Satellite vs. Digital Cable (1 Viewer)

[Robert_J]

Dish seems to have the better hardware.

Dish does most of the hardware and software design in house. Most new receivers are buggy and crash until the second or third software update. When they finally get them working they only give you the basics on the interface. All of Dish's PVRs are timer based like a VCR. CSI is recorded on Thursday at 9pm (central time). DirecTV's PVR is show based recording. Tell it to record CSI and it gets the regular showing, special showings on different nights, two hour versions, etc. Set it once and forget it.

-Robert

 

[JeremyFr]

They say they will be able to carry up to 50 HD channels.

Some how I doubt that with all the bandwidth issues they're already running into of course I guess eventually maybe the FCC will let them put enough satellites in the sky and we'll never see the sun. hehe

 

[Jorge UF]

I at first had digital cable, but went to direct tv because of all the sports options and basically they had more channels. I am a big florida gator fan and watching there games are a must. NFL ticket is pretty nice as well. The sony SAT A65 direc TV reciever I have is great and I can zoom through the guide pretty quick, which wasn't really an option on digital cable.

 

[Alan M]

I recently purchased a new rptv,and decided to give my old rptv to my sister.I have directv in my home and have had it for 4 years now.
After having my brother in law and his brawny friends move my old rptv to my sisters,I went to do the hookup for her digital cable.I had just watched this tv the nite before thru my directv setup and I must say,even digital cable just didnt deliver the same pq that I was used to.
Yes,cable is different depending on where you are,but In los angeles.Ill stick to directv thank you.

 

[Brian Fitterman]

If COX cable in my area ever offers HD and the recording capability that I have with my DirecTivos, as well as matching the picture quality, then I might think of switching...but until then, forget about it.

 

[Dave Moritz]

Charter Cable here in Whittier, CA would have to offer as many channels as dish, lower there prices, boost the PQ from pathetic to dish PQ or better for me to even consider getting cable. I honestly dont think they have the bandwith to do it! Especailly with cable internet in the area. It seems that ever since cable started offering internet access I have run into drop in PQ and hum problems in the audio. If cable wants to survive they need to step up quality of product and use better cable boxes. For me cable sucks!

Dish
Cable

 

[Jerome Grate]

As mentioned in other posts, cable companies are different and offer different packages and services based on the area. PLease also note that on digital cable, not every channel is digital. Here in New York, my mother in Manhattan has it and you tell which channels are digital just by turning to them, and then the picture pixels in. You can tell the difference between the analog channels and digital channels. Same holds true for my brother in law in Long Island. As to satellite (DirecTV guy myself), I find the picture is far better than Digital cable only because in both situations my brother in law and mother are not using the S-Video. If HD is you goal here, and digital cable provides it with it's own cable box and a set top box is not required, I'd be hard press to go with digital cable. I think technically satellite takes an analog signal and process the analog signal digitally and send it, but the source is analog. FYI.

 

[JeremyFr]

Well actually lets look at how the systems work.

First we'll start with what ultimately is the best but no longer available and that was C-band. C-band were the large 10-20 foot dishes that you used to have to have to get satellite TV. It was digital as all Satellite signals are. The reason it was the best was you were tuning to a certain stations direct feed no middleman straight from the source. But it was expensive and that kept it out of the reach of most people, not to mention very inconvenient to apartment dwellers.

Next we have Digital Cable. Digital Cable consists of a Hybrid Fiber Coax network. This network consists of very high bandwidth fiber optic sonet rings layed within citys/neighborhoods. These high bandwidth sonet rings serve nodes which on a typical basis serve around 500 homes through Coaxial Cable.

The source for this network is what is called a headend. the headend consists of the C-Band reception facility where the signals are collected off the respective C-Band transponders that each network uses. Next the signal is either sent uncompressed analog or in its compressed digital from from the satellite to the customers home. At the home theres is either a cable ready tv if they are a non digital subscriber and they recieve all the channels that are available to them via analog. Or 2nd you have a customer who subcribes to digital cable. These digital customers will have DCT's or Digital Consumer Terminals that are supplied to them. These DCT's uncompress the Digicipher compressed picture that is distrubuted to them from the satellite through the cable network. This data has not been reprocessed or compressed in any way except for carrier frequency, it is sent directly from the satellite feed to the box and decoded. Now respectively you can have many factors that effect PQ including line quality of the drop to the consumers home, supplying plant if its been upgraded or not etc.

Last we have Dish Network. With Dish network they to have a Headend of sorts where they receive all C-band network feeds. These feeds are uncompressed at the headend and then recompressed for transmission to the Satellite. The signal is then transmitted in its recompressed form to there satellite where it is finally transmitted to the customers home and decoded by a satellite receiver.

Now I know I'm a strong advocate for Cable here in Washington and thats because up here I've never experienced as good a pq with Dish/Direct TV as I have with Cable and this is even before I started working for Comcast.

I will say that each and every system has its downfalls and advantages and yes dish is prolly better than many other cable companys in this country.

Advantages to Cable are virtually unlimiited bandwidth to add bandwidth you just up the fiber system. with Dish its put another Satellite up, there only going to be able to put so many satellites up in space before they're stuck at a stalemate. Cable offers the Fastest Internet connections in the country 50% faster than DSL nationwide according to a recent study. Satellite will never be able to achieve a decent net bandwidth and even if they could latency would be so bad it still would never work for online gaming or other realtime applications. I dont ever forsee one becoming bigger than the other just simply due to the fact that they can offer things the other cant. for instance Dish is great for people who live out in the boondocks where they're lucky to even get power/telephone etc.

At anyrate this was a pretty useless post but I'm here at work bored off my a$$.