When you go to the sites that promote cable and read their arguments
and supposed facts and then go to the real sources of fact you will
have basically the information which has been gathered below. There
can only be one conclusion because of the following reasons listed and
linked to the research below.
Satellite TV Demand Is Exploding
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You may have probably already noticed that more and more of the
people you know at work are making comments that they saw this
or that on their satellite TV but unfortunately because you have
cable you could not get that channel. But then, don’t you
get the local channels that they cannot get? You may still believe
this but it is a big myth nowadays. With Satellite TV you get
almost all immediate local channels and actually more because
you get almost all the local channels just beyond your reach with
cable in your region. The
Federal Communications recent ninth annual report on cable and
satellite subscribers shows a significant satellite TV subscriber
growth rate during the first half of 2002 of 19.3 million to 21.1
million which is a 9 percent increase while the growth rate for
cable TV subscribers only increased from 68.6 million to 68.8
million households which is basically flat for the same time period.
In fact during 2002 Cable’s market share fell a further
2 percent and now stands at 63 percent. According to a recent
Nielson Media Research in the last year television households
in the Susquehanna Valley increased by more than 8,700 while in
the same period cable households dropped by 17,700. Obviously
they are switching to alternative systems which in almost every
case will be satellite TV since there is really no other systems
that meets most viewers expectations. There are many good reasons
why so many are leaving cable and changing to Satellite TV as
clearly outlined and detailed below.
Satellite TV Will Save You Money
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With Satellite TV in almost all cases you pay less per month
with far more channels and at higher quality digital without all
the rate hikes that continue to happen with cable. In fact studies
have shown that on average Satellite TV costs the consumer 20%
less than cable TV. The amount of your savings with vary depending
on whether you live in the 5% of the US where there are some competing
cable companies or in the other 95% where there is only one cable
company with no incentive to drive down competition. You can get
Satellite TV starting at around $25.00 per month whereas the national
average for cable from July 2002 to July 2003 is $40.11
per month with rate increases at 8.2% during that period.
In the areas where there is competition between companies the
figure is lower averaging $37.84. Subscription rates for Satellite
TV have only increased in the last 6 years since January 1997
13% while cable rates in the same period increased over 35% which
is almost 3 times greater. Most Cable companies require you to
pay for extra receivers in other rooms whereas a number of big
Satellite companies like VMC
Satellite, the biggest DISH Network Dealer, in the US offer
up to 4 receivers free with free installation and life time warranty.
Even those Satellite companies that do charge for extra receivers
are offering plans at a lower price than cable companies.
Here is an example of the excellent deals that Satellite companies
in the US can give you that you will never get with cable.
VMC Satellite in the US has been rated with the best quality,
prices, service, support and customer satisfaction by groups like
the Consumers
Product Review Council which did a poll across the entire
US showing out of 10,732 customers that use Satellite TV an overwhelming
majority of 71% crediting VMC
Satellite. For as low as $29.99 per month VMC Satellite gives
you free installation with up to 4 receivers, all equipment is
free with a life time warranty including a free DVR that can record
up to 100 hours of your favorite shows without tapes, $49.99 free
credit on your bill each month for 4 months, a free HDTV receiver
when you sign up for HDTV programming which has up to 256 channels
of digital quality available. Reference Links
(TheWGALChannel.com)
Cable TV Rips You Off Big
Time
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Cable TV price rates have been increasing far more rapidly than
Satellite. According to a
recent Federal Communications report from July 2001 to July 2002,
cable rates rose by an average of 8.2 percent, more than five
times the rate of inflation compared with a 7.6 percent increase
in the same period one year early. The consumer price index during
this same period only increased an average of 1.5 percent. That
is 5 times greater price increase for cable than for the consumer
price index. Cable companies blame the price increases on the cost
of upgrading systems, equipment, new programming and sports channels.
Consumer Federation of America and Consumers Union, the publisher
of Consumer Reports magazine state the real reason for increases
is rather due to cable companies taking advantage of their power
of monopoly due to the lack of competition. In fact 95% of cable
owners have no competing cable companies in the US. A report entitled
"Cable
Mergers, Monopoly Power, and Price Increases," points out
government and industry data that shows cable revenues rising far
faster that their industry costs. In fact expenditures to upgrade
systems to digital and so on have been shown to require basically
no price increases because they easily pay for themselves. Also
it is shocking to discover what cable companies have spent to buy
each other out so that they can be consolidated and have monopoly
power for higher revenue. Between 1998 and 2001 cable companies
spent over a quarter of a trillion dollars buying each other out
which is six times more than they did on capital expenditures to
upgrade their system and during this same time the average price
paid per subscriber more than doubled. Also the report shows that
almost 40% of the top and highest priced cable channels are owned
partially or completely by cable operators or companies which have
large ownership stakes in cable companies which means that for a
significant part of the cable industry the increasing cost of programming
prices passed on to the consumer is due to deals for the transfer
of one division of the company to another division. Also the report
shows that same things are now beginning to happen to cable internet
services that have happened to cost such unjust prices increases
for cable TV
Satellite's TV Superior
Quality Reception.
