i'm switching to DirecTV, which should i expect from DirecTV when i do get hooked up with it

[Willh699]

me and my household just said goodbye to Dish after 9 years and will be switching to DirecTV tomorrow. as a soon to be former Dish customer who is joining what the DIsh fanboys call "The Dark Side", what should i expect from DirecTV.

as in will i get better PQ then Dish, will i get better equipment then Dish, how well will the DirecTV eye/LNB handle the notorious North Texas Severe thunderstorms and other heavy rain type weather, and what features on the DirecTV DVRs/Receivers that Dish does have and they Don't or what features DirecTV does have that Dish don't have.

i hope to fall in love with DirecTV quickly, as much as i loved Dish until recently and will miss them, but only briefly as i get used to DirecTV.

i want to hear from you DirecTV fanboys and long time DirecTV customers as i'm joining the DirecTV section starting at this point forward.

 

[AZ.]

Im no fan boy of anyone! HA.....
I think Direct isn't even in the same league for equipment and software....It will take some time getting used to!
Hey Im a sports nut....I get everything but NBA package....Dish just dont play that game....
Picture quality....?....I cant see a difference.....and thats on a 75" sony....
I still have dish with a VIP922 in Illinois which I sling from time to time to watch home town news....

 

[bmetelsky]

I had DirecTv, then switched to DISH, then DirecTv, then back to DISH. The moves have been mostly related to pricing.
PQ is about the same, perhaps DirecTv has slightly better SD picture quality. The newest DVR's are the HR-44 and HR-54.
I had the HR-44 with two "mini's" and they were fine. I moved back to DISH recently for the Hopper 3 due to being intrigued with the 16 tuner capability, and absolutely love it so far. There are probably things that you will like about DirecTv and things that you will dislike. Both provide superior service when compared to the cable companies, in my opinion.

 

[twizt3dsist3r]

A 922... wow.. those were the buttered bread of their day...

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[fayrich]

You can expect a price increase every year, signal outage in heavy rain or snow, and a hassle from them if service is ever required. Other than that, everything is wonderful.

 

[mdram]

i rarely lose signal in rain or snow, it happens about as often as it did with dish
expect fewer channels to be dropped due to dishputes

if you dont get an hr54, tell the installer no, and have him come back with one
it will be required for 4k in the future

dont get a client(unless you have to have 4k) go for at least an h24 or h25, if not an hr24

as for features, the program info is much better than dish had when i was there
search through it and see what all you can find

 

[Marcingak]

Dish: Better equipment and price
DirecTV: Better picture quality and more sports

 

[rapidturtle]

Rain fade is minimal. If you are a good customer after 2 years, call and be prepared to cancel, and they will give you a ton of discounts to stay. Equipment is great. I haven't used the hopper, but everything I do on my HR44 is fast and intuitive. I don't really understand how the Hopper is so much better, but like I said, I haven't used it.
I had some issues with my DVR a few months back, and they sent out a tech free of charge, and he replaced my DVR, checked all of my connections and replaced my LNB. I don't even have the equipment protection.
For me D* has been nothing but a pleasure to deal with.

 

[Willh699]

Well, here's a follow up on my transition to DirecTV from Dish.

Got hooked up with DirecTV today (well, yesterday now that it's after midnight). They hooked me and household with the Genie and Genie Minis receivers thus making it a whole home set up.

And the installer put the DirecTV Dish on a pole next to my house facing south, which is different from how Dish installed their Dish, which was on the side of the house where it was also facing south for the Dish signal.

The PQ quality on DirecTV is much better then on Dish, even FS1, FS2, the ESPN channels and other 720p only looked better then on Dish where it look more grainy.

And so far, I have had minor issues with trying to figure out where the channels I normally watch are on DirecTV and minor freezing/glitches with audio.

Here's my pros and cons so far with DirecTV:

Pros: better PQs, channels in HD that aren't on Dish's HD lineup like TVLand, MTV2, and full time RSN in my market.
Weather Channel app, better looking UI then Dish's old non-Carbon UI, the feature where it automatically changes the resolution on a certain channel where it goes to 480p for SD channels, 720p for the 720p only channels and 1080i for the rest of the HD channels, and that's about all I can think of on night one of DirecTV

Cons: no autotune feature as I like to have autotune to go to the channel in case I forget to change the channel, DVR FF/rewind being different from Dish with it being slower to FF/Rewind then Dish's and it telling you how much time you have from the live feed when you pause the channel, and the glitches that come and goes from changing the channel nonstop without staying stop for a while, missing some HD channels that were in HD on Dish's HD lineup.

So far, so good. That's all on my follow up.


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[Marcingak]

You can change the speed of FF/Rewind by pressing the FF/Rewind buttons multiple times.

