get an internet to the house.  Long story short, the T-Mobile 5G internet is totally dependent on your line of sight location to their nearest cell tower.  We were only able to get a 4 bar (good) connection, and the internal wifi is marginally acceptable.  It works for our security system, but will not support our Amazon Firestick on the TV!  Centurylink was able to replace our internet ports at the neighborhood phone box after 10 days, so we can stream TV again.  The 5G internet is also highly dependent upon user traffic, and we do get a reliable connection after midnight when most people are not using their phones.  Bottom line with all of this...take me back to the 1950's - 70's, before watching TV became so complicated...and having to have a smartphone just to survive in our digital world.  Went to Opening Day (MLB) today, and you need a digital phone with your "downloaded tickets" to get into the stadium.  Since the stadium is totally cashless, you need a credit card or Apple pay to get any food or beverages.

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