Cable/Sat Quality: Do you prefer Comcast, Fios, DirectTV, or Dish?

[Todd Anderson]

I'm curious to know where people stand on picture quality across the major cable/sat companies?

I've been a long-term Comcast subscriber... a few months ago our fees shot through the roof and I strongly considered jumping to Fios. But, we like the X1 platform and decided to just go through the annoyingly tedious process of demanding a lower rate.

I'm still interested in the idea of Fios, tho... particularly in the picture quality department.

 

[tripplej]

I had comcast as well as Dish Network in the past. Dish was better in terms of quality. Currently, I have neither. I couldn't justify the price hikes every year and cut the cord. I now only use OTA (Over the air) antenna and stream Amazon prime, netflix, and hulu plus.

 

[Todd Anderson]

In terms of quality... what do you mean (specifically)?

 

[tripplej]

When I say quality, dish had a clearer picture. Comcast in comparison for some of their channels were not as clear. They would crunch (compress) the signal making the picture soft.

 

[Mark C Flick]

In my experience:
1. OTA hands down, no contest. Looks like HD
2. Dishnetwork Looks like Superbit
3. DirecTV Looks like an average DVD
4. Comcast slightly better than VHS
No experience with FIOS.

 

[Todd Anderson]

You guys are killing me! Hmmm... What makes Dish so much better?

Hopefully someone with some Fios experience will chime in with a Comcast/Fios comparison....

 

[Mark C Flick]

Couple things that, for me, make Dish better is the Hopper w/Sling. It's a pretty impressive DVR, light years ahead of Comcast and still ahead of DirecTV. The Pandora app actually works. Built-in Netflix is awesome.
I really disliked Comcast, the picture quality was not very good, compressed, pixilated etc, DVR was clunky, on-demand only had some episodes and the remote left a lot to be desired.
Maybe different parts of the country have different quality from these guys but from what I've seen I'd take Dish over any of the others.

 

[Sonnie]

We have TroyCable right now... 720p, but it looks every bit as good as Dish, which we had previously for a couple of years. Prior to Dish we had DirecTV. Angie and I both thought DirecTV had a better picture than Dish, and held the signal better during storms. However, the Hopper with 5 tuners was by far a better STB than the Genie with DirecTV. Either is currently better than our STB with cable, as it needs work, although it does offer unlimited tuners because it's IPTV, so there is no limits on what you can record. But quality wise, I would put cable and DirecTV on top, then Dish. It may be where you are in the country. Last I checked it seems the consensus over at DBS Talk was that DirecTV has the better quality picture overall, but not by much.

 

[phillihp23]

I used to have Comcast for years....I got tired of the price gouging and jumped ship to Dish HD about 3 years ago. I have been happy since. They will tell you exactly what your monthly bill will be and not change it randomly. They usually give you a really good deal the first year and then standard price the second (two year contract required). I have a Hopper 3 with sling and 5 4K joeys. It runs me $150 a month standard price, I got the first year for $75 a month for the Americas top 200 plan. Six TV's. You can watch four channels at once in a sports split screen mode on your tv. And it now works with amazon echo (talk to your tv to find shows, I personally don't have one), Sirius, Netflix app, Pandora app., youtube app. Watch and record up to 16 shows at once. They did some minor shuffling of channel packages this year and my cost did go up about $4.

I find the picture quality to be high quality.

 

[Mark C Flick]

So it has now been just over 6 months that I have been saddled with DirecTV and I can honestly say, there is not one thing about it I like better than DISH Network.

 

[Todd Anderson]

How about picture quality, Mark? Notice any differences?

 

[Sonnie]

We recently went back to Dish and love it. Dish has the new Hopper 3 4K and Joey 4K... super nice features and functionality - 16 tuners. The picture quality looks about as good as any of them we've ever had. I can't say it is as good as what DirecTV was when we had it, because it has been so long ago since we had it. I just know it looks very good on our Vizio 70" 4K display. We have only had one instance of loss single and it was during a serious thunderstorm. We are very happy with our service... and because the service tech miss his first appointment... we got an extra $15 per month off for the first year. It was a bit odd... they wanted to install it on a Sunday afternoon, but I explained it would be better if they waited until my day off on Wednesday. They insisted on Sunday, which I explained would be okay of after 3pm. He showed up at 1pm and we were not here. Rescheduled for Wednesday and got the discount to boot.

 

[Todd Anderson]

When you go Dish, you have to get a separate internet service provider, yes?

 

[phillihp23]

When you go Dish, you have to get a separate internet service provider, yes?

They offer a internet service....I still use broadband through Comcast though.

 

[Sonnie]

You don't want their service if you can help it. There isn't a satellite Internet service that is worth it... latency (ping time) is super slow, which makes general surfing pitiful... on top of access limitations that don't allow you to use much bandwidth per month. We've had all three services available and hated all three, including the latest Wildblue Viasat that was supposed to be the best. I would not consider any of them until they figure out a way to improve ping time and get rid of FAP (Fair Access Policy).

