it still happens to this day and it gets annoying you in the middle of watching your favorite show and boom it starts to rain and you can’t watch anymore
Yeah, and the ones RCA(Thompson) made back in the 90's before DirectTV did the boxes fully in house where even worse, and looked ugly AF, but I did like the UI better as the screen savers where nicer with the dogs, and things like multicolored rain drops instead of just a bouncing DirectTV logo.
Oh, dude, I have you beat. When I was a kid, my family had cable and our tv remote looked like some Frankenstein monster. At least four of the buttons were missing and the slot for the batteries wouldn't stay in place so we put masking tape on it.
@@runrafarunthebestintheworld it’s not they add shit to your bills that u never added and plus the cable service be laggy at points of time and with the WiFi service, your connection will just disconnect and reconnect out of the blue. It’s an okay service but no lie it is better than direct and dish doe but at the same time it’s no better frfr
Last yeah when the storms hit, it knocked out the power for days. When the power came back on the Hopper booted right up and we had TV. Suddenlink did not fix the cable internet for weeks after that and the TVs at the dialysis center for weeks after that.
As soon as AT&T bought Direct Tv my Bill went up from $100 to $160 including a $15 charge for HD. I cancelled them after and got a Roku and Sling TV and Hulu $36 for both.
DirecTV was my family's preference but as others have pointed out, the interrupted service during storms was just brutal. Thankfully, we also had game consoles, so we'd switch over to that instead.
@@wolfetteplays8894 Lucky, lol. My family lived in central Louisiana and it was nearly a guarantee that if it rained, the TV was going out or it would become extremely choppy.
I'll never forget going to Radio Shack with my dad to get Direct Tv. I think it was '95. Within a couple of hours we had satellite tv and it felt like we had travelled to the future.
They really played up that angle in the advertising back then. I never had it, but still think the concept seems far out even though it really isn't anymore.
Do a video on Panera Bread. I don’t think it deserves the full “Why They’re Hated” title though. Maybe call it, “Panera Bread, that Sandwich Cost How Much!?”
I used to work there when I was in high school in 2018. The staff was treated horribly. One of my coworkers got super sick and went to the emergency room and they still made her work the next day. She asked if she could wear a face mask so she wouldn’t spread germs if she coughed, they told her no because it would “look bad” in front of the customers, but they’re the ones who made her come to work! I just remember a lot of sketchy things were happening with cooperate and management. I’m so glad I’m out of there, the food isn’t too bad, but I don’t want to support a company that is totally fake.
My family were early adopters (we lived in the South, where they ran the DirecTV pilot program), and the footage of the first-gen remote and onscreen guide @ 1:28 really took me back! Thanks!
Actually those early satellite dish setups were the best tv you could get. Unlimited programming that was free and the quality was the same as the studio monitor in the tv station. Incredible color saturation, clear images and were often not just broadcast but remote feeds from the big trucks the stations sent out on special assignments. You were privy to a lot of "off air" feeds that were meant for the tv station alone to use prior to editing. All you needed was the startup cost of equipment and the ability to point the antenna at the right spot in the sky. The rest was gravy!
That's right! My parents' friends had a dish in the 80s, and I was always wishing we had one because it had so many channels from anywhere in the world really. The picture was amazing. My dad opted for a "hot", remote-controlled cable box, which was not bad either! LOL
@@KristianWontroba lol. You mean one of those black boxes? My buddy next door had one when we were kids. But my Dad was so paranoid about getting caught.
@@himwhoisnottobenamed5427 I just remember watching Pulp Fiction over and over again on Pay Per View after school (any part of the movie you caught was good.) And crappy no-XXX hairy-bobbin' manass porn on Spice.
I remember seeing a giant early satellite dish as a child in 1993 and even marvelling at the available programming; I didn't understand until many years later that there was a time when most satellite broadcasts were unencrypted and therefore technically accessible without a subscription and that was a major reason those dishes were so popular, especially because the next year, I started hearing about DirecTV and wondering about how the dishes could be so much smaller.
Im a Hispanic so most of us have dish because our mothers like watching “telenovelas” but I can’t complain it was amazing had everything made my whole childhood
Man Yess!! Dish was the shit for me when it came to the music channels that’s where I’d discovered likes of trip-hop,acid jazz,chill,electronic and yes smooth jazz as well😉
I had Dish when I was a kid, my family was always excited for the free movie channels every month or so and we loved the service. Now we have all moved on, my brother and I use streaming services and my parents have DirectTV now because of a bundle with AT&T. Great memories though.
I remember trying to convince my mom we didnt need Direct TV anymore and that we could use Netflix and TH-cam instead. She payed so much money for it, it was insane.
It's pretty wild. I'm piggybacking off Verizon Network in bumfuck from their sub-company Visible but I can basically stream/download anything through phone for $25 a month (plus phone service). I think the tech is just obsolete and Boost Mobile should have offered better terms (everyone in house now with Visible/Verizon.) “We will make Electric Light so cheap that only the wealthy can afford to burn candles.”
Reminds me of Sirius and XM, probably going to be a similar ending. There will always be hold overs that use cable/satellite for entertainment, but it will continue to shrink until the customer base dies out.
First time I watched satellite was back in the late 90s when I would go to visit my dad during the summer. He would go to work and me and my sister would have a babysitter and we used to watch Game Show Network all day. It got me into the classic games shows like Card Sharks and Match Game.
Heck yeah my dad had Direct TV at his place in the 90's, and GSN was a true throwback even then when they showed reruns of things. I was also obsessed with Tech TV once it came around when I got control of the TV remote when he, and my step mom where at work, as you could only have it on a single TV in the house(unless you got a repeater that showed the same thing on multiple TV's so pointless).
I’ve been a subscriber to dish since 2006, great service. I always felt Dish was ahead of game with technology. The sling box device worked excellent. The hopper series is also great technology. Dish added Amazon prime tv, Netflix & TH-cam which are great ideas however they must add additional streaming services.
I had a big C-band dish in the '80s. It was great because I could see not only regular network TV but also lots of closed circuit things that wasn't intend to be seen by the public. This ended when satellites converted to digital transmission and you had to have a special receiver with the proper digital decoder to receive each channel.
I work on Hughesnet equipment, and the majority of satellite customers live in rural areas where there are no cables running to. If you live in the country, it usually would cost the cable/fiber companies too much money (man-hours, labor, cable lines, equipment) to run to your property/road.
I was stuck on a 2 year contract with Dish and finally canceled it a little bit ago. The constant contract battles with companies and channel blackouts as well as my promotional pricing ending was the final nail in the coffin. Streaming services like TH-cam TV and Fubo seem like the way to go now.
100%, I moved from Direct TV years ago when they started charging me $122 a month, and have been a cord cutter since around 2012, and have been through all the paid live streaming TV services, and if you want to use your service in more than one place with access to lots of sports( I use mine at home, at the lake camping, and work as I run a senior center for a small non profit, and we dropped cable TV to save money, but kept basic internet, and phone) then right now TH-cam is the best option as you only need to check in with your home address every 4 months, as Hulu Live has locked down home addresses unless you are watching on your phone, or tablet, plus a new limit of 2 streams at a time down from 5 along with rate increase(Screw Disney who owns majority stake), and the others just don't have the channels I want, and/or pull the same stunts as Hulu on location even in the same zip code(my work is 5 minutes from my house), I also pair my TH-cam TV with TH-cam music, and Peacock since it's only $5 a month, then use all the other free services on Roku like PlutoTV, Xumo, Stirr, Roku Live Channels, Crackle, Tubi, etc..
Dish dropped the Regional sports networks claiming that they care about their customers and want to keep our cost down. Within 2 weeks they raised my bill$5
@@wilymoH When I had DirecTV they pulled nearly the same stunts with local channels while running banners for customers in my area to call, and fight the evil local channels regional owners who are trying to raise your rates like Nexstar, then yep 2 weeks later they settle, then a week after that we get the bill, and it's $12 more expensive. 🤬
This really needs to be part of this video. The contract fights and dish dropping regional sports has been a disaster for them (maybe just in certain regions, Idk). For people who dont care to sit down and google whats going on and are just confused and angry as to why they are still paying the same for less channels, and losing things like some of the premium HBO/cinemax channels and the regional sports (for ex. my parents are avid sf giants fans in central CA and dish stopped carrying MSNBC sports bay area), its frustrating. I think they're paying something like 150-200/mo, the bill never went down, and they lost essentially why they even had it in the first place. I had to teach them how to watch pirated streams, and with my sister sharing her hulu/Netflix/prime info, they dropped them. They'd been customers for almost 20 years.
Family Video still has two akron area syores open i think. from what I saw last, they are still renting movies but also seem to be half vape / cbd shop
I was around to see the new dishes replace the old ones. Moreover, my uncle Pete was one of the first in Canada to have satellite TV. So when we visited on a trip to Edmonton, I was very quick to watch everything available. It's how I discovered A Goofy Movie! That said, I live in Canada so these two companies aren't too relevant to me. What I will say is that the Company Man makes such intriguing videos that I don't really care if I know a company or not. In watching a video, I learn what I need to about both companies in each of these vs videos, the fall of, etc. If you're reading this Company Man, I'd like to say much love from BC, Canada. Keep up the amazing work!
