Cable TV Nonsense

They'll Say Just About Anything To Get You To Sign Up

Click Here to see the "good news" I received from my cable company shortly after they took control from the bankrupt Adelphia.

Now as you can tell, I feel pretty strongly about my DISH Network service and when the cable company sends me something like this in the mail, I have to have a good laugh over it. I've yet to see any offers from my local cable company (Comcast) that have prompted me to even consider switching over to their service for my television programming. For my money, DISH Network offers the best programming packages and prices for my money.

If they only knew how ridiculous it was to send one of these to me. I cannot believe they say "STOP DISHING OUT MONEY!" Are they serious? Oh sure, sign up with the cable company so they can raise their prices a month or two after you sign up.

Check out the entry I made in my DISH Network Blog for information on how often DISH Network has raised their prices over the last dozen years or so.

It's also strange to see the cable companies making the claim that there are "no local services" available with satellite TV. Once again, they are wrong. I have every local channel in my area available to me for an additional $5 a month. Even though my location allows me to receive the local channels from Boston very well with a roof-top antenna, I have recently upgraded my programming package by adding the local channels because we never got good reception from the local TV station in Manchester because the roof-top antenna is pointed towards Boston. We also were not receiving the on-screen program guide information with the local channels as received from the roof-top antenna and that made viewing local channels a bit less convenient.

Since signing up for the local channels, we are now able to watch the Manchester station very clearly. Manchester is not considered a "major market" like Boston or New York, so you can see that DISH Network offers a lot of local channels, and now offers local channels in every U.S. television market.

On the reverse side of the card they sent to me, they have printed the usual nonsensical claims about satellite TV. One of their favorite jabs is to claim that satellite TV reception is subject to weather conditions. This is a true statement, however, they lead people to believe that it is much worse than it actually is.

As I pointed out on the main page, we've lost our DISH Network reception very rarely -- perhaps seven or eight times while watching something during the more than eleven years we have had it here.

I can tell you without hesitation that I used to lose my cable TV service a lot more than that when I had it a number of years ago. We'd lose the service if a auto accident knocked a telephone pole down or if an ice storm or strong winds took the wires down.

I can recall waiting two or three days to have my cable TV service restored after a bad ice storm one winter. The weather-related interruptions we have experienced with DISH Network TV have typically lasted between 10 minutes and 30 minutes. But of course the cable company never talks about that.

Be sure to see my blog post that covers the cable outage that hit our area and lasted over two weeks. And the cable TV companies want to talk about how the weather impacts satellite reception? Yeah, right.

And here's something else to think about. If satellite TV is so unreliable due to weather conditions, why is it that the cable TV companies themselves use satellite signals for most of the programming they are sending out to subscribers? Have you been by your cable TV company's "head end" facility?

The "head end" is the facility where they feed the signals into their system for their subscribers. If not, find out where it is and take a drive by. You'll see a few satellite dishes at their facility that they use for most of the programming they provide. I guess getting TV signals from a satellite can't be as unreliable as they claim it is, eh?

Cable TV is also much more prone to outages due to equipment failure, since it is so dependent on all the equipment that is strung up on the telephone poles between their facility and your home. This includes the wires themselves, as well as a series of amplifiers or repeaters that are used to maintain the strength of the signals throughout the system.

Granted, this is a rather extreme example, but I do know someone who has this capability at their house. If you live in an area that is ever subject to ice storms, you know they can sometimes be severe enough to knock out power for days. With cable TV, no power means no TV, since their whole system is dependent on electrical power to keep it working. Remember those amplifiers I mentioned? Well, without power, they don't work.

However, if you have your own generator or battery back-up system (like that someone I know) you can continue to watch your DISH Network programming, and keep yourself from going nuts due to the extreme boredom so many of us experience during power outages!

I was searching around not long ago for some DISH Network information online, and I stumbled onto one of those sites that promote cable TV. It was comparing satellite and cable TV, so I had to take a minute to read some of it. Frankly, there was so much foolishness there that I decided I just had to update this section and destroy some of their claims.

Their old standby argument is that satellite customers have all kinds of trouble due to the weather. I've talked about this before, but they did bring up a new fabrication that I thought was rather amusing, so I wanted to mention it.

They are talking about something they call "wind fade." I don't know where they dreamed that one up but I can tell you that in all the years I have had DISH Network, I have not once seen it react to the wind and I live in a pretty windy location here at an elevation of around 1100 feet.

Trust me, we get more than our share of wind here. In fact, one of my neighbors just up the street has one of those windmills for generating electric power. Guess what? People don't spend thousands of dollars getting one of those things installed if they don't have a good supply of wind in their area. So much for the"wind fade" argument, I suppose.

And here's another good one. They claim that since the weather so easily affects your satellite reception, you may lose your signal before you can be warned about dangerous weather that is coming, like a tornado. They encourage people to trust cable TV for the safety of their family. I guess they need to resort to fear-mongering to convince people that cable TV is the best choice.

Well, guess what happens when the wind blows a tree onto the lines? Bye, bye cable service. So much for receiving that warning of an impending tornado by way of your cable service. The very best option for dangerous weather warnings is one of those weather alert radios you can buy at a very reasonable price. Make sure it can run on batteries in case a storm knocks out power in your area! If you are that concerned about protecting your family from dangerous weather, that is the best option.

One thing that particular site keeps harping about with regard to satellite TV is "signal fade." Well, I've had DISH Network for over ten years, and I don't know what they are talking about, so I guess it cannot be the big problem that they want people to believe it is.

One thing that is not talked about on the cable TV site is a cost comparison, and that's because cable TV is the hands down loser in that category. I was a cable TV customer for 10 years in my previous home before I got DISH Network, so I know how often they raise their prices, and let me tell you, it is not infrequently. In the ten years I have had DISH Network, they have raised the price two or three times. If you like paying more, by all means, sign up for cable TV.