Imagine your television picture is a jigsaw puzzle broken down into individual pieces, placed in a box, shipped to its final location and put back together again exactly as it was before. That is essentially how digital cable works. And because the picture takes up less space in digital pieces, many more channels can fit through the existing cable system in your town.
What's the difference between Digital Cable and satellite services? Unlike satellite services, the signal from Digital Cable cannot be interrupted by snow, rain, and high winds. With a satellite dish, something as simple as medium to dense cloud cover can cause a satellite picture to be degraded or unintelligible.
You do not have to buy a dish that needs to be installed on the outside of your house. You will receive all local channels without an old-fashioned rooftop antenna. With all the hype around satellite offering local channels, local channels are still only available in 35-40 major cities nationwide. Where available, they stilll do not carry all of the local programming thatPremier Communicationsprovides, just major networks. PBS in many cases is still offered at an additional charge above and beyond local programming. Rates for local channels range from $4.99 to $5.99, depending upon the satellite provider.
Satellite does not "necessarily" require multiple receivers per TV. Satellite installers use a procedure called "mirroring" which allows a single receiver to be viewed on up to two televisions. This "mirroring" does not allow each TV to be controlled separately....what ever is being watched by the TV with the receiver physically attached is what the slave TV must view.....no independent channel control. Satellite providers do provide the same sophisticated parental controls as does Digital Cable.
