I bought an HDTV by Mitsubishi two years ago. I've never had Cable and never subscribed to any form of Satellite TV -- I hate the idea of paying for TV broadcasting. But all those "reality" shows are forcing me to finally abandon normal TV. I can't stand it.
I'm considering VOOM as my first foray into this field. But I'm one of those "difficult" types that simply has to look at where the best "value" is for my dollar -- which is hard to do because the definition keeps changing.
Last weekend I sat down and listed every Channel listed by all three providers (Dish, DirecTV, and VOOM), across their respective Plans. The only one I haven't compiled, yet, is Dish's "Everything" plan. This is not entirely easy because different programs are listed differently at all three websites.
Station counts are pretty impressive at a casual glance. VOOM kills everybody else for HD channels -- but you all know that. The off-putting part of that situation, however, is I keep finding comments in Forums that say the Quality of all those HD broadcasts varies considerably. Complaints about poor-quality videos, etc.
Next, I started eliminating those Channels I considered worthless to me. Then those that are semi-useless. Then those I'll probably never watch. This eliminated virtually all Sports stations, although I watch the occasional Redskins game here in the DC area. All foreign stations are off the list. All women's-interest. All religious. And a few I'm not sure about because -- who knows -- I might actually WANT to watch a rural station talking about the tractor models available this Spring... nahhh!!!!
This leaves mostly educational, science fiction, science, investments, men's programming, news, home living, etc. -- those areas I have real interests in. But fighting that is the desire to mostly buy HD programming for that damned expensive HD set I paid for. I feel like I'm not really feeding my "baby" the right food these past two years. I'm curious about what I'm depriving myself of...
Getting down to a tally for "Most-Watchable Channels", I come up with the following counts...
DirecTV Plus Plan = 19 Channels
DirecTV Premier Plan = 21 Channels
Dish Top 180 Plan = 18 Channels
VOOM = 10 -- and only one is an HD show I recognize
VaVaVOOM = 11 -- and only one is an HD show I recognize
This is ignoring HD programming on VOOM -- which is unfair, in a way, because that's why you buy VOOM. My conclusion there might be that -- not including HD -- VOOM offers half as many of the normal Channels as I would find appealing on the other options.
Easing up a bit and including "Watchable Channels", the numbers increased to...
DirecTV Plus Plan = 64 Channels
DirecTV Premier Plan = 89 Channels
Dish Top 180 Plan = 72 Channels
VOOM = 57 -- but 10 of those are Cinema10
VaVaVOOM = 82 -- but 10 of those are Cinema10
This seems the most fair, to me, but I still have no experience to know that the exclusive shows on VOOM are any more "watchable"" than those on Dish or DirecTV.
This completely surprised me -- although, admittedly, I'm not experienced at this. That means I have NO WAY to evaluate the likelihood that I'll watch this-or-that without having actually had access to them for at least a year. But when I asked friends at work, they all said the same thing: "We actually watch only about 10 channels or shows on a repeated basis. The others we just flip through or never view."
Some questions I have include...
a) If the bulk of channels show Sports or Movies, do you find it "helpful" to have access to, say, 10 or 15 Movie Channels -- or do they pretty much repeat themselves? If they repeat themselves, do I count maybe only 2 or 3 Movie Channels? Are these all no-name shows that nobody rushed out to the theaters for, anyway?
b) Am I correct in assuming that two identically-named Channels listed as "East" and "West" are simply different Time-Zone rebroadcasts of each other? From my point of view, there's very little value in that.
c) Is it accurate to believe that having 5 different versions of Discovery Channel -- as an example -- available on DirecTV is no real "advantage" over one HD version on VOOM? How much Discovery can a person watch? Do you find yourself seeing shows being shared across those various Channels? Or does one standard version of Discovery pretty much cover all the other divisions?
For my personal comparisons, I "eliminated" all the music channels. Dish includes Sirius satellite radio, for example, but I doubt I'll listen to it through my TV. This was an interesting experiment for me, and I'd be happy to share the Excel spreadsheet to anyone who wants to create their own Preferred Channels Tally. Just don't harp on me about the mistakes I'm sure it's riddled with (wrong format indications, wrong availability listings, whatever). Most of it is probably right without my having to pour over every last little notation.
