No dth services provider can give better picture/sound quality than local cable wala. Why ?
Here you have to understand how both the technologies work.
1.your local cable wala downloads the original signal of the channel from satellite, then without compressing the signal quality it transmits the signal to your home
2. In contrast, dth operators downloads the signal, compresses the signal and then uploads to again their satellite and dth user downloads that signal from the satellite. Cos dth operators have taken satellite bandwidth as rent they want to accomodate more and more channels into their limited bandwidth by compressing the signal loosing the signal quality
3. Do not confused by digital
tv. Unless otherwise your tv has dvi port/interface (which is reraly found),ultimately the user has to convert from digital to analog before viewing the channel and you are actually watching analog signal
4. Again mpeg-4 is not a standard which gives better picture quality rather its better compression technology reducing the picture quality and hence mpeg-4 means less quality than mpeg-2 or original signal quality
but certainly the cable has the biggest drawback that, even if you have power at home and cable wala does not have, you will not be able to see the channels which sometimes gives bitter experience. Where as if you have dth you can watch the channels if you have power at home.
And the biggest disadvantage with dth is, once you bought the hardware from your service provider, you are bound to stick with them and you do not have option to switch the service operator as they all are not oibeying the trai's rule for technical interoperability of dth hardware, which is a must and govt must take action to all dth players
