Time Cable vs Direct TV

One of the best things about modern cable and satellite television is the explosion of sports programming now available to customers across the country. Many years ago you would only see a couple of college football games on Saturday and two or three on Sunday, today you can literally pick from dozens of games every weekend. Even the NCAA Men's tournament has additional coverage with the Mega March Madness package on Direct TV.

Content is king today, and as the saying goes the networks of course want to bring as much content as possible to the customer so they can sell more advertising. Lots of new all-sports channels have sprung up in the past couple of years. Included among these are Altitude Sports, which carries NBA Nuggets and the NHL's Colorado Avalanche matches, and also the Big 10 network and the mtn, the broadcast home of the Mountain West conference.

Certainly these new channels are great for fans in lots of areas, disagreements between the providers of content and those who deliver the content have resulted in trouble at times to the customer. For example, the Big Ten Network began broadcasting in 2007, but they were in a carraige dispute with cable TV provider Time Warner. Customers of Time Warner in Michigan were not able to watch some of the home town teams play because of the carraige dispute. Fortunately, the parties came to terms before the 2008 season, so customers could stay with Time Warner instead of having to switch over to one of the satellite TV companies like DISH Network or DirecTV. An important thing to do when considering providers is to consider all factors, comparing Time Warner or DirecTV satellite.

Specialized sports packages are another issue to deal with for the customer. 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 pay television subscribers, who do not understand why a package Sunday Ticket isn't available to every provider, especially a bicompany like Time Warner where you can watch Halloween 2. Alternative sports bundles though are more friendly to subscribers, such as 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 Sunday Ticket.