Satellite Vs. Cable TV

The only reason we have DirecTV is because my husband "Has" to have the NFL package which Cable does not offer. We both agree that once cable picks it up we will go back to cable. Our satellite goes out with all thunderstorms and quite a few snow storms. We bought a weather radio so we can keep up on storm warnings. As far as the price, with 4 TVs in the house - $108 per month- $57.99 for the main channels and 1 receiver, $14.99 for HBO, $10 for High Def on 2 TVs, $6.00 for DVR on 1 TV, and $5.00 per extra receiver which we have 3 of. I think it's ridiculous. The channels are no different than cable, and cable doesn't go out in a storm. I don't know exactly how much cable costs, but DirecTV sure has a lot of extra fees that add up quickly.

Hi J.! We have had Dish Network for 7 years. We only lose reception in extremely high winds (50+ mph, tornado etc.). Never in normal rain/ thunder storms.
Good luck with whatever you choose!

We have had Direct TV for several years, however, we just recently switched to ATT U-verse. We were able to bundle our telephone, internet, and cable and we are saving about $40 a month. I think the best way to save money on it not matter whether you have cable or satellite is to bundle.

We had more problems with reception after moving to WI. When there is a snow storm or a bad rain storm you will lose your signal. Last summer we kept rabbit ears in the basement for the tornado warnings.

My husband sells direct tv and we have cable at home also, to check when storms hit. they are basicly the same with reception.

We have dish network and really like it. There are so many interactive programs that come with your service. I can hit a select button and get weather, sports, news, whatever up to the minute updates for my area. We have had dish for four years and had one service call this summer which the guy tried to tell me it would cost so much money just for coming out, but when I said that I would switch to a different company if they did not come out for free they came out the next day free of charge and took care of everything. We have also lost service during storms, but not rain. It has to be pouring and high winds to loose service and it usually comes right back in with in a couple minutes or as soon as the weather gets better. Great product for a great price.

I had Satellite for years and it was okay but I did have issues with outages during storms, windy days and snow build up on the dish itself during heavy snow storms. Also remember that you if have more than one TV you want to hook up you must have that many cords run into your house, you can't split one cord into many TV's and you have to have a receiver box for each TV. While it depends on how many channels you want it can cost as much or even more than cable does.

I am not sure where you are located but personally I would say stick with CABLE. We have dish and I just HATE IT. We lose signal at least everyday. Not to mention their customer service is just awful. We had to wait 2 weeks for a repair person to come and take a look at our box just for him to say well its the reception box thingie and gave us a new one. With Cable they would only take a few days to repair what was wrong. You can lose reception out of the blue for not particular reason (if you have dish i mean). IT sucks!!

We also did the switch about 6 months ago. We have never had any problems with any storms or any type of reception. It is for sure a change that you have to get used to though. The remote is different, the channels are in different orders... but after awhile it grows on you. The one thing I am not happy with is the pay per view movies. We do not have a landline and in order to rent a movie you either have to have one or call and order the movie. Very inconvenient.

We have Dish Network and have never had a problem--for 14 years. We occasionally lost tv (for about 10 min) when it would rain. We just upgraded our service and they brought a new dish. We had a huge storm last night and it was fine. Somebody told me I should have called a long time ago to have that fixed. I thought it was just part of having a dish.
If you do order try to get as much as you can out of the package. We just got a bunch a great deals for renewing our contract (free movie channels, upgraded dvr etc...)

We have gone both ways. Currently we are cable customers because if it storms or rains you loose signal, if the sun is too bright on the dish you loose signal (sun spots) and also we were with Direct TV and they increased pricing regularly. We don't have any of the movie channels or anything and we actually bundled our internet and cable and got a better price and it is lower than satellite.

We always had cable and were afraid to switch because of reception problems, because we liked On demand and because we knew and were comfortable with cable. We ended up getting frustrated one too many times with on demand service being interrupted, and transmission problems, so we switched and and got a fantastic deal. We use Direct TV and have two DVR receivers one for each tv and we love it! I have had the reception go out only one time in two years due to rain, and at the time it was raining so hard you could not see out the window. We love the HD channels, the reception and the picture. We are very happy and are saving money over cable.

We switched from cable to Directv 12 years ago and have never regretted it. The dish is sooo much better than it used to be. We never have a signal problem now. The customer service is so much better than the cable company here too. :)

We used to have Satellite and the thing I didn't like about it was we couldn't get our local channel 12 news, channel 16 city council meetings, nor PBS (channel 2). Maybe that has changed. We lost reception sometimes in the winter during ice storms and that sort of thing, but not a real problem. Sometimes lose cable reception too, so don't let that be your only determining factor. I recall my husband going up to spray PAM on the dish one time to keep the ice from sticking or something. If it's not a convenient location or too high on the roof, that can be dangerous. There are a lot of things I did like about satellite that I missed when we switched. Have you priced cable as a bundle for computer, phone and TV?

