Is Directv good? Are they cable or sattelite based?

direct TV is satellite based.

I've had them and Dish network, and cable TV from Time Warner in Charlotte, NC and Columbus, OH...

Customer service was the worst with Time Warner in Charlotte, and not much better with Dish Network. Both have a real problem with lying to clients, on more than one issue over a period of a year, until we finally switched to Directway, (now Hughesnet) and then finally direct TV.

I wanted out of market sports, like football and baseball, and Direct Tv was the only one to carry the wide range of sports that we wanted...

The others did have some sports, but, if you weren't interested in Boston or New York, they had nothing for you.

As for service outages, I have had my current system almost 3 years and had momentary blackouts when a strong storm comes in, lasting 5-15 minutes... it's sporatic, and only happens during the hurricane season when the winds pick up and start banging the dish around.

with Time Warner, we were having outages daily for an hour or more at it's worst, and the service crews they sent out to repair the trouble were difficult to deal with.

go with Direct TV for sports, or Dishnet if sports isn't that big a deal...

I hd Derct Tv for a number of years. I have no major complaints. They are sattelite based. So if you live in an area where you receive a lot of snow fall / heavy winds and rain it may not be your best option as outages do occur in sevear weather elements. They are on the pricey side for the channels you get.

I think cable is a better value when combining internet and phone into your cable package.