I am Dutch and halve of the companies he is talking about I have not ever known about or only from my few trips to the US as my father lives there. I still come back for his video's
For almost 29 years I was an engineer helping to build and launch communication satellites in Palo Alto California. DirecTV was a pretty loyal customer but Echostar (Dish) bounced between us and at least Lockheed to build their satellites (maybe Boeing too but I don’t remember). There were a couple of times when we had both Echostar and DirecTV in the factory at the same time. I always thought that was funny, two competitors’ satellites being built by the same people in the same factory! As far as I remember we never had visits from the competing customers in the facility at the same time! That may have lead to blows but my money would have been on Charlie Ergen!
I had DirecTV from 2004 to 2008, and loved it I had two reasons for getting the service. 1) I lived in the sticks, where cable anything doesn't exist, and gigantic aerial antennas for TV over the air would at best get you two channels so were not worth the cost. 2) I was sailing merchant marine at the time, and would be away from home for months on end. DirecTV would let me put my service on hold while I was gone, and not charge me for it, while Dish would have put me in a contract where I had to pay for the service whether I was home to watch it or not.
I would say Dish Network due to having more specialty channels that have programs that can’t be streamed online. DirecTV which I once had a decade ago, used to be good when they had G4, Fuel TV, etc that used to be on the air, and all those local high school and college sports networks for cheap. DirecTV should’ve never been bought out by AT&T, it was a bad merger and didn’t lower the costs for subscribers!
I remember when I discovered MuchMusic on directv back in the early 2000s. Introduced me to many bands I would have never seen on MTV at the time (Thrice, Matchbook Romance, Atreyu). Many of those bands went on to be pretty popular like Taking Back Sunday and Hawthorne Heights.I remember seeing Taking Back Sunday open for Blink 182 back in 03/04 and I was pretty much the only one in the crowd, that I noticed, knew the word to their songs.
@@brantisonfire MuchMusic was better than MTV in the 2000s, because they were airing more music videos unlike MTV which was starting its decline with reality shows like The Osbournes. My sister saw Hawthorne Heights live in concert with her friends.
@@Markimark151 I saw them at Warped Tour in 2004 and missed them in 2005. I had to drive three and a half hours to Charlotte and me and my friends never left early enough to catch any bands that played before noon.
I had direct TV. Before AT&T took over, I liked the service. I felt like I was getting my money's worth. But then they got bought out and raised their prices and treated me like crap. I cancelled my service.
The irony is that ATT did not change any prices (besides the annual contract renegotiation that ALL TV companies do). I would be willing to bet you were on a promotional discount that ended, and *that* is what caused the price increase.
@@SilencerNate probably, but I know I used to have good customer service before them. Then att took over the didnt care about me and they increased prices and took away channels. They screwed it up
@@wackyjacky7259 The only channel that was lost by DTV since ATT bought them out (and later sold DTV) was Bien Sports. Bien wanted all customers to have to pay for the channel, whether they wanted the channel or not. DTV/ATT refused, and eventually they were removed. That was the only channel lost in the last 6 years. I can't say anything about the customer service component, because like any company, there are good and bad apples. Most of the DTV employees remained at their jobs due to the perks they inherited from DTV. But if you got a bad apple (or bad barrel), sorry to hear it. Most customer service there is decent (DTV has been the top of one of the customer service satisfaction things for like a decade now, can't recall which one).
We lived in the mountains in Vermont during the 1990's and had one of those C-Band antennas. Satellite was the only way to get television that deep in the woods. It was okay, but during and after a snowstorm the dish had to be swept clean to keep the weight from breaking it.
Yess your bringing back memories from when I was growing up 🤣 god I sound old I'm 24 and had satellite till we moved to a place where we can get cable and it's all we use. I remember when it would snow no TV until the snow fell off the dish lol.
I use to work for DISH back from 2001 thru 2004. During that time I worked for the then Executive VP, Soraya Cartwright. I have a little bit of insight dealing with the merger in 2002 that was blocked. The argument was that DISH would be a monopoly. Charlie Ergen argued that it wasn't since 90 percent of people had cable TV and they would be a small part of the population. Ergen promised not to raise the price of the TV for X amount of years if the merger would have gone through. Since Murdoch owned so many TV stations he knew his company would be losing money because Ergen was not a guy you want to mess with. Ergen is a smart and has ruthless business acumen. I can't believe you didn't mention that Charlie Ergen was a professional gambler. The biggest problem with satellite TV is bandwidth. They can only have so much using satellites. Satellite TV/internet will always be needed in the US. I say that only because so many people live in the country and not a big city so the only way to get internet and TV is by satellite. I hope you read my comment. I can answer more questions in regards to DISH if you have any.
My parents had a bar growing up and seeing that massive satellite gave my a pleasant flashback to my childhood. I remember being mesmerized by that huge satellite on the roof.
My family had Dish back in the day. Some good memories watching Cartoon Network and Nick as a kid. But we cut the cord a few years back and haven't looked back.
Regarding people getting cable over a dish...us people in the country didn't have that option. It was either a tv antenna on top of the house on a rotor pulling in a tv station 100 miles away (or farther, as the closest we had was Omaha, Lincoln, and Sioux City, ALL at 100 miles away). If you wanted 'cable', then you bought a $5-10k dish, usually a 10'. Our neighbor still has their's set up in the yard from the early '80s. Those were awesome!
I was a Dish customer until about 2014 when I migrated entirely to streaming and I haven't looked back. I don't watch sports or late night talk shows so I can't think of a single value add for switching back. I think both will continue to shrink, become a niche for rural America and eventually die out when they get broadband infrastructure. I think they will cross into the a fully niche industry once sports fully embraces streaming instead of legacy media.
Same but I might have to buy it back or just get TH-cam TV because I want to watch a final season of a show that is only on cable/Satelite and have to wait months after that season comes out if I want to watch it legaly
the biggest interest could be just there satellites if they could be used for other services like mobile connexion in the most remote parts. I mean satellite telephones already exist but they are very cumbersome to use. Often only allow 1G mobile use.
@@sirBrouwer Geosynchronous satellites are actually really bad for 2-way communication because of how high they orbit -- about a quarter light second round trip. It also takes a very powerful (directional) transmitter to get a signal out there with any clarity along with a dish to amplify the signal upon return. Their only advantage is that they can talk to a significant portion of the earth and they're really easy to point a dish at. That lends itself to getting a signal from a fixed place and transmitting it to fixed dishes who don't care about delay as long as the signal gets through consistently.
I am in rural America and have the broadband infrastructure you say we don't(1 gbps x 1 gbps) Still use dish. Streaming looked good 5 years ago. Now its basically the same or more expensive.
DirecTV took up a huge part of my childhood, My dad had it and i would always get excited when i went over to his house because i got to watch CN (and Adult Swim). Then my Mom got DirecTV and we had it at my house for quite a few years until my mom canceled it and we got internet instead so we could watch Netflix/Hulu.
The big satellite dishes were awesome. You could get EVERY channel back in the day, and the quality was awesome. Then the providers started encrypting their signal and it was all downhill from there.
Please do these videos: The Decline of Office Depot/OfficeMax The Decline of Mervyn's The Decline of Borders Books/Waldenbooks Delta Airlines: The Rise and Fall and Rise Again Chrysler: The Rise and Fall and Rise Again General Motors: The Rise and Fall and Rise Again Disney: Why They’re Hated Nintendo: Why They’re Hated
My parents had friends that had one of those giant satellite dishes back in the late 80s and from what I can remember that since nothing was scrambled back then they could watch pretty much anything from all over the world
Every time a storm here in my City Of Yakima Washington? My services get cut off bad And Had Dish Network Since 2006 Toi Am Going To Get cable next Too😑
I'm a Dish Technician, and the subscriber satellite TV is only a small part of our job. We are smarthome professionals as well. I can come install just about anything. I think my job is safe, although I agree subscriber cable/satellite services are on the way out, there will always be tech that common folks need an expert to install in-home
I live in Mexico and there's no DirecTV here (at least that I'm aware of) and dish is not only the cheapest TV option but they actually have good customer service, and we still have it actually.
Dish Network, the DVR, the remote, the games they had on channel 101 (I think, correct if wrong), and all the channels I watched on there are so nostalgic for me.
Very well done with one exception, Dish has entered the high speed internet/telephone service game and will continue to grow because of their reach in rural America where infrastructure is an issue
@@nathangibson2114 Starlink isn't a fully functioning satellite provider yet. Currently, Starlink is available as a public beta to select customers in the northern United States, Canada. Beta testers can expect periodic service outages until the satellite constellation is fully built out and full service can be launched.
