Right now we have cable that is not that good. We are always having to call them out here to fix it and I am tired of it. Plus it keeps going up. Well we just got the local television stations on satellite dish and have been thinking of using it. What do you think of Dish Network? Anybody have that service?

If you can get your local channels thru the Dish, it's great. I loved having a Dish, and the only reason I don't have it right now is because I get free cable in the house I'm renting. My only gripe with Dish was that I couldn't get the networks, because I supposedly was able to get them with a roof top antenna(never mind that we lived on a military base, and you can't have roof top antennas on base). But that isn't something Dish controls, the FCC does.

Oh, and if there is a heavy rainstorm, you will lose reception for a bit.

I've had DirecTV for a couple of years now, and I really like it. The reception is noticeably better than what we got with cable. We get the local networks. I think they charge $5 a month for this. It is still cheaper than cable.

We have Dish. It's nice but look out for the windstorms that knock out your connection. It's happened twice already.

We had Dish Network and it was pretty good, we couldn't get local were we were and that was a pain in the ass. Also if it rained hard or was windy the reception got jumpy....

It cost a bit cheaper than cable.

We got DirecTV back in October because our cable company sucked. The reception is better, picture is better, but the sound tends to go up and down--not sure if that is a transmission problem or what. Choice is better, and it's cheaper. We haven't had too many outages, just 15 minutes here and there in a storm.

Two things I don't like is now I don't get our local state news chanel and I don't get the local forecast anymore on The Weather Channel--I'm assuming because it's broadcasting from a satellite over Texas.

I have Dish Network. I like it so much better than cable. The only downside is if the weather outside is bad, the signal will go out. We pay 59.62 a month and that gets us 150 channels plus about 6 HBO's and 6 Showtimes. Not too shabby.

Also, you should check around for promotions. There are always ads for free installation and 2 or 3 room receivers. I think Blockbuster is also doing some kind of promo with DirecTV.

We've had DirecTV for almost 2 years now. Our local channels aren't offered yet (supposed to be very, very soon...) but we're fortunate enough to get them all in with just rabbit ears. We have a lot of trees and I was worried about the signal getting lost in storms or snow collecting on the dish, but honestly it's very rarely been a problem. I would say it's happened less often than the cable going out.

Our cable was about $47 a month for extended basic when we switched. We pay $10 less than that now and get more channels. The only drawbacks for me are losing the local Weather Channel and that the UPN channel here is cable only (we only watched that for Buffy and the occasional basketball or hockey game, though, so no big loss).

We were hit by lightning once which took out our dish and receiver (yes, it was plugged in to a good, expensive surge protector; we think it was a very close if not direct hit). I believe it cost us somewhere around $50-75 to have the guy come out and replace both, which I thought was reasonable.

We have bell satellite and we love it.