I have Direct TV and I would recommend you stay with cable. I have had a lot of problems with reception and local channels coming in. Also, sometimes the receiver resets itself right in the middle of a show. The customer service is horrible! Maybe Dish Network is better, but I'm not sure.

Satellite has been really great for us for the last 4-5 years. We have only lost the signal a handful of times, during the major Thunderstorms - in which case we can still keep up with the weather by radio or computer. We do not lose signal in everyday rain, like this weekend.
Go for it.

J.,

I love satellite and wouldn't ever consider switching back to cable. When I lived in the south, we did lose reception during very bad thunder storms. It hasn't really happened since we moved to Minnesota, probably because the storms aren't as bad. If it is a problem where you are, you may want to consider buying a weather service radio with batteries so if the sattelite and the electricity go out, you can still get weather information about the storms.

Good luck,
S.

We have had DTV on and off over the years. The one constant issue was losing reception during rain or strong storms (snow not an issue). Once during a "pay per view" event it went out due to strong rain and they did refund us our money.-but we missed the "big event" we had waited for! We finally are done with our contract and will not go back. It was very frustrating! A friend of mine has Dish and said she didn't have as many problems. Good luck!

I found that satellite wasnt much cheaper and you have to upgade equip often and yes it did go out when ever bad or windy weather happened.

Don't do it unless you have only 1 or 2 TVs in your house and you do NOT need reception when it rains, and you are NOT concerned about severe weather alerts. We made the switch to satellite a little over a year ago (because of the cost) and it ended up costing us plenty. You can hook 2 TVs up to one box and they have to watch the same channel, but if you have more TVs, you need more boxes which translates to more dollars. And, did I mention that if you want to tape a show, the TV has to be tuned to the channel you are taping. The box can't record a channel that's different than the one the TV is on. So forget watching one and taping another for later viewing. That can't happen. And, if you opt to leave a TV or two without a box, you might just as well box up the TV 'cuz you'll have no reception. And, then there are the hidden fees. . . . we use our cell phones and dropped the home phone a few months before the switch to the dish (a cost saving measure), and guess what, the satellite company added $15 to our monthly bill because we didn't have a home phone. I never did figure that one out and no, they didn't mention anything about it before they installed the dish. It had something to do with extra programming & services being ordered only over a land line, and since we didn't have a land line, we were assessed a fee. We were so frustrated after about 6 months that we paid the $190 to get out of our contract and go back to cable. Now I feel much safer when there are storm watches or warnings. And ALL my TVs work on all stations all of the time.

J.,

We made the switch and couldn't be happier! Yes, you do lose reception during rain storms...and I have heard during heavy snowstorms as well...but we haven't had that experience. I did "dvr" a show and even though I couldn't watch it live during the rain storm, we were able to watch it later. (I didn't think that it would have a picture!)
DISH has been very good to us...if we have to call in they walk us through the issue...

Good luck!
J.

it was hard for me to make the switch too but now i'm really glad we did. you get alot more channels for less money. it is a bit annoying when a really cloudy rainstorm blocks it out but even the worst ice storm we had didn't so it's not very often. i've never had dishnetwork so i don't know the difference. i get local channels free. with directv you get $100 if you get referred by someone else with directv. just give their acct. # when you sign up. right now out of the blue they gave us 3 months free showtime channels just because. so there are perks with directv but like i said i don't know much about dishnetwork.

S. m

AT&T digital cable (uverse if available). Dont waste your time with satellite.

Now I am going to say just the opposite of what others are saying here. We had DTV and lived in the city. We have now swithced to Cable. I do not think our DTV was mauch cheaper, but maybe it is because we got a huge deal when we moved and did the bundle plan. We had DTV for 10 years and we were just like that couple on the commercial.... LOL.... The signal would go out each time it rained hard or a storm came through. It drove me nuts because this is the time I am glued to the tv, watching the weather and tracking the storm. I like to know if there are tornado warnings or watches.... Drove me nuts the blue screen saying searching for signal..... Hubby and I would always go round and round.... When it snowed too, I would loose signals. My friend laughs at me because I lost a broom on the roof leaning out the window from the 2nd floor to clean the freakin' snow off the dish. (upside down smilie here). The nice thing is in the afternoon we got the sun amd it would melt the snow off if the snow drift went over the dish. Now since swithing, we have had one cable out problem, but it was due to someone knocking down a line or something... We will see what this spring weather brings us... I also did not like each time we added a service to DTV, they would add a year or two on to our contract. Added TiVO and the contract extended. Added a reciever and the contract extended. Added channels and the contract extended. I think once you meet the first two year contract you should be able to leave whenever you want and should be able to add any services as you go. We have all of our recievers left if you need them.... LOL..... Will not be going back I do not think.

