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Re: Cable vs. Satellite
If you compare the two then for cable you have to compare it against it's Digital service because that's all that satallite offers.
In both cases one must use a specialized digital box to receive the digital signal. In other words you simply cannot hook up your tv set to a satellite or digital cable coax feed thru and expect to get 120+ channels or any at all.
So if you have ten TV sets you need 10 boxes and that comes at a cost. And this is where the comparison weighs in towards cable. With cable if you want to equip your ten tv sets with digital service you simply get 10 boxes and hook them up to your cable feed thru from the cable company.
With satellite, your LNB must go thru a switchbox that has a limit of up to four offered by DishNetwork or 5 from aftermarket sources that may or may not work with your digital service provider.
Beyond that you must acquire another account to obtain over four or five tv set capability.
I subscribe to DishNetwork and have the 4-room set up unfortunately I need a fifth. However DishNetwork cannot provide me with a 5-way switchbox (not the same as a splitter or video router). I've researched aftermarket 5-way switchboxes and they aren't compatable with DishNetwork's proprietary system.
You simply cannot split an LNB's digital downlinked signal the way you can a digital cable signal and yes I've tried, you lose the integrity of the digital bitstream completely once it passes thru the splitter.
Pricewise if 4-rooms is all that you need then DishNetwork's $29.95/mo for the 4-room setup package with 125 digital channels with local broadcasts is unbeatable, yet.
But if you crave RoadRunner and want Oceanic's proprietary channels such as OC16, then you must subscribe to Oceanic's cable service and pay the higher price.
Quality wise both sound the same and look the same however when I lived in Kaimuki on 18th Avenue, Oceanic's feed had poor grounding. It took me forever to isolate the 60Hz buzz that was eminating thru my home theater system until I unthreaded the coax lead-in from Oceanic and the buzz went away. I checked the ground wire on the splitter and that was fine, my ground was okay, somewhere in Oceanic's hub was a failure in their grounding.
Reliability wise, when it rains you tend to lose your satellite signal, for Oceanic, when the wind blew the overhead cable lines you'd lose the signal. In both cases if one bit in the serial digital bitstream drops you lose the entire signal. The digital box (whether it be satellite or cable) needs to reacquire the digital signal by filling it's buffer with it. Kinda refilling the bucket of water before opening up the water spigot below it to maintain a flow. When you lose your digital signal your bucket empties. You have to wait until the bucket can fill to a minimal level before you can use it again.
With analog, there is no bucket to fill before use. You simply get static on the lines, but at least you can still see the snap of the football (albeit grainy) and the action. With digital your entire audio and video drops and then nothing until the digital box reacquires the signal and that could take several minutes, in the meantime you don't know if the Raiders made their first down or just lost field turf on their 4th down attempt to run the ball.
I've had Cable both digital and analog (prefer analog) and DishNetwork's satellite service and can honestly say I prefer to have Oceanic's analog service for price and reliability. You can still have Road Runner with analog. As a matter of fact, you can subscribe to Road Runner without even having to open an analog or digital cable service. You can still tap off the coax before the cable modem but all you'd get is Oceanic's basic service which is the standard broadcast signals up to 13+14 plus some of their upper irrelevent channels. They install a filter to block out ch's 15 to 60-something. Without that filter you'd receive their Standard package. If you remove that filter without their knowledge that's considered utility theft and carries a hefty penalty of $5,000 per violation (for every tv set in your house) and/or 5-years imprisonment at a federal lock up because utility theft is a federal offense.
So take your pick. My preference is Oceanic's Standard analog package with Road Runner. Unfortunately my choice deep out here in Kea'au is limited to DishNetwork's 4-room $29.95 deal. Even my Verizon phone line isn't conditioned to allow for DSL. As a matter of fact my 56K dial up transfer rate is limited to 40.2 Kbs because of the crappy lines here (we drop telephone and data signals repeatedly out here)
If you compare the two then for cable you have to compare it against it's Digital service because that's all that satallite offers.
In both cases one must use a specialized digital box to receive the digital signal. In other words you simply cannot hook up your tv set to a satellite or digital cable coax feed thru and expect to get 120+ channels or any at all.
So if you have ten TV sets you need 10 boxes and that comes at a cost. And this is where the comparison weighs in towards cable. With cable if you want to equip your ten tv sets with digital service you simply get 10 boxes and hook them up to your cable feed thru from the cable company.
With satellite, your LNB must go thru a switchbox that has a limit of up to four offered by DishNetwork or 5 from aftermarket sources that may or may not work with your digital service provider.
Beyond that you must acquire another account to obtain over four or five tv set capability.
I subscribe to DishNetwork and have the 4-room set up unfortunately I need a fifth. However DishNetwork cannot provide me with a 5-way switchbox (not the same as a splitter or video router). I've researched aftermarket 5-way switchboxes and they aren't compatable with DishNetwork's proprietary system.
You simply cannot split an LNB's digital downlinked signal the way you can a digital cable signal and yes I've tried, you lose the integrity of the digital bitstream completely once it passes thru the splitter.
Pricewise if 4-rooms is all that you need then DishNetwork's $29.95/mo for the 4-room setup package with 125 digital channels with local broadcasts is unbeatable, yet.
But if you crave RoadRunner and want Oceanic's proprietary channels such as OC16, then you must subscribe to Oceanic's cable service and pay the higher price.
Quality wise both sound the same and look the same however when I lived in Kaimuki on 18th Avenue, Oceanic's feed had poor grounding. It took me forever to isolate the 60Hz buzz that was eminating thru my home theater system until I unthreaded the coax lead-in from Oceanic and the buzz went away. I checked the ground wire on the splitter and that was fine, my ground was okay, somewhere in Oceanic's hub was a failure in their grounding.
Reliability wise, when it rains you tend to lose your satellite signal, for Oceanic, when the wind blew the overhead cable lines you'd lose the signal. In both cases if one bit in the serial digital bitstream drops you lose the entire signal. The digital box (whether it be satellite or cable) needs to reacquire the digital signal by filling it's buffer with it. Kinda refilling the bucket of water before opening up the water spigot below it to maintain a flow. When you lose your digital signal your bucket empties. You have to wait until the bucket can fill to a minimal level before you can use it again.
With analog, there is no bucket to fill before use. You simply get static on the lines, but at least you can still see the snap of the football (albeit grainy) and the action. With digital your entire audio and video drops and then nothing until the digital box reacquires the signal and that could take several minutes, in the meantime you don't know if the Raiders made their first down or just lost field turf on their 4th down attempt to run the ball.
I've had Cable both digital and analog (prefer analog) and DishNetwork's satellite service and can honestly say I prefer to have Oceanic's analog service for price and reliability. You can still have Road Runner with analog. As a matter of fact, you can subscribe to Road Runner without even having to open an analog or digital cable service. You can still tap off the coax before the cable modem but all you'd get is Oceanic's basic service which is the standard broadcast signals up to 13+14 plus some of their upper irrelevent channels. They install a filter to block out ch's 15 to 60-something. Without that filter you'd receive their Standard package. If you remove that filter without their knowledge that's considered utility theft and carries a hefty penalty of $5,000 per violation (for every tv set in your house) and/or 5-years imprisonment at a federal lock up because utility theft is a federal offense.
So take your pick. My preference is Oceanic's Standard analog package with Road Runner. Unfortunately my choice deep out here in Kea'au is limited to DishNetwork's 4-room $29.95 deal. Even my Verizon phone line isn't conditioned to allow for DSL. As a matter of fact my 56K dial up transfer rate is limited to 40.2 Kbs because of the crappy lines here (we drop telephone and data signals repeatedly out here)
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