I hope everyone is enjoying Fox 17 KDSM...

[ornryactor]

Hey all, get into the 1990's and get a dish will ya? Cheaper, better, no-brainer

Unless you enjoy having telephone and internet service. Then cable makes a LOT more financial sense.

95% of Mediacom's customers have both TV and internet through their cable, and a pretty sizeable chunk have telephone service as well. Having all three through one company (and one physical cable) is a heck of a lot cheaper than buying TV through one company, internet through another, and telephone through a third.

You're right- satellite is so 1990s. Get into the 2000's and stick with cable.

 

[Cyclonesrule91]

I know I've heard the only negative about mediacom phone is if you lose electricity, you lose your phone. With the other services you still can use the phone in that case. Otherwise, they have all the options you can get through anybody else....

 

[ISUAlum2002]

Unless you enjoy having telephone and internet service. Then cable makes a LOT more financial sense.

95% of Mediacom's customers have both TV and internet through their cable, and a pretty sizeable chunk have telephone service as well. Having all three through one company (and one physical cable) is a heck of a lot cheaper than buying TV through one company, internet through another, and telephone through a third.

You're right- satellite is so 1990s. Get into the 2000's and stick with cable.

I agree with all of this.

Another great thing about satellite is that you get to jack around with a separate receiver for each TV or tie 2 or more TV's into one receiver and be forced to have the same channel on all TV's hooked into that one receiver. When you have 5 TV's in a house like mine, messing around with separate receivers for each of them is not enticing.

How about the weather? High winds or nasty snowfall? Hope your dish is still getting a good signal. A friend of mine can't get the local channels through dish because a tree is blocking the signal.

I don't want to have to get Qwest for DSL. First off, its a lot slower than cable internet, and second, I don't have a phone line and don't want to deal with a separate bill for it.

 

[ISUFan22]

Ahhh, good news. Gets us to January 5th. And just a few weeks after that, we'll be back to our old faithful DirecTV.

*sigh*

At last...reunited!

 

[PolkCityClone]

All I have to do is get $15 rabbit ears and I will be fine. So, how many of the games that are on Mediacom 22 are also on Dish? What about those classic games against KU in bball?

How does the dish work in bad weather?

 

[Kyle]

I'll be sticking with mediacom. If need be I'll get out the $12 pair of bunny ears I have laying around somewhere. It sounds to me like Sinclair is being unreasonable, requiring mediacom to pick up like 22 more channels or something rediculous. Not only that, but there are so many Cyclone athletic events on mediacom channel 22 that I don't want to give it up.

 

[PolkCityClone]

I'll be sticking with mediacom. If need be I'll get out the $12 pair of bunny ears I have laying around somewhere. It sounds to me like Sinclair is being unreasonable, requiring mediacom to pick up like 22 more channels or something rediculous. Not only that, but there are so many Cyclone athletic events on mediacom channel 22 that I don't want to give it up.

Looks like I was going to pay 3 buck to much for my bunny ears...

 

[Cyclonepride]

Not to incite local panic, but isn't the ISU- Iowa game supposed to be carried by 17, since it's in Iowa City this year?

 

[Kyle]

Looks like I was going to pay 3 buck to much for my bunny ears...

I've had them for a few years, there may be some inflation to factor in.

 

[Warder60]

As I understood it - people like Dish Network because they have the ability to provide the most HD channels currently. I have Dish Net, but as a poor college student, the lowest HD package is all I'm willing to pay out on for now.
All the locals come in fine too.

I'll have reception problems in large thunderstorms and the like. I can't really remember, but I don't think large snowstorms had as much if any effect.
Not usually that big of a deal since the interruption doesn't usually last too long, and storms are more fun to watch than TV anyway.

I have several friends around Ames that have Mediacom thanks to apartments or whatever. Back when I was deciding on what services to use, they all encouraged me to stay away because their cable internet service sucks. They have all kinds of connection issues. (My home in cedar rapids doesn't have issues with the internet on mediacom though)


But I also think Sinclair is ********. If they did this to the other service providers, then it sucks that they haven't stood up with mediacom.

 

[cytech]

The main thing that keeps me with mediacom is the internet service. Qwest's DSL just doesn't even compare. I would say on average DSL is about 5-10 times faster then dial up. And mediacom cable internet is 10-20 times faster then DSL.

 

[Cypwr]

I have both Mediacom cable and Dish Network. No comparison DN blows MC out of the water. MC picture quality sucks where I live. I have had them out to look at it 3 times and there service techs have no clue. The only station that I even watch on cable is Mediacom Connections and that is the only place you can get that. Pros for DN you can order Fox Sport Net and get all 30 or so FSN stations that show different events a lot of the time, MC only offers one out of St Louis. The storms knocking out the signal only happens 2 or 3 times a year and does not last too long. For anyone wondering why I have both, MC is paid for by the wife's work because she needs access to the internet and to not add cable adds $10 a month to the internet bill, where having cable added cost $12 so it only cost $2 to have it. We also have high def so you need an antenna anyway so I do not have local stations on DN (which cost extra too) which would be digital vs over the air which is HD.
So buy the antenna as an excuse to buy an HD set in the future, HD is a must and to think I thought I had it made when I was a kid and my mom would let me stay up late and watch Monday Night Football in my bedroom on a black and white TV.

