[Vision2020] KAYU, Time Warner, DirecTV, & DISH

[Dan Carscallen]

Saundra and Vizzz peeps:

Having been both a Dish and DirecTV subscriber, I can honestly say that
either one would be a good option.  The only reason we switched from one
(Dish) to the other (DirecTV) was their lack of willingness to share
with us any kind of offers to upgrade to DVR service.

Let me tackle some of  your questions/concerns/etc . . .

". . .  I figured out that if I jump to DirecTV or DISH, I'll get all
the programming I pay for on *every* TV without exorbitant additional
monthly fees for each TV on top of already pretty steep monthly costs
with Time Warner."

I don't know how TimeWarner works, but you have to pay 5 bucks (or maybe
it's $4.95) per receiver (on top of your base fee), be it Dish or
DirecTV.

". . . Maybe I can use parental controls to block the sports channels"  

You can set up several "favorites" lists, or browse the guide with just
news, sports, movie, family, whatever channels.  Parental controls are
also available that will block certain rated shows.

"How often do those of you using DISH or DirecTV experience outages and
how long do they typically last?  How was performance during our recent
heavy snows?"

The only outages I've experienced were when the dish got covered with
snow (easy enough to wipe clean) or when the sunflowers grew too tall
around it (easy enough to chop down sunflowers).  

"I'm also unclear about locating the dish itself.  We live in a single
family home in an older residential neighborhood with lots of trees --
are the trees likely to be a problem?"

In a word, yes.  You need a good southern exposure.  Sometimes you can
"shoot the gap", so to speak, but if the trees are too thick, or your
neighbor's house is too tall, you may have to go with a roof mount.  An
installer will be able to tell pretty quickly whether you have a good
spot.  I lucked out and could go alongside the house and it shoots right
up the neighbor's roofline.  Makes it easier to clean off the snow!

I couldn't tell you about ReplayTV.  I have RCA's DVR system, which
takes two cables (no splitter).  If ReplayTV is better than TiVo, it
must be REALLY good, because I liked the heck out of TiVo when we had
it, but couldn't justify the extra subscription.  I haven't a clue how
the DirecTV or Dish works with the RTV setup.  I would imagine a good
installer could tell you.

Now there are MANY Dish and DirecTV installers running around after
TimeWarner and KAYU/Fox's little pissing contest.  They are probably all
okay, but if you don't mind spending the money for a quality install, I
believe TPG Multimedia Solutions still handles both, and I think First
Step started handling one of the brands (can't recall which).  Again, I
don't think you'll have a problem with either of the companies.

Your pal,

DC