For everyone complaining, do you really need cable TV? No, it is entertainment.
I tried to cable when I moved to Long Beach, Ca. No can do. My little spot is in a grey area where no one, not Cox, Comcast, Adelphia or Time/Warner will give me service.
So I got a dish. I bought the reciever for 10 bucks, the install was free (and they put it in the day after I called AND they came right at the time they said they would) and I pay about 38 bucks for basic service. Which is exactly what I was paying for cable in San Fernando.
Very happy with the dish.
Not for my poor ol’ Grandad - he’s lying in a hospital on a Cable IV because without daily injections of crappy reruns and fifty different iterations of the same basic interior decorating show he’ll just wither away and die - and now with Comcast raising their rates we’re not sure we’ll be able to afford it anymore - and my poor ol’ Grandad’ll die!
::bursts into tears::
I ain’t here to defend Comcast’s billing practices, but rather correct some misinformation.
This isn’t the same thing at all, Monty. You should really know something about the technology before you issue this blather. Cable operators do, in most cases, receive program material off a satellite feed, but they’re not blasting the originators of the that signal. They’re blasting the Direct TV guys and whoever else is directly competing with them. The guys originating the signal, which both cable and satellite TV operators use, are HBO, ESPN, the networks and the like. The cable ads certainly aren’t lambasting their signal providers. I’ll also note that some content is received by cable operators off large conventional antennas. There’s a reason it’s called Community Antenna Television.
You get the same advice as Monty. Cable system operators are granted a franchise by, probably your city council, to operate in your area. If you want choices, take it to them. There are many areas in the country with competing cable services. If a decent subscription take rate can be identified, cable system operators are more than willing to “overbuild” another operator.
I have a rather simple justification for having cable. I’m quite dependent on closed captioning in order to enjoy a TV show. The caption signal is part of the broadcast signal, so if the reception is poor, the captions are going to be horrendously garbled or even absent entirely. My cable has been of consistently good reception that I rarely have trouble with captions. But if I try watching TV with a regular antenna, the caption quality is hit-or-miss at best.
For the record, my digital cable comes from Comcast, and I really haven’t had that many service problems with them yet. They’re getting a bit expensive though, so I’m starting to look into less expensive satellite systems as an alternative.