Thanks for reading and responding to a Newbie!
Guy Owen
I'm considering VOOM as my first foray into this field. But I'm one of those "difficult" types that simply has to look at where the best "value" is for my dollar -- which is hard to do because the definition keeps changing.
Last weekend I sat down and listed every Channel listed by all three providers (Dish, DirecTV, and VOOM), across their respective Plans. The only one I haven't compiled, yet, is Dish's "Everything" plan. This is not entirely easy because different programs are listed differently at all three websites.
Station counts are pretty impressive at a casual glance. VOOM kills everybody else for HD channels -- but you all know that. The off-putting part of that situation, however, is I keep finding comments in Forums that say the Quality of all those HD broadcasts varies considerably. Complaints about poor-quality videos, etc.
Next, I started eliminating those Channels I considered worthless to me. Then those that are semi-useless. Then those I'll probably never watch. This eliminated virtually all Sports stations, although I watch the occasional Redskins game here in the DC area. All foreign stations are off the list. All women's-interest. All religious. And a few I'm not sure about because -- who knows -- I might actually WANT to watch a rural station talking about the tractor models available this Spring... nahhh!!!!
This leaves mostly educational, science fiction, science, investments, men's programming, news, home living, etc. -- those areas I have real interests in. But fighting that is the desire to mostly buy HD programming for that damned expensive HD set I paid for. I feel like I'm not really feeding my "baby" the right food these past two years. I'm curious about what I'm depriving myself of...
Getting down to a tally for "Most-Watchable Channels", I come up with the following counts...
DirecTV Plus Plan = 19 Channels
DirecTV Premier Plan = 21 Channels
Dish Top 180 Plan = 18 Channels
VOOM = 10 -- and only one is an HD show I recognize
VaVaVOOM = 11 -- and only one is an HD show I recognize
This is ignoring HD programming on VOOM -- which is unfair, in a way, because that's why you buy VOOM. My conclusion there might be that -- not including HD -- VOOM offers half as many of the normal Channels as I would find appealing on the other options.
Easing up a bit and including "Watchable Channels", the numbers increased to...
DirecTV Plus Plan = 64 Channels
DirecTV Premier Plan = 89 Channels
Dish Top 180 Plan = 72 Channels
VOOM = 57 -- but 10 of those are Cinema10
VaVaVOOM = 82 -- but 10 of those are Cinema10
This seems the most fair, to me, but I still have no experience to know that the exclusive shows on VOOM are any more "watchable"" than those on Dish or DirecTV.
This completely surprised me -- although, admittedly, I'm not experienced at this. That means I have NO WAY to evaluate the likelihood that I'll watch this-or-that without having actually had access to them for at least a year. But when I asked friends at work, they all said the same thing: "We actually watch only about 10 channels or shows on a repeated basis. The others we just flip through or never view."
Some questions I have include...
a) If the bulk of channels show Sports or Movies, do you find it "helpful" to have access to, say, 10 or 15 Movie Channels -- or do they pretty much repeat themselves? If they repeat themselves, do I count maybe only 2 or 3 Movie Channels? Are these all no-name shows that nobody rushed out to the theaters for, anyway?
b) Am I correct in assuming that two identically-named Channels listed as "East" and "West" are simply different Time-Zone rebroadcasts of each other? From my point of view, there's very little value in that.
c) Is it accurate to believe that having 5 different versions of Discovery Channel -- as an example -- available on DirecTV is no real "advantage" over one HD version on VOOM? How much Discovery can a person watch? Do you find yourself seeing shows being shared across those various Channels? Or does one standard version of Discovery pretty much cover all the other divisions?
For my personal comparisons, I "eliminated" all the music channels. Dish includes Sirius satellite radio, for example, but I doubt I'll listen to it through my TV. This was an interesting experiment for me, and I'd be happy to share the Excel spreadsheet to anyone who wants to create their own Preferred Channels Tally. Just don't harp on me about the mistakes I'm sure it's riddled with (wrong format indications, wrong availability listings, whatever). Most of it is probably right without my having to pour over every last little notation.
Thanks for reading and responding to a Newbie!
Guy Owen