satallite TV

[The Daring Dufas]

Most folks have no idea what "hacking" is all about. O_o

TDD

[Ed Pawlowski]

The Viacom channels? They'll be back but I don't miss them myself. One reason I hesitated going to SAT was loss of signal. In two years, it has been out for a brief time twice. I'm talking 10 minutes or less. Our cable company would go out if the weatherman even predicted rain. In high winds and two winters of snow, not a bit of loss.

I easily get 3MB but I'm probably closer tot he substation. Our cable company would be faster, but the price was $20 more. Yes, I'd pay 5 bucks for faster, but not $24. Flor $10 more, I can get slower service from MetrocCast. They offer an Ultra package for $70 and depending on location, speed can be ither 25 mb or 10 mb. Probably depends on local infrastructure.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Depends on your cable company. I needed a box and their remote anyway for even a basic service.

I'm not sure what you mean by sharing channels. All our work independent of each other and each TV has a box. On two of them, I have an RF remote so it does not have to be aimed. Nice feature in some locations.

[Vic Smith]

When Comcast went all digital here a couple years ago, I had to connect a box to each TV. Doesn't matter if you have a "digital ready" TV. You need a box for each TV if you want to select channels for that TV. They give you 3 boxes gratis. After that you pay a monthly fee for additional boxes. Maybe 10 bucks, can't remember. I'm guessing "channel sharing" is splitting the signal from one box to

2 or more TV's. Difficult, since the TV location might not be local to the box, which you need to change channels. I might have the MIL move in here soon, so I'll have to pay for a 4th box. Unless I give up one I'm using now. Might do that.

[trader4]

I think for a lot of people the issue of having a "converter box" isn't a big one because today DVR's are available and you can get one as part of a sat package. They add so much to the TV that I can't imagine not having one. Hence, most people are going to wind up with a "box" of some sort.

In my case, I have cable, but I've had a Tivo for 10+ years now. It uses a cablecard, which costs me a few dollars a month less than the cable company would charge for their basic cable box without recorder. So, I'm saving about $8 a month and the Tivo will pay for itself in about 4 years. I use the Tivo remote to control both it and the TV.

[krw]

Yes. I watch TVLND sometimes.

Our DISH went out whenever there was a minor storm in the area. The only time (only been here two months) DirectTV has gone out was last night when a fairly severe T-cell was parked right over us.

Cable Internet was actually $5 cheaper than DSL in my apartment, locally. 2MB (even 3) is marginal. With DSL at the other house I might just as well use dial up, though it would be more expensive.

[gfretwell]

I have 2 dish boxes with 2 tuners in each. They output on 4 different "cable" channels (73, 75, 77, 79). I also have a Replay TV on broadcast channel 3, an agile modulator on channel 68 for the PC I have connected and an antenna amp that puts out the 15 or so local channels on their respective broadcast channel. All of this is in the living room.

All of this gets merged into a big distribution amp that feeds all of the other TVs in the house

I have plenty of channels.

The Dish boxes have RF remotes for 2 of the tuners (chan 73 and 79) If you have either of them you put the TV on the respective channel and run the dish box with that remote from wherever the TV is.