DSL v Cable & Cable v Dish

[medpedspouse]

I hope this does not have to move to the debate section but as I prepare for the move I realize that I am beginning with a clean slate and can make different choices.

Which do you prefer and why...

For internet access - Cable or DSL (Dial-up is not an option )

For tv watching - cable or dish

Currently, I have cable for internet access and the Dish. I chose those because when I was moving into our current house the neighbors told me to stay away from DSL. The Dish was because there was a promotion that gave us a great deal. Now, several years later I am faced with the same choices. Any thoughts - opinion??? :huh:

We have cable. I wish I could have DSL. I've had that before, it worked well and is less expensive than cable.

[Vanquisher]

Cable in general is a lot faster and more reliably fast. I have an issue of PC magazine that lists the fastest providers. If you are going to a market where they have Verizon FioS, get THAT. It is fiber optic and super quick. It's about the same price as cable or DSL. It really depends on the service providers in your area what is typically better. The bandwidth they quote you will be an as high as speed or up to ___Mb/s. This doesn't tell the full story. We have Road Runner cable.

I have Directv because they were affiliated with Tivo. I love Tivo. Dual tuner magic. Can't live with out it. Other DVRs suck. Anyhoo, they don't have Tivo anymore because they decided to do their own DVR. Jerks. But, you can still find used ones on eBay. That's how I got the TiVo for my bedroom. Anyway, so until someone else has Tivo equipment or lets me do dual tuner magic, I guess I will stick with Directv. Tivo didn't used to make dual tuner models at all except for use with Directv. I don't know if that's changed at all or not.

I did like cable though when we had it. Not really a huge difference there. Whatever is cheaper is better, I would say. They both have pros and cons. Tivo is the key ingredient.

[Ravenclaw]

They have Fios in our new city but not available yet in our building!!!
AND it's cheaper than DSL and much cheaper than cable.
I think we're going to get Verizon DSL. We currently have Roadrunner (TimeWarner) cable and it's pretty good. I've never had DSL before but I've heard it's not as reliable as cable.

We had dish when we were in Cleveland and when we originally moved here. In both places we had trouble w/reception when there was really bad weather (snowstoms in Cleveland, HEAVY rain here).

I now prefer cable.

[SuzySunshine]

We have cable and prefer it for internet. I can't speak to a dish as I've never had one, my parents like theirs though it can sometimes have issues with the weather.

You might check and see if your cable company does high speed, phone and TV you'll save some money.

I'll have to look into the Fios -- Verizon, huh?

The cost for cable makes me...

[fluffhead]

I think it depends heavily on the provider and the local area - we are having better luck with DSL than we did with cable, and customer service was pretty much nonexistent with cable.
We tried to become independent of comcast and go DISH, but we have too many tall trees and apparently couldn't get a good signal.

[DCJenn]

We have the cable, internet, telephone bundle through the cable company and it's 164 bucks a month. I am relatively sure we're getting screwed but this is one of those things that now that everything is set up, I'm loathe to change it.

Jenn

I just got cable / phone / internet w/one premium channel and unlimited long distance for $119. Plus they're having a special where your first 3 MONTHS are free. I'm pretty geeked.

Prices aside, I prefer cable. We had DirecTV (dish) for a year and couldn't wait to get rid of it. It didn't have to be storming feverishly to lose service, it just had to be partly cloudy and we would lose service. That was so annoying! Never had a problem with cable or cable internet. We have Comcast here, but in Ohio it will be Time Warner.

[medpedspouse]

Thanks everyone for posting! I have learned much - did not know that I even had more options.

I was especially interested in the DSL stories because I was thinking about doing the landline, cell phone, inetrenet bundle and would have had to use DSL.

The cost of cable makes me too. As soon as I logged off here I checking out Fios.

[Vishenka69]

I was actually thinking of trying to switch to DirecTV from cable with this move. We often have service problems with bad weather and with the amount of rain this past year, it was pretty frequent. A few times, we didn't have phone, internet or cable (all hooked up together), although usually it's just the cable TV that doesn't work. I'm still not crazy about the landline idea, as we almost never use our current one.

[Vanquisher]

I have Vonage and love it. If you want to do Vonage, let me send you an e-mail to set you up so we can both save $.

[poky]

We have DirecTV now and will probably stay with them when we move. Only time we had an outage due to weather was when the dish filled up with snow. Which here in Portland was once in the past 4 years.

Right now we have FIOS, which we love, but it's not an option where we're going, so we're going back to DSL. Cheaper than cable (especially if we're staying with satellite for TV), and with cable you're sharing bandwidth with everyone around you who also has cablemodems, so during peak times, you're likely to get much slower througput than what you're paying for. DSL doesn't have that problem.