 

[JohnL]

me and my household just said goodbye to Dish after 9 years and will be switching to DirecTV tomorrow. as a soon to be former Dish customer who is joining what the DIsh fanboys call "The Dark Side", what should i expect from DirecTV.

as in will i get better PQ then Dish, will i get better equipment then Dish, how well will the DirecTV eye/LNB handle the notorious North Texas Severe thunderstorms and other heavy rain type weather, and what features on the DirecTV DVRs/Receivers that Dish does have and they Don't or what features DirecTV does have that Dish don't have.

i hope to fall in love with DirecTV quickly, as much as i loved Dish until recently and will miss them, but only briefly as i get used to DirecTV.

i want to hear from you DirecTV fanboys and long time DirecTV customers as i'm joining the DirecTV section starting at this point forward.

I've had both, first off DirecTV's HD PQ is slightly better than Dish's HD PQ. DirecTV's Genie is very nice and has RVU (if you have a TV that has RVU built-in) DirecTV also has wireless Client boxes that do not require a physical connection, DirecTV's Whole Home is very good and allows you to see all recordings from multiple DVR's as a central list, also if you get whole home, any HD receiver can playback any DVR recording, although the new Hopper 3 is the most advanced STB DVR available bar none and has several features the Genie does not namely being able to record all your Primetime local network shows using one tuner, Commercial break skip and with the Hopper 3 16 active tuners.

DirecTV uses KA Band to transmit their HD channels, as such it is more affected by Rain Fade than KU Band, which is used by Dish for SD/HD and for DirecTV's SD content.

DirecTV does NOT have the ability to use External Hard Drives as well as Internal Hard Drives like Dish does. DirecTV does not have the Dish Network drop to live bug that can cause you to cancel or stop recordings that are in progress if you watch the show while it is recording.

DirecTV has more sports packages, and doesn't have any part time RSN's, Every game in the OOM Packages (Center Ice, NBA, MLB) is in HD and you get both Home Town feeds for each game.

John

 

[JohnL]

Cons: no autotune feature as I like to have autotune to go to the channel in case I forget to change the channel, DVR FF/rewind being different from Dish with it being slower to FF/Rewind then Dish's and it telling you how much time you have from the live feed when you pause the channel,


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By Default DirecTV's skip forward and back are set to Slip forward and back, meaning on each key press the DVR will fast forward or reverse instead of doing an instant jump. You can change it to do the instant skip.
The following steps will turn your 30-second slip button into a 30-second skip button (this also changes the back button from slip to skip):

• Press {MENU}
• Arrow down to "Search and Browse"
• Arrow over to "Smart Search." Press {SELECT}
• Spell out the word 30SKIP
• Press the {RED} button (not the record button) for a Keyword Search
• Make sure "All" is highlighted and press {SELECT}

You will see a screen saying "There are no matching programs at this time." Press {EXIT} to go back to TV.

John

 

[realbbbb]

DirecTV does NOT have the ability to use External Hard Drives as well as Internal Hard Drives like Dish does. ......

I don't have experience with this personally, but I don't believe that is correct. You can hook up an external hard drive to certain DVR's, at least per DTV's website.

https://support.directv.com/app/ans...ording-capacity-of-my-standard-dvr-or-hd-dvr?

 

[mdram]

I don't have experience with this personally, but I don't believe that is correct. You can hook up an external hard drive to certain DVR's, at least per DTV's website.

https://support.directv.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1763/~/can-i-increase-the-recording-capacity-of-my-standard-dvr-or-hd-dvr?

you can hook it up, but it will replace the internal, you cannot copy between them like with dish

 

[darrengs]

I don't have experience with this personally, but I don't believe that is correct. You can hook up an external hard drive to certain DVR's, at least per DTV's website.

https://support.directv.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1763/~/can-i-increase-the-recording-capacity-of-my-standard-dvr-or-hd-dvr?

PP is correct, they stated: "DirecTV does NOT have the ability to use External Hard Drives as well as Internal Hard Drives like Dish does. ......"
Per your link, "When your receiver reboots, it will automatically see the newly-connected hard drive. The hard drive inside your receiver will be disabled."

So you can get more room by going with an external drive, but then your external drive is disabled.

However, I do see a positive to this implementation, if one were to use an external drive with at least mirrored raid, they wouldn't have to worry about losing their recordings due to a hard drive failure, which has happened twice to me on my Hoppers.

 

[Doug on the farm]

So you can get more room by going with an external drive, but then your external drive is disabled.

I think you meant "but then your internal drive is disabled".

 

[darrengs]

I think you meant "but then your internal drive is disabled".

Yes, that was what I meant.

 

[Willh699]

Another follow up as Sunday was the 1 month anniversary of the switchover, and I had issues with the DVR since then and DirecTV sent the guy that installed it back out here the Saturday after to work it, didn't fix it, then they sent his supervisor to work on it too, still same issue with the DVR, so we had yet a 3rd guy come out and it turns out, I had the HR34 Genie DVR, which was the first gen Genie and he drove a actual AT&T van instead of a truck like the other 2 have driven to my home in and he say the 2 guys were "contractors" and they had not gotten the newer Genie boxes.

So he switch the DVR out, replaced the HR34 with a HR44 and then he reconnected the C51 Genie minis in the 3 bedrooms in my home to the new DVR box.

Anyway, the new DVR seems to be working fine and it works faster then the HR34 Genie ever did.


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[mdram]

34's are hit and miss, i actually have one of the few good ones i have heard about