Satelite or Cable which gives you a better picture?

[ygmn]

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On 1/20/2005 9:33:59 AM ARPRINCE wrote:

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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).

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DirecTV has the YES network....GO yankees! hehehe

if you look around online...you can find deals for 4 rooms free stuff...and then I suggest getting an HD box for the main TV room...well worth it...speed of menus, HD from Satelite & HD from your antenna

[RichardP]

For those of you asking about the extra receiver boxes, yes, you have to have a separate box for each TV, and the last time I looked, each one beyond the first one costs you $5.00 extra per month.

A word of advice: When they say they will make you a deal, as in cutting the price on something or giving you 5 free receivers instead of 4, be sure to get that person's employee number or name so you can verify their offer later. I left Dish because a "customer service representative" told me they would sell me a DVR/receiver for $80, rather than the usual $99, because I subscribed to a large movie package, paying $79/month. I called back the next day to set up the purchase and installation, and the new person said "Oh, no one could have told you $80, it's definitely $99" and this was the story up the line to the supervisor level. That's called lowballing (as in a car salesperson having to "check with the manager" on the agreed upon price, then coming back and claiming "he wouldn't go for it"). I was so angry that I cancelled my service and switched back to DirecTV.

But of course, as I posted above, both companies are using less and less bandwidth for regular transmission, which produces noticeable compression artifacts. The fact that compression already seems worse on the Fox channels, and Fox's parent company, NewsCorp, bought DirecTV last year, does not bode well for the future quality of standard signals. Maybe things will improve when most/all channels are eventually transmitted in HD. Of course, cable and satellite broadcasts do not have to follow the FCC timetable for switching over to HD.

[toddvj]

To do 5 rooms instead of four involves more than just adding another receiver. You need a 5x8 multiswitch, which runs about $150.00, the recevier and installation. That's why you don't see "five rooms free" promotions. If you can get them to cover it through negotiation, more power to ya.

If not, there are other options. You probably would never have all five TVs on different channels at the same time, right? You can run a box to more than one TV with RF or wired IR remote, or have a couple of boxes running through a modulator.

[popbumper]

WE has cable for about a year when we move dinto our latest residence, and it sucked. Lousy picture, lots of noise. The cable "box" was right at our driveway behind the house - we probably had service techs out three times before they said "well, you probably have internal wiring issues". Ya right.

Moved to DISH - better picture, reception, choices, BETTER cost. Of course, weather has an adverse affect, but only rarely. LOVE the PVR so we can watch shows after the fact and blast through commercials.

About two months ago I finally picked up an HD OTA receiver. Dang skippy! We are now spoiled enough by the quality of the picture that satellite sucks - grainy and pixelated by comparison, and lacking the digital 5 channel surround of HD. If only we had more programming choices; perhaps VOOM?

Popbumper

[RichardP]

I saw recently that Voom was in financial trouble, and then today it was announced that Voom had been sold to Dish Network (EchoStar). Voom only had 26,000 customers (thats 0.02% of all US households; DirecTV and Dish together serve about 20 million US homes), and had an operating loss of $75 million, with only about $5 million of assets. I sure hope satellite technology and economics get better.

[toddvj]

Popbumper, Now all you need is an HD DVR!!! The best of both worlds.

[DLUngurait]

Earlier in the thread someone said:

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

This is not true.

Over the air is the ONLY way to currently see HD signals that are NOT beeing compressed (via transmition). We all know there's lot's of smoke and mirrors in the digital realm...even more so in the world of "HD"

Dave

[Rychster]

Get satelite if you have a choice. Just remember that DirecTV and I would gather the rest of the satelite companies compress the video signal pretty high these days to cram all those channels they offer in a package deal. I have the HDTV package and love it. You also have to decide whether sports packages are important since not all cable companies carry all sports packages and DirecTV at the moment has the NFL rights.

Another thing to understand is that DirecTV optimizes their broadcast signal (because of all the new channels to cram in their frequency range) to look the best on a 30 inch or smaller TV. So if you have a huge TV in the house, be mindful you will see annoying artifacts on occasion with most normal (non-HD) channels. It is a fact of life until they broadcast with less compression. Not sure when that will be??