[Cialug] [OT] Digital TV

[Tim Wilson]

Personally, we've been pretty happy with DirecTV.  They do have a cheaper
package now, I think it's meant to compete with Dish's cheap package and the
basic cable package.  The only complaints I have about it is rain does
frequently knock it out.  Also the people they having working for them are
hit-or-miss on whether they know what they're talking about.  But, you only
have to deal with them when first setting things up, adding/changing your
setup, or there's a problem, which doesn't happen very often.

Of course, if you DO go DirecTV, e-mail me off-list for info on how we can
each save $100.

Regarding antennas, stay away from RCA.  I've come to the conclusion that
RCA stands for Really Crappy Apparatus.  I had an RCA antenna and couldn't
get locals in West Des Moines.  I bought a Terk antenna about a year ago,
and like it as a backup.  The one problem that I discovered with it is I
still had to move it when going to/from channel 13.  I don't understand why,
it's my understanding that the towers are within 2 degrees of each other.
That isn't very much, I thought I'd be able to put the antenna such that it
was 1 degree away from the highest and lowest angles.  But I was never able
to get it set right.  For us, it is just a backup.  Like I said, with
satellite, if it rains too hard, you'll lose signal.  But you also get more
channels than OTA.


On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 1:50 PM, Matthew Nuzum <newz at bearfruit.org> wrote:

> On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 12:45 PM, Jim Asbille <jim.asbille at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > I got the same letter from Mediacom.  We are losing CNN as well.  I am
> > thinking of going to antennae but don't want to lose my Internet access
> for
> > $40ish a month.  Are there any reasonable broadband access alternatives
> that
> > won't cost much more than this?
> >
>
> I switched to Dish for TV and Qwest for DSL. My DSL is $35/mo or so
> 1.5Mbps down, 768K up. Not good for watching streaming hidef video but
> otherwise works great. I spend less now than with mediacom's basic
> package + internet and as a bonus have a DVR. Download bandwidth is
> down (from 7Mbps) but upload bandwidth is up. Unless I'm downloading
> an iso I usually don't notice the download difference but I often
> appreciate the upload speed. The DVR is a blessing and a curse. I used
> to never watch TV. At least I can skip the commercials.
>
> --
> Matthew Nuzum
> newz2000 on freenode, skype, linkedin, identi.ca and twitter
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-- 
Tim
Required reading: http://bccplease.com/
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