Cable vs. DirecTV / Advertising vs. Reality
Ok, so I’ve had satellite service for about 9 years on an off. In between satellite (moving from town to town etc) I’ve used cable more than once, and have never been satisfied with the quality of service. I just tried again. I had cable connected the first week of September, and I’m already so fed up with it that I’m pretty sure I’m going back to satellite this week.
Reasons I decided to try cable again:
1. The $25 per month (16 months $400 total) “Ditch the Dish” program.
2. Comcast has no contract, so I could try it, and dump it when I want.
3. Cannot get HDTV satellite service. I bought a High Definition TV and I cannot get a clear view of the sky in the right direction to use the HDTV satellite.
4. My satellite Tivo receiver is having a problem with the modem (I bought a network card that works pretty well) so I thought that with my Tivo headed south it would be a good deal to get the cable DVR for $5 per month.
5. Comcast has taken over here in the East Point, GA area (used to be AT&T and they were horrible), and I thought I’d give them a try.
6. I missed having the local East Point government channel.
7. The video on demand feature Comcast has locally is very promising.
What I got:
1. I picked up the Motorola HD DVR receiver that Comcast is using.
2. Within the last few years they replaced every bit of cable in the area, and replaced all the equipment in their system for digital cable.
3. Brand new wiring all the way from the pole to my set-top box.
Why I’m going back:
1. Receiver will not let me watch a program while I record another one. With the DirecTV I could record two different shows at the same time, and could even watch another pre-recorded show while recording the other two.
2. The Cable DVR is essentially a VCR, I have to tell it every single program to record. Tivo service is FAR SUPERIOR when it comes to selecting shows (season pass, wishlist, etc).
3. The cable DVR doesn’t have the ease of use of the Tivo. The Tivo has excellent look and feel, along with convenient features (the only thing the cable box had that I’d like on the Tivo is a % full counter for the hard drive).
4. Tivo/DirecTV menus are far superior. DirecTV lets you see more of the program guide, instead of taking up 40% of your guide screen with advertising as Comcast does.
5. The channel changing on the Cable DVR is horribly slow.
6. DVR digitizes everything it as you are watching it. Since all the low channels are analog (noisy) the DVR makes the picture quality on them visibly worse. Even without the DVR the picture on the low channels is not nearly as clear as on the satellite.
7. The quality on the analog channels (about 70 of the channels) is poor (the DVR makes them even worse).
Notes:
1. I’ve never had to repoint my dish. I’ve had 3 different dishes at three different houses, and have never had to repoint a dish. I just thought I would mention it since the commercial I saw today claimed there were people who had to constantly repoint their dishes.
2. When satellite goes out in a storm it is usually only for a minute or two, so it’s not nearly the problem the cable company plays it up to be. Cable on the other hand has been terrible. The HDTV that I’m paying extra for goes out regularly. Even when the HDTV is working breakups in audio and video are very common. I would venture to say that I am yet to see a complete hour go by without the video or audio skipping or hanging on HDTV. I’ve had the cable less than a month, and I have already lost all the digital channels twice for more than 45 minutes (per the pre-recorded message these were wide area outages so it wasn’t just my neighborhood). With Tivo on the satellite I have over a hundred hours of captured video (I’ve greatly expanded storage on the drive) and only a couple of shows show lost satellite signal with the longest gap being about 5 minutes.
3. Cost… The cable is more expensive. Even with the $25 a month off the regular price (ditch the dish special) the cable is more expensive (however I am paying $5 a month extra for HDTV on cable, but it is still more expensive).
4. In the Atlanta area DirecTV has all the local channels the cable company has, and the quality of the local channels is better on the satellite dish. I will however miss the local Government channel (they don’t carry it on the dish).
5. When it is working the HDTV is beautiful, at least on Discovery and the INHD channel. The networks HD quality is not nearly as good.
6. In the last two weeks I’ve seen 4 football games where one or more of the the HD cameras is on the fritz, causing jittering intermittent signal whenever that specific camera angle is selected (but they still use it all game, makes me nuts, I guess they don’t see it at the switcher, or maybe the switcher is bad and they keep moving it from game to game… dunno).
7. Video quality on the satellite is not as good as it was 8 years ago, but it is still much better than the quality I received from Comcast cable (including the digital channels). Only Comcast’s HDTV channels looked better.
8. Video on demand works very well. I love the feature. Every show I saw was commercial free (except a small Chevy commercial at the beginning of the show). There aren’t very many shows to choose from, but I expect this will improve.