We moved to an area where the cable television is ran through Charter Cable. We’d had it for 6 months, and it’s total crap. We pay way too much for the channels we have, and the stream (if thats the right word) cuts out on a regular basis. We’ve replaced our digital box twice already, and the one we have now still doesn’t work right. I’ve had Comcast in the past, and even though it wasn’t cheap, the quality was much better.
I’ve been thinking about switching to Satellite TV. You get more channels for less money.
So, for those of you who have experienced both, which is better? Does the weather really hinder the reception on the dish? Its snowing here now, but for the most part the weather here is rather mild. I also have some reservations about signing a contract and being stuck with something bad for 18 months.
It has been asked a lot, and I think the general consensus is that satellite is fine. Ours is, though I live in California, so snow is not an issue. I can’t recall reception problems in the rain. I have Dish Network, who actually answer their phones quickly and whose service has been first rate. I can’t speak to DirecTV. We got it when we had analog cable, which was never very good, and the cable guy thought we were odd to both trunks would work.
We currently have satellite. We love it, and will NEVER go back to cable.
Our cable, when we had it, was ‘iffy’. We could never be sure when it was actually going to work. We still have cable internet, but that’s another story, and we’re not happy with it, because of the fact that it keeps going out all the time.
But, it’s the only thing that is available out here, other than dial-up…and we won’t even get into that.
The snow here in Indiana is much different in amount than you have in your area, but after our ‘heavy’ snows, the satellite has worked beautifully, with no problems.
During some strong thunderstorms, we have lost the satellite signal, but it comes right back on after a few minutes, at the most.
We’ve never had any problems with our satellite (Dish TV).
We always had problems…and still do, regarding the internet…with our cable (Rapid Cable).
We have DirecTV (well, Hughes.net) for about 10 years. Runs our internet too. Rarely any problems with it. We have to knock the snow off the dish after a dump, but that’s it.
I can’t compare it to cable, because that’s not available.
We had Charter for a fairly brief time, and it was crap indeed. I do use Charter for my internet connection, which mostly works fine. We switched to Dish, and its not only awesome, its (last time I looked) quite a bit cheaper than Charter.
Michigan winters / DirecTV user. Very rarely lose any signal (and it is MUCH better since I put in the DVR because it buffers the signal all the time).
I had much worse luck with cable, actually. I am never looking back.
I live near Montreal, and in five years, we’ve lost the sat signal maybe three times, for about 10 minutes each time. A few other times, the image broke up a bit, but again, it was just for a few minutes.
Mind you, we don’t watch much TV. Probably there were a few more times when the signal wasn’t available, and we just didn’t know. Whatever. I wouldn’t hesitate for a second to go with satellite, if the price and options are good.
I like our satellite service - we have DirecTV. When we first moved into our house, we had Dish, but changed over so my husband could get the NFL package (cable wasn’t available in our area at the time). I have been pretty happy with DirecTV. We are getting more high-definition channels with satellite than we could with cable in our area, plus a few channels that cable would make us pay extra for, so it’s all good.
Weather can be a problem if you have a lot of thunderstorms in your area - ours will go out for a few minutes during a good storm. Snow doesn’t seem to have the same effect, but since we’re in the South we don’t get a lot of snow anyway so for us it hasn’t been a problem.
I’ve had Direct TV in Florida and Dish Network in Minnesota.
Both were nice and the Dish Network DVR worked great.
However, the signal loss during storms started to bug me. Really bug me. After two years in a row of missing the LOST season finale due to thunder storms, not being able to watch weather reports during severe weather, and coming home during a snow storm ready to curl up in front of the TV for the night and getting nothing but a blank screen, I decided to go to Comcast cable.
Sure their DVRs are glitchy but I haven’t lost a signal since.
I used to have satellite and much preferred it to the cable I have now (apartment living is not satellite friendly, though). All the horror stories that Comcast has on their ads about satellite being unreliable seem, politely said, disingenuous.
If you secure your dish to a movable object then, yes, you’ll lose the satellite in high winds. If a monsoon is raging outside, then maybe the rain will block it out. On the other hand, my cable seems to be sensitive to precipitation, too.
Secure your dish to something that is firm, hang it low enough to reach with a broom in the event of sticky snow. You’ll be fine. Take advantage of the free installation - it’s a bitch to get right.
Satellite dish user here in Ottawa, where winters can be quite cold and snowy. Outage is brief, and only on major storms, both rain and snow: once or twice per year for maybe 10 - 15 minutes at a time.
