Cable or Satellite?

Is satellite more likely to be available during a SHTF situation? For example, consider a major earthquake. I'm thinking that it's likely that cable will go completely out, whereas satellite is likely to be still operational assuming I have power. Are my thoughts generally correct?

For satellite, my main provider is DirecTV. For cable, my main provider is Comcast.

I'm getting sick of Comcast because they can't fix the reception problems at my house. Ever since cable switched to all digital, there have been reception problems. So, I'm working up the motivation for going through the trouble and switching to satellite.

Yes, if you have power and your dish is still intact and in position, your satellite connection would stand a better chance of being up than a cable connection.

HJ

My experience is that DirecTV provide woeful service for a premium price. I kicked them to the curb 2yrs ago and haven't looked back. OTA does just fine for me.

We have Dish my parents have cable. It seems like the pictures they get are not always as goodas what we tend to get. Our OTA was very spotty so we had to do something.

I'd want to know how likely it is that you'll have power if the cable service has gone out. Your satellite dish is pointed rather precisely at the satellite; is it still pointed in that direction after the shivers have stopped.

I would not pick a cable/satellite provider based on an earthquake, for what my opinion is worth. I'd go by service, price, and features, since that's the daily use, and I'd rely on over the air local TV and radio for local news in an emergency. In my area, rabbit ears work fine. The issue is whether I'll have power (and the house is still standing).

I'm not sure why for satellite there is a 'main provider'. We have Dish, but that's a happenstance of some local seller having Dish to sell. Are there limits to where satellite TV can go?

With a backup generator, the likelihood of having power is about 100%. Even if we're talking power from the grid, grid power is likely to be restored before cable lines are fixed.

I'd rather have the option of not watching news on television, rather than my failed cable service making that decision for me.

As mentioned, I'm trying to work up motivation. Features are roughly the same between satellite and cable. So, there is no decision to be made on features. I just want the news and sports channels, and everything else is just extra.

This reliability issue during a disaster could be the difference. Comcast service is no longer more reliable on a daily basis either, ever since Comcast went to all digital. Regarding cost, I'll have to analyze the options, but I think I need another degree from college to figure that out. Rabbit ears are about worthless in my area.

As far as "main provider" goes, I'll revise that to say Comcast is the ONLY cable television provider in my area. As for satellite, "main" means most popular.

IMO TV is simply not necessary.

I lived for years without TV and found out that during disasters radio had more, and more frequent, local news. The TV stations were all regional and neighbors were actually less aware of what was going on locally watching TV. Yes, TV has pretty graphics but a much lower information density. Watching TV is also a fairly singular activity. I can do real work and listen to the radio but watching TV, not so much. I would save precious resources like gasoline for more important things than keeping the boob tube lit.

Those are good points, Art. (Now, if we could just get you out to the range and turn you into a responsible gun owner... )

I admit that I need to ramp up my radio knowledge and capabilities. I work from a home office and TV news is on low volume the entire day. So, it's natural for me to figure out how to keep the TV going during a disaster. I need to spend the time and hone into local radio stations for news.

I just thought of another issue. The Internet would be valuable during a SHTF situation. Currently, my Internet runs through cable. Further, my home phone service runs through the Internet. Yeah, satellite is looking even better.

Do you get free to air satellite broadcasts in the USA?

Setting up a low powered portable satellite TV reception antenna is pretty easy if the power went out. i.e. a Solar PV/SLA battery supply etc to power everything.

For your Portable Dish, Tripod, LNB and cabling;

http://www.sky4caravans.co.uk/satellite-touring-kit-p-50.html

A cheapo DVB-S USB box is available and can be used in conjuction with a low powered Netbook PC via the USB port, which allows recording of TV channels etc for playback.

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.15820

It only uses 7.5W so is easily powered by a Solar PV panel.

I have cable for internet and sat for TV. I used to install cable as a subcontractor, mainly hi-speed internet, but also TV.

