Adventures with Directv
Written: Dec 03 '00 (Updated Dec 03 '00)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Sound: |
 |
|
| Ease of Use: |
|
|
| Picture Quality: |
|
|
| Durability: |
 |
|
| Customer Service: |
|
|
|
Pros: Many more stations to watch, Crisp Clear Picture
Cons: Works on only one TV, Can be pricey
|
|
|
| sharmck's Full Review: RCA DRD502RB DIRECTV System |
My husband is one of the most highly intense football fans that there are. We live on the East Coast and his favorite football team the Oakland Raiders is a West Coast team. So many Sunday’s passed him by without the opportunity of watching the game. Then we heard about Satellite TV. Directv to be more exact. Directv offers something that no other satellite or cable company offers. The exclusive rights to watch 13 football games each and every weekend. That meant that my crazy husband could watch his beloved Raiders each week that they played. He was just beside himself with excitement! We spent the next few weeks finding out everything we could about getting Directv.
About that time Circuit City a large electronics store near where we live was running a special. It included the Dish, the Receiver, and the installation kit all for 99.00. Plus you were to get a free month of service. We signed up right away. My husband is an electrician so installing our new satellite dish was a breeze for him. Just about everything you need is provided for you in the kit. They even provide you with a videotape that gives step-by-step instructions. I even felt that I could have installed it after watching the tape and I am not even handy. Well maybe if I wasn't afraid to get on the roof. You will need a few tools to do this like wire cutters, screwdrivers etc. Basically you just had to run a cable from the Receiver up onto the roof where the dish was. You can put the dish anywhere you want outside that is in view of the direction the satellite is in. In our case that was towards the southwest. We chose the roof because it had the clearest undisturbed view. Plus it was out of the way so no one would be able to bother it.
Included with your kit will be everything that you need for installation. The hardest part was finding that darn signal. It consisted of my husband standing on the roof twisting the dish ever so slightly while I watched the screen until the signal caught the dish. Finally after about 20 minutes of searching we found it.
Once that was done he was able to tighten the bolts in place to hold the dish securely and prevent it from being moved. We then had to insert our access card, which is a card that looks like a credit card. You place this into the receiver then you simply call Directv and tell them to activate your service. Within seconds we had a beautiful crystal clear picture. The receiver that we have with our unit does many things. There are TV menus that show you what programs are on. There are programming settings that let you search for shows you want to watch. There are filters that you can set to block out any program that have certain ratings. I like having the filters set since we have young children. They now are only able to access G rated things without me punching in my password code. You can also rent pay per view movies right from your home easily. I have also programmed the remote to control our TV to so now we can just use one remote.
There are many choices of packages that you can get with the Directv lineup. Many different price ranges too, starting at just 19.99 a month and going up to as high as 80.00 - 90.00 and above depending on all the extra's that you get.
We have their total choice package that gives us all the basic cable stations plus a few extra's thrown in there. We pay around 30.00 a month for that. Plus we also have the NFL football package, which runs us about 149.00 for the season. You can also choose other sporting packages like basketball, baseball, or hockey. Both professional or collage levels. There are all the pay stations to choose from as well like HBO, Showtime and Cinnemax to name a few.
We even have our local network stations through our Directv so now we do not need any additional antennas or cable connections. (We do pay 4.99 for that service) The picture quality is much better and the dish is ours. We own it; we don't rent it like you do with a cable box. For what you get I recommend the Directv experience over cable any day.
The only drawbacks to having the Directv are the fact that you can only get it on one TV unless you go for a duel headed satellite dish and two receivers. However that costs you much more. Down the road we do plan on getting the second receiver for our other TV. The second problem is that you do sometimes have problems watching tv when there is bad weather. The signal gets lost and you may be blacked out for a bit. Although where we live the weather isn't normally that bad and we have only lost the service a few times.
You can find out more information about Directv and their receivers and dishes at www.directv.com
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 99.00 for kit and aobut 35.00 a month
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
sharmck
|
 - Top 1000 |
|
Location: USA
Reviews written: 130
Trusted by: 122 members
About Me:
Epinions isn't what it once was. IS IT!
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.