Dish or Insight

[dspon]

I currently have Dish and have to subscribe to the 250 pkg w/ HD. The golf channel is only in the upper pkg. I also have RR service from insight. The HD channels I watch the most are avail from insight except for Nat. Geo. I had Insight 4 years ago and was disappointed with the picture quality, especially the sd channels. Has the quality gotten better with 2.0? The cost of Insight w/rr is just about what I'm paying Dish.

[Mike0616]

I currently have Dish and have to subscribe to the 250 pkg w/ HD. The golf channel is only in the upper pkg. I also have RR service from insight. The HD channels I watch the most are avail from insight except for Nat. Geo. I had Insight 4 years ago and was disappointed with the picture quality, especially the sd channels. Has the quality gotten better with 2.0? The cost of Insight w/rr is just about what I'm paying Dish.

2.0 was a media campaign that really didn't mean much, all they really did was renumber the channels to group them into categories as THEY saw fit. Now, all the sports channels (sans HD) are in the 500s, news & info in 400s, etc. Did they make any major changes to technology? In a word, NO!

The quality of their DVRs (which you MUST have one per HDTV) suck. I have had one unit replaced 5 times in 7 months. Also, if you are happy with what Insight offers NOW, you are all set, but do NOT look for them to add much in the way of HD any time soon.

BTW, to get the HD to function properly here, it only took Insight about 6 trips over a 3 month period to get the picture not to pixelate as badly, artifact not as often, etc.

I had D* several years ago, left them for E* for local channels, and then to Insight for HD. Of the 3, Insight is the worst, IMO. Now waiting to see if D* makes good on promises (ads) to add lots of HD content as they now offer nothing special and E*'s HD is a joke, from what I see of it (PQ sux on HD) and channels are "interesting" (Mom always said to say that rather than saying are downright chitty.) Seriously, the Voom channels are worthless to me as I don't want to watch the same old BAD (as in they were not good when they were made long ago) movies over and over and over. (Yes, there IS a reason that Voom went under!)

Am not sure that you will be happy with the (lack of) tech support, service (if needed), etc. from Insight, the programming or quality of their hardware. You may very well wish to do what I am doing, wait and see if D* makes good on their promises (the satellites are either in place or will soon be there for the HD channels) and take a look at them.

The biggest UPSIDE to Insight is there are no contracts to sign or term commitments, so you can bail out on them at will.

Good luck!

[RIRWIN1983]

2.0 was a media campaign that really didn't mean much, all they really did was renumber the channels to group them into categories as THEY saw fit. Now, all the sports channels (sans HD) are in the 500s, news & info in 400s, etc. Did they make any major changes to technology? In a word, NO!

The quality of their DVRs (which you MUST have one per HDTV) suck. I have had one unit replaced 5 times in 7 months. Also, if you are happy with what Insight offers NOW, you are all set, but do NOT look for them to add much in the way of HD any time soon.

BTW, to get the HD to function properly here, it only took Insight about 6 trips over a 3 month period to get the picture not to pixelate as badly, artifact not as often, etc.

I had D* several years ago, left them for E* for local channels, and then to Insight for HD. Of the 3, Insight is the worst, IMO. Now waiting to see if D* makes good on promises (ads) to add lots of HD content as they now offer nothing special and E*'s HD is a joke, from what I see of it (PQ sux on HD) and channels are "interesting" (Mom always said to say that rather than saying are downright chitty.) Seriously, the Voom channels are worthless to me as I don't want to watch the same old BAD (as in they were not good when they were made long ago) movies over and over and over. (Yes, there IS a reason that Voom went under!)

Am not sure that you will be happy with the (lack of) tech support, service (if needed), etc. from Insight, the programming or quality of their hardware. You may very well wish to do what I am doing, wait and see if D* makes good on their promises (the satellites are either in place or will soon be there for the HD channels) and take a look at them.

The biggest UPSIDE to Insight is there are no contracts to sign or term commitments, so you can bail out on them at will.

Good luck!

