There are several satellite TV service providers to choose from, when you go to get satellite service for your home or business and by far the top two out of all of them are Dish Network and DirecTV. They are both identical in many ways, but there are a few areas of difference that sets the two apart.

They both were started in nineteen-ninety-four and both of them have great records in total overall customer satisfaction. J.D. Power and associates have given them both high marks in this area, for the past five years in a row and they both have easy to use, twenty-four hour a day toll free customer service numbers, that can be used day or night if you have any questions about their service.

Both of them will provide you with a complete satellite TV system when you sign to one of their extended programming service packages and both of them have the same free installation policy. Their overall cost per channel, in their packages is about the same also, but the way that their packages are constructed is some what different.

DirecTV has fewer package choices but has the largest entry level package between the two, with their Total Choice Package that contains one-hundred and fifty-five channels in it. Dish Network has a greater variety of programming packages and therefore allows you the greater chance of finding a package that has the most selections that you might be interested in.

Dish Network features The Americas Top series of packages that are an eclectic mix of great programming and are put together in a progressive step by step fashion that allows you more choices with each successive package. Both of these service providers offer free Sirius Satellite radio with some of their packages, so they are also similar in that way.

One area that sets the two of them apart is the type of programming that each one of them specializes in and also the amount of high definition programming that each one of them carries. DirecTV is the unchallenged sports leader and has really put a lot of eggs in the sports basket. They have a full twenty-five channels of sports programming that cover a wide variety of sports.

They also have a few sports channels that they have exclusive rights to that you have to pay a little extra for. Dish Network is the leader in high definition programming with over thirty channels to DirecTVs dozen channels of high definition programming. Dish Network also specializes in movie programming, in the way that DirecTV specializes in sports programming.

No other programming provider can bring you as many choices in movie programming as Dish Network. Dish Network features everything from classics to new releases and has a broad scope of topics with choices including even westerns and science fiction among so many others. If you love great movie programming, then Dish Network would have to be your first pick.

Dish Network also recently launched their Mobile Dish service that makes available one-hundred channels of satellite programming, for people with RVs and other moving vehicles that might want satellite service. So it really comes down to a choice between these two service providers, when you are deciding who you are going to go to for your satellite service.