Don't get me wrong, I hate my cable company, (currently Comcast), but I gladly let them take their $93 a month from my account for broadband Internet and expanded basic.
For me it's all about uptime. And with cable, I have been up with both services everyday since the Summer of 1999.
There is no dish service that can say that.
Our antenna has to be nearly 6 feet in diameter because the satellite is right on the horizon here in central Alaska. The only time I've ever had a dropout is spring and fall when the sun glitches it for a two week period for about 30 minutes a day. We've had some pretty good summer thunderstorms up here and it doesn't affect the signal.
My mom in northern California had some pretty good snow in the winter and thunderstorms in the summer and it never glitched. I theorize either you had much older equipment or the antenna wasn't quite aimed right.
Cable is so 80's, man!
So, an occasional disruption during heavy rain is no big deal to me. Happens once a month or so, and usually for only 10 minutes.
I've had maybe 2 outages in the last several years due to storms. And when it does happen it doesnt last long. I had far more outages the last time I had cable, than my combined Dish/DirecTV experience.