I'm going back to cable

[ejb1980]

I've had my dish "tweaked to perfection" more than once, but when those severe rain storms roll up the Ohio River Valley, signal outages will happen. Snow storms? That's a different story. I cannot remember ever losing a signal in any snow storm, even with the entire dish covered in several inches of ice or powder. Funny things those satellite signals.

That said, I'll take signal losses over antiquated cable boxes any day. Guess I've gotten spoiled.

When I lived up north, this was my experience. Rain knocks it out, but blizzard has little effect. This year, many northern friends/family have D* and had their dishes covered for days - even a week or more - at a time and never lost signal.

I briefly lost my D* service this year with an ice storm. I don't know how long it was out because power was out, too. When the power came back on two days later, D* was there and TWC was out for 3 more days!

 

[TheTechGuru]

Cable Internet (thus TV too for TV subscribers) was down for 3 weeks after Ike. DirecTV worked as soon as we fired up the generator.


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[iceturkee]

I'd say that 90% of those on this particular forum are well aware of the negatives, EVERYONE that gets Sat, D* or DISH knows that weather can cause issues, however, those well peaked rarely have issues.

I've had torrential down pours, normally won't be a problem, once in a while I'll lose signal for a few minutes, but thats about once a year.

I had 85 inches of snow this past winter, 10' at a time at times, more coming on Tuesday and NEVER lost signal this winter.

NO Provider carries ALL the HD channels, NO ONE.

So you can have 17 BH boxes and they are free ? interesting, whats your monthly charge for each box ?

i have bright house beside dtv. you do have to pay for each hd box you have with bhn. i believe the price per box goes down, depending on the number of dvr's you are using,

as for satellite outage, my dish is pretty much in alignment and i only lose signal in a bad downpour. and then i lose for about 10 minutes. but i have also lost cable signal in bad storms too.

bhn's dvrs are horrible. they don't compare with genie. if you want something comparable you need a new tivo roamio.

bhn's picture quality sucks as most channels are still mpeg2. the main bright spot with cable is the number of hd channels they have that dtv doesn't.

 

[Mr Tony]

hmmm maybe I should post a "I went back to OTA" thread and the reasons why just like the OP did

 

[king3pj]

Maybe he was referring to analog cable which doesn't require a box in each room. Before we got satellite we only had a digital cable box hooked up to our main TV in the living room. The TVs in the basement and our bedrooms just got analog cable from the wall. Switching to Dish and having to pay an equipment fee for each one of those TVs basically wiped out the price benefit of taking a new customer deal with Dish.

Of course, there were lots of drawbacks to our old cable setup. First, we only received all the channels we paid for on our main TV with the cable box. Several channels were digital only. We could only watch some channels in our living room like MLB Network, HBO and, FSN Detroit +(the overflow channel. The main FSN Detroit channel came in analog too.). Switching to Dish and finally getting every channel we paid for on all our TVs was a big deal at first.

Secondly, not paying for a cable box at each TV saves lots of money but it also means no cable box features. We had no interactive guide on our secondary TVs. You either had to watch TV Guide Network or flip through the channels to find something to watch. More importantly, there was no HD outside of the QAM channels and no DVR on our secondary TVs.

Cable already has, or will be soon getting rid of analog TV in most markets. For those who still have it available, it's an option to save money on all your secondary TVs while still having independent viewing that isn't available with satellite. Even if it isn't an option for most of us here who would never go back to the days of SD cable with no DVR some people don't care about that stuff. Believe it or not, I still have relatives who will be clinging to their analog cable until it finally goes away in the next couple months.

 

[iceturkee]

Maybe he was referring to analog cable which doesn't require a box in each room. Before we got satellite we only had a digital cable box hooked up to our main TV in the living room. The TVs in the basement and our bedrooms just got analog cable from the wall. Switching to Dish and having to pay an equipment fee for each one of those TVs basically wiped out the price benefit of taking a new customer deal with Dish.

Of course, there were lots of drawbacks to our old cable setup. First, we only received all the channels we paid for on our main TV with the cable box. Several channels were digital only. We could only watch some channels in our living room like MLB Network, HBO and, FSN Detroit +(the overflow channel. The main FSN Detroit channel came in analog too.). Switching to Dish and finally getting every channel we paid for on all our TVs was a big deal at first.

Secondly, not paying for a cable box at each TV saves lots of money but it also means no cable box features. We had no interactive guide on our secondary TVs. You either had to watch TV Guide Network or flip through the channels to find something to watch. More importantly, there was no HD outside of the QAM channels and no DVR on our secondary TVs.

Cable already has, or will be soon getting rid of analog TV in most markets. For those who still have it available, it's an option to save money on all your secondary TVs while still having independent viewing that isn't available with satellite. Even if it isn't an option for most of us here who would never go back to the days of SD cable with no DVR some people don't care about that stuff. Believe it or not, I still have relatives who will be clinging to their analog cable until it finally goes away in the next couple months.

bright house in central florida is making the switch to all digital, even as i type this. those customers who are still getting an analog signal need an adapter so they can receive digital. i believe that is free until the first of next year.