[Villages Kahuna]

I had DirecTV "up north" for many years before I moved to TV. I knew that DIrecTV would relocate all my service for no cost, but I decided to check out Comcast. The woman at the number I dialed in TV for Comcast was freindly, but forewarned me that I would experience far more service interruptions because of rain storms, lightning, sunspots, or whatever with a dish than I ever did up north. So I bit and had Comcast installed. Little did I know at the time that "Comcast" in TV is actually a department of TV that arranges cable installation for Comcast for a fee.

What a mistake!

I quickly found that Comcast in central Florida is waaay behind much of the rest of the country in their technology. Their digital DVR's are like horse and buggy compared to the TiVo I had been used to. And all those ads for services like "On Demand" or digital phone--forget it in TV. After some questioning of the local Comcast reps, they admitted that they will have to materially upgrade their cable and their head-end servers before any of those services are available in TV, or in central Florida for that matter. Even the local Comcast programming is second-rate, particularly in the sports area.

I beat a hot path back to DirecTV, and thankfully so. They did hook me up for no cost, and very professionally, at that. Their DVR's are worlds better than Comcast, although still not in the class of TiVo for ease of use and capability. Their programming is better. And although we're not in TV for the heavy thunderstorm season in the summer months, we had less interference during the ten months of the year we are there than we experienced in north suburban Chicago. My comparison at the time was that the cost for similar programming and equipment was about the same.

Needless to say, I recommend DirecTV!