My DISH Network Review - The Only TV For Me!

(My DISH Network Story)

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Sometimes my family makes fun of me because when I sit down at the keyboard, I do tend to "go on" a bit. I know many people who struggle when it comes to writing about almost anything, and that's true for me at times as well. However, when I am writing about something I feel strongly about, I have to agree with what my family says, and admit that it is hard for me to shut up sometimes!

I suppose this is a pretty good example that proves my family's point. I like my DISH Network service so much that I decided to create this site so that other people could learn more about the service, find out about the best DISH Network offers.

DISH Network Satellite TV is definitely something I feel strongly about and as a result, I probably have a bit too much to say about it! I guess you could call this my DISH Network Review.

One of the reasons I have so many good things to say about DISH Network TV is that I was a very unhappy cable TV customer for many years. I was never satisfied with cable. The picture quality was never as good as their advertising claimed it was, and they were constantly raising their prices.

I suspect that digital cable has improved the picture quality of cable, but since I still rely on the local cable TV company to provide my high-speed internet service, I know they are still up to their old tricks of raising their prices too often. The cable TV company is the only option for high-speed internet service where I live, so for now, I am still stuck with expensive service from a cable company.

When I moved to New Hampshire more than eleven years ago, I finally had an opportunity to try satellite TV. I was pretty certain that the layout of the lot that my previous house was built on would not allow for satellite TV reception, so I was very anxious to have a chance to try satellite television for the first time and find out how it compared to cable.

With a large field to the southwest of my house and no trees tall enough to block my view of the southern sky, I was quite confident that my new home was perfectly situated to receive satellite television.

Here you can see a picture of the dish antennas mounted on my house. The inset picture was the old installation, before I upgraded to an HD-capable system. Some people call them "ugly," especially the cable TV companies, but I think they look kind of cool, and they even match the color of my house!

The dish on the left is aligned to receive broadcasts from the satellites at 100 and 119 degrees while the one on the right is aligned to receive broadcasts from the satellite a 61.5 degrees, which carries a lot of the high-definition programming that I wanted to have access to.

By the way, the yellow and gray poles that you see there are not part of the Dish Network installation. They were used to mount some radio antennas and weather monitoring equipment.

I spent a lot of time researching the satellite TV packages that were available back in 1998, and I settled on DISH Network. I chose DISH since they provided all the channels that I was interested in, and since I am not much of a sports fan, I was able to choose a package that gave me what I wanted without a lot of extra sports channels that I was not interested in paying for.

At the time, there were no deals available that provided free equipment like they have today. So, I purchased a dish and two receivers, and installed it a few days after we moved into our new home. Back then you could also install it all yourself, and having a lot of experience with installing radio equipment, antennas and stuff like that, I was actually looking forward to installing the DISH TV equipment as a fun and interesting project.

I'm not sure if the do-it-yourself option is available any more, since the new systems are capable of picking up a signal from two or even three satellites at the same time, and it is much more difficult to install without all the professional equipment and know-how. I had to deal with only one satellite when I installed my system, so it really wasn't too hard to set it up.

I still remember coming down off the roof of the house and stepping into the living room to look at the DISH Network signal on the TV for the very first time. It was love at first sight! I could hardly believe how clear the picture was. I had never seen a cable TV signal that even came close. At that point I knew I had written my last check to a cable TV company for their lousy TV service! Although I still do pay Comcast for high-speed internet service every month, at least until another option is available in my area.

Since that time, I have been a very happy DISH Network customer. My old, original receivers -- a DISH Network 5000 and 3000 never gave me any trouble, and I sent them back to DISH Network when I upgraded to an HD-capable system back around the beginning of 2007 for a nice credit.

My system and service has been rock solid the whole time I have had it. I've adjusted the position of my old dish only once during all the time I had it, and that ain't too bad. Despite what the cable TV companies say about satellite TV being so susceptible to the weather, we've had it go out on us a total of perhaps seven or eight times while we were watching something, and that is over a period in excess of eleven years! Like everything else the cable TV companies say about satellite, it's a very significant exaggeration and they know it.

If you're sick of paying too much for cable every month and not getting the service you deserve, I suggest you check out the offerings from DISH Network. Trust me, I'm a pretty picky consumer and if I'm this happy with DISH Network, I think there's an excellent chance you will be too. That's why I decided to do this DISH Network Review.

If you spend some time researching satellite TV, you are bound to run into some horror stories from people who were not happy with DISH Network. But, it will be the same story for any large company that has millions of customers -- sometimes there will be mistakes and poor decisions made, and then there are those people that never seem to be satisfied with anything, and always find something to complain about.

If you spend some time looking, you'll be able to dig up dirt on any big company, but for me, DISH Network has been excellent, and I've never had any problems with billing or customer service.

I had been dragging my feet for a few years regarding HDTV. It's not because I did not want it, that's for sure! I wanted it alright, I just wasn't ready to spend time researching it. At the same time, I was not sure I wanted to lay out big bucks for an HD television just yet.

I was also held back a bit knowing that the prices would be coming down, as they eventually do with all hot new technologies, so I waited it out a bit while continuing to drool over those big HDTV sets in the glossy catalogs that came in my mailbox.

Not long ago, I decided the time was finally right, and I purchased a 51-inch Hitachi HD set and I've been in love with it ever since. Since watching the big screen, I find that I am more easily drawn into whatever it is I am watching. It seems so much more real to me, and I am constantly noticing little details that I had never noticed before.

Before ordering my DISH Network HDTV upgrade, I did a lot of research on the internet because I'm just the type of guy that likes to be aware of all the details when I am about to buy something new. I even decided to take a look at DirecTV's HD line-up to see if they might have a better deal than DISH Network.

It did not take long to answer that question. I checked out some of the online forums and discussion boards where the real heavy-duty video heads hang out and there was a clear consensus that DISH Network's HD offerings beat DirecTV hands down at that point in time.

I've actually given up trying to keep track of whether DISH Network or DirecTV has the most HD channels. Each claims to have the most, and of course, the number depends on whether local channels are counted as part of the total. I think it is safe to say that both DISH Network and DirecTV have a generous number of HD channels and if your decision is going to be based on that factor, you will probably do well with either service.

I hope you have found my DISH Network Review helpful. There's a lot of other information here beyond this DISH review, so see the menu at the top of the page to check out the other DISH Network information here.

If you are seriously considering DISH Network, you may want to check out my Best DISH Network Deals page.