<p>How's the TV and internet service in college?</p>
<p>Like, for TV, do you get free Cable? And how many channels are there? Do you have to bring your own TV?</p>
<p>And how are the internet speeds? I really hate slow connections. :)</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>It really, really depends on the college and the dorm that you end up at at the college.</p>
<p>At my university, you have to bring your own TV and cable cord, but cable is free and includes 6 HBO channels. We have about 80-90 channels I think. It’s a fairly standard cable package. The onyl thing we don’t really have is Disney Channel… but I got over that.</p>
<p>Internet is slow at most schools. It can be made faster by ethernet, but you do have to realize that there are likely to be more than 100 people using one network, so it’s going to be slow. I mean it isn’t dial-up standards or anything, it’s just a bit slower than what you would probably have at home.</p>
<p>Just to provide another perspective - at my school, the cable cords were in place, but you had to provide your own TV and pay for the cable on your own. We never bothered.</p>
<p>Some dorms were wired and some were wireless; when they were wired, we bought a cheap router and made our own wireless internet. It wasn’t super fast, but it was reasonable.</p>
<p>Cable in my dorm is free, as far as I know, as long as you bring a TV and cables.</p>
<p>Ethernet is fast, about 100 mbps, a bit slower on peak hours but only rarely is it slow. But I’m used to about 5 mbps at home, so it seems fast.</p>
<p>Wireless is slow, at best you can load youtube videos without having to wait. People on one side don’t get anything. But my dorm is tiny and old, with one router in the whole building.</p>
<p>From my experience, the internet at colleges seems to be fast; internet was free, cable was free and a lot of resources for each. I recommend not bringing a computer but bringing a tv.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the responses guys!</p>
<p>3weeks, why would you not recommend a laptop? I’d think that would be one of the most important things to bring. Much better than having to use a public one.</p>
<p>To provide another data point: my college had cable in the dorm common rooms but not individual bedrooms, and we couldn’t get it even if we had been willing to pay for it ourselves.</p>
<p>^Same with me. I can’t even imagine how little I could get done if I had cable in my room.</p>
<p>Conversely, I’m quite pleased with my internet speed at my school. But I always use an Ethernet cable in my room.</p>
<p>Cable and internet definitely varies from school to school. In my dorm we didn’t have that many channels at all. Internet worked fine, though. Definitely bring a laptop. Being able to type up papers and send in homework is more important than having cable. Having to rely on computer labs all the time can get annoying (limited hours, locations, being crowded).</p>
<p>I was surprised to learn how easy it is to live without a TV in college. I was always either busy with homework or hanging out with friends, and I never even thought about watching TV. Plus TVs take up a LOT of space in dorms that are already way too tiny to share with another person. Most people end up never using their TV at all.</p>
<p>And yes, you have to bring your own TV, but a lot of dorms will have TVs in common areas that you can use.</p>
<p>I live in a suite for my first year. The suite TV has free basic cable but for your individual rooms, you have to pay 17 dollars a month. The internet is amazingly fast at my college.</p>
<p>At my school…</p>
<p>Wireless is quite good in my dorm, and there isn’t a big noticeable difference with Ethernet (though sometimes it can run slow). I still use Ethernet, though. However, wireless can be poor in some areas (including a building where a lot of people study).</p>
<p>As for cable, in my room I get channels up to the 300’s which includes some HD channels and some HBOs. Didn’t have to pay any extra for it. So it varies greatly by school.</p>
<p>IIRC, we get extended cable (so you get channels like USA, MTV, etc) at our school. I don’t think we have HD channels nor do we have HBO. Wireless internet in the dorms can be crummy at peak hours but the IT department recommends using ethernet to avoid that.</p>
<p>Will the Internet seem slow to me if my home Internet is 28kbps? ^-^</p>