Ten years of lousy service is something I do not easily forget. That was how long I had to rely on cable television for all of TV viewing. Before I ever signed up for cable television, I always expected the quality of the reception to be quite exceptional. After all, that's what their commercials said. In my opinion they were wrong. I was never satisfied with the picture quality.

For me, cable television service meant frequent price increases. It seemed to me that they were raising the price of the service every few months even though the service was not improving and they were not adding new channels to my programming package.

I'm sure cable television has changed a lot since I was a customer about 9 years ago. Digital cable now provides a better quality picture and "on demand" service provides greater programming choices. One thing that has not changed is the frequent price increases. I know that because I still rely on service from the local cable television company for my high-speed Internet service since it is the only high-speed service available in this area.

Since I was never satisfied with cable television, I decided to try satellite television back around 1998. After researching my options, I decided to sign up with Dish Network. I chose Dish Network because the programming packages they offered were more in line with my tastes than the packages being offered by the other satellite TV service.

From the very beginning I was very happy with Dish Network and I still am very happy with it today. I have had very few problems with my service and only one significant outage in the 9 years or so I have had it.

Don't believe what the cable TV companies say about satellite TV and the weather. The cable television companies want you to think that satellite TV customers lose their reception when it rains or snows and that just isn't true. We have had very few weather-related outages the entire time I have had Dish Network service and those were only with very heavy rain. Unless you live in an area that has frequent tropical downpours, you should not experience many weather-related outages.

Even though the cable companies like to say that satellite TV is subject to a lot of weather-related outages, it's actually the opposite that is true. I was a cable customer long enough to see my share of outages when a traffic accident knocked a pole down or a bad storm caused a tree to fall on the wires and bring them down.

Since you do not have to worry about wires or telephone poles being knocked down, outages are less frequent, and more importantly, a lot shorter with satellite TV when compared to cable television. I can recall cable TV outages that lasted for days following a major storm. Sure, without electric power, you are usually not able to watch TV, but in my experience, the cable TV outages always lasted longer than the power outages, and if you happen to have your own generator, you can continue to watch satellite TV even if the power lines are down.