This is SUPER long, sorry about the wall o' text but I wanted to explain my mindset. . .my God this thread is 10 years old, I remember reading it 10 years ago and thinking it made sense then. . . I procrastinate therefor I am.
The TLDR is "I am going to cancel DishTV after 10 years or whatever and go to a streaming service like Hulu or FuboTV."
I've had Cable/DirectTV/DishTV (so one or the other) for over 30 years now. I think I switched from cable to DirecTV around 2000 and back then DirecTV was wonderful, cheaper, amazing. Brand new equipment, outstanding customer service, free from cable I was pleased. Then we moved to a new home around 2007, signed up again and DirecTV sent me USED equipment and my entire experience was horrible. I put up with this for about 3 years until one day one of my USED receivers broke. I called customer support and they wanted to charge me for replacement equipment. I said "can I just exchange it" and they said yes but there's a fee, you'll have to pay for replacement cost even though I was renting the equipment (which is BS too.) Finally, I said, "Okay can I just send this in for repair" to which they said "yes but it's $20 for us to send you the container and then you must pay for shipping back and forth." So, in my super pissed off state, I cancelled and switched to DishTV that very day and I'll be 100% honest, DirecTV was entirely indifferent.
DishTV has been wonderful to deal with, I was issued brand new equipment, they've always been great about sending me upgraded equipment, customer support is awesome, etc. so this plus a combination of laziness, perfectly simple integration/channel guide system, an unwillingness to change on my part, ease of use, the feature set (hopper, dvr, room to room operation, etc.) and channel selection (including perfect local channel integration) are the main reasons I've stuck with DishTV all these years (I think 10 or 11 now.)
Several recent events have made me initiate a change. 1.) Signal loss - I used to lose my signal on extreme rain/heavy snow and, honestly, it happened so infrequently I just didn't really care as I would switch over to recorded programs or internet (Netflix, Prime, Youtube, etc.) and generally within a few minutes I was back in business. About 5 years this got really bad, I complained and they quickly came out and installed a new dish on the house. . . but left the old one up there so I paid a roofer to remove it and repair the roof. However, now it happens constantly. Rain, mist, cloudy, windy, light snow, heavy snow and I mean if it's not pretty much perfect outside, no signal. It's raining right now and I have complete signal loss. 2.) Local channel disputes are CONSTANT. Each side blames each other, I don't really care, I'm the guy paying the bill, come on. And I tried an antenna, it doesn't work. I already have a stupid dish on my roof, now I have to install a 1950's era aerial antenna too? (Attic, roof, window, I don't really care, it's ugly and stupid looking - no thanks!) 3.) Expense, I do not have premium channels with my Dish subscription (no HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, etc.) I have the most expensive package, HD package, three receivers and the cost is DOUBLE the most expensive, loaded up thing you can get on Hulu or FuboTV - double.
So, with all that in mind, Sunday was the kicker. Total signal loss, local NBC channel was offline due to dispute, I started to watch the F1 race with my son on ESPN, boom, signal loss RIGHT during the start of the race. My son said "I got this" and did a simulcast from his phone to the TV from a Youtube feed he found so we could watch the race, later on the weather cleared and we switched it back. NBC Sunday night football was down, contract dispute, so I signed up for Hulu trial so we could give it a test run. First off, the picture clarity is amazingly cleaner/brighter/better, however, I'm not in love with the menu system, I think that is going to take some time for me to warm up to it, it's a lot like Netflix and Amazon Prime and I like but don't love those interfaces.
I work in IT, I work with TONS of different interfaces, different operating systems, different software, text based, windows based, you name it, I work with it but I believe my mind has been shaped, formed and molded by the simple channel guide/excel spreadsheet/table view. Channel Number/Description in column 1, Time in column 2 (present to future) and row by row of channel selections - it's simple, it's easy, you scroll up and down and side to side, find the channel you want, punch it directly in and you switch to it and it's been this way since it was printed in black and white ink since the newspaper days - it's hard to undo 50+ years of mental programming. The other thing a channel guide gives you is surfing and LESS to choose from. Generally, when I pull up a channel guide, I see like 8-10 channel options and I know that most of the time 80% of that is crap I have no interest in. For example, right now, I key in 120 and the History channel pops up in the channel guide and I see "Hist (yes), Hist on demand (maybe), FYI (maybe), A&E (no), Pop(no), Game Show (no), E! (no) and Cooking (no)" so, right there, I have one hit and two options so I go right to the History channel to watch American Pickers (where the hell is Frank???)
All that brings me to the point that the Hulu channel guide (so far) is my only ding. It's not bad, it's just not what I expected and I've found that I do not think it is customizable. In a perfect world, I would select a My Tab with the 10 or 12 channels we watch. Right now you "kind of" have that in Recent but you explore outside of your normal dozen, that channel gets added into the Recents whether you like it or not, I'd like to be able to remove a channel or just select "my favorites". So, much like Netflix and Prime, you select it, it pulls up and I see 4 rows of 6 (24 options), 6 TV Shows options, 6 movie options, 6 complete Network options and 6 Team options (basketball, football, ncaa football, nhl hockey, baseball, ncaa basketball) and much like Netflix/Amazon, you get to the point where you can't decide so you pick Youtube (for example.)
Sorry for the long post but anyway, the wheels are in motion, I'm cancelling my satellite TV and moving on whether it's Hulu, FubuTV, Youtube, something different, I dunno, but I'm done with cable, done with satellite and I'm moving on.