Finally!  After years of wanting and always seemingly out of reach, we had DirecTV installed yesterday.  Good bye Comcast... and good riddens I might add. 

First off, let me just let everyone know the one, main question that I had that NOBODY could answer correctly or with such confidence that I would believe them: No, you DO NOT need a phone line to have DirecTV.  Personally, I've asked employees at both Best Buy and Circuit City and all have given me the same answer; "Yes, you NEED a phone line" - WRONG!

After calling DirecTV personally, mostly because of a mailer I received offering a bunch of incentives (way to go marketing department), I got the answer I was waiting to hear; "No, you do not need a phone line".  Straight from the horses mouth.  After hearing that, I promptly scheduled the nearest install date.  Two days later, an installer came out and gave me freedom from Comcast. 

Comcastic?  More like Craptastic.

I'm not going to compare side-by-side but I can tell you that the picture quality is great.  On top of that, the level of service I've received so far from DirecTV has far surpassed my 5 or so years with Comcast. 

Unfortunately, I still have my cable modem.  I love the speed but not the unexpected outages which can last for days.  Calling Comcast usually yields such responses as "have you tried rebooting the modem" or "there is someone working on a line near you, it'll be up sometime". 

I'll tell you one thing, once I'm eligible for Fiber I'm dropping Comcast... for good.