Hell I've had my cable go out for longer than that in the course of a day, much less a year. Seems like satellite has the advantage to me...
Dish vs Comcast (not a Dish Network sucks thread; re: rain fade, etc)
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Hell I've had my cable go out for longer than that in the course of a day, much less a year. Seems like satellite has the advantage to me...
Due to my work schedule I can’t get season tickets or I would, it would be cheaper in the long run then Stub Hub though. A couple years ago I was desperate to go to the season opener, ended up losing 3-5 IIRC. Still had a good time. Here's a screen cap from the email receipt. Three hundo sixty two smackeroo's
just to put a final point on this. look at north alabama radar for this morning. was raining so hard I could barely see the hot tub. never once lost signal. was watching numbers and then angel. ymmv
You're right, it's those nasty black clouds. You may even be in the middle of a blizzard and still obtain a strong signal.
We are praying for signal loss here - haven't had good rain for 9 months now.
In the 8 years I've had satellite programming, I remember maybe 2-3 incidents a year lasting about 5 minutes each where we lost satellite signal, so the % of signal loss is much much lower than 0.1%.
When we had cable, it was 3 or 4 times a year when the signal would deteriorate so my VHF low channels started to get snowy and I had to call tha cableco to get them to tune up their amplifers and that would take at least several hours.
We once had a truck take out a utility pole between us and the cableco and did without cable for a day.
Toward the end of our cable experience we had a digital tier and the signal drop would make most of those channels disappear.
In summary, both cable and satellite have problems, satelllite with bad weather, cable with bad maintenance.
In the 8 years I've had satellite programming, I remember maybe 2-3 incidents a year lasting about 5 minutes each where we lost satellite signal, so the % of signal loss is much much lower than 0.1%.
When we had cable, it was 3 or 4 times a year when the signal would deteriorate so my VHF low channels started to get snowy and I had to call tha cableco to get them to tune up their amplifers and that would take at least several hours.
We once had a truck take out a utility pole between us and the cableco and did without cable for a day.
Toward the end of our cable experience we had a digital tier and the signal drop would make most of those channels disappear.
In summary, both cable and satellite have problems, satelllite with bad weather, cable with bad maintenance.
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It seems all of the companies nickle and dime the customer any way they can. We had Dish for over 6 years, until prices went up and all of the new receiver fees hit and drove our bill from $96 to $136/mo. in under 3 years. This made me look at other options. Dish could only offer $10/mo. discount for a year, so we went with the FIOS triple play and get all 3 for less than the price of Dish. I was very leary switching, but the whole house DVR is better than I thought, VOD is fantastic and the picture quality is still WOW after 2 months. Will we ever switch back, don't know, but that $30 we were charged to send back the receivers left a bad taste, it wasn't there when I signed up. We didn't really suffer rain fade, a few minutes a year. Snow on the dish sucked this past year with the dish on a 2 story house. Every service had their pluses and minuses and can be spun either way, it is what the customer wants out of it. We still get the HD channels we watched, plus the local sports Dish cannot offer (Go Phils!) and ABC Family HD that my daughter watches at a better price, but we no longer have a DVR on every TV, and with a large VOD and whole hose DVR we find we don't have to.
I thought a cable card setup with Windows Media Center and XBoxes at the TVs for the media extenders might be a fun project. Anyone tried this?
JEFFinINDY said:
There's nothing fun about cable cards. I don't know how your cable co treats them, but our local racket, cox, requires an installer to come out and "install" it. Of course, for a fee, in addition to monthly rent of the card. That's the reason I cancelled cable after having it for a total of 5 hours. I was so glad I kept dish just in case.
How about a CableCard sucks thread because CableCard is not necessarily an advantage, and when you add the required SDV adapter it becomes an even WORSE advantage, and you get to pay for a truck roll (at least $35-$80) for the Cable TV tech to pair the card/s, and that is often itself a fiasco, and you get to pay a monthly fee for each cable card, and even some cable TV systems charge and "additional outlet" fee for you 3rd party box, although I am not clear if the "outlet fee" is legal.
There are other things in your list of "advantages" that just aren't, but too long to get into here.
Go to the TiVo forums and you will see a sea of frustrating horror stories with the cable co.'s, CableCards, and the INCREASING use of flags on all systems to prevent copies or even transferring to the other TiVo.
It seems HTPC makes the most sense if one wants Cable TV. You choose an MVPD to suit your needs, desires, and budget. Everything is a compromise.
There are other things in your list of "advantages" that just aren't, but too long to get into here.
Go to the TiVo forums and you will see a sea of frustrating horror stories with the cable co.'s, CableCards, and the INCREASING use of flags on all systems to prevent copies or even transferring to the other TiVo.
It seems HTPC makes the most sense if one wants Cable TV. You choose an MVPD to suit your needs, desires, and budget. Everything is a compromise.
