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Directv vs COX a comparison

MarcB

MarcB

After having Directv since April 2016, we switched back to COX. Cost is one of the reasons.

What I miss about Directv. The Reelz Channel with all their celebrities stories. Bloomberg TV. I used to watch or DVR The Kim Komando Show every Saturday. The NFL Network. These are all in higher priced packaged on COX. Being able to DVR 4 shows at the same time.

What I like about COX. More channels I like - Game Show Network, NBC Sports, FOX Sports 1/2, ESPN/2, LAFF Network, COZI TV, Antenna TV, and The Weather Channel. I like The Weather Channel because they air Mayday Air Disasters every Tuesday Evening. (The show airs (as Air Disasters) on The Smithsonian Channel, but the only time I got to see it was when Directv had a sneak preview of the package that includes The Smithsonian Channel).

Other commentsCOX also does not carry subchannels LATV (18.4), Comet TV (20.3), Stadium (20.4), or Justice Channel (61.4), not that I care about any of those channels.
 
Bloomberg TV is available for free at Bloomberg.com.
 
MarcB said:
After having Directv since April 2016, we switched back to COX. Cost is one of the reasons.

What I miss about Directv. The Reelz Channel with all their celebrities stories. Bloomberg TV. I used to watch or DVR The Kim Komando Show every Saturday. The NFL Network. These are all in higher priced packaged on COX. Being able to DVR 4 shows at the same time.

What I like about COX. More channels I like - Game Show Network, NBC Sports, FOX Sports 1/2, ESPN/2, LAFF Network, COZI TV, Antenna TV, and The Weather Channel. I like The Weather Channel because they air Mayday Air Disasters every Tuesday Evening. (The show airs (as Air Disasters) on The Smithsonian Channel, but the only time I got to see it was when Directv had a sneak preview of the package that includes The Smithsonian Channel).

Other commentsCOX also does not carry subchannels LATV (18.4), Comet TV (20.3), Stadium (20.4), or Justice Channel (61.4), not that I care about any of those channels.
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DirecTV has all of those channels. You just didn't want to pay for them. Cox won't have those channels either if you get the lower services.
 
Okay. As of Friday October 4th we are now on our 3rd Cox Cable box since we subscribed to them on September 9th! Not even 30 days yet.

The first one went bad on September 12th! Every night COX pushes through a software update. Well on September 12th it failed. So we called they sent out a technician and they gave us a new box. Same exact make and model as the first. Then on Friday October 4th our new box failed. Same thing. They pushed through a software update and it didn't go through. They sent out a technician and gave us a new box. Different make and model than the first two. Slightly smaller too. I happened to be awake early Saturday morning when a message popped up about the software update. I skipped it. :p Software updates usually go through between 2AM and 4AM. I had TV on this morning already at 4AM and it worked fine, so I guess the software updated with no issues.

It's ridiculous that we're on our 3rd box in under 30 days. We never had any equipment issues when we had DirecTV. We had the same equipment for the entire 41 months we had it. The only "issue" we had was the occasional outage due to precipitation.
 
MarcB said:
It's ridiculous that we're on our 3rd box in under 30 days. We never had any equipment issues when we had DirecTV. We had the same equipment for the entire 41 months we had it. The only "issue" we had was the occasional outage due to precipitation.
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The DirecTV equipment may be OK, but what about the continual contract disputes? I had seriously considered them at one time, but the disputes are only getting worse and it has turned me off from getting either satellite system.
 
anotherguy said:
The DirecTV equipment may be OK, but what about the continual contract disputes? I had seriously considered them at one time, but the disputes are only getting worse and it has turned me off from getting either satellite system.
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At least up to recently, Dish was far and away worse with disputes than DirecTV. But now that seems to be changing since AT&T took over. DirecTV also has equipment issues with its main receiver quitting out of the blue, mostly due to overheating. Every time I call for service or make changes they want to extend my contract. Never again. I'll just deal with it for the rest of the year because of Sunday Ticket.

I'm just waiting until the end of football season before I drop them. I'm going to start testing YouTube TV this week, along with other Roku programming and getting my outside antenna back in shape.

I was with Cox, and its Phoenix-area predecessor Dimension Cable, from 1994 thru 2009. Their biggest problem was lousy equipment and internet outages. I'm not going back to them.
 
KeithE4 said:
I was with Cox, and its Phoenix-area predecessor Dimension Cable, from 1994 thru 2009. Their biggest problem was lousy equipment and internet outages. I'm not going back to them.
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I've been on Cox Internet for a couple years now and have suffered only two outages. Neither one was Cox fault. Car took out a dist box down the street and landscaper took out the coax in my front yard (along with most of my drip system).

I don't have a Cox-supplied cable box. Use my own modem/router and use Cox software app to access their basic services.

The only issues I ever had with Cox was their use of contractors who didn't appear to know what they were doing and very difficult to get hold of.
 
KeithE4 said:
I was with Cox, and its Phoenix-area predecessor Dimension Cable.
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The COX system where I live in Connecticut was Dimension Cable as well back in the day. It serves just three towns - Meriden, Southington, and Cheshire. Interestingly enough (at least to me) is the Cox Solutions Store at 687 East Main Street in Meriden has been the location of the local Customer Service office for the cable company since the area first got cable in the late 1970s. I believe it was Warner Cable (or something like that) before it was Dimension. Dimension became COX's 2nd Franchise in the state. One of the other COX franchise serves Newington, Rocky Hill, Whethersfield and strangely it jumps the Connecticut River and also serves Manchester and Glastonbury.