I find it hard for you to believe with you location says sunny south. And isent beyond Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana.

That being said, Even if you used to live in their service territory, it hasent been since the 2.0 change. I have had Insight, ever since they were Coxal Communications. And while i took a one year break Oct 2004-Oct 2005 right before the 2.0 comming out, as the prices kept going up. Comparing the quality then, to what it is now, it has improved, thats right improved, its not the greatest, but it is better than what it was before.

[Carroll A]

I would go with what makes you happy... For me right now it is E*... I am in Rockford IL one of the markets that will be Comcasted starting in 2008... I had an insight sales rep stop by Thursday trying to sale me their service and I had to turn him down... In our neighborhood the service is out more than it is on so I just wish I could get my neighbors to see the advantages on either E* or D*... A lot of my co workers seem happy with the cable service, but when I had Insight for a few months four years ago I was very disappointed... In my case I gave them a fair shake, but living in an apartment complex at the time a lot of the cabling was out of date causing a lot of problems with the digital channels in the 500MHz range thus me not getting about 30 of the digital channels I was paying for... After constant bickering between the landlord and Insight I said the hell with it u hook the box and returned it and the same day in Jan 02 Had Dish installed and have been happy ever since... There are things that I really liked about Insight such as the On Demand stuff, but that is not enough to sway me back to cable... If Insight was as good as the Charter system my wife's mom and dad have I would switch in a heart beat... Charter last year did the complete digital conversion and all of their channels look very good and they have a 42 inch Mitsubishi... CC

I currently have Dish and have to subscribe to the 250 pkg w/ HD. The golf channel is only in the upper pkg. I also have RR service from insight. The HD channels I watch the most are avail from insight except for Nat. Geo. I had Insight 4 years ago and was disappointed with the picture quality, especially the sd channels. Has the quality gotten better with 2.0? The cost of Insight w/rr is just about what I'm paying Dish.

[trido]

I currently have Dish and have to subscribe to the 250 pkg w/ HD. The golf channel is only in the upper pkg. I also have RR service from insight. The HD channels I watch the most are avail from insight except for Nat. Geo. I had Insight 4 years ago and was disappointed with the picture quality, especially the sd channels. Has the quality gotten better with 2.0? The cost of Insight w/rr is just about what I'm paying Dish.

Let me know if I can test anything I have Insight and DISh.Insight is Southern IN.

I tell you one thing real fast and firm DISH pix on all channels is better than any on insight,period.

Especialy HD.

[dspon]

Thanks for the info. Sounds like I should just stay with Dish for now. Orginally left for poor picture quality. I went with voom until they folded. Vooms original picture quality was compelling. Most channels were in true Hd format, not like Dish presently pedals out.

[Mike0616]

I find it hard for you to believe with you location says sunny south. And isent beyond Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana.

That being said, Even if you used to live in their service territory, it hasent been since the 2.0 change. I have had Insight, ever since they were Coxal Communications. And while i took a one year break Oct 2004-Oct 2005 right before the 2.0 comming out, as the prices kept going up. Comparing the quality then, to what it is now, it has improved, thats right improved, its not the greatest, but it is better than what it was before.

Check your geography class out again, you may well wish to go back! Last I checked, KY is SOUTH of the Mason-Dixon Line, is it not? While you are at it, invest in a dictionary, cause your spelling leads me to doubt you are any older than, say 10 or 12, and on Mommy's computer, at best.

I still have Insight, as of today, 2.0 with the HD and HBO packages, and like I said, the 2.0 was a ruse. I had this area back when it was owned by Storer and it was even worse then, but then, that is why I was on D* and then E*.

Now that Insight is being split into Comcast and Insight, rumors have it that Insight will be bought by Times-Warner, which if they live down to their reputation, is yet another, how you say in English?, step down in service.

It appears that the only acceptable games in town will be with either ATT (as soon as they can get the fiber into town, yep, one of the fringes of living in a metro over a million as opposed to the sticks, huh?), E*, or D*.

