The Battle for Your Television - IO Digital Cable Versus Dish Network

I have personally used both iO Digital Cable and Dish Network for their television distribution programs. While both have pretty high quality, one of these blows the other out of the water with some of it's concepts used in customer service and their product satisfaction. But first, lets learn some minor information about both of these companies.

iO Digital Cable is distributed by a company called Cablevision, a well known cable company that has pretty nice customer service. iO Digital Cable is only available in a few states, which are New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and a part of Pennsylvania. iO Digital Cable offers high definition television, also including interactive channels that include games. iO Digital Cable also comes with a basket full of additional channels including iO specific channels, music channels, and much, much more.

Dish Network is a whole other ballgame. Dish Network uses satellites to broadcast their television program. As of 2006, Dish Network has over 26,000,000 subscribers (source).

While Dish Network may be a larger company than Cablevision's iO Digital Cable, that doesn't mean that is it better in any way. From what I have concluded from using both products, I approve as iO Digital Cable as the winner, and here are the reasons why.

Customer service, it's something that Cablevision has. When my family had the house interior painted, the painter had to remove the television and cable box to paint behind it. In doing this, all of the wires got messed up, tangled, and were nearly impossible to figure out where they had initially been prior to the painting. I, myself, and a few of my friends tried to put the wires back, with minimal success in the end. We got something back, but it was apparently some regularly broadcasted channel that everyone got, it wasn't the iO box's channels. My father called Cablevision, and they sent a technician less than a few days later. I woke up one morning to see that the television was now back in order, and all unnecessary cables were gone, and the cables needed were in an orderly fashion behind the television. We had always had problems with Dish Network's customer service, as they hardly ever helped us when we had a problem.

The weather plays many tricks on Dish Network's programs. Sometimes if it's merely raining, you are unable to gain access to your regular television programs, and you may sit there minutes at a time waiting for the Dish Network box to allocate a signal. If it's raining or snowing, channels also become pixelated at times, making shows unbearable to watch. Also, such things as audio and video are not timed right at times depending on the weather, so you may hear one sentence from a script, and then see the character saying it a few moments later. iO Digital Cable has never given us one single problem when it came to weather. A lot of people want to watch television when the weather is bad, rather than when it is nice out, which is sometimes impossible to do with Dish Network.

iO Digital Cable allows you to play games using their own service at a mere $4.95/month. Also, iO Digital Cable contains "iO On Demand", which allows users to easily view specific movies that are listed for a minimal fee. In doing this, the user now does not have to leave their house to watch a movie. Instead, the user can relax, and choose whatever movie they wish to watch from a specific list.

Lastly, the iO Digital Cable remote is easy to use, even for technological novices. Pushing the large "iO" button in the middle brings the user to a menu to look through iO On Demand listings, iO Games, and much more.

In my opinion, iO Digital Cable is the clear winner when it comes to 'iO Digital Cable versus Dish Network'. Every single aspect of iO Digital Cable exceeds that of Dish Network, at least from my perception.