dumping comcast

[Kymera]

I considered the move to satellite, but decided against it because of the added over head. The initial cost of the Dish and HDTV decoder was very high, over $1k if I remember correctly. I'm paying $10/month over my basic cable service for HDTV/Digital cable and I get the following HD channels : ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, ESPN, Comcast Sports NET, INHD, INHD2 and some PBS station. Additionally, all my movie channels have one that is HD and 5.1DD. A much better bargain if you ask me.

[TripleRLtd]

I don't think it's the installers, it really is the weather down here. I live about 10 miles or so away from TripleR, my neighbour had satellite, I have TW Cable. Almost every day during "rainy season" (may - september) the picture would at least go really fuzzy and more often than not cut out.

Unfortunately, the sun spots cut out cable too, although this only happens exactly when the English soccer is showing on a Saturday, in the month of October, apprently.

I've just realised.. TW used the Solar Flare excuse against me... no fair

Cheers

Exactly.
In fact, if it wasn't for the weather down here and the loss of signal, I would probably go with Satellite simply because I was able to get sooo many sports channels not available on cable w/o a separtated subscription.
BTW
I can't remember how long it's been since cable went down.

[jmani]

Well I guess my decision has been made for me as the tivo/pvr's with the DSS cannot record over the air/basic cable channels only content provided by the dish

[ilovetheusers]

Soon to be 3mb down here at the end of the year (so I have heard)

You can get a 3m now with the business oriented line for about $100 a month and you get 5 IP's.

[hansonpcs]

I did a little research on cable verses satalite about a year ago and found that not every thing is not as black and white as it seems. First off there is a big difference between Dish Network and Directv and then there is another difference between them and cable.

First consideration should be if you are going to use them for internet access satalite typically starts out about 100k were as cable starts out at about 256k, this can vary but needs to be considered, I think.

Next is the consideration that Directv has only one satalite for the US verses the two that Dish Network has, which allows for more consistence access to channles and the internet. A large storm moving in from the west blocks the signal from the one satalite but satalite in the eastern sky keeps you running with no problems, as the storm moves into the eastern sky the satalite in the western sky become avalible and your service continues uninterupted.

Another concideration is the startup cost from what I saw the cost for satalite hardware was about $500 this included everything, tv and two way satalite for internet. Cable maybe just a small setup fee.

And finally cost of subsciption now I do not know exactly all the costs of the various service providers and there costs for each of the varying service they provide. But from what I saw locally it seemed that at least at the entry level they all had very close to the same price, but remember that there is a difference in what you are getting for that price. For example, for myself, the cable was asking $50/month for basic cable (20 channels approx.) and 256k internet, and satalite was also asking about $50 for basic tv package (40 channles approx "no" local) and 100k internet. Now here is were it gets real tricky and some may not even know of these options both cable and satalite have an option to upgrade your internet access speeds up to I believe as high as 1.5m (I recently think heard of some at 2m) but for a price. Now at the high end they both had very similar pricing but the price/k obviously starts out at a different level, $50 for 100k for one and $50 for 256k for the other. And as your speed is incramentally increesed the prices will slowly begin to become the same price/k.