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Cable TV Versus Satellite TV?
rufey writes "In the next few weeks I'll be moving and am thinking about getting either cable TV or satellite. I don't need broadband Internet (I use DSL), so getting cable TV bundled with broadband is not an option I'm considering. Comcast is the local cable provider in my area, and are playing TV spots about how satellite TV signals can be lost when it rains, when the wind blows, and even when the dog sneezes (I'm sure the dog sneezing excuse in the commercials are more for humor than fact). What has been Slashdot readers' experience with cable and satellite TV? I'm looking at trying to balance cost versus quality of signal and picture. How much does the weather affect the signal quality of satellite TV reception? Some satellite packages include a DVR (Comcast doesn't offer one yet in my area). Is it worth getting the DVR supplied by the satellite company (DirectTV, DishNetwork), or is buying a separate TiVo a better option? As a geek, I'm also interested in getting NASA TV."
Come on slashbots, and set yourself free - Kill your TV!
I've been tv free for 4 years now - and would never consider going back.
there is much more to life than watching a piece of furniture.
... hi bingo
...neither? Sell the TV, and where your entertainment center would be, put a bookcase. I cut back to basic cable and though i "miss" some shows, I dont miss wasting countless hours on the couch .....i cant even tell you what "reality shows" are on these days....
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
I'm pretty happy with cable and now that a friend who workd for AOL/Time Warner pointed out a little secret, I'll be even more so.
Cable companies make money by selling those pre-configured 'packages' of channel choices. With digital cable, however, it's quite simple for them to control which channels your receiver displays. By law, the cable companies MUST allow you to pick and choose which channels you wish to pay for.
Finally, being able to get all the Discovery channels whilst avoiding the shite like AMC or other such ilk.
I have comcast cable and internet,
we lost it during hurricane elizabeth and it
was the last service to be restored by nearly a
week (we also lost power and telephones). Phones
were back first, power second.
I've used both satellite (dish network) and comcast cable. Let me tell you, I've had more outages with comcast than with dish. The dish only went out when it was an ice storm. And let me tell you, I didn't even have power half the time. Every time it rains here, literally my cable goes out. Don't believe the ads saying they lost the "pitcha".
EVERYONE I have heard has said that they moved to satellite and have had none of the problems they mention on TV. The fact of the matter is that satellite is the future and newer technology. Cable is expensive as they have to lay all the cable. In a few more years the satellite dishes should get smaller as tech progresses. Just look at satellite radio (XM). The antenna for that is about 3 inches square. In 5 years or 10 years satellite tv will probably be able to do something a little larger or even that size that you don't have to mount or point in any direction.
I have seen satellite antennas get smaller. They used to be 10 feet across and now they are 18 inches and shrinking. My cable box has not changed in 4 years.
GO FOR SATELLITE, cable blinks out and on too.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
I have had DTV for about 3 years (in two different houses). I have only had a (noticeable) signal loss from rain twice (I think), and I've had more signal loss from snow it seems to be only very short periods of time (I don't lose an hour show, I have 5 seconds of screwed up video and the audio is OK...or maybe I lose video for two minutes and audio for 90 seconds). My DTV outages definitely haven't added up in length to a single outage from my former cable TV provider, which seemed to be something rain related and if it happened after bisness hours they didn't fix until the next bisness day (so a Friday outage killed cable for the whole weekend).
As far as DVRs go before I had DTV I had DISH and a "stand alone" TiVo. I liked it so much I eventually got DTV and the "all in one" TiVo. The down side of the all in one is it won't let you record the audio-only music channels (you can watch them live), if you don't care about such channels then no problem. If you do it is a pain because you TiVo might change channels on you while you watch because you havn't touched the remote recently and it knows there is something on you asked it to record (or it thinks you will really want, and there is some free space on the drive).
I've also been told none of the "home media options" are currently only for stand alone systems. Also there is no combo DVD-writer and Sat-reciever.
On the upside it can record two things at once. Which is great because it means you can just tell it what you like and it can "just do the right thing" without have to tell you "I'm sorry, you are already recording FOO on Chanel X at HH:MM...do you want to record FOO or cancel FOO and get BAR?". Well, at least not as offen. More then two tuners would be nice :-) For me that is more important then the other stuff (esp. since I have had mine long enough that there was no home media option, or DVD writer when I made my choice).