If you have power your best bet is to have sat TV. I went out and determined the direction/angle on the sat dish, marked them down, then noted them in my "smart book". Should the dish shift, I can re-aim it and then call for tech support.

Having said that, I did stay with cable for the internet, only because DSL in my area is not so hot. What is odd, my power/cable/phone lines are underground. But I can go point to the spot they go back to arial - and if there is a good hurricane, I lose power.

I have two radios in the event I lose power. Pictures are not important, local news is. The past couple of hurricanes has proven that - local radio was 24/7 news that I needed.

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're asking but in all or most locales here, that areas local channels broadcast their signal free and over the air. You just need an antenna and a capable tv to pick it up.

I get wonderful, uncompressed HiDef tv for $0 per month. Albeit only 5 or 6 channels but still. Oregon Public Broadcasting is great and there are some wonderful educational shows on there.

Assuming a power supply, I was going to say "yes" to your question until I remembered one thing. My mother in the Bay Area has Dish, and I don't know if DirectTV is any different, but her satellite receiver box needs to be able to dial out on a regular telephone line periodically. I assume it's mostly a way for the box to check if you've been paying your monthly fees. Anyway, without a working landline connection, she won't get satellite TV. I know, bummer, right?

It's too bad that we never have true competition between multiple cable providers in the same area (at least, I don't remember ever living anywhere where I had that choice.).

Besides broadcast TV, one other option that hasn't been mentioned is TV service from the traditional telephone providers, like AT&T's U-verse service or Verizon's TV service that is available with their fiber optic FiOS service. But that is still being rolled out in many areas, so these services may not even be available where you are.

I came to the opposite conclusion myself, but it really depends on your locale. Here in the Los Angeles/Orange County area, it is usually the local TV stations who have the resources to send people out to developing situations, while the radio stations tend to rely more on information from news wires, press releases, or even listeners calling in.

We've had a lot of really bad wildfires in the last several years, and local TV news coverage has been superior to the radio news coverage in most cases IMHO, including the luxury of actually seeing wildfires from the news helicopters. Even so, I'm not sure if the people most directly affected were getting enough details even from the TV news coverage. I suppose in any fast developing situation, it's pretty rare to cover ALL the information bases to everyone's satisfaction ALL the time.

> My mother in the Bay Area has Dish, and I don't know if DirectTV is any
> different, but her satellite receiver box needs to be able to dial out on a
> regular telephone line periodically.

I've got Dish, and I told the installer I didn't want my box to be connected to the phone line, so he didn't do it. I've had Dish for over 5 years, including upgrading the box to digital, and I've never had it connected to the phone line. I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Upgrades and maintenance come down from the heavens in the dark of the night. When I've called in for support, they've never questioned me not having a phone connection. I think the reason they want it is so the box can call in for pay on demand to bill you whatever programming they sell.

I think the reason for the lack of multiple cable providers is that municipalities charge a fee for letting cable providers have access to city sewers, er, underground cabling tunnels, and cable providers won't pony up if they have competition. Cities charge for letting people have access to the residents.

> it is usually the local TV stations who have the resources to send people out
> to developing situations, while the radio stations tend to rely more on
> information from news wires, press releases, or even listeners calling in.

That's been the case here in the San Francisco Bay Area. Most radio stations are owned by Clear Channel, and they don't even have a crew here (well, one engineer). All the talent is recorded somewhere else and the tape is mailed in. See "Clear Channel Still Haunted by Minot Toxic Spill Disaster," http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/...ll-disaster.ars

TV stations still have news crews because they're on camera and can show us all the fires. :-> It's been my experience that TV gives us better current local news than does radio, but I'm sure mileage varies.

My sat reciever is not hooked up to any phone lines. Means I can't order pay-per-view stuff or movies, etc. To upgrade my receiver, I get a plug-in chip once every year or so. I have Dish, so a phone line connection for them is not required. Fact is, DW didn't want to be able to order the stuff - we went Dish to save money over what the cable clowns were charging us.

