Cable TV

I canceled our cable service a year or two ago in order to cut expenses. I just re-upped. I'm not real happy about it, but there are some shows you just can't get any other way. Verizon sold off their fiber optic business to Frontier (whoever they are) so that's who we had to talk to. They offered us a choice of fiber-optic service, or for about half the money, a satellite dish from one of them thar miniature satellite dish companies. This strikes me as a conflict of interest. Now the miniature satellite dish is quite the slick little piece of technology, but I don't like the companies. There are two reasons for that. One is because of their relentless advertising and the other is their habit of sticking their ugly stinking satellite dishes on the front of houses where they are most obnoxious. So I went with the fiber optic connection.

There's another reason to prefer the ground based delivery and that is the signal quality. These satellite systems use such a high frequency it is subject to degradation by just about anything including leaves and rain. I don't know whether it is a real issue or whether it just something overwrought nerds worry about, but I suspect it is one of those things that won't be a problem until the day of the big game when Jim Bob tosses that Hail Mary and zizzzit! Hey! What happened to the picture? Of course that could be the time that Joe Bob accidentally cuts the cable in downtown Peoria with his backhow and disrupts fiber-optic service to the entire West Coast. What? You didn't know that West Coast TV service ran through Peoria? Well, I don't know that it does, but I don't know that it doesn't either.

Then there a couple of other minor issues, that could end up being long term problems:

• there's the whole deal of having another piece of equipment (the dish), 
• having it mounted on the roof where you have to deal with all the roof related issues, 
• having cables running all over the outside of the house. Installer's do what they can, but threading cables inside of walls isn't something they do. 
• the location of the dish. Can it be mounted on the back of the house where it is out of sight, or will it be out of sight of the satellite as well? And who decides whether it can see the satellite or not? And would it be okay if it's just peaking over the ridge line?

Lastly, there is their pricing strategy. First off they want a contract. It's for two years. First year is really cheap. The second year is almost double. Now the two years are up and you've gotten used to having this whiz bang gadget beaming a thousand channels of crap into your house. I wonder what the new rates are going to be? 

I think what it comes down to is we had the fiber-optic service before and it worked well enough and we were happy with it. I don't know how well the satellite stuff will work, and I don't want to spend the time or money to find out.

Update April 2016 replaced missing picture.