The other upside is once in a while my stand alone TiVo wouldn't quite be able to change the channel so I would get the wrong thing recorded. I tried moving the IR transmitter around, and even at one point making a tinfoil IR sheld/guide. I've never hade that problem with the DTiVo (unless you count when DTV changed FX's channel number and a bunch of my seassion passes stoped recording anything).
Good luck with your choice.
P.S. I pretty much only switched away from DISH to DTV because of the TiVo. If you decide on another PVR or a standalone one I have no real reason to recomend DTV over DISH. I was pretty happy with the service from both.
Digital cable will have problems with signal from time to time as well so don't let them lie to you about signal quality. I was at a friends house last night for the SuperBowl and he had all sorts of pixellation problems with the signal to his new LCD set. In my county we have Comcast as the only cable provider and they constantly have outages because the system they inherited (bought) was never built correctly to service the capacity of residents here. My sat (Direct TV) has only had problems when VERY stormy to the point where you shouldn't be watching the TV as lightning may take out more than just signal. Even the recent hurricane didn't disrupt my signal more than 1/2 hour. The service I've had with Direct TV is WAY better than calling the cable company as well. The cable company here doesn't even have a way to speak to a human on the other end. You only get recorded "we are experiencing outages in the following areas (name of cities) and will have them fixed as soon as possible." They don't even give you a realistic timeframe!
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
Having used 4 different TV broadcast methods, I've gathered a good amount of experience and knowledge of the pros and cons of each.
Satellite:
Pros
Good Image and Sound Quality
Easy Timeshifting
PVR capability
Easy to use
Can be self-installed
Good packages that often include installation
Availible wherever there is a view of the southern sky
Cons
Signal can be lost in very poor weather (usually takes a heavy snow/lightning storm)
Crappy broadband
PPV is over Dial-up (except for newer 2-way systems)
18" dish sticking out of some part of your house
Routing to another TV requires another reciever unit
Analog Cable:
Pros
Uses Tuner built into TV
Easily routable to another TV without expensive equipment
Half-Decent broadband
Availible in most neighborhoods
Cons
PVR requires external hardware (or you can use a VCR)
No on-screen guide
Expensive for # of channels you get
Mandatory installation, usually expensive ($60+)
Fewer channels
Digital Cable:
Pros
On screen guide in PIP
Creme-de-la-creme tech support
Uses existing cable wire (nice if upgrading from analog)
Older Analog channels + Newer Digital channels
Very good picture and sound quality
Cons
Very expensive
Bunny-Ears reciever unit
Pros
Cheap
No monthly costs
Local channels
Cons
Local channels only
Shaky image quality
Shaky sound quality
Few channels
Frink: Nice try floyd, but you were designed for scrubbing, and scrubbing is what you shall do.
What features does it have that a Tivo or ReplayTv doesn't have?
According to many reviews posted to alt.video.ptv.tivo, its primary advantages are bugs, bugs and more bugs. Some reviews have mentioned coming home to find the entire drive erased, or to find problems with the scheduler either not recording scheduled programs or recording only small snippets of shows (1-2 minutes).
There are apparently two major versions/codebases of software for the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 DVRs, and some revisions apparently work better than others, but for the most part, even the favorable reviews have concluded that the SA-8000 DVRs don't yet compare well to more mature DVRs from Tivo and ReplayTV.
I'm sure that over time, the SA-8000s and their derivatives will improve, but if you're comparing apples-to-apples today, you can do better than an SA-8000 from your cable company.
I love, or should say "loved" Tivo. Unfortunately, it DOESN'T work with all cable boxes. Here in Colorado, at least, Comcast uses crappy "General Instruments/Motorola" digital cable boxes that don't accept Tivo's remote commands properly. (Actually, they don't even accept their own very well- very slow). There have been discussions in the various Tivo forums for years about work-arounds. The most common is to tape the Tivo IR sender directly over the IR receiver on the cable box, and then cover the front of both the Tivo and cable box with black electrical tape.