@@nathangibson2114 I'm just saying, it's a big earth and to date they have an array capable of providing service to less than five percent of it. As for it blowing the competition out of the water. There is no competition as of now,. Global is a far cry better than less than 5 percent. FYI, their Beta users are backed up by Echostar to lesson service outages
@@nathangibson2114 Starlink is in Beta i know someone payed 500$ to buy to try it and he said it not best speed is all over he got cable too cause Starlink goes out a lot , Starlink is still not Stable they promises and hype but it could flop too
Had cable first and I liked messing and playing with the box as a kid. Then we got dish and it was lit . The tv guide was so convenient and we got east and west channels so it made catching episodes eat easier. Dish was able to make one box work like two so two tvs in the house could watch tv. I ended up messing around with how they did that and reversed it. So my Wii in my room would send the signal to the living room tv and I could play in my room and living room without moving the Wii.
Wow! I totally forgot about Primestar. But that was the first dish company I knew of as a kid back in the 90's, since a neighbor of mine in NYC had a huge dish on his building with Primestar on it.
I first encountered satellite TV when my neighbor got it because his father started selling it. The channel lineup was amazing at the time since my family and everyone else on my block had analog cable which offered only a few dozen channels in the basic package. It seems like digital cable mostly caught up to it in that regard, although sports bars always still seem to have dishes instead of cable.
I remember when DirecTV first came out and my dad subscribed asap, he thought it was the future. He had to get an antenna for the local channels and my parents had to install it themselves. I don't even think the dishes had dtv labels, I'm pretty sure everything had RCA on it. He got rid of it a couple years later when we moved to Ohio and got WideOpenWest since it was hella cheaper.
My family got DirecTV so early that we drove 70 miles to buy the RCA-brand dish and receiver at a furniture/appliance store. After installing it ourselves, we called a phone number to get service set up. I stayed with them until I got an HDTV in 2009 and DirecTV didn't have Fox News in HD. I called DirecTV and was told very curtly that they had no intention whatsoever of carrying Fox News in HD. I called to ask Dish, and the guy said that they keep Fox News in HD on continuously in their call center, so I switched in a heartbeat. It was surprisingly cheaper and just as good, so I've been with them ever since.
I knew some people with satellite tv, and I remember first being impressed by the 500 channels they got, and then disappointed when it was all "different coast feeds" and "HD repeaters" of the same channel, and radio channels, and foreign language channels, and maybe a premium cable channel I was interested in like boomerang.
i used to think that satellite TV would always have a place in homes that are pretty off the grid, but with starlink making strides… I think satellite tv is just inching closer to death
True but isn’t Starlink cost $90+ dollars a month? This does work well in rural America like farmers but until Starlink is a little bit lower in cost, I think it is expensive to get in the short term.
@@skoolboy991 lucky. I’m stuck with either Frontier Comms. or Spectrum in my area. Would rather have Google fiber but only use Frontier Comms because of the fiber: used to be Verizon FiOS but sold their landlines to Frontier Communication back in 2015 (?) and what a mess that was.
I use to work for Dish as a installation tech. Went to alot of homes and saw alot of strange things. Found out the Catholic priest had more Alcohol than the local liquor store.
The biggest selling point for Dish and Direct was the fact it was digital and there were more channels though they lacked local channels till the early 2000s. I got it in 1999 and never looked back. The rain fade can be minimized by properly aligning the dish and even then the occasional outage for a few minutes was worth the benefits. Most cable companies had at best 70 channels and the picture looked rough. When cable first went digital they kept their basic channels analog and used a lot of compression. They only went full digital when they shut down the analog and required most to get a converter. Now cable is pretty competitive but the future is streaming.
I got Direct TV when you had to buy the receiver and dish then you had a choice of having it professionally installed or buy a self install kit. I went with the kit and the total cost was about $700.00. After 10 years I wanted to upgrade my equipment but but it was going to cost more than I was willing to pay and Dish offered all new equipment and installation for a 2 year commitment. After 8 years I went back to Direct TV because with the Dish Network satellite being farther west rain fade happened quite often and it rarely happens with Direct TV. I have also added Direct TV to several fire sticks after calling to find out if there was an additional charge and according the representative I talked to there is no additional charge for their satellite customers.
@@runrafarunthebestintheworld I can't speak for Dish, but the only national channel DTV has lost in the last 3 years was Bien Sports. Bien wanted their channel on EVERY subscription, whether customers wanted it or not. ATT refused, and they were dropped.
It's because channels are demanding more money and Dish is tired of raising their already obscene prices just so these channels don't black out. If Dish had their way, every channel would be A La Carte, but Disney, NBC and the like refuse to let their 20+ channels to be subscribed to separately. And they constantly raise the per-subscriber price to Dish for these channels.
My family had DirecTV from late 90's to early 2000's. My fondest memories about it, aside from watching Cartoon Network, Nick and Disney Channel's Art Attack, it was the Games channel. Those were my introduction to gaming, years before i knew what videogames are. I remembee there was tic tac toe game with flowers, a spaceship game about retrieving a green orb; and a first person maze game.
Lost my job at DirecTV when Liberty Media took over. They were a-holes who only cared about cutting costs and not helping the customer. Good video as always!
You are absolutely right about them not caring about customers which is weird. How do they think they can stay in business with such poor customer service. Who pays for all their salaries?
@@jerrylee8261 proud of 2008 our service was top notch. I remember executives from Liberty Media coming into our call center and asking us questions that essentially was saying "but why do you offer that service to the customer? Wouldn't it be cheaper to...." That's when I knew we were in trouble.
@@kidcardco Last year DTV gave me a year long rate at $60PM which was great. This year only got a $25PM reduction. Have to pay about $115PM which to me is outrageous. I can afford it but I just don't want to They did give me free NFL ticket this fall. Have been thinking of cancelling but can't seem to find a suitable replacement. Out of all the channels on DTV I only watch 15 or so. Not counting sports channels when football starts up. Dish paywalls their desirable channels just like DTV.
@@jerrylee8261 sadly that's the way business goes these days. Corporations who own more than one channel want you to take all their crappy channels with the one or two well-known channels that people actually watch. That way they can sell it to advertisers as "X amount of households have this channel" It sucks but a buffet style cable package will never happen because of deals like that.
I live where it's possible to receive about eight Mexican TV stations over the air, but not one American one. The surest way to spot an Anglo household here is to look for the dish. City folk don't have a clue how vital dishes are to rural folk, so there'll always be a market, until some other technology comes along and (maybe two generations later) extends beyond the city limits.
I am still amazed how dish tech evolved over the years. From huge expensive dishes with flakey analogue signal to tiny cheap dishes with crystal clear digital signal and way more channels.
DirecTV seems to be moving over to streaming, which is a good idea. AT&T owns Time Warner. It seems like they are using DirecTV was the name of their streaming service, and it's not a bad idea.
I used to work as an installer for Dish. I don't have any complaints other than the upselling that we had to do. We had to try to sell the customer soundbars (that sounded like the base was over modulated) or "audiophile HDMI cables" (that were snake oil) or identity theft protection (that was worthless) or surge protectors (that were again snake oil like ALL surge protectors are) or a bunch of other worthless crap that has nothing to do with TV. . . . . I didn't up sell anything to anyone and later found a job that didn't make me feel dirty inside as I drifted off to sleep but as far as the TV part goes, that part of the job was okay.
I've had Directv since 2001, and the service has been quite good if also quite expensive. I have never experienced prolonged outages due to storms. However, in my rural area the telephone and internet services have problems, so Comcast is coming to my neighborhood. I expect I will drop Directv and sign up with Comcast for TV, internet and my land line, hopefully at some reduction in cost for the package.
My first experience with satellite tv was with directv back in the late 2000’s (I was in kindergarten) and I oddly loved how curved the end of the remote was. Also, anyone remembers when Directv had games? I constantly ran the batteries out playing monopoly
Having had both within the past few years and still currently have dish I would never go back to direct TV ever. As far as price and customer service goes I have had a much better experience with dish. Also dish seems to do better during a storm.
My dad had DirecTV and it was rude he asked for a new receiver and they are only for new subscribers so know what he grew a set and canceled them and went to dish since 2002 I think.
I use to work for the Executive VP and customer service was a HUGE deal. You have no idea they training and stuff I went through to make that companies customer service excellent.
I had Direct, U-verse and Dish at different times during my childhood. Both would break up bad in more than anything that wasn't a light drizzle. As far as satellites, I preferred Dish though, it seemed to work slightly better, also Directs customer service was absolute garbage in comparison from my families personal experience. U-verse was actually the best as it was rarely down due to using ground cables but that was later made apart of Direct due to AT&T having bandwidth issues with everything just starting to go 4K (which is ironic though as everybody is moving to 4K streaming services now.) I had a lot of trees around my house which certainly didn't help things though.
Minor corrections to this story from an old man whose father had a giant dish in the early 80's: We were picking up the signal that cable TV providers were using for providing cable TV service. The picture quality was fantastic and every channel you could ever want was available -- with the "minor" inconvenience of having to point your dish to different satellites, depending on which channel you wanted to watch. The joy of this started crumbling in the mid-to-late 80's when they started scrambling / digitizing the picture, primarily to keep people from being able to watch these channels for free. We had to buy a digital satellite receiver for a few years and subscribe to specific channels to keep watching shows which became very expensive -- though, for those of us living in the sticks without cable TV options, we simply had no choice.
