As far as Quatity DiectTV Satellite is what it is 10 High Def plus HBO & Showtime. But cable on the other hand is diffrent depending on your carrier. Time Warner is no way as good as Cable Visions IO. DirecTV has the sports packages if you care. DirectTV has a small edge in picture.
No, even your cable provider gets their signal via sat... ;-) For the record, I am Digital Cable myself, but only becasue they offered a better deal in the long-term.
What do you mean by bandwidth? Aer you trying to get internet access in conjunction?
As far as prices are concerned, they all have package prices that are pretty fixed. They may have specials running from time to time depending on the area, and you may be able to get them to drop their prices for a few months, but overall they will get you since you really don't have many choices.
If you are in Ontario you are probably better off with cable.
That's what I meant by "long-term". The emerging Satellite provider here had a great "first 6 months" offer, but after that, it was even more expensive. Although, maybe I should call up my cable guys and say they should match that offer for the next 6 months or I will go there...
They are really starting to get competitive. The Digital cable works great like the new In Demand which allows you to watch HBO, ShowTime, Starz and movies that are stored in their system at any time. If you miss a show you can catch it later because it's saved.
One point that has been brought up to me as I have tried to make this same decision is that digital cable is not "All Digital" like satellite is. With cable some of the channels come over the feed in standard analog format and others are digital. Satelite is all digital. I've been told that the picture on any given channel on an HDTV from digital feed (satellite) is superior to the picture from the analog feed (cable). We have Comcast in my neighborhood. Does anyone know if there is any merit to this?
Yea, Dave is right. Your confusing standard analog channels with digital channels. With your basic cable set up, you get analog, those same channels will be analog even with your digital box, however MOST service providers will give you those same stations in digital formats on another channel.
I got some more information, perhaps you care to comment.
It is true that signal source is often satellite but these source signals use full bandwidth (no compression).
Satellite service providers must compress the bandwidth for cost reasons to deliver so many channels. Full bandwidth would require launching many more multi-million dollar satellites.
Cable providers delivering land based signals to the customers are not restricted by this compression requirement.
The result is that because cable providers do not compress (as much?) they send a better clearer more high definition signal.
Hog the compression that you are referring to is really a non-ssue at this point. The problem is that so many sources of the programming are still low-def. That is the source is still shot in lower resolution and/or the broadcast is still in lower res. So the compression is really not something to worry about for quite a while.
That's not what I heard. There are more and more HD sources all the time. It's all about bandwidth in the news today. The big satellite service providers are chomping at the bit for additional satellite licenses from the government.
Also, if the next big satellite change is to Mpeg4 compression, doesn't that indicate a deficiency with the current Mpeg2 compression process? Mpeg4 will drive new dishes and receivers to customers I believe.
When signals are compressed as they are from satellite service providers, they need to be uncompressed and will show artifacts.
More and more HD sources are coming, but out of 400 some odd channels available to me on my Comcast, I have about 11 or 12 that broadcast in HD. Out of those you get very few programming that is actually shot in HD, including some (not most) live sports, and some regular TV programs and some movies
The compression software can be downloaded via satellites to the receivers. It definitly shouldn't require a dish upgrade since they are dumb anyway. Remember that mostly you don't pay for those things anyway.
My Comcast signal (uncompressed supposedly) constantly shows flakes and image breakups. So there may not be much advantages there.
I think I would base my decision on this topic on content availablity and weather issues (storms or even rain sometimes knock out satellite availability, someone may have mentioned this here before), not so much on compression issues