Need help in choosing a tv and internet service
 

Hi all,
We are new to TV and are researching reliable Television and internet provider services. We live north of 466 in Glenbrook.
Does anyone have any suggestions based on your own experiences?

In that area your only choice might be comcast

Direct Tv is available in Glenbrook and they use Centurylink for their internet provider. But I am concerned about the TV picture not working when the weather is not cooperating and wonder if anyone has had that problem there. Also, any feedback on the reliability of Century link and it’s Internet speed? Just wondering if there are better options to choose from....

Excellent price and service reliability with Century Link package of tv, internet and phone. Need to call once a year to renew discounts.
Never had a problem with service in last 5 years.

I have Centurylink fiber optic internet in Woodbury. They offer various speeds up to a gigabyte. I have 40 mb service and it works great for streaming etc. Steady reliable service except once a squirrel chewed a wire but they fixed it same day.

For TV I have Direct TV, works great and hi quality HD signal. Lose service when strong storms come from SW but not for long and I can just stream TV when this happens.

I don't recommend having TV and Internet from same provider if it goes out you have nothing.

I've had Centurylink internet for 6-1/2 years and only one outage, that was about 2 years ago. They sent a tech that afternoon who discovered a lightning strike near the garage had knocked the backup battery in the garage. He replaced the battery and it came right back. I only have 10 mbps speed and have no problems playing Netflix and videos from youtube.

I've also had Directv since 2008 and here in TV since 2011. I don't worry about outages due to weather because the content is so much better. I have about 45 commercial free movie channels counting HBO, Cinemax, Starz, Showtime, MGM, Sony, HDNET, etc all in HD. When I look at Comcast and see maybe one HBO channel in HD, I can't imagine watching movies on my 75" Samsung that are not in HD. You can say, Comcast has on-demand all those movie in HD. True, but every movie on my movie channels is also available in HD Directv ondemand as well. There's just something I like about flipping through channels and happen upon a movie without planning, or a just way to spend the afternoon.

My Directv Dvr can store 1,000 hours of content. That's a good amount of TV shows and movies. For example I just recorded about 35 old Perry Mason episodes and I already have tons of movies and shows recorded in HD and I don't even worry about reaching my limits, I look and it said still 40% space available.

Of course during heavy rain storms you can lose picture. Two things you can do. Picture loss due to rain normally only happens on the HD channel. Every HD channel also has an SD version, or duplicate. If you switch your onscreen menu to all channels, you'll see the duplicate, for example TBS HD channel 247, switch to TBS SD and the channel will reappear but might be a little fuzzy, certainly good enough to watch the ending to a program. The other option is, all those programs and movies that you have recorded, now becomes a good time to watch some of them, your DVR recorded programs are not effected by the weather.

The other reason I like Directv is for the sports programming. This year, being my tenth year with them, they gave me NFL Sunday Ticket for free, normally it's $300 extra spread over 6 months during football season. So today while you're watching Dolphins at Patriots, I can watch any of the eight games at 1pm on my TV. I came here from Maryland, and back there the weekly sports shows were shown on MASN (Mid-Atlantic Sports Network), just like in Boston they're on NESN and in New York on YES, every region has 1 or 2 regional sports channels. I can watch any of those channels as part of my Premier Package, or you can add it to a regular package for $5.

Yes, this all comes with a price, but it's like everything else in life, if you want the best, you have to pay for it. If a new Honda Fit for under $20,000 gets you where you want to go, why spend $50,000 on that expensive car in your garage?

Xfinity by Comcast is Excellent. I have it in 2 rentals and it never disappoints. You have to call every 2 years and threaten to cancel to keep the low rates - only issue. They are VERY customer focused these days - they give you a selection of 2 hour windows for installation, and the guy actually shows up as scheduled. Their new cable boxes have voice recognition also which is really cool The internet is lightning fast if you sign up for the 75 MBPS service, it actually runs about 90. Add 140 channels and 2 cable boxes and it is about $130 a month all in.

Ed

Great point- thank you!!

Thank you Ed- appreciate the info.
Go Packers!

Thanks so much John- appreciate you taking the time to give me such a detailed response ������

I have found a Comcast to be a very reliable service. I can only recall one outage in the 3 years I have been full time in The Villages. My only complaint are the “fees”. If you have a Roku stick, Comcast has an app for Roku that allows you to run your TV service through Roku. You must have the “main” cable box, but can use the Roku app on secondary televisions. Can save a few bucks on equipment rental.

Thanks so much John- appreciate you taking the time to give me such a detailed response 😊

So you can’t use the Roku stick with the primary tv?

Yes. I just have the Roku stick on the secondary tv in my “man cave”. But as mentioned, for the Comcast Roku app to work you must have a Comcast TV account, which necessitates a cable box. When you start the app you must verify your Comcast account information.

I hear rumors this may be changing, however, at this point in time, these are only rumors...

You can use Roku without primary TV, you must have internet, but your selections will be limited..........there are free options on Roku.