Dish vs. Direct TV vs. Vertizon Fios

[colleyvillesooner]

Looks like we will be getting a house next month in the Dallas area.

Anyone have any opinions on Dish vs. Fios vs. AT&T Uverse?
I think I've heard Dish over direct TV, but Fios is new on the scene.

Don't really need a home phone, but maimly interested in High speed internet and HD service with two DVR's.

I have Time Warner right now, which is fine and I could transfer it, but wanted to see what my options were and how the HD quality was on the others.

TIA

[olevetonahill]

Dont know a thing about Fios
Had Dish , went to direct several yrs ago Still with em

[OUAlumni1990]

I got direct here, its ok i guess. Except I hate that cheap little remote they give you though. Guess you can go to best buy and get a better remote if all else fails.

[CrimsonJim]

Got Dish here with DVR. Never had any problems with it. I haven't heard of Fios either. Are you able to get AT&T U-verse where you live. I've heard that's pretty good.

[OU_Sooners75]

Not sure about Fios...but I now it is fiber optic, and the internet they provide is suppose to be a lot faster than cable! Never had Satellite internet.

And as far as Satellite. I love it, you get more options...but it sucks when big *** storms move in!

If I had FIOS in my area, I would definitely try it out.

[olevetonahill]

Satilite Innerwebs succs big donkey balls
Its just barely better than dial up
Its Ok when it works But It dont always werk :mad:

[Preservation Parcels]

We have had FIOS since December. Verizon is horrid when it comes to customer service. Plan to spend an hour or two, mostly on hold, on the phone every time you have a problem. We signed up for the plan for $99 a month for phone, internet, and TV. They bill us $190 every month. Emails and endless phone calls haven't been able to clear it up.

We had Verizon DSL before this. It worked faster and more reliably. It also included Norton Utilities as part of the package. No more. Now we have constant problems connecting to the internet, and they want an extra $14.95 a month for "technical support" to make it do what it should do in the first place.

The tv signal is often "chunky" and sound cuts in and out. We had an antenna in the attic before this. The HD signal was more reliable with that, but we didn't get as many channels.

The phone part of it works fine. I just wish I didn't have to use it to call Verizon so often.

Good luck with that.

[colleyvillesooner]

thanks for the heads up.

AT&T Uverse is available as well? Anyone have that?

[SeattleOUstudent]

I have UVerse and love it. I have an awesome Samsung tele and was looking for the best HD picture out there. I found it with Uverse. The rule of thumb is you have a choice of Uverse or Fios. THey dont overlap in coverage areas so this will help your decision tremendously!

FWIW, FIOS is supposed to be better, net-wise. Dont know much about their picture quality. I would assume since everything is fiber, it should be pretty good. Uverse offers TONS of HD programming though. I hardly ever go off their HD tier....and i watch a lot of TV.

[walkoffsooner]

I like dish best. But I have direct due to mlb package only available with them.

[PhilTLL]

Fios has a pretty solid reputation, the above poster's unfortunate situation not withstanding. I think HD picture quality is generally held to be (1) Fios (2) DirecTV (3) Dish (4) UVerse. Fios just has such a huge amount of available bandwidth that they've made "no compression from the broadcaster's source" a selling point.

DirecTV blows away the sports options for all other providers. That's a major selling point for them, and if you're going to spend $$$ on HD sports, DTV is your best bet. NFL is a well-known DTV exclusive, as is NASCAR Hotpass if that's your thing, and the MLB/NBA/NHL packages are more robust on DTV than their competitors, mostly because the others lack carriage for as many HD RSNs, thus less HD games overall.

The bad news is that rain/snow fade, particularly during heavy, southern plains style thunderstorms, is still an issue for satellite, no matter how well-aligned your dish is and no matter how much the providers claim otherwise.

