Cable vs Satellite vs u-verse

[Warhammer]

What's the current consensus for broadband and cable, etc.?

[korme]

u verse is trying to turn me broke

[Blackadar]

Cut the cord entirely.

[BillJasper]

We've had Insight/Time Warner broadband for over a decade now. The price doesn't seem too steep for 20 meg service and we have enough bandwidth to run Netflix on two devices.

[Marmel]

Switched from Comcast to U-verse and could not be happier about it. I have no interest in satellite.

[Honolulu_Blue]

I've always been perfectly happy with Comcast, but I know I'm in the minority there.

[Butter]

I have had satellite and U-Verse. Overall, U-Verse has been pretty solid, but there can be some software lag in the program guides on their boxes which gets old after a while. We had stuttering for a while, but I really haven't noticed that for a good year. I think we were one of our area's first adopters, and now that there are more subscribers they were able to add more access points or whatever to reduce the picture quality issues.

I have also never heard of U-Verse having rights fees showdowns over channels, which is highly appealing.

[chadritt]

I loved U-verse when I had it. Never had a problem with the internet or cable and it was extremely easy to change my cable package through their website. My current provider was pretty much forced on me by my apartment complex and making any changes to my service is a giant pain comparatively.

[terpkristin]

Knowing how satellites work, I'd never get satellite TV unless it was my only option and would probably even then think REALLY hard before getting satellite internet. Oddly, most people who work in my industry prefer terrestrial-based solutions for the typical home consumer...

/tk

[korme]

After this month's promotion runs out, I think I will be paying over $200 for U-Verse. See, they get me to stay by offering me a nice deal, but it's a short term one, yet they keep me on that nice new package but drop the deal. I started out paying $110/mo for U-Verse a year and a half ago and it's now going to almost double that. Time to drop and find something different.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Butter_of_69

I have also never heard of U-Verse having rights fees showdowns over channels, which is highly appealing.

I actually figured that was probably a matter of a lot of their contracts not having reached expiration date yet.
Guess I was wrong about that.

Fox dispute leaves AT&T U-verse TV subscribers without 20 baseball games in St. Louis - FierceCable

Al Jazeera America Is Already in a Carriage Dispute With AT&T | Adweek

AT&T pulls Scripps channels in dispute over use rights, fees » Knoxville News Sentinel

edit: removed one link, was a bad Google result that I misread

[Butter]

Eh. One was 2010, one was St. Louis specific, and the third is Al Jazeera America. So I will I suppose amend my statement to say "over channels I care about".

[kcchief19]

Originally Posted by korme

u verse is trying to turn me broke

Call them and select the option that you want to change or cancel a service, and tell them you're leaving. They will offer you pretty much the same deal as a new customer.

I called and selected the option to ask a question about my bill, told the rep I was shopping my options because the last rate hike was too much, and told her what she had to match to keep me from going to DirecTV. She only offered to knock $15 off my bill (my bill went up $65).

When I called the second time to cancel, I got a retention rep and he offered me virtually the same price as DirecTV (without NFL Ticket, of course). I told him I would have stayed if I was offered that deal the first time I called instead of after I already switched.

[kcchief19]

Originally Posted by Butter_of_69

I have also never heard of U-Verse having rights fees showdowns over channels, which is highly appealing.

Partly because they are a smaller dog and just pay the going rate. The big channels hammer out deals with Comcast and Time Warner to set the market, and everybody else follows.

Uverse has no trouble dropping channels for asking for too much money. They aren't big name channels, but they dropped Hallmark and came darn close to impasse on AMC not too long ago.

[Julio Riddols]

Originally Posted by Blackadar

Cut the cord entirely.

This is what we did. 15 a month for Netflix and Hulu and Youtube has enough content to keep me and my family occupied any time we need it. When cable and satellite go pay per channel and make everything the channels show "on demand", I might get back in that pool.

[General Mike]

Comcast is my only option for internet here, so I stay with them for the other stuff.

[General Mike]

Dola, their internet is so shitty that cutting the cord and going to a streaming model wouldn't work for me anyway.

