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Cable vs. Satellite

T

TechHead87

Senior member
I'm leaning towards Direct tv, but here's the thing....I've got cable internet that I simply DONT want to get rid of. Simply because my only other option would be to go BACK to BellSouth DSL. And I dont EVER want to deal with them again.

I think my cable company has a "deal" that says if you've got sat.tv, cable net will run you about $60/month (4mb down is highest they go).

Bellsouth DSL's quote/unquote "service" is $50/month for a 3mb/down, but my last experience with them was HORRIBLE. My connection would drop out at least once every two weeks. I once went an entire WEEKEND without internet because "they dont send maintenance folks out on weekends".

What's a man to do? I wanna go the cheapest route possible....
 
I have heard that with Direct TV, if there is ANYTHING in the way of the dish, your reception gets muddled. The obstruction could be your neighbor's house, a tree, etc.
 
Originally posted by: zanieladie
I have heard that with Direct TV, if there is ANYTHING in the way of the dish, your reception gets muddled. The obstruction could be your neighbor's house, a tree, etc.
Click to expand...

I've heard the same thing, but there's gotta be a better way than cable.

The thing about direct tv is, some people swear by it...others dont.
 
Not sure which would be best. I dropped comcast and went with Dishnetwork and Earthlink DSL........
 
Well duh! I love DirecTV. I guess we'll see how much I like it when I get the new HD DVR later this year.

What I don't like is their new "leasing" scheme.
 
Former Dish Network customer although not by choice but for the simple reason that I don't have a line of sight or place to put the dish at my new place. In any case it all depends on how much you're spending now. Your cable internet cost is going to go up if you do switch to satellite for the simple reason that they want to keep your services bundled with them. In terms of experience with the service I had it for about 2 years before I moved to the new place. Never had any long term interruptions in service and the boxes worked fine for me. A properly peaked dish will get you through a lot of weather. I live in Denver, CO and experienced some fairly heavy snowfall and rainfall which didn't cause any problems. The least expensive package (other than the Family Package) offered by Dish currently runs $29.99 a month for 60 channels. The least expensive for DirecTV is $44.99 a month although you do get 144 channels as opposed to just 60. So with Dish you'd be spending approximately $89.99 a month (plus taxes) for cable internet and satellite TV for DirecTV you'd be paying $104.99 a month for satellite and cable internet. While I love Dish I doubt you'd be saving any money that route although your picture quality may improve going with either satellite service.
 
Man, you guys are getting hosed. I can get 4Mbps cable for $27 w/o cable tv. Granted I despise cable companies (and hence have DSL), its there should I ever have a change of heart.
 
Yeah that's just the way Comcast is in my area. I am getting a decent deal for 12 months though where I get 6 megabit service and their Digital Silver package for $69.99 a month.
 
Originally posted by: TechHead87
I guess what I'm trying to say is, is anyone out there in anandtechland satisfied with Satellite TV?
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Absolutely. I've had it for a few years now and have had no problems. Of course it has went out four or five times or had some artifacts during really bad storms. One of the storms had the neighborhood cable out for three days. My outage lasted about five minutes.

I thought I might have problems with some of the tall tree but haven't. I did set it up myself and made sure that b!tch wasn't moving after I set it. I'm sure alot of problems are from crappy installs...........
 
SWITCH! You won't regret it, I've got cable AND Satellite, god I love watching satellite, sure sometimes the picture will exhibit blocking but to be perfectly honest, when it rains, I get WAYYY more picture degredation on cable then I ever get on satellite. All channels are digital on satellite, maybe not all HD but they're all digital, cable, you've got some digital, some analog and the analog looks like ASS.
 
dude, I have digital cable, and even when it rains, the cable tv starts pixellating.

The service sucks too, I hate when they block out the sound, and put some annoying "beeeeeep" noise, w/ text scrolling "turn to channel blah blah to learn more about so-and-so being abducted,..."

My parents had directv before they moved. It was awesome. People complaining that the signal drops when it rains is either lying, or never had directv.

During major extreme storms, the signal may dip a little, and stutter, but it's almost negligible.
 
i have cable and my neighbor has dish networks. Honest to God, everytime it rains, the signal goes and it's static city on the TV.

-=bmacd=-
 
That's my problem too, OP--I have cable internet, and my SunRocket line over my cable internet, so I just don't want to ditch my broadband connection.
 
My main reason NOT to use Satellite is they charge you for every TV you want to have. At least they used to. So if you have more than 3 or 4 TV is in your house, it's cheaper using cable. You at least get the standard cable channels on all TVs and just the digital channels on the ones with the boxes. I only have the box on our main TV and the rest just get the normal cable channels.
 
DirecTV FTW!

Though, I do think their new leasing plan is assinine. If I were a cable co., I would be jumping all over it in advertisements.

Where are you getting $50 for Bellsouth 3megs down btw? It should be $37.95 + that stupid $2 access fee. If you already have Bellsouth phone service and you get DSL & DirecTV, you should get a small discount on your monthly bill.

As for those complaining about poor signal during inclement weather, I've had DirecTV since 2000. The only time my signal has gone out during inclement weather has been when there was a storm strong enough to knock out my poor soon after the signal was lost.
 
I had satellite (Dish Network) for about 2 years and then switched to cable because Cablevision offered a bundle discount for cable tv, broadband, and VoIP. Overall Dish Network was ok, paid $25 a month for America 150 or whatver it's called (including local channels). The picture quality was noticeably better than cable for most channels, otherwise equal for the channels cable carries in digital. My only complaint about Dish Network is that during storms we would get poor or no reception, but that doesn't happen for me with cable at all. If I were you I would stick with cable, especially if on demand isn't important and if you don't plan on going with dsl for internet.
 
Originally posted by: TechHead87
I guess what I'm trying to say is, is anyone out there in anandtechland satisfied with Satellite TV?
Click to expand...

I have directv. There used to be a huge tree blocking the southern sky in front of my house.

The tree is gone, and the dish is still there 🙂 I also have basic cable in the house because it's cheaper to have basic with cable internet rather than just internet, and even between basic cable and basic directv, Comcast is a joke. I feed the cable to the kitchen tv and the spare bedrooms just in case someone spends the night.

My mother-in-law has digital cable, and as far as I can tell, directv is better for channels and the way the menu is set up, and it used to be cheaper. I don't know about that now.

I don't have HD though so can't comment on that.
 
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