Also the whole binding year contract may be a pain in the 'tocks should i decide to vamoose or travel or some such.
Never know.
See, it balances out to minimal saving but i'm not so sure what the crazy benefits of cable internet would be anyway unless i end up up and downloading things a lot, or being on the computer a lot more than i have been recently.

Wireless with cable isn't really much of a pain - I bought $40 router, followed the directions to install it (which involved plugging stuff in) and then I was done. I don't use cable TV, and I can't recall ever having serious internet outages, for what that's worth.

But are you saying you love cable internet, and if so, why?

if your cable starts to get glitchy and inconsistent, chances are that your broadband connection will behave similarly.

i say don't sign any long-term service agreements, and as soon as a third-party option comes around (like wireless broadband, or if they ever figure out how to deliver broadband over powerlines without causing massive RF interference), drop your phone company like a bad habit.

Cable internet these days tends to be more reliable than most consumer grade DSL, as well as cheaper. (This is the reverse of how it used to be in relatively recent history.)

Cable also tends to be faster than consumer grade DSL, with as much as 10-20 megabits down, and usually about 300-800 kilobits up. (Note, in many places commercial DSL is available with rates as high as 25mb up/down, but it costs more.)

For most consumers - because of the petty wars with DSL providers and telephone companies - cable is the choice at this point these days.

The main reasons I would go for a DSL connection otherwise, price unconsidered, are privacy, service, guaranteed speed rates. A good private DSL provider is less likely to kill your account or roll over and play dead to the RIAA. A good provider will guarantee a connection speed as well as uptime. Cable will never guarantee a speed, because connections are shared by an entire neighborhood or street.



Wireless routers are dirt cheap these days. Do NOT rent or buy these devices from your provider. Cable/DSL providers do not offer "wireless" broadband - it's just the same wired signal as their regular broadband, with the added bonus of them giving/loaning/renting you a wireless router to plug in to your wired connection. In almost all cases it makes much more sense to go buy your own router and wireless card. The really cheap routers are less than $20 these days, and cheapie cards can be less than $5-10.

Cable internet and digital TV are handled by a technique called "multiband transmission". It works by sending different signals within different frequencies on the same cable. The coaxial cable and signalling equipment that the cable companies use can handle a lot of high-powered RF (radio frequency) signal, which makes it much easier to do this kind of "multiband transmission" on a single cable then it is to do on a lower powered, non-RF and much "leakier" cable like twisted pair phone wires.

In essence, the coaxial cable network is one great big, complicated radio or TV antennae. But instead of radiating that radio frequency energy, it's conducted and channeled down the coaxial cables. However, instead of design their "antennae" to efficiently radiate, it must be designed to "leak" as little as possible. This prevents interference with stuff it shouldn't interfere with, but it also helps them transmit more signal over farther distances while using less energy. It is not entirely unlike a metaphorical garden hose - kinks or leaks mean less pressure at the business end.

Anyway, fast forward to digital cable and internet. They both work on the same cable, yet function indepently because of this "multiband transmission". In cable internet, you have a cable modem, which talks to their equipment in the box down the road, which is the termination point for your "local loop", as you and your neighbors share a certain amount of physical cable (like a local area network). This modem transmits and recieves signals in a specific frequency range.

Digital cable works much the same way - except instead of an internet connection it broadcasts a digitally encoded stream that, when decoded, gives you your digital TV. Your digital cable box has a built in modem, what amounts to a small computer and a host of circuits dedicated to decoding the signal, transmitting commands back to their offices for TV on demand and so forth. It's not entirely unlike a PC connected to the internet, except it is totally specialized for the purposes of recieving and displaying streams of digitally encoded video.

Which is a very complicated way of saying "Like your computer and the internet, it's going to fuck up quite often. Except here it's an underpowered, embedded little piece of crap computer doing the decoding, and when it fucks up it fucks up big time." Your computer and the internet connection it's attached to fuck up all the time, but you just don't notice it because the medium is tolerant. Most of the stuff we view is static, not realtime streaming video or audio. Videos posted and played from the internet are often heavily buffered, even further glossing over the glitches.

And since it's supposedly "TV", we notice the glitches in realtime streaming all that much more, because TV isn't supposed to do that. Oh, but it most certainly does when you compress it with the crappiest compression and pump it through shitty little underpowered computers.

Yeah, they could add a lot more RAM and CPU speed to these set top boxes, but then they'd basically cost as much as a computer, and would basically be a full computer. (Which isn't a bad idea, unless you're CEO of a cable company trying to wring every last drop of blood out of our turnip-shaped heads. :( )

So, no, Digital TV and Cable internet, while on the same cable, have two different infrastructures and technologies supporting them. One can fail and the other can function just fine - just as long as the physical cable is intact and the other still has its own infrastructure in place.



And all that being said, Digital Cable is one of the biggest scams this decade or last. The picture quality generally sucks, they don't pay attention to the compression and encoding, it's artless, and it generally looks and behaves about 1000 times more awful and terrible than the old analog cable system.

Even worse? It costs the cable companies less to transmit, because it frees up bandwidth, the equipment is cheaper to replace and they no longer have to worry so much about things like noise, signal strength or quality, because they just stream the video data to your set-top box like it was the internet, anyway.

And yet they're still trying to charge more for it. Just because it's digital that doesn't mean it's better.

But also what syntax said. If your digital cable is regularly glitchy you likely have a noisy connection, and cable companies have no motivation to go clean up their circuits.

I've never used DSL, eth. Syntax is right, though. You shouldn't sign long-term service agreements. Something always comes up at leaves you cursing it.

I read today that AT&T will start selling $19.95/month "naked" DSL in the next few months. I'd wait for that.

The main reasons I would go for a DSL connection otherwise, price unconsidered, are privacy, service, guaranteed speed rates. A good private DSL provider is less likely to kill your account or roll over and play dead to the RIAA.

i was thinking about this, too, except these aren't small mom & pops but the smaller of the big boys.
If people know specifics of different companies, phone and cablewise, pro or con, feel free to put that info here for your fellow bunnies.

i know i'd be getting a free cable modem out of it and any wireless router would be of my own resources, i'm just trying to sort out the best, cheapest options i can.
i wouldn't mind losing my landline or my cable possibly. Trying to clean up and pare down before the new year and possibly avoid signing any contracts that aren't necessary.

Besides wanting to see the new Rome and Sopranos and liking the first second season opener of Extras with Orlando Bloom (he was pretty funny), i just don't find myself actually watching it so much as having it on with most everything i wanna see being available on the interent free and mostly legal for right now.
And right now i just dunno and i want info to sway me.

Interesting, mudgirl, i was wondering if something would be up with them since that bit Colbert did a few days ago.

I had digital cable for a few years from Comcast. Their set top box sucked and did far less than TiVo. We used their movie service maybe twice. The connection was initially installed by a drunkard and had to be repaired because the cable box on the street filled up with water whenever it rained. To get broadband, we had to get digital cable or it would've cost more.

We switched to Verizon DSL because we're very close to the swtich and it was slightly cheaper. Their service has been underwhelming and the phone sucks -- get ready for it -- every time it rains. They blame it on the internal wiring, and I know for a fact that it's not (I wired the house, trust me), especially in light of the last time it it rained, I opened the outside access panel and, ta da, it had water in it.

This is only one particular case, but from my point of view they both suck equally.

Second what loquacious said (well done). Also, I have twice run DSL at the same time as cable (different providers) and cable is just faster and better.