Dish Network or DirectTV Problems

[justhavinfun]

Hey fellow Sowallers! Looking for some advice about Satellite TV in the area, especially around 30A. The cable bill is getting up there and Direct TV has some great specials going on. Whats the relaibility like especially with all the storms that roll through? Opinions please!!

 

[Kurt]

Directv is quite good as long as you're dish is aimed well which is not difficult for a trained tech. Tell them I referred you and we each get $100 off our bill.
http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/referral/referralProgram.jsp

 

[kebo]

Does Direct TV now have CBS? Several years ago I had to go to cable i order to get CBS which carries SEC football!

 

[beachmouse]

I just did a search, and it looks like most of Walton County still doesn't have local networks. (It looks like if you're Villa Tasso/Choctaw Beach or otherwise have a Niceville zip code, they might let you have the Mobile-Pensacola locals.)

We'll lose signal for maybe 5 minutes when we get one of those 3-4 inches an hour cloudbursts, but a good normal thunderstorm doesn't cause signal disruption. And the dishes hold up well in windy conditions. We never lost signal when Ivan was making landfall, (freakishly, we were part of the 2% of Okaloosa County that never lost power) and it was actually kind of weird watching the ride-out crew on WEAR talking about how their tv and radio rebroadcast towers were all down, but that they'd had reports that Crestview cable viewers could still watch, and we almost called up the station to say the the Niceville along Hwy 20 (ie. power on) folks who had satellite could still see them too.

 

[Will B]

You can get network feeds of all the major networks, but I don't think that local channels are offered. Outages due to the weather are very brief when they do occur. Personally, I don't mind. It's almost like a 5 minute warning that you are about to get drilled pretty hard.

 

[Here4Good]

Anyone else who lives in Sowal have experiences to share concerning Dish or Direct?

 

[Kurt]

Does Direct TV now have CBS? Several years ago I had to go to cable i order to get CBS which carries SEC football!

I have always gotten the networks but not locals. There are some locals now I believe but I don't tune to them.

 

[Danny Burns]

We've had DirecTV and Dish. They will both go out briefly with heavy weather to the southwest. Dish offers all local channels for a $6 monthly fee. We use Dish as the pricing packages are better for what we watch.

You can also get local channels with an antenna and a digital receiver (you know, the one that no one got when the government offered to pay for it because they had cable). So even when the satellite and cable goe out, we still have local channels. There's even channel 7.4 (digital NBC) that runs local radar 24/7.

 

[NotDeadYet]

I have Dish and get all three local channels, 13 and 7 from Panama City (ABC and NBC) and 4 from Dothan, Al. (CBS). Used to be unable to get CBS but it was added some time ago.
Kurt is right about the dish needing to be aimed properly. If it is, there are few problems.
I'm just off 30A.
Century Link has some attractive bundles if you also want DSL and a landline.

 

[daveream]

Hey fellow Sowallers! Looking for some advice about Satellite TV in the area, especially around 30A. The cable bill is getting up there and Direct TV has some great specials going on. Whats the relaibility like especially with all the storms that roll through? Opinions please!!

I have dish and love it compared to mediacom. We had more outages with mediacom
and took days to fix. Make the switch if you want local channels go with dish if not
go with dish or direct depending on whose lineup you like better.