 

[besserheimerphat]

I agree with all of this.

Another great thing about satellite is that you get to jack around with a separate receiver for each TV or tie 2 or more TV's into one receiver and be forced to have the same channel on all TV's hooked into that one receiver. When you have 5 TV's in a house like mine, messing around with separate receivers for each of them is not enticing.

How about the weather? High winds or nasty snowfall? Hope your dish is still getting a good signal. A friend of mine can't get the local channels through dish because a tree is blocking the signal.

I don't want to have to get Qwest for DSL. First off, its a lot slower than cable internet, and second, I don't have a phone line and don't want to deal with a separate bill for it.

1.) Our phone company, Iowa Telecom, bundles DishNetwork, DSL and telephone into a single, significantly cheaper bill.

2.) Our two TV's are powered by one reciever, and I CAN watch different channels on each TV simultaneously - multiple tuners in one reciever, the primary TV uses a normal IR remote, while the secondary TV uses a UHF remote which relays back to the receiver somewhere else in the house.

3.) Weather doesn't effect the signal very often. I live out in the country, so I've always got at least a gentle breeze blowing. Heavy rain, heavy snow, wind, lightning - none of it has greatly effected our TV viewing. I've actually lost electricity more often than I lost signal. And I also have a tree that intrudes into the dish's "viewing area."

 

[cycloneworld]

Right now I'm paying $50 per month to Mediacom for Internet and Digital 2-star cable (Starz/Sho). I can't imagine getting a better deal than that.

However, I just got a 51" HDTV so DISH intrigues me. How do people pull HD channels over the air? Just with an HD box?

 

[cytech]

Right now I'm paying $50 per month to Mediacom for Internet and Digital 2-star cable (Starz/Sho). I can't imagine getting a better deal than that.

However, I just got a 51" HDTV so DISH intrigues me. How do people pull HD channels over the air? Just with an HD box?

that all depends on how far away from the brodcast towers you live. But it requires a anntena.
This web site http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx
is pretty good for letting you know what you will need to use to get a proper signal.

 

[cloneluke80]

The main thing that keeps me with mediacom is the internet service. Qwest's DSL just doesn't even compare. I would say on average DSL is about 5-10 times faster then dial up. And mediacom cable internet is 10-20 times faster then DSL.

This statement is false. I have DSL and they upped my bandwidth and lowered my price. It is $36 per month for 768k download speed. This blows my girlfriends media com out of the water most days. You see with cable, you share bandwidth with the neighborhood where with DSL you have guaranteed bandwidth, and with everyone downloading video and large files these days, I would rather have dedicated bandwidth than sharing.

 

[ISUFan22]

2 big reasons I don't like Mediacom (and most cable companies)...

1. No NFL Sunday Ticket. Not having it this fall is killing me.

2. No NFL Network. A huge game took place last night and how many people got to watch it?

That's just me though, I'm a big NFL guy just as I am college. Plus, we had DirecTV for 5 years with very minimal outages. Trick in the winter is to spray a non-stick cooking spray on the dish once or twice during the winter. Helps keep the snow off it.

 

[cytech]

Where exactly do you live that you are getting this kind of service through mediacom on the internet side. I find it very hard to believe. I would be happy to put my cable modem up against any qwest DSL service in a speed test to prove my point.
http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

Last Result:
Download Speed: 4691 kbps (586.4 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 238 kbps (29.8 KB/sec transfer rate)

it is a little slow today, but I do have 3 other computers using this connection as well. But I would bet this is atleast 5 times faster than the results you can get

 

[ISUFan22]

This statement is false. I have DSL and they upped my bandwidth and lowered my price. It is $36 per month for 768k download speed. This blows my girlfriends media com out of the water most days. You see with cable, you share bandwidth with the neighborhood where with DSL you have guaranteed bandwidth, and with everyone downloading video and large files these days, I would rather have dedicated bandwidth than sharing.

DSL intrigues me. Right now we have cable internet and bought our own cable modem.

What type of service can I expect from DSL? What do I need to buy in order to avoid renting equipment? Do they try to charge you more if you have a wireless network? What the real cost?

 

[cytech]

well with qwest DSL they generally give you a 2wire DSLmodem/Wireless router with the paid service. I don't think there is a leaseing/rental fee for that. But with DSL the main thing is, how far away you are from their office and how far you are from a repeater. In most areas the highest signal you can recieve is 512/512Kb. Though if you are close to their office or a repeater you can get as strong as 1024/1024 Kb. In comparison mediacom offers a watered down internet service that runs around 20-30 bucks a month that is 512/128 Kb. The main offering is what most people have which is 5120/256 Kb which runs $45 per month with cable. Then they offer mediacom maxx which is 10240/512 Kb for an extra $10 per month.