Apparently the Tivo itself has an IR sender built into the front, and the cable box gets easily confused by any other IR activity besides its own remote (and simply locks is IR receiver temporarily), so the extra Tivo IR activity, along with the Tivo remote, really screw it up. Even doing this, Tivo was only able to change the channels properly about 50% of the time at best. With channels above 99, it had less than a 10% success rate. So- I ended up with hours of crap I wouldn't want to watch if I was paid to, while missing my favorite shows.
On the other hand, I had a DirecTV receiver (by Sony) before that worked flawlessly with Tivo, and had a DirecTivo (also by Sony) that worked fantastic. With the exception of a couple of really nasty thunderstorms (with hail), I had no problems at all with my DirecTV system for over 3 years.
The only reason I have cable is my significant other gets it for free because she works for Comcast. If I had to pay for one or the other, I wouldn't hesitate to get DirecTV again and dust off my Tivo.
My parents still have the big huge dish in thier yard. You can get some pretty interesting stuff if you are willing to pay for the tech. Of course it IS a dying technology, but it is pretty interesting how they are trying keep it alive through things like 4dtv and mpeg sidecars.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
I have Dish Network, and all of the evil things that Comcast says about rain and wind and leaves in fall are true. Having said that, I have been pretty happy with the PVR they offer. Not TiVo, but sufficient.
Depending on what you watch, and how important picture quality is to you, cable may actually be a better bet. I am in a Comcast service area and am seriously considering switching. For one thing, the local channels on Dish are horrible. They compress them to the point of being unwatchable. This just became clear to me when I bought a big screen television.
The same holds true for the less popular cable channels. Most of the popular channels are pretty good quality. I don't know what bit rate Comcast uses for their channels, but I thought that I would give them a try for a couple of months and do a side by side comparison.
If you have a clean plant, the analog channels are actually much better quality than the digital ones. (I know... flame bait). In a big market, the cable companies take a lot of their feeds directly from the station. A good clean analog signal has 10 to 20 times more picture quality than a compressed signal from Dish network. OTOH, a crappy analog signal is unwatchable. Since they just rebuilt the plant around here, the analog signals look pretty good.
As for the PVR issue, Comcast has just started rolling out the Motrola DVR box. They only have the single tuner model available now, but that's all I have with Dish and it hasn't been a problem. Most programs that I watch are repeated many times so there is always a time when I can record them when I am not watching something else.
Of course, if you are a realityTV or sports junkie, even two tuners may not be enough. In that case, both Dish and DirectTV (and Time-Warner Cable) have dual tuner PVR boxes. You can actually record two channels while you are watching something that was previously recorded. Pretty cool, but a bit much for me. Motorola is coming out with one (HD as well), but it's probably a ways down the road. Comcast is almost totally Motorola.
As far as the broadband issue, I also have DSL, but if I switch to Comcast, I will probably switch to cable modem. Again, it don't cost much to try it out. They offer 3 Mb/s downstream, while DSL limits me to about 1.2 Mb/s.
I live in Quebec and the only problem I ever had receiving transmission was because sone snow was sticking on the dish. But if the snow is not sticky, we receive a good signal even during a snow storm...
Montreal - Best city to live in!
I live in southeastern Virginia in the Hampton Roads area. When the hurricane hit last fall, the rain was barely sprinkling and the cable TV went down for over a week. My phone service is also tied into the cable so was also down. However, cellular pretty much survived throughout the entire hurricane with only minimal downtime. I laugh everytime I see those cable TV commercials saying their landlines provide better signal quality, etc. After the main storm was over and all the power was out, my family and I sat in our living room and watched DirecTV powered by our generator. :)
I recently bought a house in a neighborhood where "free" (i.e., subsidized) cable is part of what your HOA dues pay for. I pay nothing extra for "extended basic" cable from my local cable company. Because of this, my cable modem service is discounted by $10 per month, and I could upgrade to digital cable for $11 a month.
However, I have DirecTV, and have had it for about 7 years now, and I'm very happy with it. I recently bought a couple of TiVo-integrated receivers, and the convenience and picture quality is excellent.
I've retasked my standalone TiVo (formerly connected to a Sony SAT-B2 DirecTV receiver) to connect to the "free" cable. This TiVo has been upgraded to 193 hours of basic quality, so I record nearly everything on Best quality. The picture quality still sucks. The picture I get from my cable company is significantly inferior to what I get from DirecTV. Before my wife and I got married, she had digital cable in her apartment, and its picture quality was not as consistently good as DirecTV's is.
