See if you can survive until the Fall. Get a netflix subscription and buy DVDs for the kids with the money you save. 90% of the TV you want to watch is on sites like hulu.com anyway

*unless you are a sports fan

Welcome Peter, and Hello Chitown,

I have had both cable tv/internet, and sat tv combo with our local phone company Windstream. The cable is almost a guarantee of no problems during bad weather, unless there is a power outage or tree across the lines. Internet offers super fast speeds, faster than DSL but I don’t need anything higher than 3Mbs anyway. Price wise its about the same, from when I had cable tv/internet. I want to say I paid around $180 a month but this was about 4 years ago. And I worked for the cable company at the time.

I have the combo of Dish Network “top250” that covers you locals, along with your favs like USA, TNT, all the cartoon, noggin, nick and disneys. Plus all the movies, HBO, Skinamax, TMC, Encore, and so on, no adult stuff. 4 ESPN channels, NFL, and MLB channel for the sportsman in me. I have two boxes total, one box in my oldest daughters’ room (standard box), along with a DVR box that controls 2 TVs both the living room and our bedroom. Couldn’t live without the DVR for sure, lets the kids watch a movie or show they want while I may be busy doing something else while my show is recording in the background. As for interruptions during storms,Chitown, tell the wife the only times I have ever lost signal is when it’s near tornado or very severe thunderstorm type of weather. Even when we do lose it, as soon as the worst of it blows over, it comes back in. The only down side is when there is a storm, you want to be able to see the locals to know whats going on, this is the only issue I ever have with it, but thats when i just pull out the radio and listen. This was the first time I ever had satellite but being in a very rural area I didn’t have much choice other than rabbit ears and tin foil. Our DSL is highest available in our area at 3Mbs, would like more but that’s all I can get for now. Along with our home phone in the package with continental LD so the other half can call her family in Texas, I think it’s a steal at $90 for the phone and DSL side, and about $120 for the satellite TV.

A lot of people I have talked to said they had a lot of issues with loss of signal, I think it has to do with installation. If it’s put on a pole out in the middle of the yard, its going to catch a lot of wind and blow it around, also if there are a lot of trees and branches that can get in the way of its line of site. Mine is mounted to the back corner of my roof. No problems with trees, its bolted down and sealed with silicon, no leaks or any problems going on 4 years now. Even a year we had six inches of snow sitting in the middle of the dish, no problems. Never thought twice about the agreement thing, figured I could live with it for 2 years even if I needed to just lower it to a 20 dollar plan for the remainder of the agreement.

Maybe this was more like 3 1/2 cents but I'm a little long winded anyway.

Hope this helps,

Justin

As of now we are bundled with high speed internet, phone and cable TV for 114.00/mo. The TV package we have is digital and includes all channels up to 100. That's about 92 more channels than we watch! But, since more Cub games are on Comcast than WGN this year, and somehow my wife and I have become addicted to HGTV...

Thanks for bringing the topic up Peter. I am always pondering the switch and will canvass the area here to see which is better.

Brian

How often do you guys find yourselves saying, "You know, back in the day TV was free and there was no such thing as high speed internet. How much was the phone bill? $30 a month? $40?"

Now, we're all paying over $100 (we're a $175 for a digital phone, digital cable w/ all the on demand crap but no movies and high speed TWC family). That's a lot of coin. What's more -- think of the number of families who can't afford these services but are paying them anyway. And on top of that, there's this little thing called a cell phone to think about . . .

Yeah, there's a lot of cool stuff in our world, but it's all so expensive.

I've had Mediacom, Comcast, DTV (dish) and now AT&T Uverse.  Uverse rocks.  It was installed the day we moved in, and has been flawless for nearly a year now.

A lot of good comments have been made already.  I'll add a few of the reasons why I will never again have dish based TV:

1.  When it snows, rains heavily, is very windy, or otherwise significantly inclement, your dish will not work.  So on those crappy days when you're stuck at home, you'll be without TV.

2.  If you're comparing internet, the Dish based internet blows.  It is far, far slower than the comparable Cable based internet.

Again, if Uverse is available, you should look into it.  I'm not an AT&T employee or shareholder...but the TV is great, the service has been perfect, the internet is BLAZINGLY fast, and I couldn't be happier.