loubiblu

Hello again :-)

This place is a wealth of information, I've been back through 55 pages, but my head hurts now! Who knew there could be such an extensive thread on fish & chips. It's beef dripping in an open chip pan btw

Anyhoo, back the to the important stuff... TV

Here in the UK we have cable with Virgin Media (full XL package plus movies and sport). Is there an equivalent? I don't mean watching UK channels and programmes, just trying to get my head around the systems available. We'll be in the Chicago area

Many thanks and sorry if I've missed a similar previous post

lansbury

There will be a cable company in the Chicago area with all various TV packages plus internet. Also you should have two satellite providers similar to Sky.

Mr Weeze

You realize you've preempted your own thread going off the rails now?

The major cable/satellite companies tend to avoid competing too much with each other. You'll have the option of some of the following:

AT&T
Comcast
Dish
Time Warner
Verizon FIOS
DirecTV
Cox
Charter

I think this was the most recent thread to get into cable providers in detail. In summary they can all be wankers and they all cost a lot. Occasionally they surprise you and everything works like it should, but it still costs a lot.

loubiblu

Thank you, more bedtime reading. I think I misunderstood the whole US TV deal. I thought you had to 'buy into' different networks, national and local, separately, but I guess there are packages that bring them together via 1 supplier? As to customer service and choice, will look at some reviews of the Chicago area.

Pulaski

Yes, you pay the company that owns the cable that comes into your house, or owns the satellite. You usually end up with a load of channels, three quarters of which you will never watch. ...... The packages without the sports channels tend to be a lot cheaper, and you can usually add one (or more) of the premium movie channels to your package.

loubiblu

Cheers,

Sport is essential so I guess we'll just have to pay a lot

Guindalf

Not necessarily.

Most local and national sports coverage will be included in your package. College and NFL football is in abundance, as is baseball (in Chicago, Cubs and White Sox at least, plus a few nationally televised games too), Nascar, F1 and Premier League football. Big events like the Super Bowl, Olympics, March Madness (college basketball tournament), Indy 300 and US Grand Prix are mostly covered by the networks. If you're into US sports, there are specialty packages for NFL and College football, baseball, basketball, MLS soccer and hockey (of the ice variety), which can work out quite pricey. Availability depends on the service you get (NFL Sunday Ticket is essentially exclusive to DirecTV, although it is possible to get it if you have a Playstation and an internet connection).

We have DirecTV and the regional sports networks (other than local) and a few others are available in a sports pack for an extra $13.99/Mo. Sunday Ticket comes free for the first year with a subscription and two year commitment.

MsElui

other thing to get used to is stupid channel names. Every one of the 'mainstream' channels like abc, fox, nbc, etc all have local station names that are some jumble of letters (typically NOT including the main name you are looking for lol). and there is a regular version of the channel and a HD version of the same channel that are miles apart in the numbering list and have no obvious relation. so i rarely watch tv so never remember the numbers and the one time i do want to watch something it takes forever to find the dam channel and then realise im not even seeing it in hd.

(that said - our cable supplier is getting rid of the NOn HD channels this week so we wont have that part of the problem anymore).

lansbury

If you have DirecTV you can set the guide to not show the standard definition channel when there is an HD version available. Or vice versa if you don't have HD. I would guess most providers have a similar setting.

Mr Weeze

You can also have xfinity set to automatically go to the HD channel if there is one.

Michael

For Comcast, their numbering system to a point makes sense. With digital cable, you get about 400 SD channels and about 130 HD channels. In my area, they put all the HD channels together starting at channel 700 so a lot of the 700 channel numbers are the same as the SD channel numbers but just a 700 added but since not all the first 130 SD channels have a HD channel, there can't be an exact match. Also sometimes the SD channel numbers weren't laid out very well but Comcast doesn't want to change them since it may confuse their customers but for HD channels they try to group channels by type. As an example, Bloomberg News is up by it's lonesome at SD channel 105 but it's HD channel is 765 putting it very near all the other cable news programs. Also a lot of the SD sports channels were scattered but since many of the lower SD channels were local independent broadcast channels which don't have a HD channel, that area is now filled with HD sports channels together.

Bob

No RCN?

Anyway, the choice you get will depend on your zip code as you probably won't have much choice.

If you're lucky, you might also have Google Fiber, but don't know if they're out that way.

Michael

I'm not sure how is that possible since many of the local independent broadcast channels don't have a HD channel and many Americans don't sign up for HD channels (but get national network and local HD broadcast channels which are required by law). In fact about 25% of Comcast cable customers get basic cable (it's not advertised) for less than $25 per month but that only includes about the first 20-30 channels which were originally the analog channels with the national network channels but mostly the local independent broadcast channels. Then there is another 25% of it's customers that had signed up for basic extended cable which were the first 70-80 analog channels and refuse to sign up for what is now referred to as digital cable so they still get the first 70-80 channels but are now digital.

Comcast kept those plans going since SAT has similar plans at similar prices and if Comcast dropped those plans, they'd likely lose about 50% of their customers.

In fact my ex g/f still has basic extended cable and won't sign up for digital cable no matter how sweet of a deal Comcast offers her (example. next 2 years for the same price).

Mr Weeze

I should have made it clear it wasn't intended to be an exhaustive list. I don't have that much patience!

Bob

I thought they were fairly big, but maybe it's a north east thing, as I don't seem to see much mention of them anywhere else on BE

They're shit though...but last I checked, still offered dial up as a option