I didn't even realize Dish Network was still around. I wonder if I mentally just merge them with DirecTV whenever I see their logo. We had DirecTV in my late teen years. We rarely had issues with outages during storms. I remember a brief period where we did, but it was just a matter of calling up the company and them sending out a tech to adjust the dish on the roof. Only happened once in the years of having it, so I was always confused by the cable ads claiming satellite dishes never worked in storms.
I love everything about my DirecTV service... except when bad weather rolls around. But living in SoCal, there's not enough of it to make me spend the obscene price of cable in my area.
I also live in Los Angeles.. Not much weather issue's here.. Had both...i would say that direct tv had a slight better picture quality.. The Sunday ticket was the edge that direct tv had, and other sports offerings... Dish is good if you're not into sports.. What hurt Dish is the channel black outs.. When AT&T bought Direct TV....it went down hill.. They will survive due to only to the folks in áreas Where's there no cable... Streaming to me is so...so...
I think satélite tv has seen its better day's... For it to survive , it would have to reinvent itself...with something that no one else has or can offer...
Having been a DirecTV user long ago, one thing I can say is that I wish the guide functionality of those boxes had become the norm instead of the low-hanging trash fruit that is the Motorola UI that seemingly burrowed its way into every single cable box I've used since.
Oh my god, I remember back in '99 my dad got a janky ass setup so we could get satellite in our RV. It eventually broke off while we were driving down the interstate, but man that brings back good memories.
Man I don’t know where to start. I’ve been a sat technician for about 12 years and with SBC for 5/6 years before that as they became back to MA bell(crap). You left out a lot but not bad for a outsider putting together a vid for timeline history.
Hard to tell with smart TVs how long any type of extras will be a good option…. We’re contemplating paying off our dish because of all the apps our TVs come with….
They exist because sadly many places in the US still can't get good high speed internet via a landline, or fixed wireless, and do to the recent FCC repack of the TV spectrum, it's only made it harder for a lot of people to pick up OTA channels since the bandwidth for ATSC 1.0 has been crammed together. Hopefully the rollout of ATSC 3.0 OTA TV, the increase of fixed Wireless internet, 5G Wireless(they are gonna need a lot of towers for it to work in rural areas), and services like Star Link low earth orbit Sat. Internet with acceptable ping times will finally help kill off overpriced Dish Network, and Direct TV.
It's still shocking to me that anybody would still pay for cable or satellite. The only people I know who use them are over 60 and also have a landline phone.
Growing up in the 80s... we had the huge dish in our backyard where you had to push "G1" ot "A3" on the remote control for it to move and find a signal. The good old days!
My family had a PrimeStar satellite for a few months in 1997. They had a larger selection of channels than cable TV. A cable TV headend acts as the middleman between the same channels you would get cheaper if you opted to buy a satellite dish and satellite receiver. In many small towns, which did not have VH-1, MTV, TBS or WGN as part of their standard package, that was a plus if you subscribed to satellite TV! One of the many drawbacks was the lack of of local content, like what's found on cable TV, such as The Weather Channel's Local on the 8s forecast being a satellite feed with forecasts for the top 50 markets and various regional radar maps in lieu of the WeatherSTAR (whether it was the STAR III, STAR 4000, STAR Jr, STAR XL, or IntelliSTAR) equipment installed at the local cable company which generates weather forecasts for a given location. Another drawback is that the Prevue Guide (later TV Guide Channel) provides Amiga-generated (later Windows NT-generated) TV listings based on each of the satellites orbiting Earth (including Galaxy 19). Usually, a cable TV's headend is utilizing an Amiga/Windows computer to generate their local Prevue/TVGC listings.
Had DirecTV all through my childhood and used to get so mad every time there was a storm and I couldn't watch cartoons for hours at a time lol
the remotes were super cheap too i remember having one that had its wires sticking out
This happened to me too but in Dish.
it still happens to this day and it gets annoying you in the middle of watching your favorite show and boom it starts to rain and you can’t watch anymore
why u couldnt watch hours at a time when there was a storm?
@@KeemySmith122 Clouds blocking view of satellite
i remember having the direct tv remote it was the cheapest piece of plastic ever
Yeah, and the ones RCA(Thompson) made back in the 90's before DirectTV did the boxes fully in house where even worse, and looked ugly AF, but I did like the UI better as the screen savers where nicer with the dogs, and things like multicolored rain drops instead of just a bouncing DirectTV logo.
Oh you mean the dogs chew toy?
Idk I kinda liked how clicky it was
Oh, dude, I have you beat. When I was a kid, my family had cable and our tv remote looked like some Frankenstein monster. At least four of the buttons were missing and the slot for the batteries wouldn't stay in place so we put masking tape on it.
the new ones arent bad
I used to think having satellite was elite until the storms hit 😂
Ikr. It's super expensive though. Not sure if I want cable now but Spectrum seems like a good service.. 😅
@@runrafarunthebestintheworld it’s not they add shit to your bills that u never added and plus the cable service be laggy at points of time and with the WiFi service, your connection will just disconnect and reconnect out of the blue. It’s an okay service but no lie it is better than direct and dish doe but at the same time it’s no better frfr
Last yeah when the storms hit, it knocked out the power for days. When the power came back on the Hopper booted right up and we had TV. Suddenlink did not fix the cable internet for weeks after that and the TVs at the dialysis center for weeks after that.
@@lil_djprod.v2766 Facts!
@Stellvia Hoenheim obviously u do 😂😂😂
As soon as AT&T bought Direct Tv my Bill went up from $100 to $160 including a $15 charge for HD. I cancelled them after and got a Roku and Sling TV and Hulu $36 for both.
We used direct tv up to last year, but ended switching to streaming services aswell
@@managed9348 Yup AT&T only cares about money but they forget you gotta treat people right or lose customers.
Dish owns Sling TV you forgot!
I came here looking for this comment.
@@kelvindavis2773 Hey to some people $124 a month is no big deal and good for them I don't have money to throw away.
DirecTV was my family's preference but as others have pointed out, the interrupted service during storms was just brutal. Thankfully, we also had game consoles, so we'd switch over to that instead.
One drizzle of rain and it was all over
I grew up with DirecTV and I don’t remember that happening.., and I lived in Florida, the tropical storm epicenter of the United States
@@wolfetteplays8894 Lucky, lol. My family lived in central Louisiana and it was nearly a guarantee that if it rained, the TV was going out or it would become extremely choppy.
I remeber when we had dish it went out randomly on the sunniest of days for no reason
I had cox as a kid
Another classic case of red vs blue
Damn dirty blues
Stupid rotten reds.
LoL 😅😅
Vote Yellow.
vote purple
I'll never forget going to Radio Shack with my dad to get Direct Tv. I think it was '95. Within a couple of hours we had satellite tv and it felt like we had travelled to the future.
They really played up that angle in the advertising back then. I never had it, but still think the concept seems far out even though it really isn't anymore.
I remember when we switched from direct TV to hopper
yeah, we got it too in 96
1990s: Yay cable
2021: What’s cable? We stream now
You do realize you are probably using a cable company for internet right?
@@fernandofelix892 I'm using Spectrum (which was formed when Time Warner Cable and Charter Communications merged) as my source for broadband internet.
You have to play videogames (on PC)
@@Justin-Hill-1987 spectrum uses cable
Haha you're so funny 😑
Do a video on Panera Bread. I don’t think it deserves the full “Why They’re Hated” title though. Maybe call it, “Panera Bread, that Sandwich Cost How Much!?”
Their menu is so confusing. I love their bread bowels though.
@@dannydaw59 lmao bread bowels
panera bread has had a couple of controversies to go over, so maybe that should be in the title
I used to work there when I was in high school in 2018. The staff was treated horribly. One of my coworkers got super sick and went to the emergency room and they still made her work the next day. She asked if she could wear a face mask so she wouldn’t spread germs if she coughed, they told her no because it would “look bad” in front of the customers, but they’re the ones who made her come to work! I just remember a lot of sketchy things were happening with cooperate and management. I’m so glad I’m out of there, the food isn’t too bad, but I don’t want to support a company that is totally fake.
😂
My family were early adopters (we lived in the South, where they ran the DirecTV pilot program), and the footage of the first-gen remote and onscreen guide @ 1:28 really took me back! Thanks!
Leaving Sling out of your dish analysis was a pretty big miss on their future that I believe will keep them going.
Yeah they could convert themselves into a streaming service or Internet service.
I think that was intentional to keep the video short. He missed ATT TV being sold with DTV (now renamed DTV Stream) as well.
@@SilencerNate he says it merged with U-verse before they spun it off. I don't think he missed it.
@@honolulublues5548 Not quite. ATT TV is a streaming service. U-Verse TV is old style coaxial cable.
@@SilencerNate he literally said other TV services... that would include the streaming TV service.
