Satellite TV Or Cable TV a Quick Comparison
By admin | September 9, 2008
Satellite television is throwing cable out in the competition. Satellite TV holds a great advantage over the cable TV companies. Not only is the picture and sound quality superior, but there’s more choice of channels while saving a reasonable amount of money.
Your options are also larger with satellite TV vs. cable - most of the larger companies offer their services just about anywhere you can visualize, whether you live high in the mountains, remotely located from the world where no cable reaches, or in a crowded city. Being national companies rather than small, locally owned cable services also means you will benefit from quality service at lower prices. It also ensures you are getting the benefit of state-of-the-art technology.
Many people have a mindset that Satellite TV systems, are very expensive or difficult to install. Not so! In fact, most of today’s top satellite TV companies will come to your home and do the installation at no extra charge once you have a contract. They will install it to maximum in four rooms.
Satellite television offers the biggest variety of shows, movies, sports, and news for the least amount of money. You can watch all your shows in digital video and sound with the option of watching them in HD format and recording them on a DVR (digital video recording) receiver.
The quality provided by Cable TV is very degraded as compare to Satellite TV. Cable TV provided the limited bandwidth, it’s no wonder the quality is poor. First, the cable wire comes from a hub transmission system somewhere near your home. At source, the signal is passable, but by the time it runs through your community, splitting to each house, the signal has degraded. As the cable is RF (radio frequency) based, it has converted from an audio/video signal (at source) to RF and then needs to re-convert back into audio/video for your television. Along the way, anything broadcasting through the air has tried to get into the cable line and will appear as noise on your TV screen.
Satellite television can support over 250 channels of programming. All channels are digital quality and offer HD (high definition) television services that are compatible to your satellite TV service. Thus, Satellite is the only service that offers a true digital signal on each and every channel. Cable can not offer true digital quality channels. So, you choose which you want.
Keith Londrie II is a well known author. For more information on Satellite TV, please visit Satellite TV for a wealth of information. You may also want to visit keith’s own web site at http://keithlondrie.com/
Tags: Cable, Cable TV, Satellite, satellite tvTopics: Satellite_TV | No Comments »
NFL Sunday Ticket Continuing Satellite TV Charge into Cable TV’s Customer Base at Halfway Point
By admin | September 8, 2008
Satellite sales consistently gaining ground in numbers and holding lead in customer satisfaction.
As we complete the first half of the NFL Season two things become readily apparent. Sports Bars who have bit the bullet and paid for commercial license to show Sunday NFL Football games on several screens are doing booming business.
I, myself being a displaced RAMS Fan have had to frequent such establishments on many occasions to see my team play. Not bad but watching it at home would be more convienient on a Sunday Morning.
NFL Sunday Ticket has been a significant programming differentiator for DirecTV, helping us build a loyal subscriber base,” DirecTV chairman Eddy Hartenstein said. “It’s crucial for us to have programming that sets us apart from our competition.”
His service has more than 17 million customers and is a unit of Hughes Electronics, which is a unit of General Motors Corp.
NFL Sunday Ticket allows subscribers to see all out-of-market games each Sunday during the regular season.
At the same time, DirecTV would use new middleware from a News Corp. subsidiary to present a new user interface in subscribers’ set-top boxes (STBs) followed by “a suite” of interactive TV services including news, sports, weather, traffic and games.
Additionally, the filing states that the merged operation would launch a new generation of satellites as early as 2006 and no later than 2008 that would provide capacity for local TV coverage in all 210 designated market areas in the United States. It would also enable DirecTV “to transmit more HDTV programming to subscribers, including local channels in HDTV format in select markets.”
By 2005, DirecTV said the merged company would offer “very competitively priced set-top boxes with fully integrated digital video recorders, which will result in the deployment of at least 1 million such STBs each year thereafter.”
Coincidentally, rival EchoStar at the same time announced it had reached the 1 million DVR mark among DISH Network subscribers.
During his remarks at the retailer rally, Hartenstein said DirecTV would draw on its high customer satisfaction ratings as a key weapon in fending off cable operators who are now ramping up digital cable programs for retail distribution.
He pointed to a recent J.D. Powers and Associates study on cable and satellite that indicated consumer satisfaction is much higher among satellite homes, adding that combined DBS subscriber totals now top 20 million customers or one in every five homes.
He added that DirecTV continues to be the top ranked multi-channel TV service in J.D. Powers consumer satisfaction surveys.
Although cable subscriptions still dominate the industry, satellite market penetration continues a steady eight-year climb, with nearly one in four households now subscribing to satellite pay TV.
Satellite receives an overall customer satisfaction index score of 723 (on a 1,000-point scale), compared to 659 for Digital Cable and 621 for analog cable, with strong performance across all measures of customer satisfaction.
Despite this outcome, cable narrows the gap in overall satisfaction versus satellite, improving at nearly twice the rate of satellite (3.1% vs. 1.6%).
Both satellite providers included in the study receive the two highest customer satisfaction rankings among the 13 largest providers of cable/satellite TV service.
Satellite pay tv regains its highest ranking from 2003, receiving top ratings from customers in three of the six factors that drive overall satisfaction: billing, cost of service, and offerings and promotions.
