Do not be taken in by the large, red, "Only $29.95/mo!" in their ads. This is only a promotion, and they are sneaky about hiding the truth of the price you WILL be paying once they've locked you into their two-year contract. To add insult to injury, their channel packages are incredibly sparse unless you pay a lot extra for the higher tiers. And way too many are not in HD -- even in 2015! DirecTV charges more for their lowest package, but that lowest package offers more channels, and more in HD, than all but Dish's most expensive packages. There is no comparison, especially if you use a multi-channel DVR (Dish is far more restrictive of what and when you can record, particularly in Prime Time, than DirecTV which is pretty much unrestricted). They cannot compete on quality of service, so they try to compete on price -- which invariably means cutting corners. But they are at least providing price competition in the cable/sat marketplace. That is pretty much their only useful function anymore (unless you have no other option to get TV for some reason).