I gave up my DirecTV for Time Warner MAXX. DirecTV is going to take a huge once people realize how maxed out their picture quality is. The new TVs have HEVC codec for decompressing video. It's 2x better than the MPEG4 that DirecTV uses. If DirecTV used HEVC, the picture would be twice as good. But they can't because they'd have to change the satellites and everyone's receivers. They're equally going to be screwed when it comes to 4K. Their current 4K offering is a really slow download to the DVR of the full show, then you can watch it. IP TV over cable/internet is going to win big. Cable doesn't have to broadcast every channel all the time to every home anymore. Just the show you watch, like Netflix does. Netflix doesn't stream every show in their catalog to each customer all the time... Why 5 dishes? He's got 5 people paying separate bills? Or he wants to watch every channel of NFL games at the same time.
Thanks Denny! Crushing my thoughts of switching from Comcast to DirectTV. Time Warner isnt available in the PDX area.
All the cable companies are going to have IP TV. Verizon or Frontier FIOS. Time Warner MAXX Comcast XFINITY etc. They all have 300mbit kind of internet speeds, too.
SHit, I've had DirecTV for 10 years and LOVE it! Looks great on my TVs......don't know what that geek is talking about FAMS!
Satellite is limited to MPEG4 because of all the set top boxes installed out there. The new TVs have HEVC, which compresses video streams 2x more than MPEG4. This means over the same bandwidth, you get 2x better quality. A full length movie that's 10Gigabytes using MPEG4 compression is 5Gigabytes using HEVC at the exact same picture quality. At 10Gigabytes for each, HEVC would be 2x better, see? A satellite transponder has 45mbit of bandwidth. DirecTV fits 5 or 6 channels per transponder. The high quality channels, they stream at 8mbit or so. In order to have more channels, they use lesser quality 4mbit or 6mbit compression - think funny car channel. So they fit some combination of channels at bitstreams that add up to the 45mbit. They may not be able to actually use the full 45mbit. This is what DirecTV is stuck with. Unless they scrap it all and offer their programming over the internet. This is perhaps the synergy that AT&T and DirecTV merger achieves. They could, contracts allowing, deliver DirecTV programming via the Internet and IP TV. Or they could launch 2x the satellites and serve MPEG4 off of half and HEVC off of half and replace the set top boxes over time. MASSIVELY EXPENSIVE> Netflix uses 8mbit bandwidth for HD, but HEVC encoding. Any app built into the TV or device that has HEVC will get the HEVC encoded stream. Visually, Netflix streams are 2x to 4x GREAT LOOKING than DirecTV on all my TVs. For 4K streams, Netflix streams 15.6mbit. 4K is 4x the size, so it gets 2x the 8mbit and then 2x for HEVC, or 4x. So same quality as Netflix HD. It is what it is. You're a nerd.
I still have non-HD Direct TV. But then again I only pay 60 a month right now (but I'm cancelling soon)
haha...what a dork. installation looks like shit. some international packages require a separate satellite I believe. He should have the Genie system, no idea why they went that route. Probably a cheap ass who has an old system and wanted to use existing equitpment.
I'm cheap. I'll have to pay 10 bucks more per month and then sign a 2 year contract and then get a new dish installed. So I'm also lazy to set up an appointment to do that. I'm going to switch to SlingTV after I disconnect, they have ESPN and TNT and then I'll get League Pass broadband.
i have 2 dishes i think the previous owner had dish network for a time cause i had both dishes outside when i moved in. i was going to go tear down the dish network but then i though i can use it as leverage next time direct tv pisses me off.
I have SD cable through comcast because im cheap too. Saves me $10/month and I cant even tell the difference all that much tbh
