As an Aussie I like to check other countries every now and again to see how some of the services we get here stack up with those being offered overseas. Today I wanted to give cable TV a go. I get Foxtel over here and I pay $101 per month for a package that includes one foreign station, (RAI International), sports channels and a couple of movie channels and stuff. The reason I pay for Foxtel is that a lot of the time the free to air channel sucks and there is nothing worthwhile to watch. The other reason is I like to watch my sports live and hate those delayed telecasts.

This morning after a brief search I came across a Direct TV, an American service which had a really cool price comparison feature. I actually picked a package which was far superior to mine and found I could get it for under $60 a month. Man I figured that was pretty good. The only problem I found was that I couldn’t find if their Direct TV Service offered RAI International, although they did state that “DIRECTV offers more then 40 Spanish-language channels, and a variety of programming from around the world” and so it could well include RAI. I could call the number on the site to find out for sure but thought that would be pointless seeing as how us Aussies have to miss out on the good deals again.

So, are any of you guys using Direct TV System? If so, how did it compare with cable and did you use the comparison feature on the website? Also what inspired you to make the move, was it the Digital TV factor, the price, service or something completely different.