Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Time Warner or Direct TV? Which is better?

Ok, I don't have any experience with either one of them since I only had standard cable. I plan on either upgrading to Digital Cable or Satellite. Which one gives you better picture? Basically I want to watch tv shows, games, and movies with my Toshiba 50 inch widescreen HDTV. Are there any pros/cons with either one? Opinions welcome.

I think that there are different variables depending on the cable provider, and/or satellite installation...

For example, I have had digital cable, DirecTV, and now have Dish. My favorite for content and quality is Dish. Second place was DirecTV, and last was Digital Cable.
They all were very close in quality here in Des Moines, Iowa, but when I visited my in-laws a couple of weeks back in Dubuque, Iowa (smaller town of about 60,000 people) they had just gotten Digital cable and HD. The HD is good, but even their digital cable is noticably worse than anything I have had before that was digital. Their digital cable TV provider is Mediacom, which is the same company that I used to have here in Des Moines (200 miles away), but in their location it just isn't very good.

People talk about satellite going out during heavy snow or summer storms, but that has a lot to do with the install. We had issues with DirecTV years ago with that, and even with Dish for the first year we had it until we found out that the installer was lazy and didn't mount the dish high enough to clear some tree tops, and it wasn't mounted solid enough to not be affected by wind. Since then, we have only had a couple of "flickers" where the screen goes to large pixelated blocks for a second and then back to normal, and that was mainly when there was a lot of lightening in the area. Still very much watchable. Obviously, digital cable isn't affected by this at all, but it was not a big problem for us any more with the right installation.

Sorry that I don't have a definative Yes or No, This or That answer for you. You might need to find someone in your area with one or the other and go see for yourself.

Looks like only one reply. Does this mean you guys only watch movies on dvds and not watch regular tv such as cable or satellite??? I went to both of my friend's house and one has Dish, other has Digital Cable. Both look very nice in HD. There has got to be other trade-offs other than the storm and rain thing. Prices are also the same in my area (Charlotte, NC). Can anyone else help in deciding which to do?

Man, I wrote a whole response but it never posted...

Your decision should be based on content. Do you watch a lot HD? Or is most of your viewing SD? Do you have OTA HD in your area? Second decision may be based on capabilities. For me, I need Tivo capability. I used DirecTivo for years, including HD Tivo. But DirecTV decided to support their own DVR for new MPEG4 channels so I moved to Comcast w/ a Tivo Series 3. My biggest decision point was that I needed to use Tivo. I've played w/ Comcast's DVR functionality and it's just bad, YMMV. I also like to upgrade my DVRs (750GB HDD on my S3) and you can't do that w/ Comcast's DVRs.

For my local Comcast, I find SD channels to look HORRIBLE compared to DirecTV. However, for me it's a don't care. 90% of my viewing is HD shows. As my wife says, I'll watch crap if it's in HD. And it's true... For HD, DirecTV and Comcast are similar but for me I also have access to 30+ local HD channels so I'm good to go.

I sometimes had rain fade w/ DirecTV but not a lot, not enough to care.

Customer service is also a factor. DirecTV and Comcast seem to be fine, w/ DirecTV slightly better. I've heard MANY horror stories w/ Time Warner including witnessing a friend on the phone w/ TW for over 1 hour. W/ DirecTV, signing up for HD commits you to 2 yr contract. Worse, if you are an existing HD customer and you buy new equipment or have to have existing equipment fixed, they reset your contract. That happened to me and angered me to no end. Comcast is month to month, NEVER EVER a contract. Point to Comcast.

No, my friend, once you are talking about HD/ digital TV signals, the deciding factors are the rain for the satellite and then the cost and variety selection.

The digital signal takes most of the factors out of the decision.

I live in the Sunny South and we do get heavy rain squalls that causes outages. Usually they only happen once in a while and then for 10-15 minutes or less.

I plan on watching HD shows such as football and other games, speed channel, espn, or even some movies in HBO if avail in HD. I also watch local stuff such as Fox, ABC, etc. I'm not sure about local OTA HD you're talking about, I've never seen or heard anything about that on either Dish, DirectTV, or TimeWarner's site. When I checked price, they came out to be the same in my area for what I need such as HD box/tuner for my widescreen tv and just normal stuff on other tvs since we never watch it.

If they are all about the same price for about the same channel offering, then, I guess that it doesn't matter. Just pick one and start enjoying the HDTV!!!!!

erred, OTA HD means Over The Air HD, which means you get local HD content via an antenna and a HD tuner. Once you get past the purchase cost of the antenna and the tuner, you are basically getting "free" HD (again, you have to pay for the initial gear, so it really isn't free). I've been looking at this for some time, but keep telling myself that I should just invest the money into a HTPC that can be the tuner.