Sat tv will become the next AOL. Few million customers because they forget to cancel it the service
@a45538 - Interesting perception of similarities. I appreciate you noting this. It is a good way to look at this topic.
@@CoolBlue71 Bro, why you respond like it's a school discussion board and you gotta get your two responses in?
Hey hey hey. I still have my original AOL account during the disk era. Use it for my business..... Don't judge me(wagging my finger).
Actually those early satellite dish setups were the best tv you could get. Unlimited programming that was free and the quality was the same as the studio monitor in the tv station. Incredible color saturation, clear images and were often not just broadcast but remote feeds from the big trucks the stations sent out on special assignments. You were privy to a lot of "off air" feeds that were meant for the tv station alone to use prior to editing. All you needed was the startup cost of equipment and the ability to point the antenna at the right spot in the sky. The rest was gravy!
That's right! My parents' friends had a dish in the 80s, and I was always wishing we had one because it had so many channels from anywhere in the world really. The picture was amazing. My dad opted for a "hot", remote-controlled cable box, which was not bad either! LOL
@@KristianWontroba lol. You mean one of those black boxes? My buddy next door had one when we were kids. But my Dad was so paranoid about getting caught.
@@himwhoisnottobenamed5427 I just remember watching Pulp Fiction over and over again on Pay Per View after school (any part of the movie you caught was good.) And crappy no-XXX hairy-bobbin' manass porn on Spice.
These early satellite dishes were a DREAM for sports fan, all raw sports video feeds, NFL games for free! It was just amazing
I paid over $2000, for my first dish (9footer) was fun for a while, then they figured out how to make me pay!!!
I remember seeing a giant early satellite dish as a child in 1993 and even marvelling at the available programming; I didn't understand until many years later that there was a time when most satellite broadcasts were unencrypted and therefore technically accessible without a subscription and that was a major reason those dishes were so popular, especially because the next year, I started hearing about DirecTV and wondering about how the dishes could be so much smaller.
Im a Hispanic so most of us have dish because our mothers like watching “telenovelas” but I can’t complain it was amazing had everything made my whole childhood
My Mom and Dad watched telenovelas mainly on Telemundo and do you remember Dish Latino
@@Hilda1204 yep it was the most convenient for us Hispanics and Latinos
DirecTV was hype for me with those music stations at the higher channels. I’m sure Dish had something similar.
Yes, Dish has their own music channels, they even have SiriusXM too!
Man Yess!! Dish was the shit for me when it came to the music channels that’s where I’d discovered likes of trip-hop,acid jazz,chill,electronic and yes smooth jazz as well😉
Dude octane was the shit!!!
I remember I would spend hours listening to their music stations
Dish is way better when it comes down to the music channels they got SiriusXM
Dish vs Directv? This is like Bloods vs Crips
😂
Haha lmbo 😂😂😂 💀💀
Lmao 😂
@Big Blackcock nice username
I had Dish when I was a kid, my family was always excited for the free movie channels every month or so and we loved the service. Now we have all moved on, my brother and I use streaming services and my parents have DirectTV now because of a bundle with AT&T. Great memories though.
I remember trying to convince my mom we didnt need Direct TV anymore and that we could use Netflix and TH-cam instead.
She payed so much money for it, it was insane.
It's pretty wild. I'm piggybacking off Verizon Network in bumfuck from their sub-company Visible but I can basically stream/download anything through phone for $25 a month (plus phone service). I think the tech is just obsolete and Boost Mobile should have offered better terms (everyone in house now with Visible/Verizon.) “We will make Electric Light so cheap that only the wealthy can afford to burn candles.”
@@gibberconfirm166 What the fuck are you even saying. I didn’t understand a single fucking thing you said
And now Netflix and TH-cam is just low quality tv
I'm glad torrents still exist and the ability to connect to tvs with your pc
I remember when Dish had a channel that showed a live view of the Earth. It was the coolest thing and I often fell asleep to it
Reminds me of Sirius and XM, probably going to be a similar ending. There will always be hold overs that use cable/satellite for entertainment, but it will continue to shrink until the customer base dies out.
First time I watched satellite was back in the late 90s when I would go to visit my dad during the summer. He would go to work and me and my sister would have a babysitter and we used to watch Game Show Network all day. It got me into the classic games shows like Card Sharks and Match Game.
I WAS OBSESSED WITH THE GSN AS A KID
My grandmother had DirecTV and I would watch GSN after school when I was younger. Those were good times.
Heck yeah my dad had Direct TV at his place in the 90's, and GSN was a true throwback even then when they showed reruns of things. I was also obsessed with Tech TV once it came around when I got control of the TV remote when he, and my step mom where at work, as you could only have it on a single TV in the house(unless you got a repeater that showed the same thing on multiple TV's so pointless).
I’ve been a subscriber to dish since 2006, great service. I always felt Dish was ahead of game with technology. The sling box device worked excellent. The hopper series is also great technology. Dish added Amazon prime tv, Netflix & TH-cam which are great ideas however they must add additional streaming services.
I have DirectTv
I had a big C-band dish in the '80s. It was great because I could see not only regular network TV but also lots of closed circuit things that wasn't intend to be seen by the public. This ended when satellites converted to digital transmission and you had to have a special receiver with the proper digital decoder to receive each channel.
I work on Hughesnet equipment, and the majority of satellite customers live in rural areas where there are no cables running to. If you live in the country, it usually would cost the cable/fiber companies too much money (man-hours, labor, cable lines, equipment) to run to your property/road.
I was stuck on a 2 year contract with Dish and finally canceled it a little bit ago. The constant contract battles with companies and channel blackouts as well as my promotional pricing ending was the final nail in the coffin. Streaming services like TH-cam TV and Fubo seem like the way to go now.
Now that AT&T U verse is switching to DirecTV yeah we might be doing the same the lack of spots channels for how much we pay is not worth it
100%, I moved from Direct TV years ago when they started charging me $122 a month, and have been a cord cutter since around 2012, and have been through all the paid live streaming TV services, and if you want to use your service in more than one place with access to lots of sports( I use mine at home, at the lake camping, and work as I run a senior center for a small non profit, and we dropped cable TV to save money, but kept basic internet, and phone) then right now TH-cam is the best option as you only need to check in with your home address every 4 months, as Hulu Live has locked down home addresses unless you are watching on your phone, or tablet, plus a new limit of 2 streams at a time down from 5 along with rate increase(Screw Disney who owns majority stake), and the others just don't have the channels I want, and/or pull the same stunts as Hulu on location even in the same zip code(my work is 5 minutes from my house), I also pair my TH-cam TV with TH-cam music, and Peacock since it's only $5 a month, then use all the other free services on Roku like PlutoTV, Xumo, Stirr, Roku Live Channels, Crackle, Tubi, etc..
Dish dropped the Regional sports networks claiming that they care about their customers and want to keep our cost down. Within 2 weeks they raised my bill$5
@@wilymoH When I had DirecTV they pulled nearly the same stunts with local channels while running banners for customers in my area to call, and fight the evil local channels regional owners who are trying to raise your rates like Nexstar, then yep 2 weeks later they settle, then a week after that we get the bill, and it's $12 more expensive. 🤬
This really needs to be part of this video. The contract fights and dish dropping regional sports has been a disaster for them (maybe just in certain regions, Idk). For people who dont care to sit down and google whats going on and are just confused and angry as to why they are still paying the same for less channels, and losing things like some of the premium HBO/cinemax channels and the regional sports (for ex. my parents are avid sf giants fans in central CA and dish stopped carrying MSNBC sports bay area), its frustrating. I think they're paying something like 150-200/mo, the bill never went down, and they lost essentially why they even had it in the first place.
I had to teach them how to watch pirated streams, and with my sister sharing her hulu/Netflix/prime info, they dropped them. They'd been customers for almost 20 years.
Correction, there is still a Blockbuster open in Bend, OR
There’s a documentary on Netflix about it
No way. I think in OH here we still have something similar like Family Video
@@juliuscaesart Pretty sure there's still a family video open in Dayton
Family Video still has two akron area syores open i think. from what I saw last, they are still renting movies but also seem to be half vape / cbd shop
@@AreGeeBee Have yet to be in that part of the state
I was around to see the new dishes replace the old ones. Moreover, my uncle Pete was one of the first in Canada to have satellite TV. So when we visited on a trip to Edmonton, I was very quick to watch everything available. It's how I discovered A Goofy Movie! That said, I live in Canada so these two companies aren't too relevant to me. What I will say is that the Company Man makes such intriguing videos that I don't really care if I know a company or not. In watching a video, I learn what I need to about both companies in each of these vs videos, the fall of, etc. If you're reading this Company Man, I'd like to say much love from BC, Canada. Keep up the amazing work!
Yea I remember the big dishes still in peoples lawns well after they switched
I am Dutch and halve of the companies he is talking about I have not ever known about or only from my few trips to the US as my father lives there.
I still come back for his video's
A lot of Canadians mounted a Dish or DirecTV system to get the US channels. They just used a US address to send the bill to.
