American TV channels

finster wrote:

I was recently in Ecuador and saw DirecTV dishes all over. Can you purchase a package with American channels such as CNN, HGTV, MSNBC, NatGeo, ESPN, History? What about the NFL or MLB package?

My DirecTV package(s) in Quito include most of what you want.

CNN:  yes
NatGeo:  yes
ESPN:  yes, with multiple channels
History:  yes

Unfortunately, MSNBC is not available.  I would love to watch Lawrence O'Donnell deconstructing Decision 2016.  But no such luck.

The home-and-garden channel you mentioned is apparently not available, but Discovery Home and Health and some food/gourmet channels are and might provide similar programming.

NFL:  The Sunday Ticket is available with no blackouts, and all Sunday night games and MNF games are shown.

MBL:  Most days, expect 3-5 games available through MLB Extra Innings and some days there is an extra game shown on ESPN.

Close to 100 percent of the games mentioned have English audio available.

My monthly DirecTV bill including sports packages is less than what I paid for cable in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

cccmedia in Quito

cccmedia wrote:

My monthly DirecTV bill including sports packages is less than what I paid for cable in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

cccmedia in Quito

But can you get Iron Pigs Baseball?

mugtech wrote:

cccmedia wrote:

My monthly DirecTV bill including sports packages is less than what I paid for cable in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

cccmedia in Quito

But can you get Iron Pigs Baseball?

And more important, can you drink Iron City beer while watching the Iron Pigs?

mugtech wrote:

cccmedia wrote:

My monthly DirecTV bill including sports packages is less than what I paid for cable in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

cccmedia in Quito

But can you get Iron Pigs Baseball?

No, but I never watched the Cerdos de Hierro when I lived in eastern Pennsylvania either.

And there's way too much soccer on TV here.  Luckily, it's easy enough to change the channel on that.

On the other hand, I got to watch Tom Brady and the Patriotas on DirecTV in every game they played this past season, except for their Thursday night win over the Jets.  That I viewed at an Internet center.

And no, I do not drink cerveza.  (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

cccmedia in Quito

Direct tv in Bethlehem, PA is $28.88/month with a year contract, includes the Sunday NFL package and 3 months of HBO, Cinamax, Starz, Showtime.  All the economic refugees, even stateside, get direct tv, not cable.

I'm paying at least $80 here in SoCal and I don't get any movie channels. In addition the NFL pkg costs something like $300 extra. I am justifying my move right here!

finster wrote:

I'm paying at least $80 here in SoCal and I don't get any movie channels. In addition the NFL pkg costs something like $300 extra. I am justifying my move right here!

I paid up to $300 a year as well for DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket as a subscriber in the States (1999-2011).

Although the Latin America website for DirecTV is not showing EC's rate for Sunday Ticket 2015 yet, historically it has been about $200 per season for that package.  There are no blacked-out games in Ecuador.

That $29 PA teaser-rate probably balloons to over $100/month during football season in year 2 with Sunday Ticket and a simple movie package.

cccmedia in Quito

cccmedia wrote:

That $29 PA teaser-rate probably balloons to over $100/month during football season in year 2 with Sunday Ticket and a simple movie package.
cccmedia in Quito

Never get to year two, quit in February, have the wife sign up the following year.

I'd like to order the NFL package and was at Super-Paco-Express the other day and they had a Directv kit for $72.


My questions are:

1.) Do I have to subscribe to their packages (family, bronze, gold, etc) or can I just subscribe to NFL?

2.) They state they show 10 games per week, any idea which teams they show mostly?

vsimple wrote:

I'd like to order the NFL package....

Do I have to subscribe to their packages (family, bronze, gold, etc) or can I just subscribe to NFL?...

They state they show 10 games per week, any idea which teams they show mostly?

Based on my experience as a DirecTV subscriber and NFL fan in Quito, you'll have to subscribe to a basic package of programing to qualify for the NFL Sunday Ticket.  You'll want an ESPN-included package to maximize NFL coverage during the regular season.

In recent years, all the NFL Sunday afternoon games -- both early and late afternoon games, that is -- have all been televised via DirecTV's exclusive Sunday Ticket package.  No Sunday afternoon games have been dropped, although it has been common for one or two games a week to be assigned a channel less than 24 hours before game time. 

The NFL games of Sunday Night Football and Monday Night Football have all been shown, typically on the ESPN Channels .. and are not a part of the Sunday Ticket package.

Thursday night games have been shown occasionally, although on most weeks they have been ‘dark' on DirecTV here.  Exceptions when Thursday games are shown could include the Week 1 season-kickoff game(s) .. some Thanksgiving Day games .. and possibly some NFL Network games.

All the Sunday Ticket and Sunday-Monday night games have historically been available with English-language audio -- the original audio from Fox, CBS, NBC or ESPN.

However, the 2015 and 2016 Super Bowl games were televised in Ecuador with only Spanish-language audio available. 

What's that all about?  I'd support a campaign to make English-language audio available for the Super Bowl and NFC playoff games (the latter shown in Ecuador historically on the Fox channel/s).  The AFC playoff games have been available with both English and Spanish audio in recent times.

cccmedia