The original cable company for my home was a mom and pop bare bones company.Cox bought them out and just last month hooked up my internet. I've had nothing but problems with the connection. Just last Friday my connection was lost 12 times in an hour and a half. I didn't know I knew that many bad words! Cox claims there is no problem but for $50 they'll come out and look...I'll learn to live with it for now.

As for Directv. We've had it for seven years now and we would never change back to cable. We get better channel selection (BBCA and all sorts of music only channels among other usual channels) much clearer reception and instant customer service if we want to change our programming as we usually do in the summer. We've lost reception only a couple of times in a bad storm. The one drawback is that we can't record one channel and watch another, but I believe newer satellite systems can do that. Ours is a Sony, 7 years old and used a lot, no repairs/maintainance.

If you've never seen BBC America, you have no idea what you're missing. Father Ted alone is worth the price of a satellite dish.