For almost 29 years I was an engineer helping to build and launch communication satellites in Palo Alto California. DirecTV was a pretty loyal customer but Echostar (Dish) bounced between us and at least Lockheed to build their satellites (maybe Boeing too but I don’t remember). There were a couple of times when we had both Echostar and DirecTV in the factory at the same time. I always thought that was funny, two competitors’ satellites being built by the same people in the same factory! As far as I remember we never had visits from the competing customers in the facility at the same time! That may have lead to blows but my money would have been on Charlie Ergen!
I bet Elon Musk would hire you for their Starlink internet service.
I had DirecTV from 2004 to 2008, and loved it I had two reasons for getting the service. 1) I lived in the sticks, where cable anything doesn't exist, and gigantic aerial antennas for TV over the air would at best get you two channels so were not worth the cost. 2) I was sailing merchant marine at the time, and would be away from home for months on end. DirecTV would let me put my service on hold while I was gone, and not charge me for it, while Dish would have put me in a contract where I had to pay for the service whether I was home to watch it or not.
I would say Dish Network due to having more specialty channels that have programs that can’t be streamed online. DirecTV which I once had a decade ago, used to be good when they had G4, Fuel TV, etc that used to be on the air, and all those local high school and college sports networks for cheap. DirecTV should’ve never been bought out by AT&T, it was a bad merger and didn’t lower the costs for subscribers!
I remember when I discovered MuchMusic on directv back in the early 2000s. Introduced me to many bands I would have never seen on MTV at the time (Thrice, Matchbook Romance, Atreyu). Many of those bands went on to be pretty popular like Taking Back Sunday and Hawthorne Heights.I remember seeing Taking Back Sunday open for Blink 182 back in 03/04 and I was pretty much the only one in the crowd, that I noticed, knew the word to their songs.
@@brantisonfire MuchMusic was better than MTV in the 2000s, because they were airing more music videos unlike MTV which was starting its decline with reality shows like The Osbournes. My sister saw Hawthorne Heights live in concert with her friends.
@@Markimark151 I saw them at Warped Tour in 2004 and missed them in 2005. I had to drive three and a half hours to Charlotte and me and my friends never left early enough to catch any bands that played before noon.
@@Markimark151 If you didn't hear G4TV is back on the air.
@@hvacguy84 though it may only be on Peacock by guess
I had direct TV. Before AT&T took over, I liked the service. I felt like I was getting my money's worth. But then they got bought out and raised their prices and treated me like crap. I cancelled my service.
and now AT&T has now spun off DirecTV...and is it's own company again.
The irony is that ATT did not change any prices (besides the annual contract renegotiation that ALL TV companies do).
I would be willing to bet you were on a promotional discount that ended, and *that* is what caused the price increase.
@@SilencerNate probably, but I know I used to have good customer service before them. Then att took over the didnt care about me and they increased prices and took away channels. They screwed it up
@@wackyjacky7259 The only channel that was lost by DTV since ATT bought them out (and later sold DTV) was Bien Sports. Bien wanted all customers to have to pay for the channel, whether they wanted the channel or not. DTV/ATT refused, and eventually they were removed. That was the only channel lost in the last 6 years.
I can't say anything about the customer service component, because like any company, there are good and bad apples. Most of the DTV employees remained at their jobs due to the perks they inherited from DTV. But if you got a bad apple (or bad barrel), sorry to hear it. Most customer service there is decent (DTV has been the top of one of the customer service satisfaction things for like a decade now, can't recall which one).
@@SilencerNate sure but I remember I couldn't watch trutv without paying more. I was like that's it. They suck 0/10
We lived in the mountains in Vermont during the 1990's and had one of those C-Band antennas. Satellite was the only way to get television that deep in the woods. It was okay, but during and after a snowstorm the dish had to be swept clean to keep the weight from breaking it.
Yess your bringing back memories from when I was growing up 🤣 god I sound old I'm 24 and had satellite till we moved to a place where we can get cable and it's all we use. I remember when it would snow no TV until the snow fell off the dish lol.
You could program the dish so it would end up in a position where it would not catch the snow.
I use to work for DISH back from 2001 thru 2004. During that time I worked for the then Executive VP, Soraya Cartwright. I have a little bit of insight dealing with the merger in 2002 that was blocked. The argument was that DISH would be a monopoly. Charlie Ergen argued that it wasn't since 90 percent of people had cable TV and they would be a small part of the population. Ergen promised not to raise the price of the TV for X amount of years if the merger would have gone through. Since Murdoch owned so many TV stations he knew his company would be losing money because Ergen was not a guy you want to mess with. Ergen is a smart and has ruthless business acumen.
I can't believe you didn't mention that Charlie Ergen was a professional gambler.
The biggest problem with satellite TV is bandwidth. They can only have so much using satellites. Satellite TV/internet will always be needed in the US. I say that only because so many people live in the country and not a big city so the only way to get internet and TV is by satellite.
I hope you read my comment. I can answer more questions in regards to DISH if you have any.
My parents had a bar growing up and seeing that massive satellite gave my a pleasant flashback to my childhood. I remember being mesmerized by that huge satellite on the roof.
I was waiting so long for you to make this and i'm glad you did
Waited so long that satellite television is no longer relevant and going the way of the dinosaur.
Who remembers the DirecTV Game service? Used to play it for hours.
Broooo! Same man
Dish used to have that tooo.
@@WilliamHollinger2019 I loved Dish games
My mother loved those games lol
Omg broo…the tank game and I think it was Tetris???
My family had Dish back in the day. Some good memories watching Cartoon Network and Nick as a kid. But we cut the cord a few years back and haven't looked back.
Dish is way better than Directv
Regarding people getting cable over a dish...us people in the country didn't have that option. It was either a tv antenna on top of the house on a rotor pulling in a tv station 100 miles away (or farther, as the closest we had was Omaha, Lincoln, and Sioux City, ALL at 100 miles away). If you wanted 'cable', then you bought a $5-10k dish, usually a 10'. Our neighbor still has their's set up in the yard from the early '80s. Those were awesome!
Both companies are merging. DirecTV is technically buying Dish Network.
I still remember back in the day going over to someone's house that had one of those huge dishes in their back yard.
That's called C-Band satellite TV, it's free TV, not a subscription service
@@specialopsdave Those huge satellite dishes remind me of the movie "Stay Tuned". If you haven't seen it, you should check it out.
I have 5 cband dishes I use everyday 127w,103w,101w,99w and 97w using fta digital receiver,lots of free channels.
1:14 is exactly how I picture Company Man when I hear his voice
I don't really see it, but that fact that someone else does is making me laugh. Well done.
I was a Dish customer until about 2014 when I migrated entirely to streaming and I haven't looked back. I don't watch sports or late night talk shows so I can't think of a single value add for switching back.
I think both will continue to shrink, become a niche for rural America and eventually die out when they get broadband infrastructure. I think they will cross into the a fully niche industry once sports fully embraces streaming instead of legacy media.
Same but I might have to buy it back or just get TH-cam TV because I want to watch a final season of a show that is only on cable/Satelite and have to wait months after that season comes out if I want to watch it legaly
the biggest interest could be just there satellites if they could be used for other services like mobile connexion in the most remote parts. I mean satellite telephones already exist but they are very cumbersome to use. Often only allow 1G mobile use.
@@sirBrouwer Geosynchronous satellites are actually really bad for 2-way communication because of how high they orbit -- about a quarter light second round trip. It also takes a very powerful (directional) transmitter to get a signal out there with any clarity along with a dish to amplify the signal upon return.
Their only advantage is that they can talk to a significant portion of the earth and they're really easy to point a dish at. That lends itself to getting a signal from a fixed place and transmitting it to fixed dishes who don't care about delay as long as the signal gets through consistently.
I am in rural America and have the broadband infrastructure you say we don't(1 gbps x 1 gbps)
Still use dish. Streaming looked good 5 years ago. Now its basically the same or more expensive.
DirecTV took up a huge part of my childhood, My dad had it and i would always get excited when i went over to his house because i got to watch CN (and Adult Swim). Then my Mom got DirecTV and we had it at my house for quite a few years until my mom canceled it and we got internet instead so we could watch Netflix/Hulu.
The big satellite dishes were awesome. You could get EVERY channel back in the day, and the quality was awesome. Then the providers started encrypting their signal and it was all downhill from there.
My 10 foot dish is hooked up and I get a pile of programming on it.
Please do these videos:
The Decline of Office Depot/OfficeMax
The Decline of Mervyn's
The Decline of Borders Books/Waldenbooks
Delta Airlines: The Rise and Fall and Rise Again
Chrysler: The Rise and Fall and Rise Again
General Motors: The Rise and Fall and Rise Again
Disney: Why They’re Hated
Nintendo: Why They’re Hated
Maybe you should do it
@@nickhueper2906 If he can of course
That’s quite a Big list. You should make them instead if you already have lots of info on each topic.
Disney:there hated because there certain agenda
Nintendo:wait there hates?