I know that even by cable company standards, my lousy analog cable picture is abnormally bad. I also know that with Rupert Murdoch taking over at DirecTV, things are likely to go downhill in picture quality there. It's a tough call to make, but for now, I'm sticking with DirecTV and I'm not impressed with cable in my neighborhood.
that's because you don't live here http://www.snopes.com/photos/military/landing.asp
Damn, I thought I kicked that crack habit. I live near the San Diego airport, and the planes do disrupt the DirecTV signal briefly. Understand that I live so close that the airport authority sound proofed my house for free. The planes are pretty low.
And I agree, Tivo is the way to go.
I've used both Comcast and Dish Network, in fact, I'm using both right now. Dish or DirectTVs digital channels are far clearer with almost no artifats in the picture. For instance, TechTV. On Comcast TechTV has artifacting out the wazoo. The bug on the screen looks like a puzzle that was put together wrong. On Dish, the picture is nearly clear. You should have few problems with the weather. You'll probabl-i lose your signal far fewer times than the cables goes out. If your Dish is mounted well, it won't be a problem. I remember the satellite installer telling me that there only needs to be 70% signal to have a picture. The picture shouldn't change at any signal level. So, either you have a clear picture or nothing. Our satellite has not gone out in several months mostly even with all the snow storms. It is actually not the clouds overhead that cause the signal loss the most. It's storms approaching or going through the signal path from a distance that make signal go out easier. Personally I would buy a standalone DVR like a TiVo. You can upgrade and replace the hard drive in it if you choose to. Well, if you're into hacking that is. I don't know how often the satellite or cable company will give you upgraded ones if you feel the need to upgrade. Also, if you plan on getting a HDTV sometime in the future. Doing research I found that cable companies also compress that signal a little. Dish does not do that. We have HDTV and we did notice that on cable the picture had some artifacing during HD programming. Barely noticable, but it was there. Programming, the only thing I will miss once the cable goes is the International Channel, the talk shows are hillarious. You get far more interesting channels on a satellite that cable just doesn't have. Comcast here has TechTV, and so does Dish and DirecTV. But Comcast has it in their highest digital tier. That costs $65/month! TechTV on Dish Network comes in the America's 120 pack. That's $35/month. The 180 pack is $45/month. and their give you a 1, 2 or 3 room setup for free. The programming pakages from Dish and DirecTV are virtually identical. Check out their sites and your cable company's site and compare them. I my opinion Satellite ends up costing about as much as cable in the long run. With programming charges for your receivers and whatnot.
Consider asking if you can mount the antenna to their roof. Suprisingly some allow you to. Let them know, that if they like, you can leave the dish installed for the next tenent so your apartment will be more easily rented. When you move, DirecTv lets you leave the dish (they'll be selling the new occupants service is the presumption) and provide a new install at your new address. Dish may do the same. Consider seeing if your complex will drop cable in favor of Dish or DirecTv. Both do deals with aprtment complexes. It provides "product differentiation" for your complex, and additional revenue for them.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
duffbeer703 says:
>Go outside and take in the sunshine. Read a book.
>If you are so dependent on TV that you need an "emergency backup", you have problems indeed.
Says a person who's nickname is an imaginary beer from an animated series on television.
http://www.WinWithRealEstate.com/
Also, the $5/month covers multiple TiVos. I have an old Series 1 Sony DirecTiVo and a newer Hughes Series 2 DirecTiVo, and still just pay the $5. Nice.
I scored the Hughes one at Circuit City for $100 a few months ago...didn't even matter that I was already a DirecTV customer (just had to agree to another year on my service agreement).
Idea (And what I'm preparing to do):
Keep your DSL. Get Cable + cable broadband. Have all your 'server' stuff go through DSL, and all your surfing go through cable.
Double your bandwidth for just another $30/mo!
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
I have full-time playboy on DirectTV (more precisely, the guy who shares my duplex does, but I pay him for a receiver so...).
Playoby's offerings are FAR different from what they were 5 years ago. In that time, Playboy has eaten the Spice Network, home to harder-core material than the T&A stuff playboy is known for (and, if I can digress for a moment: That's the stuff I like. I don't want to see some guy's hairy ass, looking like he got out of prison that morning, pawing at Tera Patrick or Carmen Luvana. Give me T&A and I'm a happy guy).
