Dish Network vs Direct TV
Home entertainment through television has come of age these days. Gone are the days when we had to depend upon the services provided by the cable company in our area and had to bear whatever he dished out in the name of entertainment. We could only ask and request him to beam a particular channel and he gave us a restrictive choice of channels only. Today, the scenario has changed completely and customer is the king with the arrival of Dish TV and Direct TV. Both Dish network and Direct TV are satellite based services and allow the customer to choose what he wishes to see.
Dish Network
Dish Network is one of the largest pay TV providers in the US. It broadcast satellite television to its 14 million subscribers scattered all over the country. The company that was started in 1996 today has numerous satellites of its own with some of them being leased by others. The company is competing with other satellite broadcasters in the country and is in direct competition with Direct TV and also has to face stiff competition with cable service providers. Dish network is one of the Fortune 200 company.
Direct TV
This is a direct broadcasting satellite service that is not restricted to the US alone and beams satellite TV to its subscribers in the US, Latin America and the Caribbean. Launched in 1994, Direct TV has 18 million subscribers and the company is in direct competition with Dish Network and other cable service providers. The company holds exclusive rights to many sports packages such as NFL Sunday Ticket, Men’s Major Golf Tournaments and Grand Slam Tennis Tournaments. The subscribers get a dish that is smaller in size, an integrated receiver and a Direct TV access card. Consumers pay a monthly subscription fee to the company to receive TV programs.
Difference between Dish Network and Direct TV
With both Dish Network and Direct TV claiming to have more channels and crystal clear clarity in their TV programs, it becomes hard for the consumer to choose between the two. Both the companies use state of the art technology to better their services to retain and increase their customer base. Being in direct competition to each other their packages and pricing is almost similar. However, Direct TV subscription is slightly costly. But one thing is for sure, and that is that both the companies are priced lower than cable service and provide much better clarity than cable TV. There are some areas in which there are slight differences between the two companies and these are such as Channels, DVR, Family Plans, HDTV, Music Stations, Pricing and Sports
One has to carefully go through finer details in their packages and choose according to his own requirements. The real difference between the two companies lies in the choice of individual customer as to what he requires and what he does not. If you are a nig NFL fan, you would obviously want Direct TV.
One big problem that Direct TV has is that of hackers whereas Dish Network uses internal cards and as such there are no such worries.
Direct TV offers more than 260 channels that includes more HD channels and also has NFL Sunday Ticket in its kitty.
Dish Network has more than 350 channels in its bag. It has more variety in its channels, most music channels and a higher number of pay per view movies.
I work at DISH Network and I just wanted to say that DISH by far gives you the better value for your money. DIRECTV charges you 8x’s more to watch their sports packages and does not give you the option to OPT out of it when the season is over. DIRECTV also charges you 16% more for their DVR service than DISH Network does and they have received an “F” from the Better Business Bureau with over 40,000 complaints from customers. For their International programming, DIRECTV has opted to not offer Arabic, Urdu, Polish, French or Italian packages and doesn’t offer an all Spanish package for their customers. If you are a new customer at DIRECTV, you will have to mail in certain rebates to get the price offered on their website which can take 6-8 weeks to process. If you are still not convinced, you can go view DISH’s and DIRECTV’s website to compare prices for their programming!
*Danielle
Does Dish Network receivers come up with 775 error codes (receiver is not able to receive information from the dish)? I had Direct TV and from the morning after the install I was getting 775 error codes, sometimes 771 error codes. I had seven service calls out on this problem and the final technician said he didn’t know what else to do that the other technicians had not tried.