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H.I.P. 5 – television, internet, phone and all that jazz in Pittsburgh

May 6th, 2010 Leave a comment Go to comments

I have a serious dilemma. I need to find cable and internet service. Phone, eh I guess but not a biggie. I need yinz guys to help me decide on who’s good and who sucks in Pittsburgh. I’ve had all of my services through Armstrong for the past 3 years and they have been rock solid with very VERY few outages and rocking internet speeds.

The house is already wired so my options are Direct TV, Verizon Fios and Comcast. I’ve had Comcast in the past and besides bitchy tech people the service was good. I hear nightmares about Fios from geeks but the house is already wired for it so that’s why I’m considering it. My only concern for Direct TV is the signal during bad weather storms.
Here is what I want/need.

  1. Fast internet – I work from home on occasion, I’m online all the time working on something, do some video conferencing along with  a lot of data transfer and dont download movies. In other words I can’t afford downtime.
  2. TV – the most important amenity in a house with an infant
    1. Hockey – I get every Pens game during the season. This cannot change. No blackouts or any of that jazz.
    2. HD – the more HD the better. That’s all I watch now unless its
    3. kids programming – Sprout, Disney and Nick Jr. are a must with a 1yr old in the house
    4. Movies – not important but a plus
    5. Watch in multiple rooms – not important but a plus
    6. Don’t give me that “dude just download your shows.” You can live like that if you want, I cant.
  3. Phone – I really don’t care about having a home phone since we have a boatload of cell minutes and long distance but Lushie likes it so whatever package is available I guess we’d take.

Direct TV sent me a flier on a great deal for 1yr but it expires at closing time so that may not be an option.

So Pittsburgh, what do you suggest and who do you want to get stabby with?

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    Categories: HouseHuntingInPgh, Pittsburgh
    • Chris P

      It’s all about the bundles these days (phone, net, tv, cell) … We have FIOS. If you go that route, I’d suggest paying the extra $10/month for the extreme package (faster net, more hd channels) … you’ll like the free video on demand (you can find a spongebob episode anytime you want;) … you’ll hate the costs. take advantage of the teaser specials and be prepared to switch once they expire.

      If you decide to go FIOS, DM me, we get some sort of credit if we refer you ;)

    • http://douglasderda.com douglas

      Thanks for the heads up chris! if I go that route you got it!

    • http://www.theburghbaby.com Burgh Baby

      I don’t hate Comcast. Yet. Internet service has been rock solid.

      We had Verizon for phone and internet at our old house. I did hate them, especially for internet service. We had DSL, though. We also had DirecTV for cable and such. We almost never had outages, so I liked them, right up until we moved and had to cancel. We got hit with $300 in BS equipment fees (we had to get a new DVR when ours died months before we moved–apparently accepting new equipment is signing a “contract”).

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    • http://myverylastnerve.blogspot.com Gina

      I had lots of problems with comcast for tv and internet – both in service and customer service. But I live in BFE, so that might contribute. Now we have Verizon DSL. It’s fine.

      I have DirecTV now for TV and I like it. We haven’t really had technical problems or anything like that. And customer service has been good. The only complaint is that we do occasionally have issues with weather – but not with thunderstorms – it’s wind. Really high wind seems to knock it out, but it generally doesn’t last more than a few minutes. not enough to make me want to change.

      We don’t have fios around here (see: BFE), but I’d consider it if/when it comes around.

    • Stacey

      We lived practically in a cow pasture before we moved last year and I had DSL. When we moved, we found that DSL was not available in the town we moved to (strange, right?) We’ve had Comcast Internet and Phone service for about 6 months now and have been thrilled. For TV, we have DirecTV. I’ve had DirecTV for over 3 years and Joe absolutely did not want to change when we moved. We’ve had very little service outage – once in a while a storm will knock it out for a few minutes and the humongus snow storm covered my dish for part of a day, but otherwise, we’ve been thrilled. And, according to my sister, Dish Network does not offer Sprout, which is a must with my 4 year old nephew. DirecTV, however, does.

      If you decide to go with Direct, let me know, I’ll give you my account number – we’ll both get credit :-)

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    • Claire

      I don’t have cable but unBF works for DirecTV indirectly. Long story, but if you decide to go with them let me know and maybe he can get you a deal.

    • MizzPenz

      You don’t know me from Adam, but hands down winner in our house is Verizon FIOS. Lightning fast internet, Good land line with unlimited long distance (we do not get very good cell phone service where we live) and the TV is top notch. We went with the HD package and we get FSN, NHL, MLB, blah blah blah. Living in the Harrisburg area, we will not go without our Pittsburgh sports. Comcast eliminated FSN so we dropped them years ago. I would rather root for the Flyers than give Comcast any of my hard earned money.

    • Griff

      Get FIOS. Trust me. You’re stupid if you don’t.

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    • http://insidexout.wordpress.com alison

      i’ve had directv for about a year now and for the most part, i’ve been outage-free. even during those huge snow storms we had a couple months ago. when i first got it, i had verizon DSL. prior to that, i had comcast digital cable and internet. comcast cable internet is lightyears faster than verizon DSL. DSL crawled. going from cable internet to DSL was like reverting back to dial-up. now, i still have directv but i have FIOS for internet and phone and FIOS is FAST!!! seems to be way faster than cable. i think it’s worth the money.

      long story short… directv + FIOS internet = WIN!

      why are you switching from armstrong if you’ve had good service? not in your new area i guess? i have a friend that works for armstrong and even he has good things to say about that company. i think that says a lot!

    • http://douglasderda.com douglas

      Burgh Baby/Gina/Stacey/Claire – I’d like to get an all in one package but from the sounds of the nightmares I dont know if thats gonna happen. FIOS seems to be pulling away as the Internet choice.

      MizzPenz – Wow that’s good to know! thanks!

      Griff – jag. still cant be worse than Triax

      Alison – trust me I would like to keep Armstrong but its not available where I’m moving. My internet, cable and TV have been stellar and the customer service is great.

    • Stacey

      I had originally wanted to do an all in one package as well, but I left Comcast as a cable provider and swore that I’d never return. We hated to give up Direct, so, there we are.

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