Tell me your DirecTV stories

[Paladin]

MY wife and I are once again considering dumping our cable and cable internet service for DirecTV and DSL. I'd like to hear any feedback those of you who've done this want to give. I'm kind of worried about the satellite signal going out from time to time, especially with storms. I'm also concerned that DSL (3.0M/768K) isn't going to be good enough for gaming.

So, post away. I'll most likely make a decision by this time Wednesday night.

[Harka]

I made the jump to Direct TV quite a while ago and cant say I am too disappointed with it. Yea there is the interruption during heavy rain and thunderstorms and it can be a bit of a pain when it happens but with the ability with to watch all of the network shows via the internet if you miss one now I live with it.

I switched to Verizon DSL a while ago and have not noticed any issues with playing online games so far.

[Circuit]

Eh, why would you be concerned that 3MB/768K wouldn't be good for gaming?

[Tai]

That pipe is fat enough, you should check what the latency will be, but I can't think DSL would have higher latency than a cable modem.

[Q]

Eh, why would you be concerned that 3MB/768K wouldn't be good for gaming?

It's amazing how quickly we forget that not long ago we were all playing on 56k or less. My old UT server for 16 people was on a 768K SDSL line.

To play games as a client, 768K is probably about 10 times more than you'll ever need. Latency on DSL shouldn't be an issue either.

I had DirecTV very briefly a while back and it was fine but then Verizon FIOS rolled into town :).

[Paladin]

Thanks for the responses, guys. On the DSL front, it isn't so much the bandwidth I'm worried about as whether or not DSL has worse latency than cable?

Q, I'd love to get FIOS, but it's not available here yet and no ETA. I keep checking though, because there are parts of the county where it is available.

[Creole Ned]

Latency on DSL is fine. I host my server over a 6mbps/1mbps DSL line and people on the opposite coast can get pings as low as the 120s.

[Q]

Q, I'd love to get FIOS, but it's not available here yet and no ETA. I keep checking though, because there are parts of the county where it is available.

You may want to hold off on switching for a bit then and keep an eye on the coverage area. Once Verizon got a foothold here, they were pretty aggressive about expanding.

[Dg3Nr8]

my DirecTV story is that I had it and loved it and cray a little bit every night because I can't get it where I currently live.

On a somewhat related note what I currently use is the basic $8 a month cable package from Comcast and a HDHomerun (http://www.silicondust.com/products/hdhomerun_atsc). With the cable plugged directly into the TV I get seven or eight channels after removing all shopping, religious and crappy public access channels. After removing the same channels with the HDHomerun in place I have around 85 channels including things like The History Channel, SciFi, ESPN, HGTV, etc. I use Vista Media Center as a DVR with this setup and it works great.

The downside to this setup is that only the major network channels are actually in HD and Comcast could decide to encrypt these channels without warning at any time. If/When that happens I imagine I'll be right back to my seven or eight channels.

[Shadowrat]

Direct tv tried to extort money from me twice.

I used to have telocity DSL. I had canceled my account right when telocity folded. Because they vanished, there was no instruction on what to do with my hardware.

It turns out dtv bought telocity's assets. A year later dtv said I owed them $1k.

After a couple months of fighting with them, they claimed I just needed to return my DSL equipment. I did and they removed themselves from my credit report.

A few months later I tried to buy a condo only to find out dtv was back on my credit report.

Now they claimed I owed them $1k for a year of DSL service. What bs. It took me months of calling every day andbitching to get them to drop it.

I fucking HATE direct tv.

Maybe they are better if they want money for a service they actually provide. Just realiZe that you are supporting a company who likes to put completely innocent people in collections. They also eat babies, club baby seals, sell soylent green, and drive their hummers in the car pool lane without passengers.

[Dg3Nr8]

but soylent green is tasty :(

[Tai]

and Hummers make great targets from space.