Amid all of the hype generated by both cable TV companies and satellite TV providers, relatively little is said about how well either of the services provides newer technologies to its subscribers. This seems to be a serious omission given all of the interest in next generation television technologies like HDTV.
Part of the reason for this may come from the fact that a lot of people still don't know exactly what HDTV is or how it figures into their lives. More importantly, because a lot of people don't understand the intricacies of HDTV, they don't understand how which kind of TV service provider they have can influence how much they enjoy high definition television. The fact is that HDTV is characterized by a high resolution picture, wide screen format aspect ratio, and Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. Taken together all of this means that High Definition Television is very data intensive compared to normal TV. In fact, HDTV can take up as much as ten times the bandwidth as what's required to transmit an equivalent chunk of normal television.
This amount of bandwidth required to transmit high definition television programming puts cable TV service providers at a huge disadvantage compared to satellite TV companies like Dish Network. That's because, while the cables that cable TV programming is transmitted over have very limited bandwidths, the electromagnetic waves that Dish Network uses to transmit its programming don't have a practical limit on the amount of data that they can carry. That makes Dish Network much better poised to provide the huge number of HDTV channels that will inevitably come on line in the near future than the cable TV companies.
Of course, in all fairness, it should be mentioned that cable TV technology is able to provide all of the features and programming that Dish Network can provide, but not with anything near the same low cost. That's because in order to get cable networks to transmit the amount of data needed to transmit a large number of HDTV channels, the actual cables need to be dug up and replaced with higher capacity cables. This is an enormously expensive undertaking when you consider the labor, materials, and inconvenience (these cables are buried in people's yards, under sidewalks, and under streets after all!) when you consider all of the thousands- perhaps millions- of miles of cable that would need to be replaced. More importantly than that, there are some major problems with undertaking such a project. For one thing, it may entirely miss the mark by falling short of bandwidth that's needed only a decade from now. Second, such an upgrade still wouldn't do anything to serve the rural populations that can't get cable TV at all.
So why is Dish Network such a better choice for HDTV? The short answer is that Dish Network's satellite technology is much more cost effective when it comes to transmitting large amounts of data. That's because it doesn't have all of those cables to maintain and upgrade. It also has the advantage of being able to serve people outside of the reach of the cable networks. This means that Dish Network can spread its business costs out over people all over the country rather than just one limited suburban or urban area. In other words, with less to maintain and more subscribers, Dish Network can deliver data intensive things like HDTV more cost effectively than cable TV can.
