The Demise of The C BAND SATELLITE System

I recently dumped my C Band system in November after 9 years of excellent service thru Mike Merryman of Satellite Systems in Ajijic. Mike told me they probably wouldn't be operating next year because the companies that are involved broadcasting the signals had too few customers left and they were not interested in broadcasting anymore because of cost. We had one of the large packages plus ALL the Movie Channels. First we lost all the Showtime channels back in September or October, then we lost other channels and finally they took away all the cable news channels FOX, CNN, MSNBC etc etc. That did it, we had had enough after they took away the news channels.

We switched to DISH Network. It has FEWER channels of EVERYTHING. On C BAND we had 12 HBO'S, 12 Showtimes, 12 Starz, TMC, Cinemaxm 2 HGTV's, 2 Food Channels, etc, etc. On DISH we have 6 HBO'S, 5 Showtimes, 4 or 5 Starz, Cinemax, one HGTV and one Food Channel. It costs as much as C Band and the picture quality is not as good even with the 8 foot dish. It is a ripoff compared to the original C Band system. We have a 57" Sony TV, so others may not notice the difference on a smaller set.

We dropped out as C Band customers a few years ago and subscribed to Starchoice and now get Starchoice (Shaw) HD service. We have never elected to receive any of the premium channels such as HBO so we can´t speak of that but we get all of the cable news programs, the U.S. networks east and west (Seattle and Detroit) and a number of excellent HD channels including CNN, the U.S. networks and some outstanding HD nature channels not available if one does not subscibe to HD service. We also get a large number of other U.S. and Canadian channels including Canadian broadcasts of such fun services as The History Channel, The Documentary Channel and on and on.

We also subscribe to local Telecable at Lakeside for local Mexican news and Telecable´s very good selection of English language movies. Telecable also carries CNN in English but we never watch it since we get CNN in HD on satellite.

We recommend Starchoice without reservation and any of you following John´s lead and dropping C Band should consider that alternative.

I adore Star Choice. I don't have HD but I'm thrilled with the programming I can get including Rochester, NY. BBC Canada is better than BBC America, too. One of my favorites is Knowledge, the Vancouver PBS type station.

The annoying thing about the satellite services is the way they bundle desireable channels with the dead weight...

If you want A&E it's bundled with 4 or 5 channels of junk

At home I could live with 7 speciality bundles ... ( about 50 channels )
but there are probably no more than 20 or 25 I'm interested in...

We opted for the whole package so as to include the satellite radio programing and the HD channels, mainly so there is decent radio there at Chapalla... now there are about 150 channels I'm not interested in...

It's to bad the consumer isn't allowed to " tailer make " a package for themselves...

Of course... who the hell would buy CBC then?

Well at least on the CBC you can get Coronation Street. That and of course Hockey Night in Canada.........