.. . If it weren’t for a couple shows like Californication, and my need to watch the Steelers.
Amen. Californication is a great show. Not for everyone, but great.
. . .
I've had cable. I've had Dish Network. I like Dish Network. They're considerably cheaper and have a much, much wider selection of content than the local cable company.
I think the PQ is better with Dish, but that is a SD-to-SD comparison as I haven't had cable in the HD-era. HD cabled friends seem to think that HD looks better at my house via Dish, but that could just be friends being nice. Or the TV. Or the free beer. Hard to say. I'm quite happy with it. The HD DVR (we lease - it's free on the programming package that we subscribe to) isn't as nice as Tivo, it works well enough for us.
You can and do lose satellite signals from time to time. That is a drawback of satellite TV. A lot of it depends on the setup and how well zeroed-in the dish is. A good installer will spend the time to "peak" the dish properly on the satellite(s). I live in the Midwest, and in the spring and summer we get some pretty significant storms. In my experience, if a storm is large enough that the National Weather Service issues a Severe Thunderstorm Warning, it'll be enough to knock out the dish for a few minutes. Often it's a really good indicator that torrential rain is going to happen in 60-90 seconds. But any moisture in the air will decrease the signal strength to some degree. It's only when that strength drops below a threshold that it's a problem (it's digital - all or nothing). And that's why proper setup is essential.
In the past year, I'd guess that we've seen a signal loss 5 or 6 times during the evening when we were actually trying to watch TV. Always during some massive torrential-rain dropping, hail slinging, tornado-spewing storm. The signal returns in a few minutes (10, at the most) as the storm moves off. Sort of a problem if you need your TV for weather updates, and somewhat annoying if it's in the middle of your favorite show.
That ever-increasing-rate thing is a problem with cable. It is here, anyway. I know a lot of people complain about ever-increasing cable bills, especially after whatever new-customer promotional period ends.
Good luck!