[rjolley]

Originally Posted by terpkristin

Knowing how satellites work, I'd never get satellite TV unless it was my only option and would probably even then think REALLY hard before getting satellite internet. Oddly, most people who work in my industry prefer terrestrial-based solutions for the typical home consumer...

/tk

Can you expand on this?

[Peregrine]

I'm happy with Uverse and haven't had many issues.

[DanGarion]

I switched to DirecTV the moment I started having to pay for Time Warner Cable and I'm happy I made the switch. I think DirecTV has a better overall product compared to most cable companies and they have the NFL package which they basically give away as a loss leader.

[fantom1979]

Originally Posted by Honolulu_Blue

I've always been perfectly happy with Comcast, but I know I'm in the minority there.

Just switched to WOW after 5 years of being on Comcast. The switch was entirely due to price, as I had always been pretty happy with Comcast's service and selection. So far, I am pretty happy with WOW. Internet stable and fast enough to play Netflix on two computers, and have had no increase in lag while playing games. Channel selection seems to be on par with Comcast (except MLB Network is missing), but On-Demand selections are not nearly as good. CBS seems to be completely missing from WOW on-demand. Saving $50 per month while still being able to hold onto my precious NFL Network/Redzone sealed the deal.

I researched Dish/Direct/U-verse, but I have 4 TV's and high speed internet. With Dish/Direct, the entire separate internet thing seemed like way too much work for someone who is as lazy as I am. U-Verse did not offer any savings once I factored in the 4 receiver boxes I would need. I probably could have gotten a better price with them if I had got off their website and called. I have a friend that works at WOW, so a couple of texts and emails and I was ready to go.

[terpkristin]

Originally Posted by rjolley

Can you expand on this?

Oops, sorry I'd missed this awhile ago. :\

Well, satellite TV (and internet) has come a long way from what it once was, with more powerful and capable satellites, but the issues that exist really can't be entirely overcome with power and technology.

The crux of the problem is that you have to get a signal to the satellite from a ground station and then back down to a receiver on the ground. Most providers use satellite feeds to provide at least a portion of (if not all of) their feeds that get distributed via copper/fiber to homes, but they use large dishes and very robust filters on the ground to ensure the best signal quality. Still, when the weather is bad at either the source dish or the receiving dish, quality will suffer. This is made worse with home-based dishes. Again, they've gotten much better, but as the industry moves to higher-frequency transmission frequencies, the signal is more susceptible to things in the atmosphere (weather, pollution, etc) and requires better filtering and tools on the ground to mitigate. A small dish and home setup can only do so much. Also, the dish for the home setup has to be pointed in the correct place. High winds can cause the dish to move/distort, which will also cause issues with signal integrity.

Then there's the bandwidth issue. Each spacecraft has a number of transponders, with a certain amount of bandwidth. They move to the higher frequencies to try to maximize what can be routed around, but there is still a limit. This isn't much of a problem with television but is a HUGE problem when you're talking about the DTH (direct-to-home) user trying to use the satellite for UP and DOWN traffic with satellite internet. There's also latency with doing satellite internet, which keeps speeds for users in the dial-up/low-end DSL range. A coworker of mine couldn't get copper for terrestrial internet where he lived, and instead of going the satellite route (which would have required him to cut down a tree for line-of-sight PLUS the other issues associated with satellite internet) and decided he'd get better speed and service using a Sprint cell wireless card.

There is also (though this is a much smaller issue than it was even 5 years ago) the issue of coverage. Satellite operators put requirements on the contractors (like the company I work for) for performance and coverage in various cities or in zones. If you happen to live well inside those boundaries, you're probably going to have a better experience with the service than those that live on the edges. With the newer spacecraft using the higher frequencies, there are more coverage regions but they are smaller in shape, which can potentially cause issues depending on use and where the ground-based antenna is relative to the boundary of the coverage zone for the transponder.

