Direct TV has terrible customer service and poor product quality. Dish is much better at both. I encountered terrible attitudes from customer service from the beginning, but could not cancel the contract without paying the $5oo.oo fee (some states have a 15 day grace period-not MO). DO NOT DO DIRECT TV UNLESS YOU WANT TO BE TREATED LIKE CRAP!!! Only 1 phone rep was decent-the others were trained idiots. We even wrote letters to the president and the billing office in Colorado. This was months ago. The president's office - not the President-said "There is nothing we can do-pay us now or pay us for 2 years-basically said "screw you and the horse...". the other letter has still, TO THIS DAY, not been responded to in any way. I assume the post office still delivers in Colorado. We never had a problem with Dish. We h ad 2 receivers and could rewind all of the TV's (4 of them) and record programs from any TV. Now we have 4 receivers, can't rewind on 3 of them, and can only record on 1. We had to have techs come out to install the system (take out high-tech and put in low -tech), had to buy unnecessary equipment, change schedules many times, to end up with bad service, bad system and hearing "too bad" too many times to count from the "representatives. It's a 2yr contract due to the "special". I can't wait to go BACK to DISH.