I've been using Dish Network now for about a year and a half. I must be honest though, I have not used any other Satellite service. I switched from local programming to Dish, and I must say that Dish has a more vast range of programs. But I do think that the quality of programming is quite low. During prime time I find myself watching network TV instead of dish because I find the programs are just too out there. But that is not Dish's fault really, it's the channel's fault. But anyways I think dish is a great satellite service. It gives you all of your TV needs, and it comes equipt with everything you need to start and they even offer to install the entire system for you which is great. I think one annoying thing about dish though is their lame, cheesy, advertisments. And I'm talking about the advertisments advertising Dish Network, not like Bud Lite ads or anything, but advertisments promoting themselves. They come on pretty frequently and since it's Dish's commercial, it comes on all of the channels (when I say "Dish's" I mean Dish Network). Dish also comes with an optional packge of what they call "CD Channels". It's basically a channel you surf too that just plays music of whatever type. Like they have a Regge channel, and Classical channel, but I don't find myself using those much at all. It's a great idea but the channels for me are just too general. For instance I like some Regge, but not all of it, and yet they play all of it. Now the remote, I must say it is a pretty nice remote although I did have one mishap with it...sombody sat down on it and the back of it (the part that holds the batteries in) broke. And thats no good. It broke fairly easy too. And without that the batteries fall out real easy. Also the remote is prety small and skinny so the couch eats it a LOT!!! Also it is prety powerful, almost too powerful in the sense that you can like hit the power button on accedent and it will go through your hand, bounce off some walls, and hit the reciver that is located behind the couch on the floor under the TV. And that can sometimes get annoying but it's just common sense not to sit on the controler or step on it or something. The channels are prety well orginized though, for instance all the religous channels are up in the 200's and like all the entertainment channels are down in the 100's or something. So you arn't like always surfing to through PAX or ANGEL or something. In fact I never end up on those channels unless I intentionally go to them. Same with news channels (which are located above the Religous ones). The system also has a nice TV Guide built into the remote. So you can see what will be on next, and like 2 hours ahead, so you don't have to purches a TV guide every month or week or whatever. But that Guide feature isn't all that great, a lot of the time you get an error saying "Information Not Avalible" or something similar and you have to wait until the dish downloads that information, which you can't really tell when that will be. But the next show is most always there, and you can flip through channels and hit the '>' button and it will tell you quickly what the next show is..very nice feature!! It's mostly if you want to go like 4 hours ahead you get that error. Another nice feature is the 'about' button on the remote. I find that to be an EXTREMLY nice feature! It tells you information about the show that you are watching, and it's not some kind of automated info box either, it tells specifics about the specific episode, or movie you are watching. Like it will tell you the star actors, and a nice detailed overview of the movie or episode (comes in handy for watching X-Files on FX (chan 137). The payperview option is nice too...but to use that you must connect your system to a phoneline, and actually, they tell you that you must keep your box connected to the phone at all times, but I don't...only for PPV and it works fine...As for sound and picture..they are both flawless. Sort of like watching DVD or something. Both are great, I think because it uses MPEG encoding so if the sound goes bad, then the picture goes bad and it all gets advanced but basically means it downloads lots of info faster (which is a good thing if you were wondering). Only when a plane flies like right in the path or something, the picture and sound just don't work out, but that doens't happen much. And you can't have any tree's or anything in the way and you don't want branchs to be getting in the way if they are blowing in the wind, so you must place the dish strategically. And if you do it yourself it is not hard at all, but it IS a two person job so you can yell at each other how well the satellite signal is coming in (which you get from the TV installation softwear which works well). Oh and one note about the box itself, it's a prety amazing pice of hardware. My brother dumped an entire glass of ornge juice through the holes in the top of the box (BIG holes...basically all went into the system), and it didn't work for like 24 hours. But after it all dried up...it worked like a charm. Amazing!

In summary I like Dish. It has it's ups and it's downs, but I think it's worth it if you are after just a bunch of TV channels, and it has great picture and sound quality. A nice way to go is to get only the HBO type of channels and none of the standard ones...that way you don't waste money on all that crappy programming.



Recommended: Yes