Cable or Dish?

[golfgal]

Which do you prefer? We are trying to decide what to use in the new house. We have cable now, never have problems. We have never had a satellite dish so I don't know anything about them. The price difference is about $1/month for basically the same number of channels.

 

[Jeafl]

We recently switched to Dish Network. I like it a lot, with one exception. I have YET to figure out how to tape something. Every single time I try it gets screwed up.

 

[Mister Incredible]

I prefer DirecTV. I think the picture quality is soooooo much better than our local cable system.

I just wish there was more high def. with Directv. The ONE fall back is I can't watch the Red Sox in high def because DTV doesn't offer NESN in high def, cable does.

 

[AnaheimGirl]

Dish.

The cable company is our area is pitiful. Anything would be a step-up from them .

Occasionally, we have trouble catching a signal on the dish (mostly when snow collects in it), but it's nowhere near as bad as the problems we had when we had cable here.

 

[GeorgeG]

We switched to a dish back up in New York and liked the clearer picture it offered, at least on clear days. My wife, who is the TV watcher, really got frustrated every time we lost the picture when it rained, which was way too often.

We switched back to cable and the digital service improved their picture to successfully compete with the dish. When we moved to Florida we went with cable for the same reason. Most of the people in our area use cable, but there are a few dishes. From what I can tell, those with dishes are "snowbirds" who don't have to deal with all the summer rain.

I also like the cable internet service better than anything else available.

No matter how you shake it, we've come a long way from rabbit ears and roof antennas, but with over 200 channels, there's really not much on worth watching.

 

[Mister Incredible]

AnaheimGirl,

Here's a tip, if you can get to the dish easily, before the winter spray the dish with PAM cooking spray. I used to have to go clear off the dish every once and a while. A friend told me to do this, the snow seems to slide right off.

I very rarely loose the Directv signal. I live in NH where we get some pretty heavy snow.

 

[binny]

We had DISH for years but recently switched to Direct TV and I like it better. Hated Cable when we had it.

 

[MoniqueU]

Direct Tv with the dual line tivo for the win.

 

[The Mystery Machine]

Always HATED cable. I had DISH for 10 years. Then when we moved they did a "bait & switch" on us, so we went to cable TV.

OMG...do I love cable. The "ON DEMAND" feature is heaven. I do not think I could ever go back to DISH.

Satellite is always going out during a storm and I don't have to put up with that anymore.

 

[rayelias]

I've had both - currently we have DirectTV.

If I had to do it again, I'd go with cable.

DirectTV is cheaper. Considerably cheaper. But, you pay extra ($5/month) for every receiver in your house. So, even if you have "cable ready" TV's, you need the special receiver in every TV just to get a signal, not just premium - ANY signal. So, if you have a 4 BR house with TV's in each bedroom and one in the living room and maybe another one somewhere else, that's a lot of extra $ for receivers. With cable, unless you want the premium stuff in every TV, you just plug in a cable ready TV and you've got action.

Plus, with Cable, you can bundle internet. We had to use Verizon DSL because of DirectTV. We pay extra for the high-speed DSL (not the 768 basic). It's OK, but it's NOTHING compared to Cable. I couldn't even imagine having to deal with the 768 basic speed. Our DSL is 3MB download. Cable is 6MB - twice the speed. Believe me, you notice. Plus, with Cable internet, you can plug a computer into any room with the cable jack. Our house came with cable in every room, but not phone in every room. So, if we wanted DSL in a room, we needed to install a phone jack.

Our satellite link does go out occasionally, but usually not for long. It's more of an annoyance - you get all involved in a program or movie and BLAM! It's out for 30-60 seconds. Kind of takes you out of the mood.

 

[ozarkmom]

The only reason we switched from cable to dish was in our town cable does not offer some channels that we wanted. I wish they would pick these channels up and we would switch back in a heartbeat. Dish is not cheaper and my cable never went out. We have several t.v.s and it was no big deal with cable unlike dish.

 

[AnaheimGirl]

Thanks for the tip, Mr. Incredible! I'll have to remember to try that next winter.

 

[sajetto]

We've had Directv and DISH and despised both! In our area our cable service is much better. We'll never go back to a dish again as long as we live here.

 

[Micca]

We have Cox cable and it works great for us. Their service has been top notch.

 

[sajetto]

We have Cox cable and it works great for us. Their service has been top notch.

That's exactly what we have and love it!

 

[Sleepy]

Before moving, we had Cox Cable and loved it too. Where we live now, the choice is a few snowy channels with an antenna or get satellite. Only 1 choice for satellite and that is SKY. Not as good as the programming in America, but it is getting better.

 

[tae1218]

We had a dish (Direct TV) but we switched in order to have cable internet connection. I was so glad that we did!