Has anyone had good or bad experiences with satellite TV compared with cable?

Glenn

Glenn,
I have had satellite TV for nearly 40 years! I still have my 12 foot dish in my back yard and the last receiver we used. In the early years nothing was scrambled, there were no commercials in the broadcasts, and you moved the dish from satellite to satellite to tune in various channels. The receivers cost in the $1000.00 range and worked really well. If you liked a certain program you could watch the entire weeks shows when they were sent down to the TV stations. My wife would watch Days of Our Lives soap opera and see the entire weeks programs in one night. During news casts when it was time for a commercial we would see the news casters talking to each other and making comments about the news or other unrelated things - sometimes what they said could never go out on the air - but it was not censored on the satellite feeds. It was great fun.

As time went on, networks began scrambling the shows and eventually we had to pay to see a lot of stuff. But that was a long time ago and things have changed a lot.

In recent years we used Directv and was very pleased with it. Dish network is also a supplier but I have no experience with them. The dishes now are only about 3 feet across and stay tuned to a single satellite. Quality is really good and show selection is enormous. Satellite TV packages range from as little as $30.00 a month and well over $200.00 monthly pending on if you get a lot of movie channels, a basic package, or something in the middle.

Today we are using Verizon Fios because of the internet speed it offers. The general programming for TV is the same as it was with Directv - but we also get some really good landline phone service with the deal.

Those of us who were among the first to have a dish and were able to watch just about everything free, except for the equipment, think it has all gone backwards. Today you pay a premium price to have access to bundles of channels that the suppliers think will sell.

Deane

Well said, Deane..... I finally took my 12 ft Dish down last year... The early days were special, and we will never see that again. It sure was exciting times.

I really enjoyed watching the "Uncensored News ", not what the networks offered you, but the real news, uncut and raw !!!!!

Here in rural Texas we have a couple of options with Satellite TV... both are miserable excuses for intelligent content. Both require the user to utilize an energy consuming DVR. Both are complex systems and easy to get "out of whack."

Out of frustration, I wanted to see if "free" television is still available digitally... so I bought one of those cheapie, line of sight digital antennas. (No, it won't work with anything but a digital TV) To my surprise, since we live within 60 miles from the Metroplex, I was able to pick up ten (sometimes more) channels. The content is not much better but I can receive local news and PBS. The higher you position your antenna, the better your reception will be.

If cable were available, I would prefer it. Not that the content would be any better... most American Television is slop for mindless hogs... but the signal would not be interupted by a flock of birds or a small rainshower. Heaven forbid a thunderstorm... LOL!

I'm sick and tired of ten minutes worth of commercials. By the time the show is ready to return... I've forgotten what I was viewing in the first place. Then there's the problem with the volume boost these scoundrels employ when they run a string of 5 to 10 commercials. (They know you've gone away to the regrigerator... LOL!)

The promise of TV has been sidetracked by greed and corruption and our mainstream media giants only give us the news they want us to have. Things happening in the rest of the world... or in the academic or scientific communities are left for CCTV (the communists) to reveal. What a sad state of affairs. That's what happens when you let politicians get involved with broadcasting. Just like everything else... it ends up being a pile of rat dung... sorta like universal health care.

Hang on, Riceeroni--you ain't seen nothin' yet! There's a bill before congress that will take FREE broadcast TV and sell it to commercial companies that will scramble standard, broadcast channels and require the general public to pay to watch local news, programming, etc... Therefore, unless you subscribe to one of the pay systems you will not be able to watch TV at all. Click here for details.

Riceroni,
You can get Directv or Dish TV from any locale. Have you checked with them? They have more content then you can possibly watch.

Deane

More on FiOs TV; I haven't had an outage or even a speck of interference on my HD TV in over two years. The picture quality is astounding. Many dish owners I know have issues with reception much more frequently.

Yes, I agree about Fios - runs flawlessly. I had a lot of problems with cable - both TV and Internet and made the change to DirecTv. The when Fios became available I switched to it because of the internet speed. There are however, some drawbacks for me about Fios TV. The new upgrade has bugs and the menu guide is a real pain in the butt to read because of the colors being used. Verizon has told me there are many complaints and some of the "older" boxes had to be replaced to work with the new OS version.

Deane

Thanks for the "heads-up" Gary. These fools in congress just don't seem to understand that we want less government... not more.

Deane... I hope I didn't mislead you with my opening remarks... we get both satellite providers here... it's just that I feel their services are worthless. When you click on the history channel... they want you to watch ghost stories or ufo myths. Click on the Travel channel and they provide you with a ton of stupid food stories from a team of idiots.

If the government wants to control something... it needs to be the folks who provide worthless, downright dumb television content. Ten idiotic "judge" shows... Nancy (barf) Grace and then CNN and their little sister plus Fox are all hell bent on dishing out what they think we need to know... and each seems compelled to provide us with a team of self-serving buffoons who just love to blather. What ever happened to a real news show... with one guy reading the news and allowing the viewer or listener to decide for himself. (Most of us have brains... although the networks seem to think otherwise.)

If they do away with "free" TV... I'm pretty well convinced that I'll just do without. 100 channels of pure drivel. Sure, every now and then a decent show crops up but they are so few and far between and dish seems to enjoy moving the shows around so it's difficult to find what you seek.

Even worse, the free movies they provide are uncensored and seem to revel in dropping the "F" Bomb unceasingly. I liked it better in world war II when radio and TV folks had manners and morals... even though it was imposed upon them. (Thank God for that!)

I'm calling my "Tea Party" Rep right now. November, here we come!

I got so disgusted with the line up on Satellite and cable that I retained bare minimum on Direct TV for the news and got Netflix. The best thing I ever did.