Oh, well, its been an interesting experience, since August, I have had my HD DVR replaced by Insight a total of 8 times and counting, hard to see how they can make any money at this rate.

[Mike0616]

I would go with what makes you happy... For me right now it is E*... I am in Rockford IL one of the markets that will be Comcasted starting in 2008... I had an insight sales rep stop by Thursday trying to sale me their service and I had to turn him down... In our neighborhood the service is out more than it is on so I just wish I could get my neighbors to see the advantages on either E* or D*... A lot of my co workers seem happy with the cable service, but when I had Insight for a few months four years ago I was very disappointed... In my case I gave them a fair shake, but living in an apartment complex at the time a lot of the cabling was out of date causing a lot of problems with the digital channels in the 500MHz range thus me not getting about 30 of the digital channels I was paying for... After constant bickering between the landlord and Insight I said the hell with it u hook the box and returned it and the same day in Jan 02 Had Dish installed and have been happy ever since... There are things that I really liked about Insight such as the On Demand stuff, but that is not enough to sway me back to cable... If Insight was as good as the Charter system my wife's mom and dad have I would switch in a heart beat... Charter last year did the complete digital conversion and all of their channels look very good and they have a 42 inch Mitsubishi... CC

I had about the same problems with Storer (Insight bought them out a few years back) that you did with Insight. This is a very upscale neighborhood, so it has been rather amazing to see the mini-dishes go up as people have gotten more and more into HD.

During the over 2 years that I had the E* DVR, I NEVER had a problem #1 with it, never called tech support, it just worked and kept on working. Its to the point now that my wife is asking why we haven't went back to either E* or D* yet.

D* keeps promising more HD channels, so they look good to me IF they do get the channels.

E* had really bad PQ (in this area, even at the dealers, which had to embarrass them), but they are supposed to be changing over to MPEG4 from MPEG2 a few channels at a time. If they can pull that off, PQ improves and open bandwidth is more available, allowing them to add even more HD channels. Chuckie's dropping of channels, without any warning, makes me think he is a bit nuts, but since they are never gone for long, I can deal with at least having service that doesn't suck.

Bottom line is, it looks as if it all depends on where you live as to what you can get, there is no cable company that has all the answers, but it appears they are losing the war.

[Edgar_in_Indy]

I may have a unique perspective on Dish vs. Insight, since I had both at the same time about a year ago. My wife is from Brazil, so we had Dish for the portuguese language programming, but I wanted locals in HD, so we had Insight installed.

I thought that Dish HD looked pretty good, but in back to back comparisons, I thought Insight HD looked even better. I was able to switch back and forth between inputs to compare the same programs on channels such as Discovery HD Theater and ESPN HD. I also have a couple OTA tuners, and I still prefer the picture on Insight HD. Even on fast-moving, highly detailed scenes, I see almost no pixelation on Insight HD.

I don't watch a lot of SD programming, but as I recall Dish SD was so-so. Insight SD is not too bad. My parents have DirecTV, and I watched a couple Colts games there last season. Horrible. In a lot of shots, you couldn't tell who the players were; they were all just blue and white blobs, almost like an old video game.

The Insight DVR isn't the greatest, but it isn't horrible either. I wouldn't say it's any worse than the Dish 522 I had for a while. It does pretty much everything a
DVR is supposed to do. My only real gripe is that you can't set a default channel list. You can setup lists of favorite channels, but whenever you go to your guide, it defaults to all channels (even the channels you don't subscribe to, and all the adult PPV). You then have to select your list of favorite channels...every time. I can't imagine why they have it setup like this, unless they think that forcing you to see all the channels will make you want to bump-up your programming package.

If you really like Dish, but still want Indy locals in HD, then get both. If you subscribe to the minumum package, your Insight bill will be $20-something. Very much worth it, IMO, since most of my viewing time is spent on the big networks.

Also, if you're already subscribing to cable internet, then you're already getting your locals in HD for free, you just need to plug the cable into an HDTV with a QAM tuner.

Edgar in Indy