Great forum - Newbie needs help

[banzai75x]

I've read through some of the FAQ and some of the boards. I recently signed up for HD Cable through COX in Orange County, CA.

Well HD is awesome, but SD is terrible. Tried some of the workarounds to get the SD better and they help a little bit. My fiance hates HD because she likes to watch the non-hd channels and doesn't see the benefit of having 5 good ones at the expense of 100+ bad ones.


I called the DISH rep and they informed me that DISH is truly "Digital". So the is better.

1. Is SD better on a satellite than on cable?
2. The DISH rep told me that everything would be free if I went with them, which I doubt is true. I know something will come back later.
3. I'm thinking of VOOM as well. Do we have anyone in OC that uses VOOM?

My watching prefernces. I don't deviate from the mainsream channels that much. Would like local channels.

 

[TuxCoder]

Welcome to SatelliteGuys.US, banzai75x!

Caveat emptor Dishus Networkum, or something. "Truly digital" does not simply mean better. For Dish Network (and DirecTV for that matter), it mainly means they can squeeze more channels at less-than-full quality by using the great compression feature of digital video. So you'd be back to that quality-vs-quantity argument. For most customers, it mainly means the picture on most channels is OK most of the time, but not great, while the picture on the rest is crummy, full of compression artifacts. For me personally, yeah it means the picture is not the best, but I enjoy the added functionality provided with digital transmission. Digital audio is more my thing, which you cannot get with analog cable or analog OTA.

So while it's truly digital, that can be misleading to many new customers. Actually that phrasing doesn't make much sense to me, as the nature of "digital" information itself, it's either digital or it's not. Maybe the rep meant Dish Network is an all digital channel lineup, instead of the lower channels still being analog as with most if not all digital cable offerings.

Anyways, on to your questions (if not already answered above by the time I'm done with all this rambling):

1. This depends largely on your local cable headend, and where you are in relation to it, etc. But in general, people tend to agree that [gasp!]SD is usually better with cable[/gasp!]. This seems to be a fairly recent trend though, within the last year or so. Hopefully they will reverse the trend with more satellites being launched in the very near term and thus more space beam capacity.

2. With Digital Home Advantage, which is what I have, the equipment and installation is indeed free. Some will say the equipment has a lease fee that's included in the monthly rate... unless I'm shown some official statement itemizing the monthly base package (AT60, AT120, AT180, AEP, etc.) fee I choose to just not care. And you just return the equipment at any time if you wish to cancel (no commitment unless you go through most retailers).

3. Can't really help with this one.

 

[ShadowEKU]

Here is an old post of mine



I really hate the fact that people get sold on "Digital Quality"

All that means is that you can send 4 channels in the space of 1 analog channel. Unfortunately all of the current DBS provders send about 6 to 8 channnels in that space and have to compress things down way too much and thus images lose their quality.

If Dish actually does look worse than cable for you i would suggest going back to cable as you are very lucky. If you have digital cable in your area I would suggest trying it out because once you get into the digital channels (Digital cable is a mix between Analog and digital analog below 100 and digital over 100) over 100 you will see the same kind of compression and artifacts. unfortunately providers are currently moving twoard quantity over quality which makes people with tvs over 20 inches very angry.


Fortunately where i live the cable sucks and goes out frequently and Dish TV (SD) looks alot better than my cables regular SD.

That and the fact they wanted 200 per DCT and I would still be leasing them.