Comments on: TV comes back after 605 days

By: Adam

Adam — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 11:53:44 +0000

You know, my new roommate has a TV and in the 6 months I’ve lived with her, I’ve not used it once (other than to watch DVDs).

With that said, I do occasionally get a hankering to watch The Simpsons and I’m also kinda hooked on Lost. What’s amazing (and gratifying!) to me is that so much of this content is available on the ‘net… FREE and LEGALLY now (Hulu and ABC.com). If the networks keep this up (and I continue having a nice big computer monitor)… who cares about that TV box?

By: Kevin

Kevin — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 02:01:52 +0000

One of my favorite things to do when the satellite dish goes out (I’m at the top of a hill so there’s a lot of winds that blow it back and forth) is call the Satellite company I’m presently with and negotiate for either a month of free service or an extra movie channel or the like. I’ve switched back and forth between dish and directv a few times over the years because the competition for customers is so competitive and they each offer great deals for ditching the competitor and signing up with them. Reminds me of the old long-distance phone plan wars of the 90’s.

By: FranciscoIV

FranciscoIV — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 04:57:39 +0000

Torchwood BBCA
Doctor Who BBCA and SciFi
The Sarah Jane Adventures coming to SciFi in April
Burn Notice on USA back this summer
Monk USA
CSI Miami cause we all love Miami
Dexter (the Showtime version not the CBS version)

I’ll add more later…

By: TDavid

TDavid — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 23:53:54 +0000

Andrew - yes they are pointing slightly different directions. I added a picture to the bottom of the post.

choover - DirecTV was great to us when we had them before, particularly with the Sunday Ticket. As mentioned in the post above, the reason we went with Dish in big part was not having to sign a contract. DirecTV did not make the same offer. With Comcast there are no contracts either, but they were the most expensive of the three and wanted to add a bunch of installation charges than neither DirecTV or Dish were going to charge. Oh and Comcast was only willing to cut the price for 6 months and then they were going to raise the price by $20/month more. Prices with Dish are guaranteed until Jan 2009 which by then we may have switched to somebody else or canceled it altogether.

Wayne - thank you for the additional recommendations. Already had Terminator in the DVR, and will look into the others.

By: Wayne

Wayne — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:43:02 +0000

Psych on USA: Not perfect but the cast makes it one fun show to watch.
Breaking Bad on AMC: Interesting series and Bryan Cranston is awesome
Mad Men on AMC: Great drama set in a 50’s ad agency…with all the political incorrectness intact.
Damages on FX: Just great Drama
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: If you liked the first two movies, give this a go. I wanted to hate it and now can’t wait for new episodes each week.
A lot of people really get into Pushing Daisies(ABC), but it’s a little too desperately quirky for me.
Reaper (UPN) is a lot of fun also.
There’s a lot out there if you know where to find it.
Good luck!

By: choover

choover — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:01:19 +0000

Looks like the no contract might come to good use. Dish doesn’t use 2 dishes to “strengthen the signal,” they need it because the satellite’s to get the channels you wanted are in 2 different places. Directv is definitely better. And they have WAY MORE HD programs than dish. I canceled dish because they charge twice the price for HD and give you half the channels. Oh, and Direct only required 1 dish.

By: Andrew Ferguson

Andrew Ferguson — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 20:53:33 +0000

The extra dish is to receive addition additional programming, such as HD (as you noted) and maybe even local channels. I’m assuming that the dishes are pointed in to different directions (although maybe only a few degrees apart), so you’re not going to be able to “strengthen the signal” as the install guy said.

Out of curiosity, are your dishes round or elliptical? We had DirecTV and they use an elliptical dish so that we can receive signals from multiple satellites that are spread further apart then would normally be receivable by a standard round dish.

By: TDavid

TDavid — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 20:27:17 +0000

Knock on wood so far, Sedulous. It rained all day yesterday and Dish never skipped a beat. Maybe that’s what the extra dish is combatting. The install guy said they did it to “strengthen the signal” and for HD. Seems better to me to have one bigger dish than two smaller ones, but whatever.

By: Sedulous

Sedulous — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 20:13:21 +0000

You might want leave your “days with no TV” counter up. All the Dish subscribers I know say it goes out in heavy rains. But you probably don’t get much rain where you live Hope it works out better for you. “House”, “Numbers”, “Dogfights” series on the History Channel (fighter planes duking it out.)

By: TDavid

TDavid — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 20:09:05 +0000

thatedeguy - we haven’t seen any of the CSI but we keep hearing this is a good show and have looked over the DVD. I did record one of the CSI episodes over the weekend.

Andrew - thanks for the suggestions. We’ve got Family Guy and all the 24 seasons on DVD. Will check out The Big Bang Theory and American Dad.