Anybody else here ever have two providers (excluding OTA) at the same time?

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edisonprime

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Dec 12, 2012
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I have Dish Network’s Top 250 with HBO, Cinemax, STARZ, and Showtime, as well as News Pack for the Dish Network side. I have Dish for its Hopper 3, all its features, as well as I like Dish’s channel lineup the best.

My second provider is Charter Spectrum streaming with the minimal TV Choice package in which I had a list to pick 10 channels from. I chose Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Investigation Discovery, The Learning Channel, Oxygen, TV Land, Disney XD, and Disney Junior. I have chosen these particular channels to either get access to certain apps that I can’t sign into with Dish, or that Dish doesn’t have them in HD but I can get in HD with these guys. Not to mention have extra on-demand content.

Anyways, does anybody else here have (or at least had) two providers at the same time? Which two providers? Why do you have more than one?
 
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I have had Dish since 2000. Back in November 2016 I moved to Comcast for internet and price for internet only was $85. Or I could bundle the same speed with locals, 45 popular cable channels plus HBO for $51 the first year and $76 the second year.

I even wired it into a TiVo I picked up from a member here thinking I could switch to Comcast during heavy thunderstorms when I lose the satellite but that never really happened either. I just wait for the storm to pass or switch to antenna locals.

The current regular cost for the bundle is around $110 and the current regular cost for internet only is around $90. I will call Comcast in the next couple of weeks and see if they will continue at the second year pricing of $76. If not it will be time to shop around. $90 is above what I'm willing to pay for internet.
 
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For TV in our fulltime RV home, our primary source is our Dish sat service, augmented with a variety of free apps on our FireTVstick, including DishAnywhere of course. Our Dish Top 200 package for instance, doesn't include the Fox Movie Channel, but the Fox NOW app does, and the NHL app sometimes has game coverage that's blacked out on Center Ice for our area, or has our preferred RSN's coverage when Center Ice only has the opponent's coverage. We also have various apps for other free services like Pluto, etc., that have a variety of programming including classic movies, etc. We also have Spectrum Internet service at our upstate NY cottage/campsite that feeds our second Hopper for DA streaming. Our motorhome has AT&T and Verizon cell Internet services.
 
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I'm in this group as well. Right now we have DirecTV with the Preferred Xtra package, Spectrum with the Choice Package, and at the moment YouTube TV. In my case the wife prefers DirecTV and we have grandfathered east coast DNS service. That comes in handy for picking up more NFL games, and for bad weather situations. I actually preferred Spectrum myself because they have more HD channels, and with my TiVo and CableCard there weren't any add on costs. Recently I haven't had a lot of time to watch TV though so I dropped the package down to Choice. I'm a big news junkie so I have CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, History, National Geographic, and for entertainment TV Land, TBS, TNT, ESPN and ESPN2. You get all the local channels and the C-SPAN1,2,3 along with a few of the shopping channels on top of the ten you choose. I've been sharing a YouTube TV subscription as well and really like it for other sports and on the go viewing. I'm fortunate in that I live right on the line between two markets so when I signed up for YouTube TV they actually let me sign up for the neighboring market, so I get Charlotte's network stations on YouTube TV.
 
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I have both Charter and DirecTV.

I'm an idiot for wasting all of this money on redundant services, but I'm a TV and technology geek, but it is a bit ridiculous.

Spectrum - TV Gold with Spectrum 201 DVR in one room, Spectrum 210 DVR in the other
DirecTV - Premier with HR24 in one room, HR44 in the other

Same thing with internet

Spectrum - Internet Gig @ 940 x 35
HughesNet - Gen 4 @ 10 x 1 with 10 GB of data

For internet access, my work pays for most of it so it doesn't matter.

The reasoning for two TV providers was much greater for me in the past

DirecTV
- NFL Sunday Ticket
- 3net, N3D, ESPN 3D
- Whole Home DVR
- Hoping they would add Sky News on the 95 degree bird

Charter/Time Warner
- TWC Sports Channel for AHL Hockey games
- The full time feed of MSG-B Zone 3, not a Sports Alt game only channel
- HBO 3D On Demand, Starz 3D On demand
- Many more channels in HD
- Epix

Most of those don't apply any more. I'm done with the NFL, no desire to ever watch another game again. The three linear 3D channels are long gone, Charter shut down all of the small cable only RSNs and a put a few games on Spectrum News but not enough to mater, DirecTV airs a lot of MSG WNY content on an Alt channel now, DirecTV has caught up big time in the HD department. Whole Home DVR is not a big deal for me anymore and there is no sign of them every adding Sky.

