Satelite or Cable which gives you a better picture?

[rvincerob1]

Does satelite have a better picture than cable? HD or standard?

[ygmn]

With HD....HD is HD...and should be the smae no matter how you get it via over the air...cable or Satelite.....

for me DirecTV has a better signal then my Cable company for regular channels

[m00n]

Not going into the HD arena, but if you consider cable to satelite, I say satelite hands down. Had cable, went to satelite, went back to cable. I was very disapointed at how cable looked after having satelite. Went back to satelite and have never looked back.

[minn_male42]

along the same topic....

what do you guys think of the DVR that you get fro free with Dish Network?

http://www.vmcsatellite.com/channels/dish_splash.cfm?aid=138007

i'm thinking of going for this system

[MrMcGoo]

Minn,

I have a Dish PVR. Got it for "free" with a one year contract. The PVR died shortly after the warrany expired. It developed hard drive problems. The receiver portion kept working.

Dish agreed to replace it for the cost of shipping a referb. The second unit died. Dish sent a new PVR for free. This machine still works fine. I suspect that they did not want to loose the account to Direct TV. My monthly subscription is on the high side.

A friend dropped Dish because of the poor picture quality in Motocross. Dish used too much digital compression. Football looks much better IMO.

Bill

[RichardP]

Living too far out of town to get cable, I have had DirecTV for nine years (with a one year defection to Dish), and I am disgusted and angered at the decline in signal quality over that time period. I've always been able to get upwards of 90% signal strength, but I now see compression artifacts everywhere ("mosquitoes" and macroblocking), the worst being on the local channels, and on the Fox family of channels (Fox local, FX, etc.). DirecTV has gotten really cheap, and presumably are compressing the standard signals a lot to regain bandwidth for their few HD channels. My local AV dealer said they need 6 times the bandwidth for one HD channel, compared to a regular SD channel. I haven't seen typical standard-def cable for some time, but where I live, satellite is no longer such a great miracle.

[oscarsear]

Regardless of what the satelite people say weather, trees and other factors do offer artifact on performance. If you go with satelite make certain your signal strength and quality is there BEFORE you finalize the contract agreement.

[dodger]

I had cable for 23 years. The picture was not the best.

I kept seeing ads where they were giving almost $200.00 of coupons, area merchandise, etc. for new customers. I received $5.00 off of the installation fee when I started.

All VCRs, Televisions are cable ready. By last June my bill was $50.00 + without digital. If I wanted digital, I would have to have a box on each unit, plus a separate remote for each unit.

By that point, the rental of the boxes, remotes, programming would have exceeded $80.00 + per month.

I went to DISH TV. $29.95 installation, refunded. $5.00 extra per month for local channels, waived if you connected to a phone line. 1 receiver for 2 sets, can watch one thing up, one thing down. Installations included what they call Super Dish. More bow tie shaped, less prone to any outages or snow/ice build up.

Picture quality excellent, beyond cable. I'm not looking back.

$29.95/month service or $80.00 + per month for cable. Had to think 1 second.

dodger

[michael hurd]

Depends on what you are watching really. I know that you are talking about Dish Network and Directv, but the same applies here in Canada for Bell Expressview, and Starchoice. I have both Starchoice and Bell Expressview, and of the two, I can say that the Starchoice has better picture quality on most of the regular channels. When you get into the movie channels, the performance of both systems is similar, but the compression can be quite high for regular programming on the Bell, with visible artifacts.

I would be willing to bet that the receiver itself is also responsible for some anomalies, due to the processing inside.

Cable is really not an option for me, as they have 3 tiers of service. The 3rd tier is where all the good programming is, and to get that you have to take all 3 for $ 80+ a month. With even the basics package on either satellite system, you have more channels than cable at less than half the price. I can also pick individual channels, again with cable, not an option.

[Griffinator]

At some point in the not-so-near future, there will be a major "pruning" of channels, driven by a new consumer demand for "a-la-carte" broadcasting, where an individual can pay $X per month for each channel they wish to receive. The broadcasters will make decisions on what to keep and what to kill based on these new subscriptions, and a lot of the crap TV will go by the wayside...

mode>

[cc1091]

I've had standard Broadband cable with AT&T and MediaOne. When I moved to my new house, the DirecTV dish was already mounted. I went to the local audio store and bought a cheap standard video DirecTV box, card and contract. Connected it all myself. The picture was awesome. The sound was awesome (all despite long line feeds from the dish on one end of my house, and the receiver at the other end of my house). Price at that time was $15 less and had more channels and features. I assume that the difference in quality between normal broadband cable and sattelite based cable will be similar in the HD arena. My theory is that there is less infrastructure of questionable quality between you and the originating broadcast signal. The local channels rebroadcast through the Sattelite do sometimes have a lot of garbage, but its never been worse than I had much of the time with broadband cable. Yes, during heavy rainstorms and snowstorms, I do have a few outtages. But with cable, when there was a rainstorm on the other side of the city, but it was only wet on my side, I would have outages too. My outtages clear up within about a half hour (if they last that long). cable outtages last for hours until they find the tree that fell on their access node.

Like others posting here. I too have noticed that in the past year DirecTV has been cheapening. Not quite as reliable. Customer service quality has fallen. Features disappeared to supposedly be replaced in the future (still waiting). Audio quality on some channels far exceeds that on others (and it seems that it isn't because that good sounding channel has better equipment). And the price has gone up.

Still, I'd rather live with DirecTV than switch back to cable.