There are basically 2 services available for Satellite broadcasts in the UK.

There is Sky TV, which is a payable satellite TV service and Freesat satellite TV service with is free to pick up with a dish.

http://packages.sky.com/digitalswitchover/new-customer-offers/?DCMP=KNC-

http://www.freesat.co.uk/index.php?page=Home

There is also terrestrial broadcasts called Freeview.

http://www.freeview.co.uk/

If the priority is just the availability of TV news stations in a wide area blackout situation such as an earthquake then the broadcast TV and radio masts could have been taken out leaving just satellite broadcast from geostationary earth orbiting satellites.

The Sky Sat TV for example broadcast their signal which is encrypted and you have to pay a subscription to decode the broadcast signal.

Most of the channels on free to view Terrestrial broadcasts (Freeview - DVB-T ) are also available on Satellite broadcast (Freesat - DVB-S).

So can all your favorite Free to Air TV channels broadcast using Terrestrial HDTV transmitters also be viewed using using a Satellite dish in the USA.

The analogue terrestrial TV signal (5 channels) in the east of Scotland gets turned of today for the Digital Switch over. This should substantially improve the current Digital TV reception (about 86 channels of TV + Radio) signal strength.

The news channels available on terrestrial Digital TV are BBC News 24, Sky News, Russia Today, Al Jezera etc

I again have DirecTV and don't have a phone connection either. I live in the desert and DirecTV's reliability is much better than the local Time Warner service. Time Warner could never get some channels to work at my house. Also, at least compared to TW, the DirecTV DVR is much much better.

Having said all that, I still have TimeWarner's Internet service. I don't have a land line and therefore DSL is not cost effective. Satellite based Internet service is nominally fast but has a lag as the signal bounces between the satellite and the ground stations.

If an earthquake does move your antenna, moving it back is certainly doable. I installed my dish myself when I first had DirecTV. The receiver often has instructions for pointing the dish based on your zipcode.

Interesting, so the phone connection isn't necessary. My mother doesn't do pay-per-view, but does get some special premium channel or two, so maybe that's what requires the box to "phone home"...

Anyway, so in that case, if a live phone connection isn't required, then I would vote for satellite as more likely to be available than cable after something like a major earthquake.

AFAIK, that type of free service is not available here. The OTA stuff I mentioned can be picked up on home made rabbit ears.

Sky is the devil.

I am with Am_Fear_Liath_Mor on the free to air. If giving the choice I would have cable over dish, but in the SHTF scenario I would utilize the free to air on the dish. Usually in that situation, the very last thing I would be doing is watching TV unless I was totally bored. All cable is is a satellite signal converted to cable anyways, so if satellites crap out, so does your cable anyway, unless it's a local feed.

Anyway if you click here-----> http://www.lyngsat.com/freetv/United-States.html
These are some of the free channels in the US and if you look at their site---> http://www.lyngsat.com/ they have listings for free channels all over the world. These are legal channels to pick up free, you need a dish 32 inches or bigger with a motor on it to pick up a whole lot of free channels. E-bay through Canada has your best deals, Do a search for Free to Air TV and you will find a ton of receivers to use, they are legal, stay away from the illegal ones to keep out of trouble. If done right you can have a lot of free tv, maybe not the best channels but it's free. I use cable for stuff I want to watch, I'm not a fan of contracts and receiver dependability with dish.


P.S. Big Dish=no rain fade

Radio news depends on whether or not you have a local station with real people, or the radio-on-a-disk Clear Channel.

A few years after I moved to WA, we had a flood that closed Interstate 5 for four days. I think it was KITI in Chehalis that had two guys on the radio 24 hrs a day for the whole time. The National Guard came to get them, and they refused to go.

These guys were GREAT! They dumped the music and just kept the information coming:
* River heights, flood stages, over banks,
* Which roads were closed,
* Which were close to being closed,
* Which roads were still open,
* Where the shelters were and the routes still open to get to them,
* Where the buses were picking up people,
* Which businesses were closed or open,
* Which mountain roads were open for semis,
* Suggestions about pets,
ETC.

