Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Cable vs Satellite

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.

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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!