Archived from groups: alt.video.ptv.tivo (
More info?)
The big difference between cable and satellite where I live (San Jose area)
is the cost. Directv works out at about $60 a month (2 rooms, TiVo, HBO),
Comcast works out at over $90 for the same (2 rooms, digital, HBO, 2 PVRs).
The basic package without digital is much cheaper than DTV's lowest, but I
want BBC America and Fox Sports (well I would want FSBA if there was a
hockey season!) which are only available on the digital tier.
I have found the reliability of DTV to be much better than cable, even in
bad weather. When we had cable, the picture quality would degrade once or
twice a year to the point where we needed to call Comcast. They would always
send a tech to our house (usually a week after we called), who would
conclude that the problem was outside, we would then have another weeks
delay until the problem was fixed. We have satellite for 3 years now with no
outages.
<in2sheep@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1109888236.798768.6600@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
>
> Rick S. wrote:
>> Looking for opinions on cable vs. Directv. Picture quality, customer
>> service, etc. My cable rates just went up again, so it's time to
> shop. Plus
>> they don't even offer HD.
>
> There's a hot topic for some people...
>
> Here's my opinion.
>
> Picture quality: You can get digital cable which should match DirecTV.
> DirecTV can be impacted by weather so the more rain storms you have,
> the higher chance you may see digital artifcats during some shows (I
> see this maybe once or twice a year where I live). Cable is pretty
> well known for having spotty signal quality on their analog lines, but
> with digital, I haven't heard as much about them having digital
> artifact problems, although some cable services are known for having
> random outages which never happens with DirecTV. You do tend to pay
> more for digital cable also.
>
> customer service - cable loses this one hands down. DirecTV isn't a
> shining star, but you can do (almost) everything on line and it's not
> so hard to get someone on the phone. Working with the cable people is
> just painful.
>
> You can get HD from DirectTV for some small fee/month. A big plus of
> DirecTV is you can get the DirecTiVo with dual tuners, dolby 5.1, all
> digital all the time, etc. and if you're willing to hack your box, you
> can then pull digital shows off your TiVo directly to the PC without
> any D->A->D conversions.
>
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