Satelite Internet

M

Mopardh9

Guest
I'm thinking about switching over from Comcast to a satelite for Tv and interenet. I have been doing some pricing and it would cost about $140/ month for what i want versus the $105 i am now paying. Is this uprgrade to Dish or Direct Tv along with Wildblue for internet, worth the money? How is the quality, I know when i had Primestar way back in the mid 90s i would have to clean off the dish a lot during bad weather and when it snowed forget it!
 
Comcast is a good service. I wish my area had it. I am just out of Comcast's area unfortunately.

My feeling is I would stick with Comcast. You can get good deals with having the cable and internet together. Cable modem will be better than an internet or DSL connection. Another thing good with cable is that you wont lose signal in bad weather and/or high winds.
 
DanicaRules said:
Comcast is a good service. I wish my area had it. I am just out of Comcast's area unfortunately.

My feeling is I would stick with Comcast. You can get good deals with having the cable and internet together. Cable modem will be better than an internet or DSL connection. Another thing good with cable is that you wont lose signal in bad weather and/or high winds.
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I've lost signal with cable, during heavy rain and or wind, also if i loose cable i loose my phone and my internet, it is all bundled. Although i don't use Comcast as my phone carrier i use Vonage which uses my cable wire. I don't like how Comcast has these promos with good rates and then 6 months later or 12 months later your rate increases. The way i look at it if you sign up at that said rate you should be locked in at that rate. I don't know what i'm going to do, probably just stay with cable another 6 months, we just moved into this house, so maybe Comcast will come out with a better package deal in my area.
 
Huh, Ive never lost a my cable signal unless a pole with a cable's main box has been knocked down. But I do know with satellite, heavy rain, wind, and trees can make you lose your signals. This is the only downside to a satellite.
 
The only problem I had with Comcast is the price kept increasing every 4 to 6 months. They bought out Adelphia here. I switched to Dish. I had to keep the internet with Comcast. Another person I post with has Sat. internet. There is some kind of penalty box if you over use. I would check into that. TRL might have that info.
When it snows, I have to sweep the dish. lol
 
I've had big dishes, 10 ft and then 5 ft when the technology got better. I've had Primestar and DirecTV. In the country I attached the feed horn from DirecTV to the Primestar Dish to get a better signal. Currently I have Time Warner Cable. But in 2 weeks AT&T is coming out to install UVerse. They have a lot more HD content. I'm not real sold on AT&T as a company but their UVerse is supposed to be better than TWC. Verizon FIOS sounds better.

As to Internet over satellite, the downloads are good but your uploads are very slow. Tho I've never used one.
 
The only reason I went to satellite for the TV and 'net, is that was my only choice.

I live too far from any TV station to use an antenna, unless it was 75 to 100 feet tall.

My only other option for 'net is dial-up, since I don't have cable or any other high-speed access. I do keep my dial-up as backup for use in bad weather. It's slow, but it keeps me in contact.

There are pros and cons to satellite --- you have to decide. Yes, I do lose signal during heavy thunderstorms with lots of lightning. But, we don't get those that often.

As for TV, I've used DirecTV since the late 80s -- even when I lived in Houston. Because the cable service was so crappy.

As for the "penalty box" on satellite 'net, it's only if you download huge amounts --- movies, etc. They limit your usage for 24 hours. It's never affected me.
 
DirecTV is awesome. I can deal with the outages, they don't last long. Had the same problem with cable anyways.

A DirecTV outage lasts a couple minutes. A Comcast outage lasts hours.
 
i lived in east springfield for 2 years with the same questions you have Mopardh9. ended up sticking with comcast minus vonage. i had vonage when i lived in new jersey and found it inadequate for teleconferencing. i worked mostly from home and teleconferencing (and file transfers) were essential to me.

comcast isn't available in the section of illinois i live in now but still use local cable for tv and primary net access. have at&t adsl as a backup. satellite isn't a realistic option to me primarily because of unreliability...rain/wind/snow/ice. lines tend to go down in bad weather.
 
So I guess MagicJack wouldn't work for you either. Tho for a person needing a normal phone $50 for the 1st year and $25 each year after seems mighty tempting.
 
barelypure said:
So I guess MagicJack wouldn't work for you either. Tho for a person needing a normal phone $50 for the 1st year and $25 each year after seems mighty tempting.
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That seems way tooo good to be true, i saw that add and kind of was curious, but went with Vonage....works fine so far. That magic jack thing ...just has to be a catch some where along the line, know anybody that uses it?
 
SlowNeasy said:
i lived in east springfield for 2 years with the same questions you have Mopardh9. ended up sticking with comcast minus vonage. i had vonage when i lived in new jersey and found it inadequate for teleconferencing. i worked mostly from home and teleconferencing (and file transfers) were essential to me.

comcast isn't available in the section of illinois i live in now but still use local cable for tv and primary net access. have at&t adsl as a backup. satellite isn't a realistic option to me primarily because of unreliability...rain/wind/snow/ice. lines tend to go down in bad weather.
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Yeh we get really bad winters here and bad thunder storms in the summer so I don't know....like what direct TV has to offer, but the satelite internet is what i am leery of. I work on the computer a lot too, and seeing how we are in a rural area my cell service sucks, too many hills and not enough towers, so having a cell for my primary phone is not an option anymore. that is why we got Vonage, i didn't like Comcasts' package and Vonage is only $19/ month
 
Mopardh9 said:
That seems way tooo good to be true, i saw that add and kind of was curious, but went with Vonage....works fine so far. That magic jack thing ...just has to be a catch some where along the line, know anybody that uses it?
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Clark Howard uses it and advertises it on his radio show.
 
don't get satelite internet. Your comcast is 1000% faster.

On hughes and wildblue (same thing, diff name), you can not up/download a combined 350 MB of data in a rolling 24 hour period, or your service is cut to between 10 and 20 KBps for 24 hours. The fastest the system at home ever meeters is 600 kbps down and 200 up.

but direcTV is good. We've haggled 10 dollars a month off our bill as of late..and we keep our HD channels.
 
also

hughesnet was good, back when it was Directway and directTV owned it. After hughes bought it off them, cost went up and service went down. So much so, they made WildBlue, which uses the exact same birds and modems has HN, but without the negativity of the un-fanbase.

http://www.datastormusers.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?/ubb/forum/f/4.html

good informative place...
 
barelypure said:
So I guess MagicJack wouldn't work for you either. Tho for a person needing a normal phone $50 for the 1st year and $25 each year after seems mighty tempting.
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I have a magic jack for long distance. Paid the 50 or so and another 60 for 5 years. It's a pertty good thing, but your computer must be running for it to work, becauses it uses USB. No problems in 2 years. If they don't have a local number for you, anyone That calls you will be long distance.
 
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