Swisscom TV Plus - recording plus HD channels - cost 29,- per month
It claims to have 160 or more TV channels plus a range of PPV movies and sports events.
In the Blue Corner:
Cablecom Comfort with the HD mediabox - cost 40,- per month
It claims to have over 165 channels, 17 of which are HD.
Let's look at what's good....
Swisscom: The UI is good when changing channels and using the EPG. In particular, you get a picture-in-picture preview of the channel you're considering watching The way it organises recordings starts to become a little confusing once a volume is hit Speed and response of the box is good There is a massive amount of sport/Teleclub channels. Massive. But Teleclub is steeply-priced
Cablecom: The quality of the picture on SD channels is superior to that of Swisscom If you get in quickly, it's on offer for a year at 50% off It has a couple of very nice channels which Swisscom doesn't have - ESPN HD and SyFy HD (if you're in the German region)
The sucky bits..... Swisscom TV will impact your Internet bandwidth when in use If you have anything less than full sync speed on your VDSL modem, you may not get HD channels. I sync at 16Mbps and they pulled them The mediabox UI appears to have been designed by children and runs on a 286 processor. It is slow and clunky. Both boxes are ugly Swisscom TV works better near a telephone jack. They do have wireless accessories but walls and distance will mean your picture suffers The Cablecom picture on SD is noticeably better than Swisscom TV
If you bundle in an Internet connection with either of these (or a Casa/Trio offer) then consider the following: Swisscom will ask you 9 francs a month for "Air"; this means you can watch some channels on various devices over the Internet Cablecom offers for free certain channels which can be accessed from home on your PC via the cable modem connection The more distance from the exchange you are with Swisscom, the crappier it gets Your Cablecom TV experience won't change but your Cablecom Internet connection may slow down if Cablecom has lots of subscribers in your area
Hopefully this helps people decide which provider to go for. I was relatively happy with Swisscom until I recently moved and now my experience has been reduced. I'm off to Cablecom.
It also makes sense to take TV and Internet from the same provider in many situations.
I am not 100% sure (I have been told maybe wrongly..but did fall for the 'trap then') but when you have 2 Tv's in your household and want a 'box' on both these Tv's with Cablecom, you need to have 2 subscriptions with them then, meaning paying for each box on its own (double costs)
We have Swisscom and are very happy. we have 2 Tv's and each have their own box..but are linked and paying only one fee. The picture quality is really good.
We use to have Cablecom! But have switched.
Customer care on Swisscom is good eg there was a bit of interruption/interference on the line over last week, and they did a upgrade this week. For the inconvenience Swisscom gave a CHF15 giftvoucher to rent 2 movies.
[*]Your Cablecom TV experience won't change but your Cablecom Internet connection may slow down if Cablecom has lots of subscribers in your area[/LIST]
Thanks very much for the comparison. It will prove really useful. The only point I would add is that the new Cablecom "Fiber power" service runs over DOCIS 3 which will mean that your cable Modem dynamically hunts for channel with the greatest available bandwidth. So you are much better protected from the big downloading fiends in your local.
I also hear that Cablecom have a new HD recorder from Cisco which is meant to address many of the previous complaints that you mention here.
Indeed you need a recent investment in a Swiss market TV - not grey.
I have a Samsung UE46B8090 which I believe is sourced from Germany. Works perfectly but does not take the CI+ adapter as it's only CI.
What I would like to know is where the people with the TVs that can take this are recording their programmes?
BTW I ordered a Cablecom mediabox and Comfort subscription through their website and got it within 4 days.
Nice comment about the Fibrepower behaviour. Sadly, I don't have the chance for >20Mbps from them. Having said that, my VDSL modem has finally finished syncing and settled at 13Mbps down and 1500kbps up. I'll take 20Mbps and a scrap on contention occasionally to 13Mbps and don't watch telly solution
Oh dear - and there I was thinking that the Cablecom SD picture really was pretty poor. A satellite picture is vastly superior (with zero monthly subscription costs to receive all the same FTA UK channels) and only if I insert a decent AV receiver to clean up the picture does the cablecom picture start to look half reasonable.
Unfortunately our cablecom internet is looking quite sick and we may be forced to move to Swisscom, so am not looking forward to a worse SD picture...
I have one question, with Cablecom do you have to connect your TV or receptor to the router, or where does the signal comes from?
I ask because I currently have Swisscom DSL internet connection, and I wanted to put some TV channels too but they told me I would have to connect the Swisscom box to the router, and they are like 15 meters away. I don't have any telephone plug near the TV...
Cablecom's signals come through the TV/Radio/Internet socket in the wall. Connecting you TV directly to the TV socket (with the basic subscription) will get you analogue TV, for digital you need either a box and additional subscription, or a CI+ card in the TV set...
Ok, thanks! I think I'm going to subscribe. But I had just one more question, you said "TV/Radio/Internet socket", but TV and Internet socket are 2 different ones (usually internet comes through the telephone socket...), I guess you mean you connect your TV box/CI+ card to the TV socket in the wall?
On another subject, do they show international football matches in Cablecom TV? I know Swisscom has Teleclub Sport Live, does Cablecom have anything similar, even if it's PPV?
Please take into account the high standard of customer support that Swisscom offers. I'm not too sure of the standard of the Cablecom customer service. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?