Thoughts From The Fair
It was a long but satisfying 4 days at the Big E fair. I was able to talk with a lot of folks about satellite television over those 4 days. Thank you to all the MultiChannel readers who stopped by and said hello, I didn’t realize that we had so many readers in New England!
One of the things that surprised me is how mainstream HDTV now is. Everyone except for two people had at least one HDTV in their house, in-fact many had 2 or more. High Definition is going to be a huge selling point for satellite services in the year coming up, in fact more of a selling point then it is now.
I also found out by talking to people that just because the cable companies offer High Definition, it doesn’t mean the pictures they are seeing are truly high definition. Many people who said they had HD from their cable companies were blown away by the HD picture quality on our video screens. (I could only imagine how much better these screens would have looked if they were properly calibrated, but I digress.)
Another interesting fact driving customers to satellite from cable is now in many areas cable systems are going 100% digital. No longer can a customer take the cable coming out of the wall and plug it directly into the cable ready television set. Now a digital cable converter is required for each television to watch cable TV. In addition I was told that the rental fees for some of these boxes is as high as $16 a month PLUS they are being charged an additional rental fee for the remote. I have always complained about the $5 the satellite companies charge for each receiver, but now I think it’s a bargain to what I heard this weekend from cable customers.
The highlight of the weekend was Saturday where we were hit with very heavy rains, as the downpours were taking place we noticed two men standing across from our booth watching our TV’s with great interest. As the rains picked up the gentlemen looked almost upset, so after a few minutes I decided to walk over there and throw away some trash and noticed that both men were from Comcast. I can only guess they were there hoping that we would lose our signal in the heavy rain. Sorry guys we didn’t lose picture once. That gave me a good laugh, although I must admit I was a little worried we would lose signal, as this rain was very heavy.
Now don’t get me wrong not everything with satellite is not perfect, and believe me I heard about it over the weekend. I heard complaints about bad installs by bad sub contractors and many complaints from DirecTV customers about the loss of Versus.
But overall the 4 days was an amazing experience, again thanks to everyone who came out, I truly enjoyed talking satellite with everyone.
Can you keep up? commented:
RUKIDDINGME, The writer was actually at a DirecTv booth for the fair, so is obviously speaking about DirecTv picture quality.
Dee Snutz commented:
Any time you should get rain fade is the times you should be in your basement under something to protect you from flying debris...
Reaper commented:
The quality of HD on Dish Network is certainly better than it is on traditional cable systems, like Comcast.
RUKIDDIN ME commented:
Since when had Dish sent out trueHD? Its all downrezzed.The writer is simply a Dish shill making a living off of them and his website
Reaper commented:
I live in Seattle and have recently had DirecTV and Dish Network. I now have FiOS TV and must say that I don't miss the (admittedly) occasional rain and snow fade.
Fade commented:
Rain fade is one of the most over exaggerated things. Cable companies want people to believe that satellite goes out EVERY time it rains, but, provided that the installer correctly peaked all of your signals, the most you should have is about 5 minutes at the most severe parts of a storm. In fact many times the fade occurs before the heavy rain starts when the storm cloud is at it's thickest retaining water.
Outlet Fees commented:
Not only does some cable systems charge for the box and remotes, but some of them also include an additional "programming fee" for each box if you want "premium" programming on it. Some of them define "premium" as ANY programming that requires an autorization, with digital that means anything above broadcast/basic.
Shield95 commented:
My Dish Network does not
go out in the rain either.