Why does the cable go out?

[Steve Mann]

...I'm one of the people still without POWER in Waukesha ...

I feel your pain. I've been without power since Tuesday evening. It sucks. I'm running a generator occasionally to keep the freezer and fridge cold. Other than that, I've got nothing. All this is really messing up my season passes/premieres this week.

[Doug Mohr]

Sorry to hear about the extended outages some of you are experiencing. I don't know any specifics regarding what is out and where, but I know crews are working 24x7.  Believe me Doug, cable "substations" do have backup systems.  At the local level, stand-by systems mounted on the poles have their limits. These power outages have now lasted way beyond those design limits.
All of the outages were/are local in nature. Since phone & cable lines are lowest on the utility poles, they are generally more subject to trees & branches taking them out. When power lines are taken down with them, cable and local phone crews sometimes have to wait for WE energies & their contractors to complete their own work (setting new poles & replacing power lines) before the workspace is safe and clear of other maintenance vehicles around the poles.
I'm not giving excuses, just dispelling some of the conjecture posted here and providing more pragmatic reasons for the lingering issues reported here.

PS- If the business model for cable is so bad, why would politicians even expect any competition if they 'open up' the market? The whole paragraph seems contradictory & inflammatory to me.  As for satellite services, I truly hope the recent burst of sun spot activity does not affect any of those systems... I don't think any ladders reach that high (Little Giant included). :eek:

I didn't mean it as conjuncture, just possibilities based on my networking experience and single point of failure scenarios.

I fully understand your explanation of the line issues and I appreciate the information. It corrects the "hunch" that I posted which was not meant as fact or probability, just possibilities.

If anyone else found my post to be contradictory and inflammatory, please tell me. Going back and re-reading it, I don't see it as either.

FYI: I do not subscribe to Time Warner, Satellite, XM, The Journal, or any other pay services. The only exception is telephone.

Doug

[Chinatown]

Not to beat a dead horse, but it seems that in the year or so that I have been a member of this website, the majority of complaints are about TWC, or cable in general. I have had D for 5 years, and loose my signal for maybe 20 minutes a year. I would never go to a shared resource. I believe that is the principal reason there are so many problems. The fees are basically the same. Why put up with their excuses.

[bradsmainsite]

I get , SO :bang:  tired of hearing about cable and dish bashing each other
if satellite is, SOOO bad why do they use it to deliver programing to you and I.

Cable uses Sat and antennas to get the programing and just redistributes to those willing to pay the price.

That being said there is nothing wrong with cable if you like to pay a middle
man and don't mind their channel line up and the S/N (picture grain)  ratio problem of all those amps before it gets to you.

Again its just a choice competition so to speak to keep everybody honest.
Truely cable vs sat is a good thing for everyone except for those of course
who have FREE tv with their antenna!

[John L]

The only advantage of Cable-TV is the Community Public Access Channels and local weather info from the Weather Channel.  You can't get any of that on Direct TV or any satellite service.

-John L.

[bradsmainsite]

Excellent point John this is often overlooked and is what holds a lot of people
back from switching to sat.

If the sat industry could figure this out LOOK OUT cable! :guns:

[kevbeck122]

Video on demand also.

D* does have an interactive thing on some of their receivers to get some local weather information, but it isn't as informative/thorough as the weather channel local info.

[Mark Strube]

Yeah I'm sure everyone has cable just for the weather channel...

There are many advantages to cable - not having to buy any of your own equipment, getting brand new equipment for free as soon as it's available, none of the HD channels are downsampled, being able to get inHD, HD on demand (which is still crappy, hoping they get some better movies on that)...

If you didn't have to buy all your own equipment with DirecTV OR if Dish Network had more competitive pricing, I'd probably have satellite.

But I really don't want this to turn into yet another DirecTV vs. Cable thread. That's gone on enough, just felt like I should defend my TWC homies.

[bradsmainsite]

Mark I agree this could go on long after we are both expired and long gone.

Bottom line is we have both and everyone is happy right?

[jkane]

I can't imagine anyone really cares about the local access station!

As for weather, Dish has a special interactive channel where you can get any local weather instantly instead of waiting until 8 minutes after the hour!  It's even better than the weather channel.  

[StarvingForHDTV]

I used to keep tabs on my local government when I had cable.  Granted I didn't watch the City meetings all of the time, but I did watch them occasionally.  When I got rid of cable, I missed having that access.  I guess I'm too lazy to go down there and watch the meetings in person.....

[AndrewP]

10.5, 10.6, 10.7 have all local weather anybody wants all the time.
TWC doesn't have WB HD, UPN HD yet. Ch 24 OTA is not in HD yet, but I can get UPN HD OTA from Chicago on 50.1

[Mark Strube]

TWC doesn't have WB HD, UPN HD yet. Ch 24 OTA is not in HD yet, but I can get UPN HD OTA from Chicago on 50.1

Which is why I've got an OTA receiver on its way in the mail.

Doubt I could receive UPN HD from Appleton or Chicago with an indoors (powered) antenna in Elm Grove, though. (Or could I?)

[AndrewP]

No, not with indoor. But if you have line of sight clear from trees and buildings then 4228 in the attic (just $40) is worth a try.