For the last five years, I have been a Direct TV customer. Let me tell you, they have it all when it comes to sports. The best part of the year is the fall as that is when football season gets underway and I have enjoyed the NFL Sunday Ticket package each of those five years. But last year the total cost for Sunday Ticket was almost $400, as they charge for the regular package and then hit you up for more money if you want to watch the games in high definition. Well, once you watch games in HD, its just about impossible to go back to watching them the other way, so I of course had to pay for the Superfan package in addition. But my wife said there is no way we could afford that this year, so I started checking into what options were available with a Dish Network package.
Now of course I can’t get Sunday Ticket on Dish Network, as the contract is an exclusive of Direct TV. You can’t get it on cable television either. But as far as the rest of the sports programming on Dish TV, things didn’t look too bad.
They have all of the local stations of course, so I will be able to watch the national games on NBC, Fox, and CBS. They also have ESPN so no problem getting the Monday Night football action. They also have the new NFL Red Zone channel, though it is on a premium tier. This premium sports tier gives you about six extra sports channels for around $5 a month. Some of the lesser known channels are here, but the Red Zone channel should be a pretty good replacement for Sunday Ticket. It jumps from game to game when teams are about to score, so you see most of the touchdowns live. Its also a lot cheaper than Direct TV so that makes the wife happy.