We kept our TroyCable service with 200meg down and up.... super fast.

 

[GFOviedo]

I was a Comcast customer for many years. However, their prices increased drastically for both TV and internet. I was paying $150 dollars a month for local channels (never watched) with internet 200 Mbps download / 12 Mbps upload.

I just recently switched to AT&T. I'm currently paying $140 dollars for TV and internet. Over 300 channels with sports package NFL, baseball, soccer, basketball. The internet is only 100 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload. So far everything is working great.

The only issue, we currently have IPTV (U-Verse TV), which doesn't have the NFL Sunday Ticket, which was something I wanted since my wife likes to watch the Cowgirls. The representative told me DirecTV and U-Verse TV were the same, but the representative was wrong. Anyway, a tech is coming by Wednesday to switch the TV equipment from IPTV to DirecTV.

Picture quality is excellent 1080p. It looks like blueray quality on my TV when you are watching the HD channels. There are other channels that aren't HD and those are 480p. If you like sports such as the NFL you can't go wrong with DirecTV.

Since I'm bundling my internet and TV, I get unlimited internet data. I am also thinking of switching my cell phone provider from Verizon to AT&T to get another $25 dollars discount for my DirecTV portion.

 

[Mark C Flick]

How about picture quality, Mark? Notice any differences?

Not a lot of difference but do think Dish was slightly better.

 

[Todd Anderson]

I was a Comcast customer for many years. However, their prices increased drastically for both TV and internet. I was paying $150 dollars a month for local channels (never watched) with internet 200 Mbps download / 12 Mbps upload.

I just recently switched to AT&T. I'm currently paying $140 dollars for TV and internet. Over 300 channels with sports package NFL, baseball, soccer, basketball. The internet is only 100 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload. So far everything is working great.

The only issue, we currently have IPTV (U-Verse TV), which doesn't have the NFL Sunday Ticket, which was something I wanted since my wife likes to watch the Cowgirls. The representative told me DirecTV and U-Verse TV were the same, but the representative was wrong. Anyway, a tech is coming by Wednesday to switch the TV equipment from IPTV to DirecTV.

Picture quality is excellent 1080p. It looks like blueray quality on my TV when you are watching the HD channels. There are other channels that aren't HD and those are 480p. If you like sports such as the NFL you can't go wrong with DirecTV.

Since I'm bundling my internet and TV, I get unlimited internet data. I am also thinking of switching my cell phone provider from Verizon to AT&T to get another $25 dollars discount for my DirecTV portion.

I have AT&T Wireless... sounds like there are some DTV and ATT promotions that I should consider checking out!

 

[Sonnie]

there is not one thing about it I like better than DISH Network.

So you prefer Dish all the way around?

 

[Mark C Flick]

I do. The remote, the DVR, the guide, the picture, the order/placement of the channels, even the aesthetics of the set top box, all of the apps (like Pandora) that actually work and especially the Netflix app.

 

[Tony V.]

Up here in the great white north Im using Telus. They recently upgraded the entire city to a fiber backbone with fiber right into my house. The HD is as good as OTA they also offer a few channels in 4k but I dont know what they are like as I dont have a 4k display.

What are most of you getting for internet speed? I did a speed test last month and was getting 167kbs up and 164kbs down (my packgage is unlimited up and down)

 

[mechman]

I'll disagree with Mark on the picture quality front. DirecTV's picture quality is a lot better than Dish's. My neighbor has Dish and I have DirecTV. I have an Epson 3010 with a 100" screen and he has an Epson 3020 with a 100" screen. He uses the hopper and I have genie. The difference in picture quality is quite noticeable to both of us.

Dish's Hopper is far superior to DirecTV's Genie equipment-wise though.

 

[Mark C Flick]

That's interesting. Makes me wonder if there is something else going on...

 

[mechman]

My thoughts have always been that it was the compression. Artifacts are much easier to see at the neighbors.

 

[GFOviedo]

I had the Direct TV tech here tomorrow. We switched from U-Verse TV to DirecTV mainly for the sports. DirecTV picture quality is excellent, and the NFL Sunday ticket is awesome as well. At the same time, I ended up switching my cell phone provided to AT&T as well. Got a pretty good deal to get 3 new iPhone 8+, and only pay for 1. This promotion will end on 9/30/2017 at 2 PM PST. I also ended up getting an iPad 9.7" 32 GB for $100 bucks with cellular service. The DirecTV rep was pretty cool and gave me several discounts so I only pay $3.00 for the iPad's cellular connection. I also get unlimited data.

So I can watch everything from DirecTV on the go, and HBO is included for free as well so I can enjoy Game of Thrones!