Cox Television Service with Contour Installed

I had been a Dish Network subscriber for 11 years but the time has come for me to try Cox Communications with the latest Contour app and services to see if I could get something better.  See I don’t hate Dish Network but I made the mistake of upgrading to the DVR before the Hopper which only supported 2 live stream records and the Dish Anywhere service just was hanging and my DVR kept locking up weekly.  The frustration and limitations were just leaving my family frustrated because when we travel we wanted to be able to watch our live television service from mobile apps while we were away.

Cox Communications meanwhile had a different approach to live streaming television, you don’t get local channels, but they stream the network stations through their network to the mobile applications or website to watch live video.  This is different than Dish Anywhere which leverages your own receiver/DVR and your own Router/Internet connection to stream live video/DVR content via your own router and ISP connection, my router was always fine and downstream with gaming, Netflix and everything else never had a problem, but live streaming HD content via Wi-Fi was always spotty at best and the signal would constantly stutter, even buying and testing a 75′ CAT-5 Cable hooked from router in a room far away to Dish Receiver didn’t help matters much.

So I had Cox installed last night and can tell you the guide and responsiveness of the system is much faster than the Dish DVR I was running, it reboots much faster, saves content faster and I now have 6 simultaneous records, so I can record 5 shows at the same time and still watch live TV.  The most I ever had to do was record 2 and watch 1 in real time, so this is more than enough.  The Cox service comes with 2 applications Cox TV and Contour for iOS, Android and Kindle Fire and this supports watching live Television over the Internet from anywhere (Cox Live TV App), or in the case of Contour you literally watch anything from your own DVR in the house on your mobile device.

So far initial tests show it is fast, no lag and seems stable but I am in the same home network, the real test is when I travel to CA and try to watch my live Cox content from CA.  So far, I am not disappointed, but I will tell you that the Cox introductory rate for the same package of channels is the same price as my regular Dish Network price and when the intro rate ends Cox is about 50% more per month than Dish Network.  Even the Cox sales rep said they couldn’t compete with Dish Network on price and Dish was the cheapest here.  They also didn’t have something like The Hopper which pre-records entire seasons of local network television shows cutting out the commercials for you.  Though I didn’t have the hopper and don’t watch that many local TV station shows compared to ones on TNT, USA…etc so I wouldn’t miss what I didn’t have in the first place, but if you wanted that feature, then Dish Network is the only one that has it.

So this is my first time with the latest Cox Television services, and I will say that Dish Network was willing to practically bend over backwards to keep me as a customer since I had been with them 11 years.  They offered to upgrade me to The Hopper for free, as well as cut my current bill by 40% for a year.  Still it was time to try something new and different, and I am no stranger to testing and reviewing new products and services.