DIRECTV vs Time Warner Cable

One of the best things about modern cable and satellite television is the explosion of sports programming now available to customers across the country. Pay per view sports packages like ESPN Gameplan give the subscriber access to nearly 20 college football games every weekend. Even the NCAA tournament has expanded coverage with the Mega March Madness package on Direct TV.

Content is king today, and as the saying goes the sports networks of course want to deliver as much sports content as possible to the end user so they can sell more advertising. Quite a few new all-sports networks have popped up over the past couple of years. A few of the new networks are Altitude Sports, which carries Nuggets from Denver and Colorado Avalanche matches, as well as the Big 10 network and the mtn, the broadcast home of the Mountain West conference.

Sure these networks are good for folks in certain parts of the country, but disagreements between the providers of content and cable networks that deliver the content have resulted in difficulties to the customer. Consider what happened last fall, the Big Ten Network began broadcasting in 2007, but they were unable to strike a deal with big cable provider Time Warner. Subscribers of Time Warner in Wisconsin were not able to watch some of the home town teams play due to this dispute. Finally however, the companies involved came to terms before the fall football season, so subscribers could stay with Time Warner rather than having to switch over to one of the satellite TV providers such as DISH Network or DirecTV. An important thing to do when considering providers is to consider all factors, comparing Time Warner or DirecTV satellite.

Out of market sports packages are another consideration for the customer. The NFL Sunday Ticket package is exclusive to DirecTV, so if you want this package, you have to switch. This has upset some consumers, who do not understand why a high demand package like this isn’t available to every provider, especially a big company like Time Warner. Alternative packages though are more fan friendly, like the National Hockey League Center Ice and the NBA League Pass, which are available on almost every cable TV and satellite company. Direct TV seems to have all of the sports programming like the NFL Sunday Ticket package.