It also performs near the top in the remaining three factors: customer service, image, and performance and reliability. Satellite TV is followed in the rankings by cable companies WOW (WideOpenWest), Cox Communications, RCN and Bright House Networks, respectively.
Customer service has once again re-established itself as the top driver of consumer satisfaction, contributing to 26 percent of the overall customer satisfaction index score.
This factor weighting is the highest seen for any factor in the cable/satellite TV study, representing a stark contrast to the 10 percent weighting the customer service factor averaged over the previous three years.
“The opportunity to purchase voice products from pay TV providers and vice versa from historical voice providers has no doubt contributed to this dramatic increase in the importance of customer service,” said Steve Kirkeby, senior director of telecommunications for J.D. Power and Associates.
“Similar to the voice market counter-parts, dissatisfaction with levels of customer service will make consumers less satisfied overall, making them more susceptible to bundling and price promotions from competitors.”
Product bundling continues to be the key area where cable providers can stem migration to satellite and increase cable’s share of the consumer wallet.
With a continuing strong consumer desire to combine multiple services in a single bill for convenience and simplicity, the study finds that 44 percent of cable subscribers want to combine their cable service with some other telecommunications product or service.
The study finds the current average monthly expenditure for pay TV service is $49.08 among satellite subscribers and $50.98 among cable subscribers.
What this means for the consumer is more and better choices at more competitive prices are in the offing as cable tv services try desperately to keep the subscribers they have which is much cheaper than trying to lure people away from “The Dish”. And if you love Pro Football like I do there is no other choice but DirecTV and NFL SUNDAY TICKET.
Kenneth Waugh Visalia Ca and displaced Football Fan and Sports writer.
KN.Waugh@gmail.com
For more information about satellite with the NFL Sunday Ticket Option click below:
http://kensrapidsatellite.opportunity.com
Tags: Football, NFL, nfl sunday ticket, playboy, Satellite, spice, sunday ticket, SUPERFANTopics: Satellite_TV | No Comments »
Satellite TV-So Much Better than Cable!
By admin | August 30, 2008
Satellite TV used to be all the rage and I guess it still is to a degree. It’s obviously one heck of a lot more accessible now than it ever was. I remember those early days where home satellite dishes resembled a NASA space patroller, consuming half of the garden in the process. Of course, back then, not everyone had satellite TV, so it was considered something of a status symbol. “Look at this neighbor, we’ve just got hooked up to satellite TV”. Ner ner ne ner ner!
Of course, like all new technology, it doesn’t stay new for long and prices usually plummet pretty quickly as demand and quality goes up. When high tech equipment got so big that it became too big for homes, the next challenge was to miniaturize everything. We now have hi-fi systems no bigger than credit cards, and look at what they can pack into a mobile phone these days. Satellite dishes were no exception and the tiny squarial soon followed the big saucers to become the superior satellite solution. Folks were glad to get there gardens back as these unobtrusive little receivers could be pinned neatly out of everyone’s reach and way.
There are also many providers nowadays of satellite TV, and just like cable television, you are able to choose from a whole variety of packages, quite often tailor made to your own requirements. I can remember way back when there were literally just a handful of stations to watch on TV, but now there are so many to choose from, you can become a prisoner to the box with the plethora of programs being transmitted at any one time. The kids of today have no idea just how limited home entertainment used to be.
When you think about it carefully, there doesn’t seem to be an end to the viewing options available through Satellite TV. All kinds of programs for all types of folks in many different languages beamed around the planet. Let’s look at a few: There’s satellite TV providers for local programs, we have music channels (including satellite radio), CD music channels, numerous movie channels, like Showtime, HBO, Cinemax, the Movie Channel, Encore, Starz, Sundance, Sci-fi and Beyond, Flix, Action, Love, Mystery, Drama, Wam, the Independent Film Channel, and so much more!
Blimey, I could go on forever! There’s my favorite, the history channel, we also have discovery, the travel channel, food channels, animal planet, home shopping, soaps, weather, Disney, cartoon network, oh there’s no end to it all.
With so much competition, it’s always a good idea to shop around if you’re thinking of hooking up for the first time or changing your provider. Many special satellite TV promotions have great giveaways such as free equipment, a free trail period, an extra package etc. Another great thing about Satellite TV is that many receivers now include what they call DVR technology, or digital video recorder. This is just a fantastic new way to record your favorite programs at any time without all the cumbersome hassles that came with traditional video recording equipment. Believe it or not, but with DVR technology, you can tape over a hundred hours of programming, save what you want, and delete what you don’t want. It absolutely awesome.
Satellite TV is very inexpensive now and subscriptions can start at less than $20 per month. Compared to many cable companies, its value that cannot be beaten. Why not check out the Satellite TV options today. You never know what you might be missing!
Tom Gibson is a freelance writer and web publisher who writes on the wonders of modern technology. He has recently written pieces for TVforecast.com on The Cheap Flat Screen and Digital TV
Tags: Cable, DVR, DVR technology, Satellite, satellite dishes, satellite radio, satellite tv, squarial, tvTopics: Satellite_TV | No Comments »