Satellite technologies are improving every day. I see it all the time...when I started working 8 years ago, the industry-standard was C-band, which was heavy and somewhat power-intensive. Ku-band stuff was the "new hotness" for most DTH things. Now Ku is sort of the standard and Ka is the new kid on the block (with some other bands for various uses), and these problems are becoming easier to mitigate or otherwise minimize. Satellite-based TV and internet have their place and uses (remote areas, for example), but I'll stick with my ground-based systems for the foreseeable future.

/tk

[DanGarion]

Originally Posted by terpkristin

Oops, sorry I'd missed this awhile ago. :\

Well, satellite TV (and internet) has come a long way from what it once was, with more powerful and capable satellites, but the issues that exist really can't be entirely overcome with power and technology.

The crux of the problem is that you have to get a signal to the satellite from a ground station and then back down to a receiver on the ground. Most providers use satellite feeds to provide at least a portion of (if not all of) their feeds that get distributed via copper/fiber to homes, but they use large dishes and very robust filters on the ground to ensure the best signal quality. Still, when the weather is bad at either the source dish or the receiving dish, quality will suffer. This is made worse with home-based dishes. Again, they've gotten much better, but as the industry moves to higher-frequency transmission frequencies, the signal is more susceptible to things in the atmosphere (weather, pollution, etc) and requires better filtering and tools on the ground to mitigate. A small dish and home setup can only do so much. Also, the dish for the home setup has to be pointed in the correct place. High winds can cause the dish to move/distort, which will also cause issues with signal integrity.

Then there's the bandwidth issue. Each spacecraft has a number of transponders, with a certain amount of bandwidth. They move to the higher frequencies to try to maximize what can be routed around, but there is still a limit. This isn't much of a problem with television but is a HUGE problem when you're talking about the DTH (direct-to-home) user trying to use the satellite for UP and DOWN traffic with satellite internet. There's also latency with doing satellite internet, which keeps speeds for users in the dial-up/low-end DSL range. A coworker of mine couldn't get copper for terrestrial internet where he lived, and instead of going the satellite route (which would have required him to cut down a tree for line-of-sight PLUS the other issues associated with satellite internet) and decided he'd get better speed and service using a Sprint cell wireless card.

There is also (though this is a much smaller issue than it was even 5 years ago) the issue of coverage. Satellite operators put requirements on the contractors (like the company I work for) for performance and coverage in various cities or in zones. If you happen to live well inside those boundaries, you're probably going to have a better experience with the service than those that live on the edges. With the newer spacecraft using the higher frequencies, there are more coverage regions but they are smaller in shape, which can potentially cause issues depending on use and where the ground-based antenna is relative to the boundary of the coverage zone for the transponder.

Satellite technologies are improving every day. I see it all the time...when I started working 8 years ago, the industry-standard was C-band, which was heavy and somewhat power-intensive. Ku-band stuff was the "new hotness" for most DTH things. Now Ku is sort of the standard and Ka is the new kid on the block (with some other bands for various uses), and these problems are becoming easier to mitigate or otherwise minimize. Satellite-based TV and internet have their place and uses (remote areas, for example), but I'll stick with my ground-based systems for the foreseeable future.

/tk

But at the end of the day only DirecTV has all the NFL games. I could say much of the same types of issues affect the cable companies as well...

[mauchow]

UVerse tv was good for me but the internet was always spotty.

Extremely happy w DTV.

[CU Tiger]

I have DirecTv because it is all that is available in this house.

Before we moved despite being an authorized dealer for DISH and Directv, I paid for local cable TV and Internet .

[terpkristin]

Originally Posted by DanGarion

But at the end of the day only DirecTV has all the NFL games. I could say much of the same types of issues affect the cable companies as well...

Can't speak to the nfl packages, I never buy those.

Yes, as I said, because the cable companies use the satellite feeds as their source for distribution, they can also be impacted by weather and atmosphere and bandwidth. The differences are that they don't use satellite for internet so the latency and speed issues go away and for tv, they use huge dishes with operators standing by to fix issues. Their systems are sooo much better equipped to attenuate and accommodate the weather issues and are far less susceptible to wind, etc. Plus, they have antenna farms for redundancy. You still see SOME effects of bandwidth and weather on terrestrial cable systems but they are far fewer than satellite DTH systems.

