Thinking Of Switching From Dish To Either Comcast/Xfinity or DirectTV

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lkrause

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Jul 14, 2007
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Western Pennsylvania
I have been with Dish for 9 years and have had no complaints other than the price going up and up. I am looking to save some money. I already have Xfinity Internet only and love it. I know that I could save money if I bundle services. My only concern is that I would be downgrading my picture quality. We have a new Sony 4k UHD HDR television. All my neighbors have Xfinity and have never had Dish or DirecTV so they have nothing to compare with and they say the picture is great. My cousin said that I should get the specs for both Xfinity/Comcast, Direct TV and Dish and compare them. I just don't want to jump ship with Dish and have horrible picture quality. I am open to switching to Direct TV also as.my son who lives in the same house has AT&T for his cell phone provider. So picture quality wise is it better to stay with a satellite provicer? Thanks in advance.
 
Bundle with Comcast and get TiVo.

I got a 55 Lg OLED, I use with Comcast and TiVo and have no issues with picture.

I also have a 4k Directv mini on the same Tv. I don’t think I have turned on Directv in several months.

You can stream 4k on Netflix. There is more 4K there than on Directv with 1 linear channel.
 
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Comcast PQ varies by area. Some are great. Some suck. But the good spot there is you should be able to try it without any commitment. Directv hands down will give you a better picture that dish. Possibly Comcast also depending on that area
 
Comcast PQ varies by area. Some are great. Some suck. But the good spot there is you should be able to try it without any commitment. Directv hands down will give you a better picture that dish. Possibly Comcast also depending on that area

I respectively disagree regarding satellite PQ. I've had both in the past few years with a 70" Sony XBR850B TV (and other 1080p sets). IMHO, My locals look much better on Dish than on DirecTV (aside from PBS, which looks like crap on both as well as OTA). Most popular cable channels look about the same on both (e.g. TBS, USA, Fox News, CNN, AMC, Comedy Central). Less popular channels still look better on DirecTV. Dish upgraded their transcoders a year or so ago, which made a big difference. The perception that DirecTV looks a whole lot better than Dish was true for a long time, but these days it is a toss up. Of course, after a couple of years with OTA and streaming prior to coming back to Satellite, I think they both could look at lot better.
 
Directv uses more bandwidth for its HD channels, there is no arguing that fact. If you don't see any difference or even believe Dish has better PQ then you must not be sensitive to the detail the additional compression is losing. Not everyone sees things in exactly the same way, and the goal of all the generations of MPEG compression has been to remove visual details that won't be missed. Looks it is working well in your case.
 
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Directv uses more bandwidth for its HD channels, there is no arguing that fact. If you don't see any difference or even believe Dish has better PQ then you must not be sensitive to the detail the additional compression is losing. Not everyone sees things in exactly the same way, and the goal of all the generations of MPEG compression has been to remove visual details that won't be missed. Looks it is working well in your case.
What he said. We tried Dish for about a week 2 months ago. Per my wife. Anyone why says they don’t see a difference is just trying to justify it for themselves They can upgrade there transcoders all they want. Until they launch some more Sats. The difference is noticeable on national channels. It is less on locals
 
While there is no replacement for bandwidth, they are both using so little it seem immaterial which is using more. I am not saying I don't see any differences or Dish is always better. I am saying, on average, Dish isn't particularly worse, and they both should be a lot better. As my wife and I watch mostly locals on our skinny channel package, we are pleased that Dish looks generally better than DirecTV for those channels. If we watched lots of cable channels, I would probably prefer DirecTV PQ. Also, transcoder upgrades can make a huge difference. The more CPU you throw at video encoding, the better PQ you can achieve with the same bandwidth, within the limits of the technology being used (H.264 MPEG4).
 
I think DTV's PQ is great. I don't have Comcast in my area but I think their X1 OS is cool. If DTV could do something like the X1 on DTV that would be cool.
 
I can’t tell the difference between any of them.

The only time I ever recall dish picture quality being bad was in the early 2000’s when many customers where getting HDTV’s and Dish was pushing out a compressed SD signal.

You could see a ghost image around people on some of the darker scenes using a rear projection Tv.

Other than that the 811 being a piece of junk. I actually got so pissed off, I smashed one with a hammer.

Then after feeling bad a destroyed a receiver and was out $100, I created an RMA and made Dish replace it under warranty.
 
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