[SteelerFan]

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On 1/14/2005 9:44:05 AM oscarsear wrote:

Regardless of what the satelite people say weather, trees and other factors do offer artifact on performance. If you go with satelite make certain your signal strength and quality is there BEFORE you finalize the contract agreement.

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I don't doubt the quality of satellite is better than cable... but while every salesman told me the weather wouldn't matter, everyone I talked to who had SAT admitted the weather did effect the reception sometimes. So I stuck with cable.

[toddvj]

Yes the weather affects the signal. But for me, it is mabye 5-6 times a year, max. And then the signal is only out for maybe an hour at the most. At most a very minor inconvenience.

For HD, you may find that Satellite is not better than Cable. Depends on your provider, etc. I receive a couple of National Network HD feeds from DirecTv and the signal is not nearly as good as that from my OTA antenna.

[Cal Blacksmith]

We have had Dish network for about 5 years with the PVR. Aside from the dog eating the remote, we have had no problems. The picture quality is great, yes there are a lot of channels we never watch but then again, we never watch broadcast TV anymore either. Way too much garbage to sort through on the "major networks" we stay mostly with the history channels, sicence channels, learning channels etc. We have only had the signal lost twice I think and they were not for very long. Yes with the movie channels and the PVR rental the bill is in the ballpark of $75/mo but for us it is worth it.

[dodger]

Since we have gone to DISH, we have had major rain, 14 inches of snow in about 16 hours.

One interruption for about 4 minutes.

We watch our local stations on the same numeric. A&E, TLC, Court TV, Cooking Channel, HGTV, couple of others.

With the DISH as I stated, it's like an odd bow tie shape. Live by an airport, planes cutting across.

After 0330, we get the same paid infomercials as cable gets.

What irks me, is the fact that when signing years ago with cable, I was told fewer or no commercials. Wrong.

Time Warner raises rates due to cost stations are charging. They own half of them!

Wanted "the sister station for Nick at Night." Can't get it, I was told. Not enough people requested it on the questionnaire - never got that.

Talked to cable's Marketing. They don't pay attention to call in requests - as they are requesting a station, results are skewed. They had it in other parts of NY State.

But they rely on the questionnaire. If you take the time to fill it out, if you get one, the results have the same skew.

I have a better picture, better sound for $30.00 vs $80.00. No brainer.

dodger

[ARPRINCE]

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On 1/18/2005 10:28:13 AM dodger wrote:

With the DISH as I stated, it's like an odd bow tie shape. Live by an airport, planes cutting across.

I have a better picture, better sound for $30.00 vs $80.00. No brainer.

dodger

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This is what I actually pay for my cable...geeeezze.

Question: If I have 5 TVs, do I need the sat. receiver box on each TV? You see in my setup right now using cable, I only use 2 boxes but the remaining 3 get's only the local channels (because the premium channels are not needed anyway). Possible?

TIA

[psg]

Question: If I have 5 TVs, do I need the sat. receiver box on each TV? You see in my setup right now using cable, I only use 2 boxes but the remaining 3 get's only the local channels (because the premium channels are not needed anyway). Possible?

At least here in Canada, most sat dishes have 2 outputs for decoders, so if you need more than that you need to purchase more gear to split it out again (a $5 coax splitter don't work). However, I've seen deals in the paper for a dish and three decoders, so perhaps that has changed a bit.

I have one plain decoder and one PVR decoder, but 3 TVs. Here's what I do to feed 3 TVs with 2 decoders:

Living room has plain decoder with IR remote. It feeds S-Video into the living room TV and I use the coax output to feed the other two TVs on channel 3. The bedroom has an IR repeater and a spare remote so I can change channels on the living room decoder from the bedroom.

The HT in the basement gets the PVR with S-video and digital audio outputs. I feed a second RCA video and stereo audio to an RF modulator and feed the coax output to channel 3 on the living TV (This is better than the PVR coax output because that is mono). The PVR remote is UHF and works from anywhere in the house.

What you can do is get a few decoders and a multi-channel RF modulator. Then you can feed the few decoders' output to all secondary TVs using plain coax that is probably already in your house.

[Joe Shmoe]

Satellite has to be much better.... my cable reception sucks & is worse in my basement. I don't know if I should switch the 100' of RG-59 to RG-6 or move the amplifier I have on it to the end of the 100' or just leave it at the beginning?

I am sure a surge protector/line conditioner would help also after reading that thread, but that's not in the budget right now.

[gcoker]

To me it depends upon the cable company. I'm sure different cable

companys have different PQ. For satillite I have been using Direct

for about 9 years. The PQ is excellent. Does the signal go out for a short

time, yes if the is a big thunderstorm to the south. But as said previously

is only a short time. With cable, nine years ago, I had a terrible

reception and It went out all the time for hours. Now that was not digital

cable so take it for waht its worth. With Direct I pay 50.00 per

month for two rooms with Starz/Encore.

[ARPRINCE]

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On 1/19/2005 1:12:41 PM psg wrote:

At least here in Canada, most sat dishes have 2 outputs for decoders, so if you need more than that you need to purchase more gear to split it out again (a $5 coax splitter don't work). However, I've seen deals in the paper for a dish and three decoders, so perhaps that has changed a bit.

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I called DISH NETWORK and asked some questions. On their site they now offer 4 sat boxes so I called. I told them I had 5 TVs, they told me that I had to pay $250 for the fifth one. In a way, I had a feeling that they were willing to give me the fifth one free too but I didn;t want to commit as of yet. Why? Well they don't carry the YES network (yankees).