jaytee

Any comments as to which is better? I think satellite is the only alternative to standard TV in Britain.

Ranjini

The only difference I noticed, was the excellent picture quality...

Patrick

Location, Location, Location. We live on an island and we can only get charter cable who (here anyway) are pretty crap. If you want Fox Sports World (for the Football) you have to get Satellite. The problem with Satellite in this area is you do not get local channels which means you do not get nbc, abc or cbs.

Across the bridge however they have Time Warner cable which does have Fox Sports world.

The thing to find out with Satellite is whether they carry the local stations in your area, if not you may better of with cable but packages and prices vary from town to town so I cannot really guide you on where you are going to live.

Patrick

DaveC

We have Charter Cable (and FSW too, so I guess it depends on which area you're in) and haven't had any problems recently. When they were upgrading the local network there was at least one big outage a week.

The cable companies here make a big sales pitch about how satellite reception can be affected by clouds / bad weather but I don't recall this being a problem back in the UK (OK Scotland!) with its seemingly permanent cloud cover. So they either have thicker clouds here in TX or we're towards the edge of the satellite footprint.

Rockgurl

I have Sky satellite here in London and it's brilliant! 5 news channels and about 14 music channels (almost a new one every week!), perfect picture and tons of choice....all for about £13 a month. The only time I ever have an interuption in picture is if there is a heavy rainfall...but I mean heavy, not a regular shower. The only reason I didn't get cable is that cable isn't laid here yet, but I'd recommend satellite to anyone. I even got my Mum & Dad to get it after they swore they never would. Now they love it as they can get the news any time of day.

Pimpbot

We have Cox digital cable and just about every channel that comes with it. I have no complaints.

bubbadog

I live in an area where cable is not an option, so I have satellite. I can get local channels on it, but I do have problems with it going out during thunderstorms. Oddly, it seems to do it more when the storms are about 10 miles west of me than when they are sitting right over me.

jaytee

Ah yes, British Sky Broadcasting Group (NYSE: BSY). http://www.sky.com/skycom/home/

Shame it isn't available in the US, but we can get most the BBC channels over the internet for free on broadband connections.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programme...nt/default.stm

try the live link near the top right

superpat

If you are going to go with satellite, then I would ask that you steer clear of DirecTV:

DirecTV Defense

For the non-techies out there, DirecTV are pursuing anyone they can find who has bought smartcards and/or associated technology, and demanding $3,500 to go away. Yes, you can use smartcards to attempt to pirate satellite TV, but there are also many legal applications in access control (securing buildings, computers), electronic cash and the like.

Cheers,

Pat (the outraged techie)

jaytee

That is not a problem for me as I have digital cable. Do you think there is any good satellite TV service in the US? What about Dish Network?

superpat

Dunno mate - I just got here 10 days ago!

Anyone have any experience of the actual content (rather than business [lack of] ethics) of the rival US satellite networks???

Cheers,

Pat

jaytee

I've looked at satellite tv plans in the US, but cable is just an easier choice since it carries all the local channels and is now digital like the satellite service.. also no potential for interference problems (rain or whatever).

Yosser

I have had both, sat and cable.

When I was paying for sat, every time it rained I lost the signal, but living in Texas, it doesn't rain that much so that was ok. I then upgraded to a dish PVR (same as TIVO) system, which I thought was great as a hard drive saves all of your favourite programmes (upto 40 hours) so it was like having a VCR but without messing about with tapes etc.

When we moved into our house my wife talked me into having cable (comcast) I pay $90 a month for total shite, its absolute bollocks.

My brother says the english SKY is much better with atleast a dozen music channels, good new movies etc, and its half the price.

I currently have the "silver package" so you have to pay another $20-$30 extra to get the good movies and the hand shandy channels.

Americans laugh when I tell them we Brits only had 4 (well 5 in certain areas) channels if you didn't have sat, but atleast they were 4 decent channels to choose from

one thing I miss, is saturday afternoon grandstand.....do do do doooo, dah dah, do do do dah, doo doo dah, bing bing a bong, barpppp barrppp e barp. (do they still play that theme tune??)

jaytee

wow, 90 a month. Does that include some form of cable internet? You can save a lot of money by getting rid of some of the movie packages. I mostly find the movie packages are useless tripe now anyway that nobody will watch. Every once in a blue moon there might be something interesting, but you might as well save the money and order what you want to watch instead.

Emm

Thanks for the info, we are looking into the satelite route as we already have a dish on the roof of our rented house but I didn't know about the smart card problem.

My hubbie is a bit of a techie and we have lots of smartcards and associated paraphinalia (most of it bought in Sweden mind you). I will show him the link you gave.

Thanks again,

Emm.