/tk

[terpkristin]

Dola,
Terrestrial cable companies also pay for priority (in some cases) on the satellites so they can be more protected in case of satellite issues. And the ground locations that the satellites are designed for (spec'd to) are usually the satellite farms.

That said, there are issues with ground cable like people digging up lines. But in 3 years of having forced satellite tv (no option for terrestrial cable)with my old apartment, I had issues every week. With my 5 years of FiOS, I've lost signal once and only occasionally (less than once a month) get glitchy feeds (which could be due to signal compression in the line or effects at the ground site(.

I'd still recommend satellite internet only as a last resort.

[Edward64]

Somewhat off topic but related.

I just got my 2 kids the iPhone. My wife and I already had the iPhone, iPad, Amazon Prime. We use the Wi-Fi at home with Comcast "Performance" package and Cisco Linksys 3500 router.

My son this morning said that performance was slow last night when my wife was watching a movie on her iPad and I was watching a movie on Amazon Prime.

My question is how do I know if I should upgrade the Comcast package or buy a new router or if it was just a blip.

[DanGarion]

Originally Posted by terpkristin

Dola,
Terrestrial cable companies also pay for priority (in some cases) on the satellites so they can be more protected in case of satellite issues. And the ground locations that the satellites are designed for (spec'd to) are usually the satellite farms.

That said, there are issues with ground cable like people digging up lines. But in 3 years of having forced satellite tv (no option for terrestrial cable)with my old apartment, I had issues every week. With my 5 years of FiOS, I've lost signal once and only occasionally (less than once a month) get glitchy feeds (which could be due to signal compression in the line or effects at the ground site(.

I'd still recommend satellite internet only as a last resort.

Oh yes I agree with you. I didn't realize this conversation had become just about Satellite internet, I would NEVER recommend it unless it was a last resort. But as for TV service I think it is on par with Cable.

[DanGarion]

Originally Posted by Edward64

Somewhat off topic but related.

I just got my 2 kids the iPhone. My wife and I already had the iPhone, iPad, Amazon Prime. We use the Wi-Fi at home with Comcast "Performance" package and Cisco Linksys 3500 router.

My son this morning said that performance was slow last night when my wife was watching a movie on her iPad and I was watching a movie on Amazon Prime.

My question is how do I know if I should upgrade the Comcast package or buy a new router or if it was just a blip.

Honestly if two people are watching separate online movies and the wireless is slow upgrading your package is 99% of the time not going to be a solution. Wireless only has so much bandwidth to share.

[Edward64]

Could a beefier router help?

[DanGarion]

Originally Posted by Edward64

Could a beefier router help?

Honestly it's probably not the router. You only have so much bandwidth.

[SteveMax58]

Originally Posted by Edward64

Could a beefier router help?

Yeah as Dan said its not likely your router unless there are other issues beyond that scenario you described. But depending on the type of router...you could use it to monitor your home network traffic volume to see if you are using more bandwidth than your Comcast service will support. That would at least rule out/in the possible need for a higher tier.

What is the downstream bandwidth for the Comcast performance package? 10 Mbps? 15 Mbps? 25? Keep in mind these are typically not guaranteed rates (though your service plan would state definitively), especially so from 6-9pm when internet traffic is peaked (highly subject to the local facility serving you). This tends to be the way most cable internet works. So even if you couldnt do all of those things well last night...doesn't mean you couldnt do exactly the same thing right now.

The 2 movies you had going might be about 8-10 Mbps (if they are both HD) plus any other surfing/email/etc. going on (which is almost nothing tbh). So if your service is supposed to be (up to) 10 Mbps, you certainly could be close enough (assuming the same conditions & movies, etc.) to have issues, 15 is likely close enough to have issues during peak traffic, while 25+ shouldn't experience these things (again, hyper-local though and not something anybody could know except the Comcast techs maintaining your facility).