The new DVR from DISH Network. It blows your cable box out of the water, dries it off, steps on it, and then sets it on fire.
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I have satellite TV again. In other words, 120+ channels of tasty digital goodness, as well as interactive TV and a two-channel DVR system, for a whole $45 a month. That’s $10 less than ‘basic’ cable from the only cable company in town (isn’t it suspicious how there only ever seems to be one cable company in town? I’m starting to see a pattern, I think.), and you get about twice the channels. The picture quality is excellent, I get local channels, and, most importantly, NESN. Furthermore, with DISH Network you get something you can never get with cable: a company that actually acts grateful to have and keep your business. Why? Probably because, if you get fed up with DISH, you can go to DirecTV in a flash, or vice versa. This competition mysteriously remains absent from the world of cable TV.
The most popular objections I hear from my cable-burdened associates are as follows. I will try to do a little myth-busting along the way:
1) “But I won’t get all the local sports and stuff!” Yes, you will. Cable companies continue to run ads claiming you don’t get local channels, but they’re lying. They’ll also tell you it’s only in certain locations. Bullshit. I live in the middle of nowhere, I have local channels.
2) “But satellite goes out when the weather’s bad!” True, if the weather is amazingly crappy, your dish will lose reception. For a couple of minutes. Once, when I had the DISH back in Philadelphia, my satellite went out for 20 minutes during a storm. My friends lost cable for two days. It’s a pretty simple and obvious thing once you realize it: my satellite system consists of a dish and a receiver, connected by a wire. If one of those is broken, you can tell. There’s no miles of cable to be damaged by trees, far away from where you can see it.
3) “But cable has on-demand! I can’t possibly plan ahead and DVR my favorite stuff!” Ok, the answer here is two-fold. If you really can’t remember to DVR something (and DISH currently offers a DVR which will automatically tape only new episodes of any show), you’re a moron and don’t deserve to watch TV. And if you really need an on-demand event, here’s the kicker: satellite has it now too. By pre-downloading movies into your DVR, DISH is able to give you a selection of ‘on-demand’ pay-per-view movies that start playing as soon as you order them, not to mention they have movies starting every 30 minutes.
Oh, one more thing. If you need the perfect reason to switch, here it is: you get to call your cable company and tell them to go screw themselves. They seem so surprised and saddened to hear you have an alternative available. And there’s no better feeling in this world than that. Not even sex.
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