Time Warner Cable vs Direct TV

One of the great things about modern cable and satellite TV is all of the sports that is now available to subscribers across the United States. While 20 years ago you might find two college football games on Saturday and two pro games on Sunday, today you can literally pick from two dozen or more games every weekend.  Even the NCAA Men's tournament has expanded coverage with the Mega March Madness package on Direct TV.

The motto today is "Content is King" and as the saying goes the networks want to bring as much sports content as possible to the end user so they can make more money on ads. Lots of new all-sports channels have sprung up in the past couple of years. A few of the new networks are Altitude Sports, which carries NBA Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche matches, and also the Big 10 network and the Mtn, the broadcast home of the Mountain West conference.

Sure these networks are great for people in certain parts of the country, but disputes between the providers of sports programming and cable networks that deliver the content have brought difficulties to the customer. For example, the Big Ten Network began broadcasting in 2007, but the network was in a carraige dispute with big cable provider Time Warner. Subscribers of Time Warner in Michigan were not able to watch some of the home town teams play because of the carraige dispute. Fortunately, the companies involved came to an agreement before the 2008 season, so subscribers could remain with with Time Warner rather than having to switch over to one of the satellite TV companies such as DISH Network or Direct TV.  An important thing to do when considering providers is to consider all factors, comparing Direct TV vs Time Warner.

Specialized sports packages are another issue to deal with for the customer. The NFL Sunday Ticket package is exclusive to DirecTV, so if you want this package, you have to switch. This has left a bad taste in the mouth of some consumers, who don't understand why a high demand package like this isn't available to every provider, especially a big company like Time Warner. Other packages though are more fan friendly, 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.