This is the kind of coverage that is really needed in a disaster. If you've got it, you need a radio more than TV. If all you have is Clear Channel, you're screwed.

The problem I've seen with TV is that all they're feeding you is news bites and the most dramatic/sensational photos they can find. Even with cable, I've never seen one with much about what YOU need to know.

I've gone through two more floods with no TV and didn't miss it. I asked around afterwards, and was told there was nothing to miss.

Sue

I agree that TV news is pretty useless, most of the time. Right now I am listening to my favorite local radio station for my daily, useful, news fix.

I have noticed that some of the local stations, based in LA, actually do provide worthwhile info during our various earthquakes and wildfires. Most of the time their news coverage is pretty useless, unless you really care about the antics of celebs.

Case in point: Late at night, my wife came in, after hearing sirens. We both caught a faint whiff of smoke. My wife checked the immediate vicinity outside, while I turned to the boob tube. A Los Angeles station was broadcasting live feed of the fire from a helicopter, and providing reasonably decent info which helped us as we prepared for a possible evac.

It is a good idea to determine which specific media sources can be useful in a disaster situation before you need to use them. My favorite local radio station doesn't have the resources to respond immediately to every situation, although their coverage will be more thorough and thoughtful as the situation evolves.

My recommendation of radio over TV was based on a few experiences but yes, a lot depends on your local stations. Radio stations that are exclusively rebroadcasting a signal from a central site can be as oblivious as the worse of the TY stations. Others have some mix of live and taped/slave content. It the owners allow, and the operators are game, such stations can shift after a disaster to serving local needs. Unfortunately there is no easy way of determining which stations can/will adapt to community needs.

There are conditions that seem to increase the odds of a radio station serving local needs. AM stations seem more likely to serve local needs. Low-power, locally owned, stations that have DJs and announcers on site most of the time seem to be more responsive than High-power, corporate owned, robot operated ones.

I've seen a few AM stations really shine. Often operating as wide-area bulletin boards and information clearinghouses. Thousands may be displaced, children and pets lost. It cannot overestimated what it means when rescuers can send out messages about unidentified kids. When people separated by the emergency have a place where they can leave a message that will be heard by thousands.

I've heard that local radio stations have even been used as a resource by emergency managers. Both to get the word out as to where to go and what to do, but also for monitoring. Unable to get emergency crews out to check if a small bridge was out the radio station sent out a request for anyone in the area to check and let them know if at all possible. Ten minutes later, using an oddball mix of land-line telephones where they still worked, CB, and a few people walking between houses, they had an answer.

Knowing the bridge was still there allowed emergency workers to avoid a twenty mile detour.

The sad thing is that a very few huge corporations own the vast majority of radio stations, and most of these are mostly rebroadcasting a feed from a central studio. So the odds of there being a responsive local radio station in your area is increasingly short. It is worth the trouble to find out what radio stations are in your area and how they are run. Find a good one and you've found gold.

I've never played with satellite, so I can't weigh in much there.

I have a smartphone with a data plan that I can use to gain internet access even if the power is out, and in a pinch I can even use it to connect a laptop out to the internet. Thihs of course presumes the local cell towers aren't overwhelmed with traffic as they well be in an emergency.

I also have a pile of battery-powered radios and a pile of batteries. The main local AM station and several of the local FM stations are designated emergency broadcast stations with greater or lesser periods of built-in generator run time. They also happen to have real DJs most of the time, and a producer sitting around to cut in with local content if something happens in the middle of the night. Anytime a major event arises they are good about getting the word out quickly and thoroughly.

The cell towers around me go out if there's merely a strong storm. I won't count on them during a SHTF situation. Even if the towers don't go out due to damage, the huge traffic during a SHTF situation on the cell networks will cause them to fail.

