First, your assertion that sat offers ’superior quality’ is misleading. What exactly are you basing this on? I hear you say that sat offers ‘all digital’ service, but, like, wtf? Who the hell cares? The only reason sat can offer all-digital is because they require, without any possible exception whatsoever, for you to utilize a set-top-box in order to decode the sat stream. Cable can still pump analog to your house (and btw, the FCC MAKES them keep pumping analog, so its not like they have a choice), so every frickin old ass TV and VCR in your house that has an NTSC tuner in it can render that analog signal, meaning you don’t have to pay a STB lease fee times 8 to run cable to your house…if you have that many TVs/VCRs/PC tuner cards. So when you tout the sat ‘all digital’ signal, you can’t possibly be insisting that sat’s signal is better than cable’s simply because they don’t offer (and aren’t legislated to offer) analog service.

So when you compare sat to DIGITAL cable, things get less convincing. Cable TV lineups and sat programming lineups become much more similar. Of course, a STB (or, maybe if you can swing it, a CableCard) is required for both sat and cable. Now we’re talking about two digital sources for video content. Apples to apples, right, everything jives? Not so, not necessarily. To simply state that one digital stream is the same as another is to be nothing but ignorant. The compression and conversion algorithms that go into broadcasting over the sat and cable pipes are the most critical factor. Is your provider dicking with the signal at all, or are they simply passing along the same signal they get from the content provider? Verizon, in the states where they offer it, sells TV service pumped over fiber optic lines laid to the house. Their bandwidth availability is huge, and they claim to send you an uncompressed signal to your home. Digital cable and sat are not the same. Sat companies use MPEG4 to compress your shit and stuff it through a pipe up to the sat and back down to you. The ‘artifacts’ that you see when you watch high-motion sports are due to the compression algorithms. Shit, the video I took of my kid on my POS digicamera is ‘digital,’ but the bit rate on it is pathetic and it looks like hell. Just b/c its digital doesn’t mean its great-its all in the data bit rate, which is dictated by ‘how’ the content was created and how much the provider (sat or cable company) is compressing it to make it ‘fit’ down the pipe to your house.

Now, cable companies also compress their shit, b/c they’re in a huge crunch for bandwidth. IT HAS BEEN MY EXPERIENCE, though only my experience, that cable provides a less compressed, cleaner digital signal to digital cable subscribers than the sat networks. For the purpose of disclosure, I’ve moved a lot lately and have experience in the last 3 years with Comcast cable, TWC, DirecTV, Dish and ATT Uverse TV.

Now, some cable companies are escaping the bandwidth crunch by pumping three channels down one QAM ‘pipe’ to your house. To make that work, they compress your shit and it looks shittier. Very complex correlation there…

You also mention HD capacity. Again, sat companies have more bandwidth availabe (Dish and DTV have both launched new sats in the last year and plan to expand more in the coming year). Since they have more capacity, they have more room in their pipes to push you more HD channels (but they still compress them pretty well). Also, sat companies dont have to worry about pushing analog to anyone, which is a huge bandwidth hog for the cable companies, so sat providers have even more ‘room’ to push content down the pipe to you.

That will change in short order though. As cable companies roll out new technologies like DOCSIS3.0 and Switched Digital Video, they will free up more space in their pipes and will be able to push more HD to their subscribers. Also, eventually the FCC will give cable the go-ahead to pull the plug on analog. Downside: now every cable subcriber has to have a STB on every TV. Upside: with no analog video hogging space in the pipes, cable will be able to free up huge amounts of bandwidth to push more HD, shopping channels, VOD and other usesless shit to your house for your viewing displeasure.

So yeah, sat companies in my opinion do not have superior signal quality to cable, and its only a matter of time before cable catches up significantly on HD capacity.

ALSO, the notion that Comcast decided to carry the BTN to make TWC look bad, force TWC subcribers into switching to sat and thereby weaken TWC’s bottom line and make it more adventageous to a Comcast buyout of TWC is, well, it sounds like a half baked conspiracy theory. Seriously? I highly doubt that shit man. Besides, any buyout of TWC by such a major cable provider would have to float through the FCC, and Comcast ain’t exactly on the good side of the feds these days.

Also, Dish isn’t exactly sitting on a pile o money, running away as primo business. They’re down the last year or so, and rumblings that way arent’ good.

