Okay, first off, here are the two things you need to know. I’m a big sports fan and my buddy Jeff lives like a pig when he’s between girlfriends. And I’m not talking about physically in between. I mean when there’s not a woman’s influence around. Over the last year, the time between one girlfriend to the next has gotten longer and longer.

How these two facts led me to find a great deal on Direct TV is a pretty interesting story, so let me elaborate...

I used to go to Jeff’s house every week to watch his Direct TV sports package - the Superfan, I think he called it. I’d always bring the beer and pizza and we’d have a great time drinking and arguing with the refs or umps or whoever was making the most recent stupid call.

Last month, though, I told Jeff I wasn’t coming back till he cleaned up his act. When I got there, I found last week’s empties still on the coffee table and the pizza box on the floor below with 2 slices of rock hard pizza still in it. I took them to the kitchen myself and found leftovers from our game watching for the past 3 weeks covering every surface in his kitchen. It was beginning to smell, too, like...I don’t know…like somebody threw up dirty feet. I’m no neat freak, but c’mon, this was disgusting!

So I started dropping by the local sports bar instead. Big mistake. Huge mistake. After a couple of weeks of running up enough on my tab to pay for the owner’s Direct TV for the next 6 months, I decided it was time to look into the Direct TV thing for myself.

Now, I should tell you that before I found the sites I’ve listed below, I came close to pitching my computer out the window and scrapping the whole idea. I’ve never had to try so hard to navigate my way around so many awful websites in my life! They say one thing on the first page and something completely different if you can stand to slog a few pages into their site.

Somehow I managed to stumble across DigitalTVDojo and the three sites listed below. They were the only ones that made any sense. I found clear explanations about Direct TV’s 250 + channels, their awesome sports packages and all the movies and events offered on pay-per-view.

The most important thing I discovered was how Direct TV’s promotional offers change so rapidly that most sites don’t even bother trying to keep up. If you order from one of those sites, you’re screwed. The problem is, you never know which ones are staying current and which ones never bother to update their info.

And that’s where the sites below come in handy. It was on those pages, for example, that I learned Direct TV would soon be offering 100 more HD channels. Hah! I bet even Jeff doesn’t know that yet. And I’m getting the HD receiver AND the DVR so I can record up to 50 hours of high def programs. Because of when I ordered and my service, I’m also getting 4 months of Direct TV’s most popular programming package free! I’m not saying you’ll get as great a deal as I did, but if you visit the sites below you can at least be sure you’ll be able to choose from the most current and best promotions.

The sites I’ve listed below are straight-up, they know their stuff and they don’t try and push you into choosing one package over another. You can take a look at all of them if you want, and then decide for yourself. But if you order Direct TV before checking them out, don’t say I didn’t warn you.