If you're trying to decide whether to get a cable TV subscription or a satellite TV subscription, you need to be armed with the facts about both types of technology. After all, there's been a lot of propaganda on both sides that makes the case for each side being the better choice. Facts about the technology are the only way to cut through all of that propaganda.

Historically speaking, cable is the older technology. Communications cables were carrying telegraph messages across the bottom of the ocean decades before anyone had even come up with the idea of the communications satellite. Cable TV has been around longer too, at least in a form that's accessible to the average American consumer. Cable TV has a longer proven track record of giving American TV viewers what they want in terms of channel selection and service.

Each technology has several advantages over the other, and it's important to have an idea of what those advantages are. Cable TV has the advantage of being more reliable in the sense that it isn't disrupted by weather related interference nearly as easily as satellite signals are. In fact, a heavy rain can ruin satellite TV signals, but it would take an earthquake or a flood to knock out cable TV service!

Another major advantage of cable TV is that it can carry information both to the viewer and allow the viewer to transmit information back to the broadcast center, while satellite TV is only set up to deliver information from the transmitter to the viewer. This is very significant in a number of different ways. First of all, it allows cable TV providers to offer high speed Internet service. Internet access allows the user to request web pages and other documents, as well as transmit emails and other information, after all. The cable TV industry is also taking advantage of this feature in order to provide video on demand service. Video on demand technology lets the viewer control what she or he watches at any given moment. Rather than wait around for a TV show, movie, or sporting event to start, video on demand lets the user select what he or she wants to watch and then the cable TV company streams that program directly to the viewer immediately and without any waiting. This is likely to make a big diference in how the cable TV industry delivers it's content as time goes on.

The cable TV industry is also using the two way information transmitting capability of cable technology to get around the limitations on how many channels it can transmit. In the past, the number of channels that a cable TV company can provide has always been limited by the number of channels that a cable can carry. Now, a new technology called switched digital video makes it possible for a TV receiver to send a request for a specific channel to the transmission center. The transmission center then transmits that channel- and just that channel- to the viewer. This allows more total channels to be available because only one channel is transmitted to a viewer at a time. Since satellite TV doesn't have this capability, it can't transmit as many channels.

All of this translates into the fact that cable TV is the superior choice of technology.