Your Holiday Experience with DirecTV HD

[AMike]

I don't know about most of you here, but we had family visit us here during the Christmas holidays. Everyone that came to visit has cable, so this was an opportunity for us to "show off" the many HD channels that they do not get on their various cable systems (Comcast, BrightHouse).

The responses were: "Wow!" "That HD is incredible". "I wish cable offered this". "I hate our cable." "We may need to switch to DirecTV".

[Upstream]

I don't get HD with DirecTV (since I can't get a competitive price for the HR-20/21).

But I visited my brother-in-law over Thanksgiving. He has Time-Warner cable and DirecTV for Sunday Ticket during football season. I compared a couple of SD channels (local and national) between the two providers on his TV. I was amazed at how poor the DirecTV SD picture was compared to TWC. (In fact, that is one of the reasons my brother-in-law said he doesn't drop TWC and go with DirecTV year round.)

[Xaa]

I don't get HD with DirecTV (since I can't get a competitive price for the HR-20/21).



Competitive vs what? What have you been offered? Mine was free which I found quite competitive.

[tonyd79]

What is SD?

And what does it have to do with the topic?

And you are cheating yourself out of HD because of a hundred bucks or so? Good for you.

My Christmas HD story. Friends in town who have DirecTV SD. Husband wants HD. Wife was resistent. Until now. "Those are all in HD?"

[spartanstew]

All of mine have been basically free as well ( 7 of them total).


Had relatives in for the last 2 weeks (and one more arrives tomorrow for a few days). None of them have D* (for various reasons), but they're all pretty tempted now after seeing all the HD channels and how good they all looked.

Even the SD looks great at my house.

[JeffBowser]

I have a slightly different story - I have DirecTV, my dad has E* - I spent a week watching his while we were visiting over the holidays, making mental comparisons with the picture the entire time. Aside from the difficulty in comparing his 50" plasma mounted high on a wall, versus my 65" traditional RPTV sitting on the floor, or my two 40" LCDs, I found E* and D* were more similar than not. One thing that bugged me, though, the E* DVR was BLAZING fast in the guide, I was stunned at the huge difference, not to mention he had only two, driving 4 TV's, and each TV could view a different channel. Sure wish D* had that.

[cariera]

The responses were: "Wow!" "That HD is incredible". "I wish cable offered this". "I hate our cable." "We may need to switch to DirecTV".

Make sure you get paid for showing off your Directv.:)

http://directv.com/DTVAPP/global/contentPage.jsp?assetId=900008

[laurie_lu]

We were at my Dad's house on XMas. He has high def with Comcast cable. His stations weren't looking any poorer than mine. I was pretty impressed actually considering all the negative things I've read about Comcast.

[sigma1914]

...not to mention he had only two, driving 4 TV's, and each TV could view a different channel. Sure wish D* had that.

Only 1 HDTV feed at a time per receiver, the TV2 is only SD.

[JeffBowser]

Aye, you are right, and on second thought, that wouldn't do for me, my only SD TV is in the kids playroom, an old 44" glass tube for some of their shooting games. My dad only has one HD TV, the other 3 are SD only, so it works well for him.

Only 1 HDTV feed at a time per receiver, the TV2 is only SD.

[Jimmy 440]

A friend of mine came to look at my HD last night.Today,we went to Best Buy so she could get a 42" HD & DirecTv.She's hooked !

[Maruuk]

Lessee, my HR21 has nasty audio dropouts and huge lags between screens and now a new fun thing where it turns everything a purple hue. I had to reset to fix that. And my replacement HR20 had completely fried non-OTA tuners which oscillate on and off at 2-second intervals and I wasted 4 hours trying to get it to work while on the phone to DTV. And missed my hockey game during that time. Happy Holidays! The DTV beancounters are laughing all the way to the bank in their one-horse open sleighs.

[davring]

Visited my sister-in-law who has a single H20/5lnb setup and asked why she was watching USA on the SD feed and she said it is breaking up to bad right now to watch. She told me D* had been out a week ago and replaced a "defective" receiver and was charged $70.00 plus shipping. It worked until he left. I checked 103b and the signal strength was between 30/40 across the board. I went outside to see if I could tweak the dish and only had to adjust the azimuth app 2 degrees and everything is now in the 80's and 90's. It is too bad that is the level of service some of these HSC's provide. She is going to E-mail them for, hopefully, a credit, as I am sure the H20 was not defective in the first place.

[n3ntj]

Every time I go back to my parent's house (who have digital cable and HD with TW), I have to tell them how bad the PQ stinks. Plus, they only get 7 or 8 HD channels. the picture is all fuzzy and the cable company's antenna for local channels needs adjustment because all of the local channels have ghosting on cable. Really stinks. If I can ever get them to come down here, they'll see how good D* is and how bad TW cable is. D* blows their TW cable away, both in number of HD channels and PQ.

[loudo]

We had family over for Christmas. After dinner we watch a little of the basketball game, The NFL Network, and a few other HD stations. Then I streamed some photos from this years vacation, from my computer to the TV, via the HR20. They were impressed with the quality of the video and the streamed photos.

They next day one family member called me up and said they wanted me to go to BB with them, as they decided to get a new HDTV. We we went and they got a new 42" HDTV.

A few days later they again called me up and asked me about DirecTV. They had called the cable company about getting a HD box for their new TV, and found out that the cable company only offered 15 national HD channels, and the NFL Network was not one of them. So, they wanted to get DirecTV. I gave them my account info, so they could use me as a referral and I could get $50.00 off my next bill.

That $50.00 off my bill will be a nice Christmas present.

[dtrell]

All of mine have been basically free as well ( 7 of them total).




spartanstew, you got seven HD DVRs for free??? was this to upgrade Mpeg2 only DVRs to the Mpeg 4 ones? this couldnt possibly be to upgrade standard receivers to an HD DVR...


That $50.00 off my bill will be a nice Christmas present.

you wont get 50 dollars off your next bill, you will get 10 dollars a month for 5 months, and thats after a month or two lag for it to kick in.

[supremelurker]

I have a slightly different story - I have DirecTV, my dad has E* - I spent a week watching his while we were visiting over the holidays, making mental comparisons with the picture the entire time. Aside from the difficulty in comparing his 50" plasma mounted high on a wall, versus my 65" traditional RPTV sitting on the floor, or my two 40" LCDs, I found E* and D* were more similar than not. One thing that bugged me, though, the E* DVR was BLAZING fast in the guide, I was stunned at the huge difference, not to mention he had only two, driving 4 TV's, and each TV could view a different channel. Sure wish D* had that.

Wait, so your dad only needs two receivers for four TVs?

[davring]

Wait, so your dad only needs two receivers for four TVs?

One Dish DVR will supposrt one HDTV and one SDTV at the same time using both tuners.

[spartanstew]

spartanstew, you got seven HD DVRs for free???

Sorry. Actually only 2 of them have been HD DVR's. The other 5 were SD DVR's and this has been over a 7 year period. And to me basically free = less than $50.