Have You Made the Switch? (Cable vs Satellite)

I can't stand cable, but I have never had a satellite either. I think the satellites depend on where you live. I had neighbor up north that had one (in the wooded mountains) and they would go out on a cloudy day.

Since we moved to Florida we have Verizon Fios (and Netflix) and my hubby will NEVER switch to anything else.

I just canceled my satelite (directtv) but it was not because of anything they were doing wrong. I just had the Choice package and it had pretty much all the channels we wanted to watch for $60 a month. I only canceled it cause after my ex moved out and the divorce was final i couldnt justify the cost for the amount of time the kids and i are actually home to watch it so we are just doing netflix now and loving it.

Satellite is very uncommon around here. You almost never see it. Almost all the cities around here are outfitted with fiber-optic. We, have Verizon Fios. We've had it for several years, and have not had one problem. It went out one day, I called, and 30 minutes later they had a guy in the neighborhood figuring it out. We had Comcast once, and it was the worst service I've ever had. Blech! It was awful.

Wait for Uverse!!! I got satellite through AT&T, there is a reason it is so cheap, it sucks!! I had it for two months and every freaking storm I lost the signal!!! I was in school at the time and never had time to watch TV. I swear to god every time I had time to sit down and watch TV I would hear the thunder!!!

I have Uverse, you just have no idea how much I love it!!!! No more dealing with the stupid people at Charter Comm!

Satellite does not work when it's windy, storms are coming even a state away, they do not provide steady service and it at the will of the environment as to if they do or not. Oh, and if the wind moves the dish they have to come out and readjust for a fee.

I hate the service out at the farm. They have no other options though. It is 1/2 mile from where the cable company stopping hanging cable and they have no plans for lengthening it.

Cable is stable in my town. We had the TV and computers on battery backup surge protectors during an ice storm a few years ago. We had cable TV the entire time we were without electricity. The cable on shut down for the hour they shut the entire town down to reboot some system.

A few months ago we ditched cable tv all together. We now use a combination of netflix, hulu, red box, blockbuster express, ect for our televeision watching needs. There are so many sites online to watch tv for free and if your tv has the ability you just hook your computer to the tv and stream shows that way. There is nothing on cable that we used to watch (for a lot of $) that we can't watch now for virtually nothing.

We have directv and have plenty of chanels and we only pay $32 a month. We have all the basic chanels and then we have HGTV, disney and all the kid stations and that's all we really need. We don't watch it all that much though.

I've been internet only for so long now, I don't even know. Years and years.

Netflix, Hulu+, show sites, xBox live... and I get more "channels" than my mum does with her premium cable package. I'm not even going to touch the quasi-legal sites, but if you add them, you've got everything and more.

The "more" is because you can get BBC, Aussie, NZ, etc.

It didn't used to be this way, of course, but especially over the past 5 years... it's nearly all online.

I'm just WAITING for HBO to let us buy service individually through them on baited breath. HBO has gone mobile, but only with a cable package. Nope. Huh-uh. Not gonna happen.

I pay less than $20 a month for Netflix, Hulu+, and xBox Live.

We made the switch to DirecTV - it has it's problems - like snow and rain can interrupt the signal.

We get the sports channels - Baseball and football. Our bill is $100 a month. We've been with them for 6 years. We have DVRs as well.

We've been Dish Network customers for almost 10 years and have been very happy with their service. Of course, we live in a state that has about 320 sunny days a year, so, clouds & rain aren't really an issue. Our bill is about $50/month and we have the local channels +120 (family pack), hubby also "must have" HD, so that's $10 of the bill! We did switch to Comcast cable and HATED it! We only switched because they had a better deal if we bundled it with internet. It took about 2 weeks before I called them back and said forget it! and we went back to DISH (for TV) and kept Comcast internet. We just started up internet through CenturyLink (new to our area) and are happy with the service--it's about $30/month for 12Mbps.

Every couple of years we "shop around," but, really, we are getting a pretty good deal with Dish (yes, we also love watching our shows!). My parents live in a neighboring town and pay almost double (for similar programming) with DirectTV. Besides, any time we have had a complaint about the satellite (signal out, bad DVR, etc), they give us freebies (PPV coupons, free channels, etc) or discounts on our bill. I have to say, though, that my husband worked for a satellite company a long time ago, so he does know how to make minor adjusments when the wind does blow the dish off track.

Cable sucks. Satellite rocks.

We switched a few years ago and love it!

Either satellite is fine - and we rarely have any interruptions from storms. What made our decision was: 1) price; full HD programming; free DVR; free HD; and the terrible service (like you) from cable.

Have ATT uverse..love it. bill too is slowing increasing but still cheaper than most cable companies! SWITCH!