Used to be, you didn't see penetration on Playboy. Now you do, even in some of the Playboy-branded content. I've seen gonzo-type movies and I've seen unedited titles from the major US porn studios (mostly Vivid, but also Wicked, VCA et al). No Max Hardcore, no "1200 Anal Cumshots", no interracial degradation porn, no midgets, but if your tastes run to something a woman might conceivably watch with you, Playboy is a pretty good deal. Cost is IIRC $12 a month, same as HBO. I think a four hour block of adult PPV on direcTV is $5 or $7.
"Totally Busted" and "The Naked News" are both pretty worthwhile for entertainment value. The "Are my Boobs crooked?" bit that's advertised on iFilms.com came from "Totally Busted".
Now, the day I can get Playboy in HDTV, I'll finally invest in a directv subscription of my own.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
I don't know if DirecTV is still like this everywhere, but I can tell you about my own experiences living in Clear Lake, Texas (the home of Johnson Space Center).
My family used to subscribe to whatever increasingly-large umbrella-corporation-of-the-month had most recently bought out our local cable television monopoly. In the eighties, when it was basically a local mom-and-pop provider, it was pretty darned cool. In the early-to-mid nineties, when the string of buyouts really got underway, its quality of service declined while its pricing increased significantly. In the mid-to-late nineties, when DBS began heating up real competition, its quality of service dramatically improved while pricing remained more or less static. And all through those times we received NASA TV, which was great!
Cut to the twenty-first century, and my family switched over to DirecTV DBS. It's been amazingly cool, albeit just as expensive as overpriced cable.
We regularly get nice big wrath-of-god thunderstorms blowing in off the Gulf, and yes, in a *really* bad storm the signal might occasionaly break up for a few minutes at a time, but it's not significantly more frequent than cable television - remember, they're getting their signal from a local satellite downlink, too. I'd rate the reliability as just slightly below cable - it *is* a smaller dish, after all - but not enough to be any sort of a nuisance.
DBS receivers kick digital cable receivers' @sses, hands down, though. The user interface is entirely dependent upon your box, and I've sampled a great many of both sorts of boxes amongst many friends, having lived in five cities in the past four years. Not a single digital cable box has been anything but a heavily-sedated slug by comparison to the DBS boxen. If you enjoy scrolling through hundreds of channels you don't subscribe to in order to find the one that you're looking for, digital cable's all for you, since DBS custom channel lists spoil that sort of fun. DBS receivers are faster, more user-friendly, more programmable, more configurable, more extendable, and not a bloody-closed-platform. You can buy a DBS receiver from any of a half-dozen manufacturers, while digital cable receivers are often vendor-locked-in, and it *really* shows.
DirecTV channel selection is superior to any digital cable system I've since tried as well, and I go for geeky esoteric stuff like NASA TV Worldlink. Bear in mind, though, that that's from the perspective of a global sampling of culture. There's a lot of fringe quirky stuff to be found on DirecTV if you dig for it, but local public-access and community channels are only available through your cable provider, as those aren't even broadcast on open airwaves. That's really the only negative point for DBS - NASA TV used to be a Clear Lake public access station in the eighties!
Local broadcast channels have never been an issue, though. Most major markets now have a decent selection of their own local broadcast stations available through regional DBS programming packages, all the national broadcast networks get DBS feeds from two or three different big cities (which often nets some interesting other-regional programming as a bonus), and a good antenna can pick up most stray channels left out of the mix. I don't know for certain, but I've heard that some of the newer DBS receivers even include built-in tuners so you never have to switch your television and audio source when you want to watch antenna broadcasts. Local broadcast channels just aren't an issue.
Right, the heaving-naked-breasts part. Well, I had great fun browsing DirectTV channel lists upon my first experience in the fall of 2002. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it carried NASA TV of all things, so I dialed straight in only to see two women and a man having what must've been quite a pleasant experience. It didn't look like the usual NASA programming, so I figured something was crossed up in the feed and let it go. Oddly, when I checked back a couple of nigh
Another thing about those pieces of living shit at COMCAST>
They incorporated a pop-up ad delivering mechanism into the "menu" system of the cable box in an automated "upgrade" about 2 years ago.
