Digital Direct TV vs HD via Cable

CATV is highly dependent on where you are--who your provider is and how far away from the headend you are. In my old house, I had Comcast digital CATV and thought it was terrible. So, when I moved, I ordered DirecTV and was very excited by the prospect of improved quality. Unfortunately, it took waaay to long to install, and in the interim, I ended up with digital CATV again because I needed the CATV broadband service and the digital add-on was a cheap promotion that would tide me over to the DirecTV install. In my new house, the digital CATV seemed much, much better, but at the time they didn't have HDTV channels, so I cancelled when the DirecTV got installed.

I hated DirecTV. For channel surfers, the channel update is sloooow, regardless of the box you use. After a year, my DirecTV contract expired and my Comcast system started carrying about 8 channels of HDTV, so I switched back. I'm much happier with digital CATV than DirecTV, and I have yet to see any outages (its been about a year).

Bottom line, you can have a good CATV signal and you can have a bad CATV signal. You can have a good DirecTV signal, and you can have a bad DirecTV signal (depends on foliage and how well the dish is aligned). If you don't have a good DirecTV signal, you will have weather outages--I know people who can predict the weather by when their DirecTV starts cutting out, and I had some issues with high winds.

On the plus side, I think CATV switches faster and has a better HDTV line up, but that is my taste (not a sports fan) and my CATV provider. On the minus side, the DirecTV folks can go integrated Tivo, and there is now an HDTV Tivo. On the plus side, I don't have to run a lot of coax through my house and my CATV is available in all rooms (you need two runs of coax to support Tivo and multiswitches for multiple rooms).

As with most things, its a matter of taste...

HDTV is definitely worth it, however!

Hey Tom, I had both at the same time too, and now I have only one. And its not DirecTV. It all depends on your signal quality--I had SAT A, B, and C in the high 80s to high 90s and I still get better PQ from Comcast. YMMV.

OTA is free, and that is a *good* thing, in the words of a notable convict. If you bought your set now, it probably doesn't have an OTA tuner--buying one will set you back a couple hundred on an open box special. I'll second UncleJeff's recommendation of antennaweb.org. It will tell you who is on air in your area and what kind of antenna you need to pick them up.

You are right about all the video sat services being in geosync orbit over the equator, but... The difference in elevation angle relates to which equatorial slot the licensee has. If the satellite is longitudinally equatorial, but latitudinally coincident with the pacific ocean, an Wash. DC viewer is going to have to use a significantly lower elevation angle to "see" that satellite as compared to one that is latitudinally coincident with DC.

I think both services' websites have calculators for zip codes to show you the direction/azimuth for their sats for your area. (I think Echostar requires two dishes for "full" service, inc. HD channels; DirecTV requires three satellites, but due to their orbital slots, you should be able to get away with a single elliptical dish with 3 LNBs--if you want the bulk of the HD stuff, you need the third LNB). Then you need to get on your roof with a compass, a protractor, a level, and a drinking straw. ; )

I think people use their chimneys for mounting b/c its easier than drilling holes through your roof, and generally its also the best high unobstructed view.

This is pre-actual ownership to see if you can get it. You get on your roof with the compass, you figure out the direction of the satellite, you use the level and the protractor to figure azimuth, lining the straw up on the protractor, and then you look through the straw to see if there is a big building or tree in the way... Frankly, I just got on my roof, eyeballed it, and said "yeah, this will work." For areas where large trees exist, or where you are attempting a ground install, or shooting between buildings, the whole compass/protractor/level/straw thing is more accurate.

The whole thing made me recollect an episode in my neighborhood as a kid where the cops were trying to figure out who shot a bunch of bb's through a window. They stuck drinking straws in the bb holes and looked through them. The all lined up with one particular window in a neighbor's house...