My parents had friends that had one of those giant satellite dishes back in the late 80s and from what I can remember that since nothing was scrambled back then they could watch pretty much anything from all over the world
Every time a storm here in my City Of Yakima Washington? My services get cut off bad And Had Dish Network Since 2006 Toi Am Going To Get cable next Too😑
My Damn Remote Can NOT Sync With My Reciever And Jst Got The Remote Two Weeks Ago Too 😑
I had the large dish growing up. It was great where I lived due to the open space. I could even watch shows from Korea.
Thank you for all that you do. I find your videos very relaxing and have helped distract me so I don't feel sad.
I'm a Dish Technician, and the subscriber satellite TV is only a small part of our job. We are smarthome professionals as well. I can come install just about anything. I think my job is safe, although I agree subscriber cable/satellite services are on the way out, there will always be tech that common folks need an expert to install in-home
I had DirecTV for 2 years, and for the most part, it was good. The only downside was the signal going out during bad weather
oh i thought the name dish was based solely on the fact that it looks like a plate...
One thing that would push me toward satellite television is highly customizable packages with tiered pricing.
I live in Mexico and there's no DirecTV here (at least that I'm aware of) and dish is not only the cheapest TV option but they actually have good customer service, and we still have it actually.
Dish Network, the DVR, the remote, the games they had on channel 101 (I think, correct if wrong), and all the channels I watched on there are so nostalgic for me.
Very well done with one exception, Dish has entered the high speed internet/telephone service game and will continue to grow because of their reach in rural America where infrastructure is an issue
Starlink is going to take over rural internet
@@nathangibson2114 Starlink isn't a fully functioning satellite provider yet. Currently, Starlink is available as a public beta to select customers in the northern United States, Canada. Beta testers can expect periodic service outages until the satellite constellation is fully built out and full service can be launched.
@@oscarmorris6736 I've been watching alot of tech reviewers that have it. It is pretty awesome and blows all the other competition out of the water.
@@nathangibson2114 I'm just saying, it's a big earth and to date they have an array capable of providing service to less than five percent of it. As for it blowing the competition out of the water. There is no competition as of now,. Global is a far cry better than less than 5 percent. FYI, their Beta users are backed up by Echostar to lesson service outages
@@nathangibson2114 Starlink is in Beta i know someone payed 500$ to buy to try it and he said it not best speed is all over he got cable too cause Starlink goes out a lot , Starlink is still not Stable they promises and hype but it could flop too
Had cable first and I liked messing and playing with the box as a kid. Then we got dish and it was lit . The tv guide was so convenient and we got east and west channels so it made catching episodes eat easier.
Dish was able to make one box work like two so two tvs in the house could watch tv. I ended up messing around with how they did that and reversed it. So my Wii in my room would send the signal to the living room tv and I could play in my room and living room without moving the Wii.
I grew up using both of these and loved them, now i use cable.
Hey Company Man, I love your videos! Could you please do a video on LACOSTE or FENDER GUITARS? Thanks again!
Wow! I totally forgot about Primestar. But that was the first dish company I knew of as a kid back in the 90's, since a neighbor of mine in NYC had a huge dish on his building with Primestar on it.
Love Wednesdays because they mean a new Company Man video
Yes
Idea: a new series where you talk about smaller industries in general, like nerf guns or book stores
12 of us do!
I first encountered satellite TV when my neighbor got it because his father started selling it. The channel lineup was amazing at the time since my family and everyone else on my block had analog cable which offered only a few dozen channels in the basic package. It seems like digital cable mostly caught up to it in that regard, although sports bars always still seem to have dishes instead of cable.
As always, a great video.
I loved Dish and I would probably still have it except that a few years ago they dropped my local sports channels. It was a dealbreaker
I don’t feel the need to spend so much on something I don’t have the time to watch between work and home life.
I remember when DirecTV first came out and my dad subscribed asap, he thought it was the future. He had to get an antenna for the local channels and my parents had to install it themselves. I don't even think the dishes had dtv labels, I'm pretty sure everything had RCA on it. He got rid of it a couple years later when we moved to Ohio and got WideOpenWest since it was hella cheaper.
My family got DirecTV so early that we drove 70 miles to buy the RCA-brand dish and receiver at a furniture/appliance store. After installing it ourselves, we called a phone number to get service set up. I stayed with them until I got an HDTV in 2009 and DirecTV didn't have Fox News in HD. I called DirecTV and was told very curtly that they had no intention whatsoever of carrying Fox News in HD. I called to ask Dish, and the guy said that they keep Fox News in HD on continuously in their call center, so I switched in a heartbeat. It was surprisingly cheaper and just as good, so I've been with them ever since.
Oh dang. This made me remember those Dish Network vs DirecTV commercials.
I had Direct tv for a long time. When At&T bought direct, wasn't the same. Switched to Dish. Love it.
I knew some people with satellite tv, and I remember first being impressed by the 500 channels they got, and then disappointed when it was all "different coast feeds" and "HD repeaters" of the same channel, and radio channels, and foreign language channels, and maybe a premium cable channel I was interested in like boomerang.
For me Boomerang was one of the cheapest channels, I had a really basic package that lacked most cartoon stations but had Boomerang.
@@mattwolf7698 Sad Boomrang changed
@@mattwolf7698 lucky you. In the markets I was in it was always a premium channel.
500 highly-compressed channels. Quality suffered. Over-the-air HDTV is superior to cable and satellite.
@Sweetest One How much does it cost for DirecTV Go streaming service? Can you pay month to month with no commitment?
i used to think that satellite TV would always have a place in homes that are pretty off the grid, but with starlink making strides… I think satellite tv is just inching closer to death
True but isn’t Starlink cost $90+ dollars a month? This does work well in rural America like farmers but until Starlink is a little bit lower in cost, I think it is expensive to get in the short term.
@@darkpepsi i think for 1gbps speeds 90$ isn’t bad at all, i pay about $70 for it and i’m in a big city.
@@skoolboy991 you have Google Fiber? I would love to have that in my area but isn’t…yet. 😩
@@darkpepsi i have at&t fiber! probably not as good as google for upload speeds but still 1gb down!
@@skoolboy991 lucky. I’m stuck with either Frontier Comms. or Spectrum in my area. Would rather have Google fiber but only use Frontier Comms because of the fiber: used to be Verizon FiOS but sold their landlines to Frontier Communication back in 2015 (?) and what a mess that was.
I use to work for Dish as a installation tech. Went to alot of homes and saw alot of strange things. Found out the Catholic priest had more Alcohol than the local liquor store.
The biggest selling point for Dish and Direct was the fact it was digital and there were more channels though they lacked local channels till the early 2000s. I got it in 1999 and never looked back. The rain fade can be minimized by properly aligning the dish and even then the occasional outage for a few minutes was worth the benefits. Most cable companies had at best 70 channels and the picture looked rough. When cable first went digital they kept their basic channels analog and used a lot of compression. They only went full digital when they shut down the analog and required most to get a converter. Now cable is pretty competitive but the future is streaming.
I got Direct TV when you had to buy the receiver and dish then you had a choice of having it professionally installed or buy a self install kit. I went with the kit and the total cost was about $700.00. After 10 years I wanted to upgrade my equipment but but it was going to cost more than I was willing to pay and Dish offered all new equipment and installation for a 2 year commitment. After 8 years I went back to Direct TV because with the Dish Network satellite being farther west rain fade happened quite often and it rarely happens with Direct TV.
I have also added Direct TV to several fire sticks after calling to find out if there was an additional charge and according the representative I talked to there is no additional charge for their satellite customers.
If Dish continues to drop channels they're not going to have a business at all
Ikr Direct TV is no different either and I don't know why he didn't talk about those things. I guess they don't like there subscribers. 😅
@@runrafarunthebestintheworld I can't speak for Dish, but the only national channel DTV has lost in the last 3 years was Bien Sports. Bien wanted their channel on EVERY subscription, whether customers wanted it or not. ATT refused, and they were dropped.
Long term, I think Dish will be focused by its mobile service division than the TV one.
It's because channels are demanding more money and Dish is tired of raising their already obscene prices just so these channels don't black out. If Dish had their way, every channel would be A La Carte, but Disney, NBC and the like refuse to let their 20+ channels to be subscribed to separately. And they constantly raise the per-subscriber price to Dish for these channels.
@@specialopsdave If more people understood this, they would be amazed prices are as low as they are now, but you're absolutely right.
My family had DirecTV from late 90's to early 2000's. My fondest memories about it, aside from watching Cartoon Network, Nick and Disney Channel's Art Attack, it was the Games channel. Those were my introduction to gaming, years before i knew what videogames are. I remembee there was tic tac toe game with flowers, a spaceship game about retrieving a green orb; and a first person maze game.
Same with my family my dad was the account holder from the late 90’s all the way to 2009
Lost my job at DirecTV when Liberty Media took over. They were a-holes who only cared about cutting costs and not helping the customer.
Good video as always!
You are absolutely right about them not caring about customers which is weird. How do they think they can stay in business with such poor customer service. Who pays for all their salaries?
