Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Cable vs Satellite

So my 1 yr free use of an HD cable box is now over(part of deal on my Sammy LCD) and cable is wanting what I consider an unreasonable fee to continue using their unit. Since I'm using Bell for my internet and telephone service, I'm going to see what bundling their Satellite "Expressvu" will be(should be a little cheaper).

For you guys that have used both cable and satellite, can you give me your impressions of both...which you felt was better/worse/no different? some people have told me that in stormy or overcast weather, it can adversly affect satellite signals.

The cost of getting my own HD cable box vs sat dish are virtually the same, btw.

Tks, Adrian

I ditched my horrendous cable company for satellite about a year ago. Since then, there has only been 1 weather-related outage (during a snow storm). With cable, it seemed like 2-3 times a month there was some picture quality issue.

Content-wise, other than not getting local CT network channels, there's not much difference. The HD picture is indistinguishable from cable.

My only knock is that the user interface is a little less friendly with satellite, and it seems like it takes a bit longer to change channels. I have DirectTV, by the way. Most surveys rate DirectTV way above Dish.

The switch saved me about $30 a month, and more aggravation than you can put a price on. I will never go back to cable for anything other than internet.

Thanks Joe. I have neighbours using both cable and satellite and they both seem to have complaints, lol. All things being equal, I think I can save a little with the satellite by bundling it with my other services.

While I've never had cable, I can speak for my satellite experience. I have Bell with the hidef package. I have a couple dishes for different locations (besides the house) and 4 receivers, one of them is also a duel tuner/pvr. I own all my equipment, don't like to rent stuff. My monthly rate is ~$80.00 for an upper level package (but not the top one).
Overall I'm pleased with it. The hidef picture looks good on my 51" screen. With the dish properly aimed, I have rarely ever had signal drop-out. Owning a dish set-up also allows me to move and install my system anywhere and anyway I want.
Right now my biggest complaint is this . . . My family watches almost everything offered on the hidef channels. Almost all these same channels are also offered in lowdef. These are a lot of duplicate channel packages and when we asked to drop the lowdef channels because we don't want to pay for them anymore, Bell said if we do that we'll lose the hidef ones too! You can have lowdef without the hidef, but not the other way around. So we're screwed paying for channels we never watch. Example; must have the regular sports package if you want to get the same hidef package.

Both have their complaints. One of the biggest deciders for may owners is the sports package. Sat has better packages. Other than that, both have similar types of packages.

Also, different areas of the country may have one service that is better than the other. In my area, both are about the same but I can get triple play service w/ Comcast (voice/data/TV) a decent price. My cable modem is 20 Mbps downstream/10 Mbps upstream, and no, that's not a typo.

I have had Dish and Comcast and had issues with both, but I will say that Comcast will never get another dime of my money. I now have AT&T U-verse. I wanted to share a story about a friend of mine that has DirectTV. Yesterday he was on the phone trying to cancel his service and switch to U-verse. His contract was a one year contract and he had the service for about 15 months. When he tried to cancel service, the rep at DirectTV told him that because he had upgraded his receiver to a HD receiver a few months ago, he was automatically agreeing to a two year contract and that it would cost him $20 a month for each month left on the contract to ditch the service. The Best Buy rep that did the receiver exchange made no mention of this two year extension. Anyway, now he is stuck with about $400 more to get out of the "contract".

I've had both Cogeco and Bell and will just echo the thoughts of others, both have their share problems. Bundles from both providers for identical services I feel are within 10 bucks of each other anyway so I don't know how much money you can save going one way or their other and I know both will discount their packages if you push hard enough or 'threaten' to pull all your business or bring them all your business depending on who you're talking to.

After spending a couple of years on cogeco I got fed up with their poor customer service so I pulled everything and went with bell, then after 2 worse years with bell not sending me the right bill for 2 years I swore I was going back to cogeco, but they negotiated a pretty good deal with me to stay for another year and I still have to call monthly to get my bill adjusted. I think you're damned if you do and damned if you don't personally.

The only REAL difference I can offer between the two is the 'On Demand' service from Cogeco(Cable)... which I really miss with Bell not having it. I know the argument can be made that you can PVR everything you want to watch, the problem is, sometimes I don't know what I want to watch until I want to watch it I find quality, channel offerings, PPV be pretty much the same.

Unlike 80'sMan I have elected not purchase my equipment because I haven't been overly impressed with either providers service and I don't want to commit myself to them with hardware purchases. I would like to purchase because I don't like renting either, but I'm afraid of commitment

My only fear with buying my own hardware would be to see it become obsolete in a year or two, but I'm sure it would pay for itself vs a rental in a year, give or take.

I agree that it will become obsolete very quickly. I think one of the advantages to the Bell PVR may be that you can increase disk space via USB drives. I didn't think the latest Cogeco or Rogers PVR's allowed you such flexiability, I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

As much as I would have liked to experiment and try satellite, one of the biggest drawbacks is when you have multiple televisions in the house(we have five). In this case satellite is just not price competitive. In addition, with the bundling capability of phone, internet and wireless etc.(Rogers), around these parts other than Bell, there is no other company that can provide a "complete" integrated service and the discounts to go with it.

It is true despite the fact that I would spend almost all my TV watching viewing HD still they all "force" you to purchase the underlying basic programming to get the HD broadcasts.
A waste of money!

I’ve gone back and forth between cable and dish network. Where I live, direct tv can not be received due to the mountains. Although I did recently hear a rumor that another satellite is in orbit and I can get direct tv. As far as compression and sound / video quality, cable is superior to satellite (where I live and my providers anyway). I suspect the quality of the signal changes at differing geographical locations. As far as customer service, hardware support and all those other things of interest besides audio / video quality, pick your poison. It’s my staunch belief that all the TV content providers, no matter which or what type, are ran by the devil and their customer service department employees are demons. If it weren’t for a couple shows like Californication, and my need to watch the Steelers, I’d have dumped cable by now and I would not re-new with cable.

I was with Cogeco cable for a very long time and switched to Bell satellite about 3 years ago. I've had the HD PVR all along. Let me be blunt and trust me......RENT THE EQUIPMENT. I'm on my third receiver at this point and each time it was because of the hard drive. It may be better now that you can buy the receiver, 61XX I think and add your own external, but I like the dual tuner, dual TV feature on the 92XX series. Picture quality seems a bit better to me on the satellite but I've never seen them side by each. We switched to a bundle with Bell to get a better rate, but I'm not happy with the Internet service at all and will be switching that and phone back to cable after Christmas.

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!