Comparing satellite TV and cable TV deals

October 13, 2007 8:49 pm admin Satellite TV Shopping

Often when people are shopping for TV entertainment services, they stuck choosing the right deals between satellite TV and cable TV. Most feels the ‘old-school’ cable TV is more reliable; while at the same time get much attracted by the lucrative offers by satellite TV companies.

Indeed, there’s a battle going on between cable TV and satellite TV. If you are consumers looking for the right choice, the following case study on satellite TV and cable TV comparisons is definitely worth reading.

Comparing the popularity

Cable TV is the pioneer in paid TV services; while satellite TV considered relative new in the business as Dish Network and DirecTV came in to the market during early 90s. Cable TVs are still a head of satellite TVs in term of popularity.

Comparing the equipments requirements

Cable TV systems require a cable to be installed from the network to your house. If your street has no cable you may need to wait a while before it is available in your area. Besides the cable you need a receiver. With digital services you need an additional digital decoder box.

Satellite TV requires a satellite dish, a receiver and a cable from the dish to your TV. Installation is easy and most dealers are capable to set up the system within three days from order date.

Comparing the reception quality

Cable TV has analog channels and even though you can upgrade to digital services, analog channels will still be analog, meaning an often-fuzzy picture. Satellite TV signals are fully digitize, which gives you all the advantages of digital systems. Very heavy rain or snow can obstruct reception briefly, but generally this happens very rarely. Reception quality is much better with Satellite TV.

Comparing the programming choices

Here it gets really interesting. Cable TV can handle up to 260 channels. Satellite TV can handle more channels. Also, Satellite TV is more advanced in HDTV (High Definition Television) services.

Cost comparison

In most of the case, satellite TV deals are less expensive than Cable TV due to many additional costs that are related to Cable TV: franchise fees, taxes, plus costs for any pay per view services, and equipment costs. Dish Network Programming Package starts at only $29.99 per month.

Comparing the interactive services

In general Satellite TV has more interactive services than Cable TV. Digital services like Dish Network’s DVR (Digital Video Recorder) which gives the option to rewind while recording even in live broadcasts, EPG (Electronic Program Guide), Instant Weather, video on demand, etc. are all available on Satellite TV, but not all are available on Cable TV.

Additional services

Besides TV entertainment, you can get other additional services from the cable and satellite companies. Cable has high-speed broadband Internet services. With subscribing to cable TV services, you can get high-speed Internet access with additional service charges.

You can get satellite Internet service with Dish Network or DirecTV as well. However the internet speeds are slightly slower and the stability of the services is still a major issue yet to be solved by satellite companies.

Overall conclusion

From the popularity angle, we can see that cable TV is having a bigger market segments. However, satellite TV services are less expensive, provide better picture quality (digital signal) and give more programming choices to their users. Perhaps this is the reason why satellite TV had been listed as one of the fastest growing products in United States. We predict that this rapid growing trend will remain the same pace for the next 5 years. As for consumer’s view of angle, satellite TV deals seems to be the better deal to go for.