Satellite and Cable vs. Streaming TV Services

Streaming TV services add and drop shows regularly. That means you may sign up for one service to watch reruns of your favorite show on-demand, but then lose it the next month to a different streaming service.

Several TV streaming services, like Netflix and Amazon Prime, also produce a lot of their own exclusive programming, forcing customers to sign up for many different services to get all the TV programming they may want. Cable and satellite TV providers like DISH offer hundreds of live TV channels as well as tens of thousands of on-demand movies and shows. You get all of your entertainment in one place.

Satellite TV signal is reliable – only the very worst storms impact it at all, so outages are very rare. Cable is also highly reliable but there are more ways it can go down - construction can cut a cable, or the cable boxes in a home/apartment building can go bad. When cable goes down, it can take a long time to repair, whereas satellite TV usually comes right back once the storm passes.

Streaming services require fast internet connections. Internet through cable is prone to outages just like cable TV. You may be able to use a mobile hotspot or view on your phone with 4G/5G, though some cell phone plans charge for extra data, and you’ll need additional technology to stream that signal to your TV.

Traditional companies like DISH still provide customer support through 24/7 toll-free phone numbers where customers can talk to actual human beings, as well as chat, but the streaming services notoriously make customer service very difficult. You can typically only email them, and response times can take days.

Ok, yes, cable/satellite companies lock you into a 2-year contract because they're leasing you equipment in the form of the dish itself and the receivers. They can't afford to just hand those out for free, so there are costs and contracts. Streaming providers have no equipment so they can afford to let consumers turn on/off their service at any time.

This would seem to be a category where streaming wins over cable, but that’s only the case if you subscribe to just one streaming service. Most people subscribe to several streaming TV services to get access to different types of content. Once you do that, you’ll likely spend as much or more than you would spend on cable or satellite TV service.