Now, everytime you simply want to view the menu system, you are bombarded with pop-ups about the new MPAA movie coming to cable or possibly that herbal supplement you've been meaning to get.
They also bundle pre-printed pop-up ads into you monthly bill, for easy access. Open up that $50 mutha and you will be delighted to find ads for Check Printing services. Get your personal checks printed with such endearing figures as J-Lo and Ben Affleck in the movie Gigli (Check Theme 10110 on the order form today!).
Its such pure bullshit... COMCAST, may these micro-aol ass-knats rot in HELL.
SCO: 800-726-8649
Verisign: 800-361-8319, 888-642-9675
Diebold: 800-433-VOTE (8683)
As for technical issues, I've had satellite tv (DSS, Dish, etc) in several locations, and the thing is that it all depends on how securely you install the dish (have done it myself a couple times without difficulty) and how accurately you aim it. As for weather interference, keep in mind that the cable company gets ITS signal off the satellites too, so any weather that is going to mess up your signal is going to mess theirs up too.
I am currently on Adelphia digital cable with their internet service as well. I have experienced outages of a few minutes to half a day at least half a dozen times in the last three months since I got the upgrade to Powerlink.
Objectively speaking, its six of one, half a dozen of the other.
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves
In my experience watching DirectTV is like watching movies on a 256-color monitor. I often wonder if DirectTV even has 256 colors. Shadows are a mosaic of grey rectangles, dark scenes look like shit, you can clearly see the key frames every second, etc. Football is the WORST. On long shots, once a second the players look like players, the rest of the time they are a jumble of pixels with an aura of jumbled pixels around them. NOT big screen TV material.
For all I know digital cable could be worse. I'm sticking with analog cable (which is often free with a cable modem...)
An important note:
Many problems with installations are from people ordering their stuff from a backwater sleezeball company.
I recommend you get your stuff directly from DirecTV or from a reputable vendor like Best Buy, Circuit City, etc.
Calling 1-800-DIRECTV does not necessarily get you to DirecTV itself!
It is a national # setup to route you to a local dealer.
If you want to actually get your stuff from direcTV, call the general customer service phone # at 800-355-5000 and do whatever you need to do to talk to someone from the phone menu. It doesn't matter who. Then, ask for the sales department. They will ask if you have a credit card (say YES) and if you have ever had DirecTV before (say NO).
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
Airplanes can cause loss of signal. I used to live on one of the departure/approach paths at MSP and occasionally the signal was lost for a few seconds when an airplane was climbing out more or less in the beam path. But I think it's more likely that the receiver was being saturated by transmissions from the plane than the aircraft itself blocking the signal.
One advantage over cable is that when you move you can have service immediately if you transfer the dish yourself, unlike cable where it may need to be "turned on" at the new location. But in our case, we used DishMover since it was already snowing as we were moving and I really didn't feel like climbing up on the icy roof to install the antenna -- the install tech took the time to do a really good job, better than I would have done with subzero windchills around me.
A friend of mine, had a dish for 6 months, we hang out at his house all the time to drink, watch movies, sports, etc.
:P
Durring this time, there was a huge blizard that rolled through. The picture quailty was really bad, when there was signal at all. We had to keep going outside to clean the dish off. If anything gets inside it, it will start crapping out.
Durring normal rain, you will notice little "bleeps" here and there on the picture. Typically, it only happens 2 times durring a 1 hour show and its very minor. However, durring very heavy down pours, the signal disappears. At times, there is signal but its unbareable to even look at.
The only times wind will affect your signal, is if your dish isn't properly secured. Any movment on the dish will create poor signal. Of course things like leaves, branchs, acorns, etc will create problems.
Now, he moved over to digital cable. It rocks, very little downtime at all. Plus, ondemand is great. Just make sure you get the best package they have. Starz and Cenimax are the best ondemand packages out there. The movie selection is generally much better. Depending on your cable provider, they are usually free access as long as you have the big package. I rent over 100 movies a month with it for free. Beats renting from the video store. But, the video store is going to have a better selection
I would recommend what others have suggested. Get cable first, try it for a few months, then switch to the dish. The dish companys are giving out good deals to people who switch from cable. Try it for a few months, if you don't like it vs cable, many cable companys are giving out the same deals to switch back.
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