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When a customer adds digital cable to their present subscription
only the supplementary channels are transmitted in digital whilst
all the others channels remain analog. Satellite TV is a huge improvement
over all types of Cable TV including digital. This is because Digital
Satellite Systems (DSS) use the “Ku”
band frequency which is much higher than the “C” band
used by Cable TV. Digital signals
picked up through the “Ku” band are MPEG-2 compressed
video signals (30:1 bits) which allows far more channels to be squeezed
through without damaging clarity. Cable TV may claim they have digital
but with the lower “C” band limitations even their expanded
services can still be considered analog and that is even with the
upgrade to digital cable. Also cable digital signals are generally
put through a fourth and fifth generation signal relayed from sub-station
to sub-station before reaching your residence so that the overall
quality picture and sound is diminished to the point that it cannot
deemed “truly digital.” Instead of the ‘snow’
or shadow experienced frequently by cable or antenna with Digital
Satellite Systems there is excellent close to true life picture
and sound which means that when you record on DVD you can be sure
of high quality digital play back many times better than recording
directly from cable wire with a VCR. Satellite TV now offers many
High Definition TV channels and they are adding more programs as
soon as they become available all the time. HDTV gives viewers crystal
clear pictures that are equivalent to theater quality sights and
sound with special Dolby Digital 5.1 channel surround sound. Your
D S programming will be transmitted and received with the same quality
that a DVD player can reproduce movies with big screen quality effects.
You need a HDTV receiver to receive these channels and companies
like VMC
Satellite offer these an all their equipment free with a life
time warranty. When cable goes down because of technical problems,
downed wire or storms you are at their mercy for who knows how long
but with satellite if you place your dish in a good protective position
and place a special cover on it to protect from extremely severe
wind with heavy rain and snow you will never have a problem. If
it is not properly sheltered you may get knocked off or have rain
fade but only very rarely is very sever storm conditions. Also,
unlike cable TV, satellite TV blankets the whole country so that
so that you can get it any where and better yet even put it in your
RV or Van when you are traveling. Also, with Satellite TV you can
get high speed internet connections that you can take with you when
you travel and that will not be down at the mercy of some Cable
systems failure. Though it may still not be as fast as cable it
is close behind.
Satellite TV Has More Hardware Capabilities
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Some of the newest features of Satellite TV offer interactive shopping
and digital hard drives in the receiver that allow for between 60
and 100 hours of easily recording programs without video tape. Also,
there is the added feature with this Personal Video Recorder Technology
as offered by DirectTv DVR by TiVo or DishPVB with DishNetwork of
being able to zap commercials while recording. This is a clear technological
advantage that is essentially unavailable with Cable TV service
today. DSS all have electronic programming guides that allow for
interactively browsing a programming guide for details on every
program that is on every hour of the day up to 2 weeks in advance
as well as parental lock out features that allow users to control
what their children can watch. Though some of these features may
also be available with digital cable interactive features like Personal
Video Recording (PVR) that can record up to 100 hours of programming
without videotapes and that can pause, replay and live on TV are
not. Satellite TV has also improved the television viewing experience
by adding features that streamline and increase the enjoyment of
watching pay per view movies, sporting events and regular programs
with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound encoded when available and that allows
for broadcast with wide screen crystal clear format as discussed
in the section above this one on superior reception quality.
Satellite TV Has More Programming
Choices Plus Local Channels
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With Satellite TV you get most immediate local channels and actually
more because you get most local channels just beyond your reach
with cable in your region. In most major cities you can get your
local FOX, CBS, NBC, AND ABC affiliate stations. Because Satellite
TV uses a superior “Ku” higher band frequency than the
lower “C” band used by Cable TV this allows for far
more channels than Cable can offer. For example, Dish Network can
provide up to 500 channels of television, data and internet services
on one satellite dish. If you really want lots of Sports channels
Satellite TV offers far more selection than a cable provider. For
example, Dish Network can get EVERY SINGLE FOX SPORTS CHANNEL in
the US. You can even subscribe to ESPN Gameplan which gives you
hundreds of games each season. Also, you can get many speciality
programs which in many cases cable TV does not have the capacity
to handle such as religious programs, foreign language programs
from Russian to Arabic and other niche channels. There is no doubt
that your cost per channel is significantly less with Satellite
TV.
Satellite TV Provides Better Service
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Though there are many happy cable subscribers many others are turned
off with limited channel selection, poor reception, frequent outages
and high monthly fees for premium channels. J.D.
Power and Associates, is a global marketing information service,
which does consumer satisfaction and quality measurements based
on millions of consumers responses annually. They did a 2002 customer
satisfaction study based on 4000 households across the US using
14 Satellite/Cable providers which covered more than 80% of the
market share for Satellite/Cable TV. In this survey of overall customer
satisfaction DIRECTV
,
a satellite TV company, ranked the highest among 14 major providers
of satellite/cable TV. DIRECTVwas
18 index points higher than the cable TV service average across
all factors that comprise customer satisfaction and was particularly
strong in the area of customer service. Check
it out here. Both cable and Satellite TV offer 24 customer service
lines and a 12 month warranty although companies like VMC
Satellite offer life time warranty on all the equipment which
is free with a 12 month subscription.
