same with me. had DISH at first but then switched to Direct. other than "resetting" every now and then", i've been satisfied.
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I've got dishnetwork with aboslutely no issues and love it! I dont watch NFL much so i dont know the package differences. My inlaws have directv and im not really a fan of it, slow loading menus and all. Maybe theres is an older system.
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We have DirectTVs business package at my office and while most of the time is is good, the occasional weather related outage is enough to drive me batty. If this was in my house and was having outages it would likely be out the window before the storm was over.
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I had it at one time about three/four years ago.
I liked it except for the problem in South Florida during rainy season (Thunderstorms).
Every time we had one, signal would go out.
Went back to cable then ended up leaving them and going with U-Verse about a year ago.
They all have good things and bad things.
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We went from a big dish (maybe 15 years of service) to Dish Network when signals all went digital. Had Dish for 3 years, customer service was a ZERO (or less!). Changed to DirecTV, Found out what customer service was about. Have had Direct for over 5 years. Loyal customer support runs strong. At my five year mark, Direct gave us a whole year of Showtime FREE. No strings attached. In a year, it will roll off without any action by us, no need to remember start dates and cancel!

My only complaint is that heavy rain storms will disrupt service a large percentage of the time. Heck, I could watch TV with the big dish when it had 2 inches of snow on it! But, that is a problem inherent in all the small dishes, be they Direct, Dish or something else. Small dish area always adds up to less reception strength, just the nature of dish service. That's why the old 10 foot dish never lost signal, more surface area to reflect back to the LNB. My sister and mom have Dish, and I get a call from my mom at least once a month to come fix something messed up. Granted, my mom is NOT tech savvy, at all. But about half the time, it's not something she's done, it's the system or provider. No complaints about DirecTV from this corner.
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Actually, the problem with rain is not due to the size of the dish.

Obviously a larger dish will receive a higher signal strength than a smaller one. But there are diminishing returns on dish size.

Almost all small dish systems, including Direc TV utilize a higher frequency of satellite service called KU band. The older large home dishes, 8 to 15 foot mostly used C band which uses lower frequencies. The lower the frequency, the larger the corresponding dish size is required for the same receive signal level.

The higher KU band frequency is susceptible to rain fade. At these frequencies large rain drops cause loss of signal as the size of the drop corresponds to the wavelength of the signal. The more intense the rain storm, the less signal gets to the receive dish. As the signals are digital, they usual work until it goes out, or the amount of data is below the threshold of the receiver to decode the signal.

If you are really interested in rain fade, here is a good explanation in English as opposed to techno geek talk. It also has a map of areas in the US where rain fade is experienced. I have no affiliation with Spacecom, they just published what I think is a pretty good explanation.

http://www.spacecom.com/customer_too..._rain_fade.htm

Snow or ice on the other hand hardly affects signal strength in the atmosphere. Usually the only problem snow or ice will create is when too much of it lines your satellite dish. This deforms the focus point of the dish and thus lowers the received or transmit level of the signal. Several companies make dish covers and or heaters to eliminate icing for all of you in snowbound locations.
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Never had enough snow in north-central Bama to need the heater when I used the big dish. I ran a dual LNB system, so I had C & KU bands. Actually considered going to the digital receiver and a package program deal for the big dish, but the receiver/decoder was over a thousand dollars!! And programing was higher than for the small dishes. By that time, almost all wild feeds were being encoded, and not available for viewing, so there wasn't much need to pay a couple of thousand to upgrade the system when the small dish companies provided equipment for free to new customers! I really miss all the wild feeds that we used to get, but have to admit that replacing accurator arms every 2 years, upgrading LNBs everytime a better generation came out, got a little old. Plus, damn wasps LOVED the "nose cone" LNB cover for nests!! Was always a rush when it came time to pull the cone off!

Good link for a plain english explanation for those not versed in satellite jargon!!
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An application of Rain-X on the dish will also prevent snow build-up. I generally wipe down the dish after the first snow and don't have to worry about it again that season.
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I just switced to AT&T U-verse and I love it!
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