It comes down to content. Spectrum has Epix, which I like most of their original content and I like DirecTV for OAN. To me those are the big differences. DirecTV also has Sportsman Channel which I would watch more of but it's SD only. It's also kind cool that I get different sets of locals on my two DirecTV DVRs because of a snafu, but I really have no use for local channels. If I had to drop one, it would be DirecTV in a heartbeat. I almost did it when AT&T took over. Can't stand AT&T, terrible, terrible company. I like having two services for redundancy and thought about cutting back on the premiums, but HBO, Showtime and Cinemax are my most watched channels.
 
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edisonprime said:
Since the primary reason that I added Spectrum TV on top of my Dish TV was because of Dish's lack of Fox News Go support. I noticed this morning that Fox News Go is now supported by Dish and I immediately cancelled Spectrum TV!
Click to expand...

I kind of keep YouTubeTV around for the same reason. You can easily stream channels on the go without switching between a bunch of apps. Plus when I travel YouTube TV gives you "roaming" locals in all the markets they cover.

EarDemon said:
I have both Charter and DirecTV.

I'm an idiot for wasting all of this money on redundant services, but I'm a TV and technology geek, but it is a bit ridiculous.

Spectrum - TV Gold with Spectrum 201 DVR in one room, Spectrum 210 DVR in the other
DirecTV - Premier with HR24 in one room, HR44 in the other

Same thing with internet

Spectrum - Internet Gig @ 940 x 35
HughesNet - Gen 4 @ 10 x 1 with 10 GB of data

For internet access, my work pays for most of it so it doesn't matter.

The reasoning for two TV providers was much greater for me in the past

DirecTV
- NFL Sunday Ticket
- 3net, N3D, ESPN 3D
- Whole Home DVR
- Hoping they would add Sky News on the 95 degree bird

Charter/Time Warner
- TWC Sports Channel for AHL Hockey games
- The full time feed of MSG-B Zone 3, not a Sports Alt game only channel
- HBO 3D On Demand, Starz 3D On demand
- Many more channels in HD
- Epix

Most of those don't apply any more. I'm done with the NFL, no desire to ever watch another game again. The three linear 3D channels are long gone, Charter shut down all of the small cable only RSNs and a put a few games on Spectrum News but not enough to mater, DirecTV airs a lot of MSG WNY content on an Alt channel now, DirecTV has caught up big time in the HD department. Whole Home DVR is not a big deal for me anymore and there is no sign of them every adding Sky.

It comes down to content. Spectrum has Epix, which I like most of their original content and I like DirecTV for OAN. To me those are the big differences. DirecTV also has Sportsman Channel which I would watch more of but it's SD only. It's also kind cool that I get different sets of locals on my two DirecTV DVRs because of a snafu, but I really have no use for local channels. If I had to drop one, it would be DirecTV in a heartbeat. I almost did it when AT&T took over. Can't stand AT&T, terrible, terrible company. I like having two services for redundancy and thought about cutting back on the premiums, but HBO, Showtime and Cinemax are my most watched channels.
Click to expand...

I was/am in a similar boat. My wife likes DirecTV and she didn't want to switch to Charter, so we kept D* and went to Preferred Xtra to save $$. I do like the DNS service and didn't want to lose that. Should congress fail to renew the law authorizing DNS service when it expires again next December I would most likely cancel DirecTV. Since switching to "Xtra" DirecTV has slowly given me back almost all of the sports channels except MLB Network and SEC Network as "bonuses" though.

I also had Charter with the "Gold" package until this week. With the TiVo I have the option of downloading recordings and can archive them to Blu-Ray and/or hard drives for playback. Over time I amassed a huge movie recording collection this way. I took a new job during the summer though that has me working longer hours, so combined with the fact that we have a one year old I don't have much time to watch TV anymore. I called them and switched to the "Choice" package to keep it around for my news channels, the C-SPANs that aren't in HD on satellite, and a few misc channels. When things calm down I likely will try to get a discount to return to "Gold"
 
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I live in a mobile home park that has a master contract with Cox for cable TV. When sign the space lease you also agree to pay for Cox.
That allowed me to cut down to the Welcome Pack with Dish. I don't want to give up my Hopper.
I recently bought a Roku TV and have just tried a free month of Prime.
 
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I have dish, fios with all the channels plus 1 gig , Comcast 60 Meg and phone for office. Netflix for daughter and hula .


Sent from my iPhone using the SatelliteGuys app!
 
I did Layer3 TV's 2-week free trial in August of 2018. I had both Dish and Layer 3 running concurrently. Using a 1080p source on a LG 65 inch OLEG TV, I could not see any difference in picture quality between Layer 3 and Dish. There was no 4K programming available from Dish at that time. My Roku Ultra box produced a better 4K picture then Layer 3' s only 4K source which appeared to be recorded NASA TV broadcasts.

Even though there have been problems reported about the Hopper 3's Guide and the setting of timers, the Hopper 3 is light years ahead of what Layer 3 offers. I had no problem packing up the Layer 3 hardware and sending it back.
 

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