Old Unhip Person's Direct TV Question

[Steve M]

The Dish Network's sports pack only costs $6/month and gets almost all the college hockey that's broadcast.  They also finally picked up CSTV this year, so I'm not sure if DirectTV has any advantage over them, at least for college sports.

[DeltaOne81]

[Q]Steve M Wrote:

 The Dish Network's sports pack only costs $6/month and gets almost all the college hockey that's broadcast.  They also finally picked up CSTV this year, so I'm not sure if DirectTV has any advantage over them, at least for college sports.[/q]

Previously Dish's packages didn't include any national sports channels on the $6 pack - OLN, ESPNU, CSTV - only the regionals. But if that's no longer true, it's worth another look.

[billhoward]

How to handle 4:3 broadcasts on a 16:9 widescreen? If your TV is big enough, just be a sport, leave it at 4:3,  and have the two sides be black. If you've got to have it fill every pixel you paid for, go with what's most commonly called panorama mode where the stretching is mostly from the outer thirds of the picture. You will find this more enjoyable on a plasma, least so on an LCD because with LCD blacks are really gray (with plasma, the pixel self-illuminates if it's supposed to be on; with LCD, a backlight illuminates every pixel and some leaks through the off (black) pixels making them gray. DLP is in between.

[DeltaOne81]

[Q]DeltaOne81 Wrote:

 [Q2]Steve M Wrote:

 The Dish Network's sports pack only costs $6/month and gets almost all the college hockey that's broadcast.  They also finally picked up CSTV this year, so I'm not sure if DirectTV has any advantage over them, at least for college sports.[/Q]
Previously Dish's packages didn't include any national sports channels on the $6 pack - OLN, ESPNU, CSTV - only the regionals. But if that's no longer true, it's worth another look.[/q]

Interesting, Dish actually added CSTV to the main "America's Top 120" lineup, not to the MultiSport package. Of course, the Dish setup is cheaper (Dish is always the cheap one - by $6 in this case), but at the moment it is missing (not saying we'd care about most):
- Golf Channel
- Outdoor Channel
- OLN
- ESPNU
- Fuel
- Fox Soccer Channel
- GolTV (also soccer)
- YES

Dish network also has HRTV (horse racing TV), in *addition* to the horseracing based TVG (which both have).

Regional Channels seem mostly the same otherwise. DirecTV lists MASN (new Washington Nationals based channel if I remember correctly), but no programming at the moment anyway. Dish lists FSN Pitt 2 (Pittsburgh needs 2??). It may be on the DirecTV system somewhere under an alternate channels, when it carries something.

The price difference also gets you a different main lineup, and I happen to like DirecTV's better, but if you think I'm doing that for you, you're crazy

[jtwcornell91]

At some point Dish also had more European networks, like France's TV5 (which shows French movies with French subtitles; good for language practice).

DirecTV has a "Cricket Ticket" PPV, which allowed me to watch the Ashes this summer (at least until that whole hurricane thing).