@@jerrylee8261 proud of 2008 our service was top notch. I remember executives from Liberty Media coming into our call center and asking us questions that essentially was saying "but why do you offer that service to the customer? Wouldn't it be cheaper to...."
That's when I knew we were in trouble.
@@kidcardco Last year DTV gave me a year long rate at $60PM which was great. This year only got a $25PM reduction. Have to pay about $115PM which to me is outrageous. I can afford it but I just don't want to They did give me free NFL ticket this fall. Have been thinking of cancelling but can't seem to find a suitable replacement. Out of all the channels on DTV I only watch 15 or so. Not counting sports channels when football starts up.
Dish paywalls their desirable channels just like DTV.
@@jerrylee8261 sadly that's the way business goes these days.
Corporations who own more than one channel want you to take all their crappy channels with the one or two well-known channels that people actually watch.
That way they can sell it to advertisers as "X amount of households have this channel"
It sucks but a buffet style cable package will never happen because of deals like that.
I live where it's possible to receive about eight Mexican TV stations over the air, but not one American one. The surest way to spot an Anglo household here is to look for the dish. City folk don't have a clue how vital dishes are to rural folk, so there'll always be a market, until some other technology comes along and (maybe two generations later) extends beyond the city limits.
I am still amazed how dish tech evolved over the years. From huge expensive dishes with flakey analogue signal to tiny cheap dishes with crystal clear digital signal and way more channels.
DirecTV seems to be moving over to streaming, which is a good idea. AT&T owns Time Warner. It seems like they are using DirecTV was the name of their streaming service, and it's not a bad idea.
I'll never forget the days of playing the bonus games on Dish Network
I remember when DirecTV had used channel 110 for it's game channel, but, I guess they eventually dropped that idea eventually.
"Dish Interactive"'s Game Center
both are rapidly approaching total irrelevancy
I used to work as an installer for Dish. I don't have any complaints other than the upselling that we had to do.
We had to try to sell the customer soundbars (that sounded like the base was over modulated) or "audiophile HDMI cables" (that were snake oil) or identity theft protection (that was worthless) or surge protectors (that were again snake oil like ALL surge protectors are) or a bunch of other worthless crap that has nothing to do with TV. . . . . I didn't up sell anything to anyone and later found a job that didn't make me feel dirty inside as I drifted off to sleep but as far as the TV part goes, that part of the job was okay.
I've had Directv since 2001, and the service has been quite good if also quite expensive. I have never experienced prolonged outages due to storms. However, in my rural area the telephone and internet services have problems, so Comcast is coming to my neighborhood. I expect I will drop Directv and sign up with Comcast for TV, internet and my land line, hopefully at some reduction in cost for the package.
My first experience with satellite tv was with directv back in the late 2000’s (I was in kindergarten) and I oddly loved how curved the end of the remote was. Also, anyone remembers when Directv had games? I constantly ran the batteries out playing monopoly
Yes, I do. Where I lived, the games were on channel 110.
Having had both within the past few years and still currently have dish I would never go back to direct TV ever. As far as price and customer service goes I have had a much better experience with dish. Also dish seems to do better during a storm.
My dad had DirecTV and it was rude he asked for a new receiver and they are only for new subscribers so know what he grew a set and canceled them and went to dish since 2002 I think.
I use to work for the Executive VP and customer service was a HUGE deal. You have no idea they training and stuff I went through to make that companies customer service excellent.
when i had dish it was good in storm but if bad enough storm it would go out but it had to been raining like tropical rain heavy
Yes, only wet blizzards take out my Dish reception, unlike my old DirecTV service
I had Direct, U-verse and Dish at different times during my childhood. Both would break up bad in more than anything that wasn't a light drizzle. As far as satellites, I preferred Dish though, it seemed to work slightly better, also Directs customer service was absolute garbage in comparison from my families personal experience. U-verse was actually the best as it was rarely down due to using ground cables but that was later made apart of Direct due to AT&T having bandwidth issues with everything just starting to go 4K (which is ironic though as everybody is moving to 4K streaming services now.)
I had a lot of trees around my house which certainly didn't help things though.
Minor corrections to this story from an old man whose father had a giant dish in the early 80's: We were picking up the signal that cable TV providers were using for providing cable TV service. The picture quality was fantastic and every channel you could ever want was available -- with the "minor" inconvenience of having to point your dish to different satellites, depending on which channel you wanted to watch. The joy of this started crumbling in the mid-to-late 80's when they started scrambling / digitizing the picture, primarily to keep people from being able to watch these channels for free. We had to buy a digital satellite receiver for a few years and subscribe to specific channels to keep watching shows which became very expensive -- though, for those of us living in the sticks without cable TV options, we simply had no choice.
I didn't even realize Dish Network was still around. I wonder if I mentally just merge them with DirecTV whenever I see their logo.
We had DirecTV in my late teen years. We rarely had issues with outages during storms. I remember a brief period where we did, but it was just a matter of calling up the company and them sending out a tech to adjust the dish on the roof. Only happened once in the years of having it, so I was always confused by the cable ads claiming satellite dishes never worked in storms.
I love everything about my DirecTV service... except when bad weather rolls around. But living in SoCal, there's not enough of it to make me spend the obscene price of cable in my area.
I also live in Los Angeles..
Not much weather issue's here..
Had both...i would say that direct tv had a slight better picture quality..
The Sunday ticket was the edge that direct tv had, and other sports offerings...
Dish is good if you're not into sports..
What hurt Dish is the channel black outs..
When AT&T bought Direct TV....it went down hill..
They will survive due to only to the folks in áreas Where's there no cable...
Streaming to me is so...so...
I think satélite tv has seen its better day's...
For it to survive , it would have to reinvent itself...with something that no one else has or can offer...
Having been a DirecTV user long ago, one thing I can say is that I wish the guide functionality of those boxes had become the norm instead of the low-hanging trash fruit that is the Motorola UI that seemingly burrowed its way into every single cable box I've used since.
I used to have DirecTV, but now I have Spectrum Cable because DirecTV was getting too expensive for me. I honestly like DirecTV better.
I like directv the best too. But it’s pretty expensive for something I don’t have much time to watch much anymore.
Oh my god, I remember back in '99 my dad got a janky ass setup so we could get satellite in our RV. It eventually broke off while we were driving down the interstate, but man that brings back good memories.
My grandpa has Dish and I have DirectTV. They both have good advantages. But DirectTV WAS MY CHILDHOOD
Man I don’t know where to start. I’ve been a sat technician for about 12 years and with SBC for 5/6 years before that as they became back to MA bell(crap). You left out a lot but not bad for a outsider putting together a vid for timeline history.
Hard to tell with smart TVs how long any type of extras will be a good option…. We’re contemplating paying off our dish because of all the apps our TVs come with….
These companies still exist? Wow
I’ve had both. Not bad but dish is just so unreliable in MD, got ATT TV Now but they’re becoming directv
Did you just think everybody instantly forgot about cable and satellite?
@@1323GamerTV att tv is probably the best online option in my opinion
They exist because sadly many places in the US still can't get good high speed internet via a landline, or fixed wireless, and do to the recent FCC repack of the TV spectrum, it's only made it harder for a lot of people to pick up OTA channels since the bandwidth for ATSC 1.0 has been crammed together.
Hopefully the rollout of ATSC 3.0 OTA TV, the increase of fixed Wireless internet, 5G Wireless(they are gonna need a lot of towers for it to work in rural areas), and services like Star Link low earth orbit Sat. Internet with acceptable ping times will finally help kill off overpriced Dish Network, and Direct TV.
It's still shocking to me that anybody would still pay for cable or satellite. The only people I know who use them are over 60 and also have a landline phone.
Growing up in the 80s... we had the huge dish in our backyard where you had to push "G1" ot "A3" on the remote control for it to move and find a signal. The good old days!
My family had a PrimeStar satellite for a few months in 1997. They had a larger selection of channels than cable TV.
A cable TV headend acts as the middleman between the same channels you would get cheaper if you opted to buy a satellite dish and satellite receiver.
In many small towns, which did not have VH-1, MTV, TBS or WGN as part of their standard package, that was a plus if you subscribed to satellite TV!
One of the many drawbacks was the lack of of local content, like what's found on cable TV, such as The Weather Channel's Local on the 8s forecast being a satellite feed with forecasts for the top 50 markets and various regional radar maps in lieu of the WeatherSTAR (whether it was the STAR III, STAR 4000, STAR Jr, STAR XL, or IntelliSTAR) equipment installed at the local cable company which generates weather forecasts for a given location. Another drawback is that the Prevue Guide (later TV Guide Channel) provides Amiga-generated (later Windows NT-generated) TV listings based on each of the satellites orbiting Earth (including Galaxy 19).
Usually, a cable TV's headend is utilizing an Amiga/Windows computer to generate their local Prevue/TVGC listings.
Been always faithful to DirecTV. Never had any issue with them. Love'em! 💙
No weather issues? DirecTV tends to have worse reception than Dish