The 3rd COX franchise in the state of Connecticut is based in Enfield and serves Enfield and many towns along the Connecticut/Massachusetts border. For the life of me I can't remember what that cable company was before COX took over the franchise Maybe Continental?
 
KeithE4 said:
At least up to recently, Dish was far and away worse with disputes than DirecTV. But now that seems to be changing since AT&T took over. DirecTV also has equipment issues with its main receiver quitting out of the blue, mostly due to overheating. Every time I call for service or make changes they want to extend my contract. Never again. I'll just deal with it for the rest of the year because of Sunday Ticket.

I'm just waiting until the end of football season before I drop them. I'm going to start testing YouTube TV this week, along with other Roku programming and getting my outside antenna back in shape.

I was with Cox, and its Phoenix-area predecessor Dimension Cable, from 1994 thru 2009. Their biggest problem was lousy equipment and internet outages. I'm not going back to them.
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Back when I first moved to Mesa / Gilbert, Arizona in 1997, we had Insight Communications as our cable provider. They were great and I remember they used to carry KTLA here in Phoenix. Then they swapped markets with West Lafayette, Indiana and we got Cox and they got Insight. Insight completely pulled out of the Phoenix market but kept their headquarters here for awhile and even had a Bowl game named after them: The Insight Bowl. Cox was awful back then so we switched to Cable America which was a great company. I remember they offered the Encore Western Channel ala carte for $1.99 a month and my dad loved that. Sadly, they got bought out by Cox and Cox stunk so we switched to Directv. They were okay, but expensive and always trying to extend our contract. We then switched to Centurylink Prism TV when that came out to us in Gilbert and they were great. Just a few months ago, though, we switched back to Cox due to the fact that Centurylink was not upgrading their internet or cable in the area and Cox offered their gigablast internet service. Cox internet is better than Centurylink, but I do miss the Prism TV service. They would offer the east and west coast feeds of TBS, TNT, Nickelodeon and other networks.

Overall, I prefer Cox over Directv, but it is a pick your poison kind of situation. Centurylink Prism TV is my personal favorite, but I don’t think they are offering it to new customers anymore.
 
Could you maybe get just internet from Cox and phone/cable from Century? Might be worth looking into since you were so much happier with it.
 
MarcB said:
The COX system where I live in Connecticut was Dimension Cable as well back in the day. It serves just three towns - Meriden, Southington, and Cheshire. Interestingly enough (at least to me) is the Cox Solutions Store at 687 East Main Street in Meriden has been the location of the local Customer Service office for the cable company since the area first got cable in the late 1970s. I believe it was Warner Cable (or something like that) before it was Dimension.
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Telesystems of Connecticut was what it was calling itself in the summer of 1981, when I moved to Connecticut.
 
MarcB said:
The COX system where I live in Connecticut was Dimension Cable as well back in the day. It serves just three towns - Meriden, Southington, and Cheshire. Interestingly enough (at least to me) is the Cox Solutions Store at 687 East Main Street in Meriden has been the location of the local Customer Service office for the cable company since the area first got cable in the late 1970s. I believe it was Warner Cable (or something like that) before it was Dimension. Dimension became COX's 2nd Franchise in the state. One of the other COX franchise serves Newington, Rocky Hill, Whethersfield and strangely it jumps the Connecticut River and also serves Manchester and Glastonbury.

The 3rd COX franchise in the state of Connecticut is based in Enfield and serves Enfield and many towns along the Connecticut/Massachusetts border. For the life of me I can't remember what that cable company was before COX took over the franchise Maybe Continental?
Click to expand...
Cox Cable Greater Hartford as it was originally called when the company moved into Manchester, Glastonbury, South Windsor, Wethersfield, Rocky Hill and Newington. Enfield and Chester came later. The whole network is based out of the Rhode Island headend now.
 
MarcB said:
The COX system where I live in Connecticut was Dimension Cable as well back in the day. It serves just three towns - Meriden, Southington, and Cheshire. Interestingly enough (at least to me) is the Cox Solutions Store at 687 East Main Street in Meriden has been the location of the local Customer Service office for the cable company since the area first got cable in the late 1970s. I believe it was Warner Cable (or something like that) before it was Dimension. Dimension became COX's 2nd Franchise in the state. One of the other COX franchise serves Newington, Rocky Hill, Whethersfield and strangely it jumps the Connecticut River and also serves Manchester and Glastonbury.

The 3rd COX franchise in the state of Connecticut is based in Enfield and serves Enfield and many towns along the Connecticut/Massachusetts border. For the life of me I can't remember what that cable company was before COX took over the franchise Maybe Continental?
Click to expand...

WETHERSFIELD

Yes, Enfield had Continental Cablevision. It also served Springfield, MA at the time.

Here is a list of the current cable franchises and providers in CT: https://www.ct.gov/pura/lib/pura/catv/CableVideoFranchises.pdf
 
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