We had AT&T U-verse and loved it. It did get expensive though. So we called Comcast and they were able to beat the price (we bundle cable, phone and internet). So far Comcast has stayed at the lower rate and we're happy with the service so no problems.

Although, for a few years we kept switching back and forth between the two, b/c we'd get the introductory rate for a year then they would try to raise it. So we'd switch to their competitor, and get the introductory rate again. Looks like Comcast figured it out and decided to keep us at that rate :)

We had a satelite and HATED it. I don't know if it was our area at the time, but everytime a plane flew by in a certain spot it would go out until the plane passed (and it was O'Hare!). Also snow would accumulate on the dish and it would not work. We'd have to go outside and brush the snow off - and if you were supposed to have a show recording when it snowed forget it. It also didn't work when it rained or when it was cloudy. I would highly recommend NOT getting a satellite dish. They couldn't pay me to deal with that again.

Before switching, get a quote from your current providers competitor. Then call your provider and ask them if they can beat (or at least match) that or you will switch. If they can not, then switch. They may just give you the lower rate and you're all set.

we switched from Dish to ATT. Do not pay for the highest speed internet. And the price they give you is without taxes, so you may not save much more, but it sounds like you will get better service. Since we switched our phone (which has always been ATT) has gone OUT twice, like used the phone fine then 5 minutes later no phone service. I am NOT happy about that, no dial tone or anything, and if it happens again I will have them come inspect it. Our internet speed we paid for was 18, we used to have 6, again, with ATT, and honestly I think this is SLOWER, so I think we will be dropping back down and saving the money. Our TV service is GREAT and I am really pleased over all. There are little things that bug me like you can't set up favorites for each person in the guide, and they have home shopping network as a channel you can't block, but overall I love the TV service and haven't had an issue at all.

We were actually looking into that as well. In our area there aren't many choices though. We were going to go with Satellite and find an internet service... until we found out that if we wanted the same internet speeds we currently have, we would end up actually paying more than what we are paying with our cable company. That is another thing you would want to check with your providers, your internet speeds. Right now with cable internet we have about 13mbps and for the same price through another provider we could get around 5mbps. That is a huge decrease in speed. I share, and view a lot of videos and photos with friends and family so that is a big deal for me, not to mention if you are wanting to stream movies through something like Netflix or Hulu.
We ended up calling the cable company and telling them we were looking at other options, and they gave us a deal on our monthly costs. I think we ended up saving around $20 or so a month.

Internet: Ask what your speed would be on the sattelite. I have heard that sattelite internet is way slower than cable internet. I have 8mb/sec and it's reasonable. Anything less would be probably too slow for comfort.

As for tv, we love tv, but we can't justify paying $100 or more a month. We just paid for the internet and we stream from hulu and Netflix. Hulu is free. Netflix is cheap - like $7 a month. We live very happily. Right now I'm watching the new show "Bent" on hulu. I'm watching the past 4 episodes commercial free! When we did have sattelite, we were annoyed whenever the rain was too stormy and we lost signal.

We were forced to have cable a few years ago (while we were in a rental and the landlord wouldn't allow us to attach or set up a satellite dish). It was awful. Hated it. It was constantly having issues or going out. Usually when someone was sick and was spending the day in bed with the remote control for entertainment. :( Hubby missed lots of the middle of sporting events, too. Hated it.

Before that and since then, we have used satellite. Pretty happy with the service in general. We don't have many issues with it going out, even in weather. And without premium channels or sports NFL packages or any extras like that (we have like 150 channels plus radio channels, so not the bottom level package) our bill runs about $75/month. I'd love to have it be $20 or zero, of course, lol.

We live on the coast in the south, and during hurricane season (or just the summer in general) when there are some pretty severe thunderstorm/windy activity, we can sometimes lose the signal for brief periods of time. But it has to be a major storm. Not just a little windy out. We're talking the kind that makes you think tornadoes might be approaching, or there is a lot of lightening of the variety that you should turn your TV and electronics off anyway.
We had Dish years ago, and it seemed to go out with every raindrop that fell. We've had DirectTV for probably 10 years now, and it doesn't have NEAR that number of lost signal events. It is pretty rare to lose the signal.

Have you tried calling your cable service and telling them you are going to leave if you don't get a better rate? I do that every six months with Comcast and have happily been at 107.50 for cable and internet (no premium channels) for over a year now. At the point I figured out how to work them I was about to start paying 150.00 a month and that was not okay. I love unwinding with all my shows after the kids go to bed. ;-)

C.

We have had AT & T U-Verse for about 4 years and LOVE it. Previously had DirecTV and had the same outage problems with heavy rain and snow that some others have noted. The problems were actually not that often, but when it occurred it was annoying!
We do not have the U-Verse phone (I need a hard-line fax); but are extremely pleased with the TV (U-450 package with HD) and internet.