"Tom Francis - SWSports" wrote in
message ...
On Wed, 7 Jan 2009 05:43:53 -0500, "Eisboch"
wrote:

I also purchased a portable sat dish and got a Direct TV account for use
on
the boat. It works great and during the winter I bring it home and have
the
dish temporarily mounted on a rear porch. All the programming is digital
obviously, and the quality of the picture is superior to that provided by
Comcast which has some of the programming in digital and some in analog
(without use of a box). I just have the basic service but I get over 500
channels, which is kinda stupid because I only watch about 4 of them.
It's
not HD, but for some reason the quality of the picture is very good. When
people see it they think it's HD until I show them the difference.

Two questions - how's the HD service between the two in terms of
number of channels and where can I get one of those protable satellite
deals? :)

Oh, third - 500 channels?!?!?

Dude....

1. I don't know how the HD service compares. I don't have HD Direct TV.
Not sure I'd bother
either because for the amount of time I actually watch TV, it wouldn't
be worth it.
As I mentioned, the digital quality of the Direct TV (non-Hd) is
excellent.

2. I bought the portable dish at an RV place down near Kingman. It was
less than 200 bucks.
You can also find them on-line. I bought (rented, I guess) the
Direct TV receiver at
Best Buy. Not expensive. Then, you have to set up an account with
Direct TV. They want you
to connect the box to a telephone line, but I explained I was using it
on a boat and they gave
me a waiver for the telephone line requirement. There's some
limitation regarding reception
of local (Boston and Providence) channels if I happened to be
travelling long distance on the
boat, but that really doesn't bother me. I usually watch the History
Channel, Discovery, TBS
CNN, MSNBC, etc. anyway. However, the basic Direct TV service has
many, many more
channels included in it. I still haven't seen all of them.

3. I just checked. Direct TV offers a total of 584 channels. With the
basic service, I get 398
of them.

Eisboch

On Wed, 7 Jan 2009 06:53:47 -0500, "Eisboch"
wrote:


"Tom Francis - SWSports" wrote in
message ...
On Wed, 7 Jan 2009 05:43:53 -0500, "Eisboch"
wrote:

I also purchased a portable sat dish and got a Direct TV account for use
on
the boat. It works great and during the winter I bring it home and have
the
dish temporarily mounted on a rear porch. All the programming is digital
obviously, and the quality of the picture is superior to that provided by
Comcast which has some of the programming in digital and some in analog
(without use of a box). I just have the basic service but I get over 500
channels, which is kinda stupid because I only watch about 4 of them.
It's
not HD, but for some reason the quality of the picture is very good. When
people see it they think it's HD until I show them the difference.

Two questions - how's the HD service between the two in terms of
number of channels and where can I get one of those protable satellite
deals? :)

Oh, third - 500 channels?!?!?

Dude....

1. I don't know how the HD service compares. I don't have HD Direct TV.
Not sure I'd bother
either because for the amount of time I actually watch TV, it wouldn't
be worth it.
As I mentioned, the digital quality of the Direct TV (non-Hd) is
excellent.

2. I bought the portable dish at an RV place down near Kingman. It was
less than 200 bucks.
You can also find them on-line. I bought (rented, I guess) the
Direct TV receiver at
Best Buy. Not expensive. Then, you have to set up an account with
Direct TV. They want you
to connect the box to a telephone line, but I explained I was using it
on a boat and they gave
me a waiver for the telephone line requirement. There's some
limitation regarding reception
of local (Boston and Providence) channels if I happened to be
travelling long distance on the
boat, but that really doesn't bother me. I usually watch the History
Channel, Discovery, TBS
CNN, MSNBC, etc. anyway. However, the basic Direct TV service has
many, many more
channels included in it. I still haven't seen all of them.

3. I just checked. Direct TV offers a total of 584 channels. With the
basic service, I get 398
of them.

Cool - thanks.

Must think this over. I don't watch a lot of TV, but I'm like you -
mostly History, Discovery and the occasional movie that I'm interested
in.

There's some
limitation regarding reception
of local (Boston and Providence) channels if I happened to be
travelling long distance on the
boat, but that really doesn't bother me.

Most locals are broadcast in what they call a "spotbeam." That's a focused
signal over a relatively small area, opposed to nationwide coverage which is
called "conus." Once you travel out of the coverage area of a spotbeam,
those channels are gone. They do this to give the sats more capacity to
carry locals.

--Mike