The infrastructure here was originally laid down by Adelphia which if you read about was a horrible company. Comcast has done little to upgrade it since taking it over a number of years ago (2005) so it is always having problems.
This can't be said about all previously owned Adelphia neighborhoods as each county has its own franchise authority and the efforts contractual therein vary from county to county.
That being said, you need to be slightly more specific in your neck of the woods as I am in Gwinnett county and have observed the infrastructure deployment being different just between my county and that of Forsyth. I do know that my county's franchise is slower than Forsyth's but I also know that I can get +50Mbps Internet anytime I want it.
Comparatively, AT&T (ahem, BellSouth) infrastructure that was laid down in my neighborhood in 1999 was part of a 1996 fiber experiment and at the time it was great. Now it is still 1999 platform, never upgraded and can deliver a whopping 1.5Mbps Internet and POTS, but no longer any SDTV cable. U-verse (my ass) as the saying goes).
As for DirecTV and how it is that is also a difficult question. I am still against the banning of distant network feeds and forcing consumers to watch/access their geographic local networks. I have had bad experiences in the Atlanta market with SDTV being transmitted deliberately on ABC with local TV replacing prime time network shows and CBS accidentally hitting the switch to SD their HD TV.
Rain fade is still there and will never go away. DirecTV is trying to sell themselves to AT&T and you might want to ask yourself if you want AT&T in your life. Aside from that the only other thing I can say related to the individual channels and their fake content therein. That isn't something DirecTV can control.