How about maybe that was just "your" experience, in your area, whatever that cable company might be.
Here in Puerto Rico dish started giving customers 6' dishes for dish 500 setups (110/119) I remember the rain killing the signal fast, with light and stupid clouds.
(not enough signal coming in from their sats at the time)
Dish then moved to 4' dishes for the 500 setup and the rain would still cause frequent signal problems but not as bad as before.(A bit more signal coming but still kinda jerky)
Now they offer 30 inch dishes with dual LNBS(a significant increase in signal for the area) and sorry but NO, dish increased their signal for Puerto Rico residents and right now I bought two 6' dishes in order to have few dropouts instead of the 30 inch dish.
In short dish started sending a weak signal to the island which costed them even more requiring the big dishes for such a weak signal, over the years their signal improved and they could save money by installing smaller dishes until they finally got the right signal along with the right economic dish. Just imagine if the entire CONUS required 6' dishes?
thats a lot of money for installs
is the 30 inch dish bad and causes mayor signal problems? Nope I have an apartment on the east side of the island(30 miles away from my main home) and I have the "El Yunque" national rain forest in between my 30 inch dish and the satellites and I get very few signal drops.
It all depends on the area in which you are for BOTH cable and satellite.
I remember trying cable a few years back and it was total crap in my area while some of my relatives have it in their home and it works great. another advantage that cable has in bundled services which save the subscriber money but still in some cases compromise on quality and limit the subscribers options.
(not enough signal coming in from their sats at the time)
Dish then moved to 4' dishes for the 500 setup and the rain would still cause frequent signal problems but not as bad as before.(A bit more signal coming but still kinda jerky)
Now they offer 30 inch dishes with dual LNBS(a significant increase in signal for the area) and sorry but NO, dish increased their signal for Puerto Rico residents and right now I bought two 6' dishes in order to have few dropouts instead of the 30 inch dish.
In short dish started sending a weak signal to the island which costed them even more requiring the big dishes for such a weak signal, over the years their signal improved and they could save money by installing smaller dishes until they finally got the right signal along with the right economic dish. Just imagine if the entire CONUS required 6' dishes?
thats a lot of money for installsis the 30 inch dish bad and causes mayor signal problems? Nope I have an apartment on the east side of the island(30 miles away from my main home) and I have the "El Yunque" national rain forest in between my 30 inch dish and the satellites and I get very few signal drops.
It all depends on the area in which you are for BOTH cable and satellite.
I remember trying cable a few years back and it was total crap in my area while some of my relatives have it in their home and it works great. another advantage that cable has in bundled services which save the subscriber money but still in some cases compromise on quality and limit the subscribers options.
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I dropped Comcast about 8 months ago. Their Digital Started pkg, or something like that, was going to cost me $99/month. That is for one dual tuner DVR, but no premium programming such as HBO. I had been getting various promo prices before that for almost 2 years, but they would not extend these to me anymore. Dish is about half the price of Comcast for pretty much equivalent programming (top 200 pkg). Comcast does have a whole lot more free HD OnDemand, especially the popular programs. There basically was no need to record CSI, Fringe, etc because they became available 2-3 days after the original broadcast. So having two tuners usually did the job. With Dish I need 4 tuners.
With Comcast I went through 6 DVRs in 14 months because of missed or corrupt recordings. So Dish was a bargain at half price. However I'm on my second Dish 722K because some recordings end early when playing back. I've had 5 or 6 of these corrupt recordings in about 8 months. I've had two within the last week. Obviously I'm not happy with Dish's service either. I understand this is a problem with some 722K DVRs, but Dish should still get it resolved.
So I say to myself it's only TV and why pay almost $100/month to watch it when I can do the same for half price.
With Comcast I went through 6 DVRs in 14 months because of missed or corrupt recordings. So Dish was a bargain at half price. However I'm on my second Dish 722K because some recordings end early when playing back. I've had 5 or 6 of these corrupt recordings in about 8 months. I've had two within the last week. Obviously I'm not happy with Dish's service either. I understand this is a problem with some 722K DVRs, but Dish should still get it resolved.
So I say to myself it's only TV and why pay almost $100/month to watch it when I can do the same for half price.
Aren't you going to be paying about $99 with Dish in a few months when your introductory price of $39.99 becomes $59.99 and you add on the cost of two dual tuner DVR receivers? Add a few bucks more for a service plan with Dish and you won't be saving any money? The good news is that the end of your two year commitment to Dish you can play off Dish vs Comcast for a deal.
Jim
Jim
I only have one dual tuner DVR with the optional dual tuner OTA module. I'm currently paying $50.99 and Dish has a price freeze through Jan 2013. I do not have a service plan with Dish because my local dealer gives 12 months free and then charges only $25 after that if he has to come out. And I had enough of Comcast after going through 6 DVRs.
