Direct TV Dish vs. Cable TV

Out here on the West Coast we have these great, sassy tv commercials that poke fun at competing technologies, those ads that point to the techno-wars between satellite dish and cable companies, including ComCast cable and the Direct TV dish, for example. One commercial, for instance, features a husband and wife: the wife is coming home from work, sees a huge hole in the tree, big enough for the satellite dish to send signals through, while the husband sits in the living room watching his TV and drinking from a container he rests on the cut out portion of the tree. Another commercial features a couple who speak in tandem to an interviewer (being the television-viewing audience), and say things such as, "When it rained.the cable went out." "When the wind blew.the cable went out." [Or maybe it was the dish; I can't recall exactly.]

Unintentionally, I found the opportunity to test both technologies. First, when I was living in a basement suite of a home that was already wired for cable, I ended up subscribing to it. It costs alot of money to ultimately get the cable channels that I wanted to watch. The way the company had it set up was that you had to subscribe first to the basic/standard package. Then, if you want to get any paid movie channels, or any of the other "extra" programs you had to subscribe to that particular package. But in order to any additional cable packages you have to have the basic, first. The TV shows that I really wanted to watch, of course, came with the enhanced package.

Maybe I was particularly sensitive to Sunday night viewing but it always seemed that the cable would go out on Sundays, the one night my shows were on. This happened a lot and it happened when there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

Direct TV Dish - Depending on the Weather

I got to experience a TV dish when I moved in with a family, next, waiting for my ideal living situation to come up. They had a Direct TV dish-in a town where the wires are all above ground and the trees are still more in population than the wires or the Direct TV dishes, and where the weather is typically more extreme with alot of wind, rain, etc. In other words, when it rained, the Direct TV dish went out, then would adjust itself by reloading, if you will, by reconnecting in a matter of minutes. When the wind blew, the Direct TV dish went out. And when nothing was inclement or disastrous, sometimes, yes, the dish went out.

My point, I guess, is that we have super services that make themselves accessible and available, that spoil us with possibilities-hundreds of channels, friendly (usually) troubleshooters, and high definition and other appealing features. But we also have an overpopulation of humans and gadgets, unpredictable flora and fauna (that falls in predictable but harsh weather conditions), and a margin for error or failure that is inevitable enough to fallible humans creating, offering, running, and maintaining the technology we crave/depend on.enough, that is, to drive us nuts when we settle in to watch a 50-dollar-a-week show that is "sorry temporarily unavailable."