UVerse's rollout hasn't exactly been flawless so far, and IPTV with FTTN is a less-tested technology than the others (including Fios' FTTP). Plus the old questions about distance from the big box, scalability of bandwidth, etc, mean that UVerse might be available in your area or even your neighborhood, but not to you, or perhaps not with optimal performance, and the more popular it is on your block, the less you'll be able to squeeze out of it, especially if you're the type who pushes the limits--multiple HD feeds at a time, torrents running, etc. Yelling at someone to get off the PC to make the pixels stop on the TV is not anyone's idea of fun.

I personally would go satellite over UVerse, DTV over Dish in terms of satellite, and maybe Fios over DTV, unless you're a total sports freak who's willing to spend for it. But of course here in OKC we only have Cox or satellite, so I don't know from experience on the other 2 options. If for some reason they both were rolling out here, I might leave Cox for Fios, but not UVerse. Cable often lags behind in the HD race, with less channels and more obvious compression, but over the next few years as analog cable is discontinued, all that sweet bandwidth will open up and they can start implementing a real switched-video system, so it won't always be that way.

[BudSooner]

Fios has a pretty solid reputation, the above poster's unfortunate situation not withstanding. I think HD picture quality is generally held to be (1) Fios (2) DirecTV (3) Dish (4) UVerse. Fios just has such a huge amount of available bandwidth that they've made "no compression from the broadcaster's source" a selling point.

DirecTV blows away the sports options for all other providers. That's a major selling point for them, and if you're going to spend $$$ on HD sports, DTV is your best bet. NFL is a well-known DTV exclusive, as is NASCAR Hotpass if that's your thing, and the MLB/NBA/NHL packages are more robust on DTV than their competitors, mostly because the others lack carriage for as many HD RSNs, thus less HD games overall.

The bad news is that rain/snow fade, particularly during heavy, southern plains style thunderstorms, is still an issue for satellite, no matter how well-aligned your dish is and no matter how much the providers claim otherwise.

UVerse's rollout hasn't exactly been flawless so far, and IPTV with FTTN is a less-tested technology than the others (including Fios' FTTP). Plus the old questions about distance from the big box, scalability of bandwidth, etc, mean that UVerse might be available in your area or even your neighborhood, but not to you, or perhaps not with optimal performance, and the more popular it is on your block, the less you'll be able to squeeze out of it, especially if you're the type who pushes the limits--multiple HD feeds at a time, torrents running, etc. Yelling at someone to get off the PC to make the pixels stop on the TV is not anyone's idea of fun.

I personally would go satellite over UVerse, DTV over Dish in terms of satellite, and maybe Fios over DTV, unless you're a total sports freak who's willing to spend for it. But of course here in OKC we only have Cox or satellite, so I don't know from experience on the other 2 options. If for some reason they both were rolling out here, I might leave Cox for Fios, but not UVerse. Cable often lags behind in the HD race, with less channels and more obvious compression, but over the next few years as analog cable is discontinued, all that sweet bandwidth will open up and they can start implementing a real switched-video system, so it won't always be that way.

Switched video is going to be both a nightmare to implement and a blessing after the kinks are worked out.
I know personally, from those who have had Uverse that it ain't so grand....I know, i'm the one who unplugs all the gizmos they installed to go back to cable.

They say it sucks dogs balls. :D

But, it's still new and like many NEW things it takes a few years to get the bugs worked out. I like the competition, it's good for everyone involved.
Cable is good when you live in the service areas, and then dish takes over, when you can't get cable or live in Sherwood Forrest and can't get a shot of the sky for the trees....then Uverse/Fios is good.

Each has it's own strength.

[jkjsooner]

Here's a good analysis of Comcast vs FIOS. It has a lot of good information about the compression ratios of various Comcast channels vs FIOS. I know Comcast isn't your provider but all the cable companies (and satellite) are attempting to squeeze a lot of high definition channels in the available bandwidth.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1008271

[BudSooner]

Here's a good analysis of Comcast vs FIOS. It has a lot of good information about the compression ratios of various Comcast channels vs FIOS. I know Comcast isn't your provider but all the cable companies (and satellite) are attempting to squeeze a lot of high definition channels in the available bandwidth.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1008271
Jesus, some of the screenshots comparing Fios to Comcast look like HD versus standard def.