This may have been covered, but I'm looking at dumping Netflix and going with a premium channel on my DirecTV. We are looking for the channel that has the best movies and programming as well as a good on demand selection.
I'm not really familiar with any of them, my wife likes the Tudors and I believe that's on Showtime, but I'm not sure if that's the package I want to go with. Any input would be appreciated.
Well, the three main premium channels in the US are Showtime, Cinemax, and HBO. I have Dish Network, so I can't tell you exactly which programming package on DirecTV you'll want to look into. We subscribe to Dish's "Everything Pack", and have for several years. So we get all of the "premium" channels.
I don't know the specific arrangements, but each premium channel gets specific movies first as they're released. You get movies a couple of months after the DVD's have been released. They'll all be in HD with great PQ and will have DD5.1 sound if you've got your satellite receiver hooked up via a digital method (HDMI, toslink, digital coax). Some movies don't ever seem to make it to certain channels. So if you only subscribe to one, there will still be some movies that you'll never get. At least, that's what it seems like.
Then there is the original programming. HBO and Showtime have many original programs, and some of them are quite good. Actually, we've found that we watch HBO & Showtime more for these shows than the movies. We quite like many of them. More so than many "regular" network shows. Just be warned that there are few rules as far as language and content. Many (all?) of these shows are definitely *not* for kids. In MPAA rating terms, all of them (that I've ever seen) would be rated "R", and at least a few would likely garner an "NC-17". None of it is "XXX", but they can get pretty raunchy. You've been warned.
Showtime notably several good ones.
The Tudors is quite good, we think. My wife and I have watched it since the beginning and we're looking forward to the next season. We also quite like
Californication, though it is most definitely not for the whole family.
Nurse Jackie is/was also good.
Weeds wasn't bad either, though it's not as good as it used to be.
Penn & Teller: Bull@%^#! is entertaining too, at times.
HBO has several good ones too. Most notably, the mini-series
Band of Brothers was astoundingly good. And very soon they're airing a Pacific 'version' of the mini-series, called
The Pacific. The previews give me goose-bumps. We will absolutely be watching that. No question. HBO also has
True Blood and
Big Love. Both of which are quite interesting. And as much as I hate to admit, we actually quite like
True Blood. Watched it because my wife wanted to, and I got sucked into it. Pardon the pun.
So of the premiums, if you are just choosing one, I'd go with either Showtime or HBO. Neither is really better than the other, they just have different programming. Check out their respective web pages and look at their original shows and see which appeal to you more.
The thing with dumping Netflix for premium channels is that you're not going to get to choose what you watch. Even with all of the channels, you still can't decide that you want to watch "Batman" tonight.
So for that... I'd highly recommend an AppleTV. We have one and just love it. For many movies, we just wait until it comes to one of the premium channels. But for those occasional must-see-now movies, or on a night when we want to watch a movie and nothing's on (it happens), we'll gladly rent them from AppleTV. And all of the series' that are on the premium channels are on the AppleTV too, though in some cases it's several months after the original episode aired.
Good luck!