We switched from Direct TV to cable because we lost reception so much. No reception during storms ever and random loss of reception for no apparent reason a few times a month. Also, If snow or ice builds up on the dish you lose reception and you have to go physically get it off of the dish so that was a pain. We got sick of missing our shows. Since cable, we've never lost reception once.

We made the switch to Direct TV a few years back. so far, we have been happier with the customer service as well as the price. YES - our direct TV goes out with rain & storms, but I do believe I can count on 1 hand the number of times a year it goes out. I would HIGHLY reccommend getting the DVR, especially with kids - you can watch DVR'd shows when the signal is out - so that is a lifesaver! Also, my mom has Dish and I believe that her "on screen" programming & guide is much more user friendly then Direct TV's is!
Good Luck!

We have had Dish TV for about 4-5 months now. We switched because it was less expensive than the cable we had. I love it. We got one of the smaller packages. We do have local channels for NBC, ABC, CBS -though I do miss the one NBC local we had - its not bad. We have two TVs on one DVR - each TV can play a different channel when you get the DVR. I love the pause and play option. For example if the phone or door bell rings you can pause the show/news you are watching and come back and hit play to pick up where you left it - then just fast forward through commercials to catch up. I also love that I can rewind what I am watching if I couldn't hear what was said. We have had a few nasty thunderstorms since we have had it and only had lost reception once for maybe two minutes. We had worse reception problems with our old cable and dont regret switching to Dish. ( We also have neighbors who have Direct Tv and they are happy with that also)

Direct TV is better than cable in price & in the # of channels that are provided but as you've heard when it rains or anything goes on with the weather, or just because, the signal may go out. I have had the experience with them both also with cable after you sign up on a promo your bill will go up dramatically. So before you make the switch weigh your options, by the way I have cable with, internet, cable, & phone Good Luck.

J.,

We have Satellite through Directv and I would never change to cable. I have had satellite for 10yrs. I would say we have signal 98-99% of the time. I wouldn't even worry about not having signal, as it doesn't happen often. I couldn't see paying the high price of cable, unless you are getting the introductory rates....

I think that it really depends upon where you are and whether there are any obstacles (i.e. large trees susceptible to winds) that will cause loss of signal during storms. The reason you lose signal is because there is something in the way of the satellite. I really can't give an opinion on comparison because I've always lived in rural areas where cable isn't an option. Good luck!

where do you live? When we lived in Madison we NEVER had any problems with our satalite (we have DirecTV), during the winter we even had giant Icesickles hanging from it, and not once was our reception out. Since we have moved to Cottage Grove tho, sometimes just the wind will make our satalite go out. You also need to remember you pay PER TV!, so If you plan on having 5 tvs hooked up, it might not be worth it.

But even regular tv on satalate (non-hd) is more clear than stadard cable tv.

We have had cable for 10 years now and have thought about switching several times because we keep getting all sorts of good offers in the mail. But every time we call, it doesn't end up being a good deal. We have the phone/internet/cable package (with 2 DVRs) through Charter and by the time we added all of that into the package through the dish people, it ended up being much more expensive - not to mention that we would have DSL internet. And the last time we called Dish Network just to check prices, before they would even give us a rate, they said they had to run a credit check to see which rate we could get. I said "screw it"...I wasn't going to get a ding in my credit just to find out that I would end up paying more than I do right now.

We have always had cable but my parents had satellite for two years (I lived with them one of those years). Their experience was it worked great except when it would not work which was usually on rain/stormy days and a few very windy days. The area where my parents live they could only put the dish on the back side of the house due to neighborhood 'codes.' It was not the ideal place they lost the signal at least once a week. The company said if they could place it somewhere else it would work better but they could not due to the neighborhood rules.

I would check with your neighborhood codes/rules to make sure there are no limits on where you can put the dish, that way you can get the best possible signal.

Also if you have neighbors that have satellite ask who they have and how it is since they live in the exact same area as you. If you get the same report for a few neighbors (good or bad) then it will be easier to make a decision.