As we all know, it's a good idea to have multiple means of communication. When I become independently wealthy, I'll have everything I want, including cable, satellite, satellite phone, radio, bunny ears, plain old telephone system and whatever else.

As for now, I'll be switching to Dish Network if my cable goes out one more time. The cable guy just came by and claimed that this fix will be the last one. We'll see. Going basic with rabbit ears is not an option for me because I want my sports channels, and I also like some of the other channels, like comedy, history, etc. Watching sports and sports news is one of my simple pleasures in life.

For everything short of an EMP-related issue or big-rock-falls-everyone-dies scenario, yes, satellite is more survivable.

However.... The following is based on my parents' experince with Hughsnet.

You are limited to a pretty paltry amount of bandwidth per day. They don't cut you off, they just limit you to much less than dial up for a day or two to punish you. Even as it is, the connection speed is only fractionally better than dialup, assuming you have no wet trees in the way- rain and trees, you have no connection. And they've had to replace three in a year due to them getting fried from something, presumably lightening strikes within a few miles.

And more to the point- the web is going to be pretty far down your list of priorities at that point. No need to tell us you are ok- we'll assume you are, wish you luck in the manner that we each find most culturally and theologically appealing, and those of us who will be responding in your general direction will move out.

A friend has Bluesky, and their monthly cap is much lower than comcast (he grabs the security updates off comcast as his GF's or here) and has all of the connectivity issues I've seen with Hughsnet.

Oh, and if you do any kind of gaming, guess what- your ping times are going to go in the toilet. That can't be improved, you are working against the speed of light.

99.9% of the time, I'd think you'd be happier with fiber.

How about my choice since 1994? : NONE.

Yep, I haven't paid the TV bill in well over 10 years.
Currently at $71 a month, Cable TV (and Sat TV) have increased at a rate of about 5% a year. This year I won't spend $852 on TV.

Given the costs over the last 10 years, I've saved well over $8,000 - maybe more - on television bills.

There's little or nothing I miss, and of late, I DO have Cable - for Internet only - so if I want to watch a show now and then, I have Hulu.com, Netflix and lots of other choices.

I just don't think anything on TV is worth paying a subscription for. I'll buy shows (I bought the season of Battlestar Galactica) but I won't pay huge sums for services I don't use.

Ah! I knew there was something we shared besides this forum...a fellow TV-less home!

Sort of.

"In North America (USA, Canada and Mexico) there are over 80 FTA digital channels available on Galaxy 19. (The majority of them are ethnic or religious.) Other popular FTA satellites include AMC-4, AMC-6, Galaxy 18, and Satmex 5. A company called GloryStar promotes FTA religious broadcasters on G-19 and AMC-4."

C and KU band stuff - and the programming is kind of, um, narrow interest:

http://www.sadoun.com/Sat/Channels/American-FTA-free-to-air-Satellite-TV-Channels.htm

When I lived in Louisiana, I had Comcast cable and LIKED it, more for Internet connectivity but, the TV wasn’t bad either. I don’t remember it ever going out.
Where I live now, rural western Arkansas, cable is not available nor is DSL. What I do have Dish Satellite for Television and use an air card for Internet. These work OK but, I find the Satellite is more expensive and goes out quite often. We get some pretty bad electrical storms with Tornados. When one of these show up the satellite goes out, usually when the weather guy says “Tornados are in the area and on the ground headed for …… Acquiring Satellite Signal” If I had the choice I would kick Satellite to the curb and go for Cable everything.

Just my opinion for my area.

My cable never went out when the industry had some analog, that is, before the industry went all digital. Just a note, you may be talking about when cable had some analog feeds, which was only about a year ago.

Today, with all digital, large imperfections in the line are difficult for a set-top box to rectify. A cable company (e.g., Comcast) can no longer get away with too many line imperfections in the cable system. It's like when a DVD is dirty inside a DVD player. The video usually stalls. In contrast, an analog VCR will keep the video rolling, imperfections and all.