One of the great things about modern cable and satellite TV is all of the sports that is now available to subscribers across the United States. Specialized sports packages like ESPN Gameplan give the customer access to nearly 20 college football games every weekend. Even the NCAA Men’s tournament has expanded coverage with the Mega March Madness on Direct TV.

Content is king today, and as the saying goes the networks want to bring as much sports content as possible to the customer so they can make more money on ads. Lots of new all-sports networks have sprung up in the past few years. Included among these are Altitude Sports, which carries Nuggets from Denver and Colorado Avalanche matches, and also the Big Ten Network and the Mtn, the network of the Mountain West conference.

Sure these channels are great for people in certain parts of the country, but disagreements between the providers of sports programming and those who deliver the content have brought trouble at times to the customer. For example, the Big Ten Network began broadcasting in 2007, but the network was in a carraige dispute with cable TV provider Time Warner. Customers of Time Warner in Illinois were not able to see some of the local teams play due to this dispute. While the battle continued for a whole year, the parties came to an agreement before the fall football season, so subscribers could stay with Time Warner rather than having to switch to one of the satellite TV providers like DISH Network or DirecTV. An important thing to do when considering providers is to consider all factors, comparing Time Warner cable vs Direct TV.

Specialized sports programming packages are another option hard core sports fans should consider. The Direct TV Sunday Ticket football package is exclusive to the satellite TV provider, so if you want this package you have to switch. This has upset some consumers, who do not understand why a high demand package like this isn’t available to every provider, especially a big company like Time Warner. Alternative sports packages though are more fan friendly, like the National Hockey League Center Ice and the NBA League Pass, which are available on almost every cable TV and satellite company. DIRECTV seems to have all of the premium sports packages like the NFL Sunday Ticket.

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I’ve been itching to get away from Comcast basic cable for quite a while. The problem is they suck you in with their packages that include voice, hi speed internet, and TV service. When you need to disconnect one, you lose the savings of the package.

But the cable TV service just has to go, as the channel selection and quality is well below par. There is so much talk today about HD, there isn’t much of that with Charter Cable. So I started doing a little research on who else was providing service in my area.

I am fortunate to be one of the folks who have a few options. Unlike some people who can only choose from just the cable company or DIRECTV satellite service, I have a third choice in my region. The phone company in my neighborhood has been altering the telephone network. So I have an additional consideration with AT&T and their U-Verse service.

That doesn’t of course mean I won’t have the same issues. It would put someone in the same boat as with the cable company, as the phone company want customers to bundle their television setup with internet and voice service. If the service works out well, customers will be pleased. Then again if the service is poor you’re in the same situation that I’m in now with the cable operator.

Some reviews I found are fairly good on telecom television service. Of course it is brand new, there is always a risk with a service like this, and some people share their bad reviews. Some of those reviews are the quite amusing, simply for the reason people make the decision to write a bad review on their poor experience and share it on the web. They badmouth the company like it is some giant conspiracy to make the customer unhappy, as if the corporation doesn’t want to make money!

Another way to go that I am looking into is of course satellite television. Because we have four TV watchers in the home, we have subscribed in the past to a premium cable television package. The satellite companies are pretty even, as the Premier DirecTV package and the America’s Everything Pack from DISH Network are each about $110 a month. Yes that’s fairly pricey for cable TV, but if you compare that to taking your family to supper and a show, the entertainment value is comparable.  Some in my family speak Spanish, so the Direct TV Mas bundle looks pretty good.  The good thing is that there are plenty of DirecTV pros and cons to help me decide which direction to take.

Technorati Tags: cable tv, directv, dish network, high speed internet, satellite tv, video, voice

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