High Def ..comcast Or Directv???

gnome011

I Am New To This. I Have A Sony Kde-37xs955. I Want To Purchase The Comcast Hd Service But I Know There Are Some Differences With That Of Comcast And Of Directv. Which One Should I Purchase??? A Little Help Please!

bbk5150

I have had every single HD tv service. Dish, Direct, Voom, and Comcast. I have concluded that Comcast is really the best. I get compelling HD content w/ Comcast. With all the other carriers, I got crappy uncompelling HD. Plus w/ Comcast, you will get your locals in HD without having to have an OTA antenna. Take my advice, get Comcast.

CatManDoo

I've never had DirecTV, but I can say a few good things about Comcast HD. The quality is very good, supposedly because it's not compressed as much as Satellite. You can check with both to see which has more channels for your viewing area. If I may make a suggestion, go with Comcast first. You probably already have a cable line to your home, and if you try it at the right time you can probably get it installed for a buck. Plus they often have special introductory offers of $19.99 for a couple months and sometimes even a free premium package like HBO, Starz, etc.... And the best part is that if you don't like it or have any problems, just return the box and you can cancel without any fees. When you sign up with DirecTV you'll have a contract. And you'll have a dish installed on your roof, possibly with an extra antenna for locals in HD. So I would suggest you "date" Comcast for a while and see how it goes. If Comcast just doesn't do it for you and won't put out what you want, then get a quicky divorce and marry DirecTV. It's better this way because there is less commitment. As for which one you will end up liking better, that is anyone's guess. You'll hear lots of pros and cons from both camps, but in the end you'll have to decide. Good Luck!

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"Miss-Ti, World's BEST Cat!"

Rogerman

Hi, I'm in eastern NC and we have Time-Warner. I have their new 8300HD hard drive recorder (DVR). It is fabulous. Picture quality when playing back a recording is absolutely like the original.
With cable you get local channels, lots of on-demand movies and shows, etc etc.
Definitely cable for me now because of the DVR. Once you have it you'll never be without one!!
Roger

ja2935

Yes the DVR is the key to good time-shifted HD viewing - never miss anything you want to see. $10 a month with Comcast or $1000 up front with DirectTV = no contest!

jejagua

I switched from DISH to Comcast and I'm happy I did it. As the previous poster described, you have nothing to lose.

Wiring is easier with cable (no dedicated runs to an outside dish).
Startup costs are much less (or nothing at all) for cable.
OnDemand simply rocks!
I'm using the DMI connection into a new Mitsubishi DLP set and the HD quality is simply astonishing.

DISH has really angered and disappointed me in the way they have implemented HD. I was a loyal customer for 3.5 years, and you'd think that after the $5000 dollars I have given them over that time would entitle me to an upgrade to HD, but they wouldn't budge. Instead, representatives from retention spout all kinds of lies about how much better the quality is and how much cheaper it is than cable. To stay with DISH I would have had to pay almost $600 for one stinking HD DVR box. Comcast gave me two HD DVR's for nada.

I got a "Ditch your Dish" promo from Comcast for 50% rebate on programming for 12 months, plus a discount on my cable modem.

I see no easy way satellite can compete with cable when comes to features such as OnDemand. Perhaps it could be achieved using a huge hard drive that cache's all programs and simply bills you when you watch one. Sounds cost prohibitive to me, especially when you consider the storage requirements of HD programming.

Try Comcast...I think you'll be pleased.

CatManDoo

The early results are in -- the polls close in 3 days. It's running 5 votes to Zero in favor of Comcast. Would this be any different if it were posted in the DirecTV thread?

p.s. In the event of a tie, it goes directly to the US Supreme Court. No counting hanging chads, etc ....

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"Miss-Ti, World's BEST Cat!"

Cygnus

IMHO HD looks better on cable than satellite. I have seen HD on DTV on a plasma and dlp TVs. Comcast HD on my projection TV looks clearer and brighter than DTV. Supposedly satellite compresses the HD signal more. It goes without saying that SD looks better from satellite tho

CatManDoo

That seems to be a frequent observation in this Forum. I am bummed about channels 2-99 being analog through cable so I try to avoid them and focus on the 10 HD channels (especially if they are broadcasting in true HD). However, RSawdey has mentioned a few times that he has heard rumors from reputable sources that Comcast will have ALL channels available on a digital tier sometime this year. That would be great if/when it happens. I hate the static and snow.

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"Miss-Ti, World's BEST Cat!"

josem3

Well, I go to DISH over cable(Comcast or Brighthouse) Why?
I get my local HD channels FREE using my OTA even if I cut my cable or satellite services, PERIOD!
From satellite you have more choices; ex, NFL games, International channels and more spanish programming(for me).
From Dish, I can get more HD Channels(10 VOOM) no ones have it!!!
plus ESPN HD, TNT HD, HDNET, HBOHD, SHOHD(More than 20 channels if we included VOOM, Dish HD Pack and locals HD OTA for only $15/mo).
When I was hit by a huracan(in FL) few months ago, I have not cable for three weeks but my satellite was on all the TIME!!! with my little power plant.
And the last, my HD DVR 942 can be used for two TV's and be able to record 200hrs! with caller ID on both Tv's.
PIC, well the quality pic is very close on each service(satellite or cable) but the pic on HD VOOM channels is EXCELLENT.
I don't try to sell you satellite service but that's was I found here when I have both services.

ILv2Xlr8

I had the comcast deal for several years, and finally got fed up with the crappy quality of the analog channels (2-99) and moved to Voom. Couldn't beat the price or quality of Voom over comcast, and will truely miss Voom. Comcast does have ondemand, a neat feature, but the motorola receivers they had crashed and froze up more than Windows on my PC.

I'm still debating whether to go back to crappy analog channels for convenience, or make my home like the local sports bar and get two more dishes put on my roof and get Dish with the 10 Voom channels.

Right now I'm leaning towards Dish, as I didn't get HD TVs to wath crappy broadcast. It cost $250 right now to get a 942 HD DVR from Dish with the 180 package for $19/mo and $15 for HD and VooM.

RSawdey

You can't compare analog cable with digital satellite... why haven't you upgraded your cable service to HD digital? Cost you next to nothing to try, and they have HD DVRs to rent.

CatManDoo

Very much looking forward to the day that Comcast carries everything digital, including the channels on 2-99. I don't care if they continue to carry the analog, as long as they also have them duplicated on a digital tier. I'm hearing nothing from Comcast, and their website is questionable due to inaccuracies.

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"Miss-Ti, World's BEST Cat!"

Cygnus

Thats cool. But hopefully Comcast improves the picture quality of SD. Currently, IMHO, SD is only slightly better than analog. DTV's digital is superior to Comcast's.

RSawdey

When analog is very good, it's virtually identical to digital SDTV. But it's 720 x 480i/30... never meant for really big TVs. The solution is more HDTV...