But fuck, who cares, can football start so I can stop wasting my time worrying about shit like this already?

In order to do this we first need to look at some basic facts. We all know (or should know by now) that Satellite provides superior quality, service and price to not just TWC but all cable monopolies. The satellite carriers offer superior prices (fact – check the comparable packages over the long run), superior quality (fact – the only all digital broadcasts and approx. twice the HD channels as cable), and superior service (fact – check the awards won by both satellite companies). Very Simply, Cable can’t compete with Satellite over the long run.

Now let’s look at some financials for the last available quarters:

TWC = $277 million in net profits
Comcast = $632 million in net profits
Directv = $455 million in net profits
Dish Network = $336 million in net profits

TWC = $19.65 per customer (per quarter)
Comcast = $26.33 per customer (per quarter)
Directv = $25.27 per customer (per quarter)
Dish Network = $24 per customer (per quarter)

Finally, let’s see what happens when we look at the revenues per employee

TWC = $6,295 per employee (per quarter)
Comcast = $6,320 per employee (per quarter)
Directv = $40,265 per employee (per quarter)
Dish Network = $14,656 per employee (per quarter)

Ok, as we can see TWC has by far the poorest financial record of any company listed above. Net revenues by quarter and per customer lag far behind Comcast and the satellite carriers. When we look at revenue per employee we can see that TWC is absolutely smoked by the satellite companies and even their biggest cable competitor, Comcrap. Translation: TWC is a poorly run and extremely bloated company that is losing ground to its competitors. Now it’s starting to make sense as to why TWC is holding out…they want, er, “need” all of the money they can get. Comcast recently struck a deal with the BTN and you can now see why – they don’t “need” the money and they can destroy TWC in the process when all of the TWC subscribers wise up and switch to satellite, thus making TWC weaker and a more viable take over target. So while TWC claims that they are looking out for the best interest of their customers they are really looking out for the best interest of their bottom line. That’s great if you’re a shareholder but really unfortunate if you’re a customer.

Now for those that claim that they are entitled to see every Big Ten game because they are taxpayers and their hard earned money is subsidizing the university, you’re partially right. Yes, this also about money for the Big Ten Schools involved. However, you must consider that this will benefit your school of choice much quicker than tax dollars ever could. In this economy and changing social values, every dollar generated to the Big Ten schools is becoming harder and harder to come by. This is a much needed shot in the arm to every school involved. Over time the BTN will benefit each member school more than national broadcasts ever could. The BTN is pioneering. Was ESPN an instant success when it was launched 25 years ago? No, in fact it nearly went out of business numerous times and was mocked for years before it ever became the behemoth that it is now.

Finally, for those of you that say that you are forced to pay for a channel that you don’t want, well, join the club. Do you think that I enjoy the Oxygen network of Lifetime Women? Of course not, you can’t make everybody happy all of the time. However, the FCC chief just reported today that the price of Cable has gone up while every other proven form of technology has gone down in recent years. Cable companies don’t report what they get charged to re-broadcast each network. This is a deceptive practice and makes it easy for the cable networks to sling mud when they really have no solid footing at all. Finally, the FCC chief has even expressed his desire for a la carte programming. Cables days as we know them are numbered!

Do yourselves all a favor and switch to satellite!!

I ask b/c it looks like Dish is going to dick me on the BTN.

I live in KS, and my old man lives in MO (KC). He currently has Dish and got the BTN last year, but this year he’s been told that they moved it to the sports package for hsi ‘market’ since he’s not in Big10 country.

Now I just signed up for Dish (we just moved from Columbus, where I had ATT Uverse TV WITH BTN HD that looks like a lot of caps I’m not yelling I promise), but Uverse is not offered out here. So instead I selected Dish over DirecTV (almost $25/mo cheaper for virtually the same thing). When I signed up I could not for the life of me find the fine print that said BTN might not be offered in my market, but since they’ve already borked my Dad I’m afraid I’m about to get the hammer as well. Which means I’ll be paying $6/mo more for the ’sports package,’ but still, that’s annoying as hell.

Alright, enough ranting. Any sat subscribers out there living outside the Big10 footprint? What’s happening to you?

And thanks for having my back with Rob. Us native Ohioans are slow learners, but we try.