Industry Insider Blasts Comcast 413
gordette writes "I'm posting this because Comcast did the same thing to me that this journalist describes — held my HD channels hostage by insisting that I shell out for an expensive cable package. The journalist is blasting Comcast for their 'shakedown' of consumers, and is doing so in full view of industry insiders. She also links to an earlier blog post describing Comcast's Motorola DVR problems."
"back charges" (Score:3, Informative)
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A household of three people can easy amass a $1000+ debt to a cable company by having someone who lives there sign up for service under their name after someone [i]else[/i] there has been disconnected for non-payment. This is just one address we're talking about here.
People balk at having to give their SSN's to the cable company to get service, but it's information they want so they can send you to a collection collections if
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But this is where your system is back to front.... (IMHO): I'm more than happy to pay a deposit for the first one or two months and the hardware, b
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You can try to explain that the other person has moved, etc but when you add that the other person is dead it seems to clear most problems. People want to be a little more helpful and with the other person dead it cuts off most avenues that they can take.
This also works with paypal, if you forgot your password don't want to go with th
Re:"back charges" (Score:5, Interesting)
It was the weirdest thing. I told them I'd be happy for her to keep paying for my phone usage, but I thought it would be fairer if I paid for it myself. In the end her daughter had to call up and cancel the phone service.
I now use DSL and VOIP from speakeasy. I've ditched the phone company, and find my perpetual bile against the phone company is slowly, after several years, starting to wane.
Now I'm starting to hate my bank.
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I've been wondering how much a DirecTV's DVR hardware is worth (in theory, not if I actually tried to sell it). I stopped the DTV installers from stealing my dual-tuner Tivo, but they left the DTV DVR here anyway. DTV was s
Re:"back charges" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"back charges" (Score:4, Informative)
That is the only reason they want your SSN.
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There are tradeoffs with every TV service. The parent said he was waiting for FiOS... which I have, so I can tell you from experience that there are tradeoffs with that too. I've also had DirecTV in the past.
With FiOS, you pay the highest prices anywhere. Oh, they advertise "$95 a month" for their three service package (TV, phone, internet), but they nickel and dime you to death. They charge $12.95 for an H
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Erik
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Hell no.
I would have told them "Thank you for informing me that you do not want my business. I will now be spending $x with your competitor, who is willing to not treat me badly for something someone I don't even know has done." *click*
Re:"back charges" (Score:4, Insightful)
And, in the majority of the US, the response would have been quite simple:
"What competitor? There's a competitor? You mean satellite? Wait, you live in an apartment, right? Good luck getting that dish approved by your landlord."
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Yes, they do. They are legally forbidden from preventing you from installing dishes in your apartment by the FCC. Maybe you're not aware of this, but here in the USA, when a Federal Law says you can do something, a landlord or other private party cannot take this right away from you.
Now if your apartment doesn't have a good place to mount a dish because you're facing north, or have trees in the way, that's a technical issue. But you can still mount it on your
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True, the companies ought to better police their own accounts and methods of ident verification of account holders, but the next-best thing is to prove that YOU'RE not who they THINK you might be.
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This is the exact problem with Comcast. They have no problem telling people they don't need your business and we as consumers seem to think that's somehow acceptable. If you don't need hi speed for work, don't pay them a penny and suffer the dial up for a while.
They tried to double charge
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This is corporatist welfare economics. Like the RIAA/DMCA/... US citizens are persecuted, until proved innocent.
If companies can not control/secure their resources/assets, then they need to go out of business. Persecuting the innocent for proof of innocent, or make additional welfare payments to support a Bad-Biz model is the real crime to a democratic nation and a capitalist economy. The more BadBiz models (with Government permission/protection) being persec
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Re:"back charges" (Score:5, Interesting)
I can top that. I was an early cable internet adopter. Back in the day, the local service did not provide cable modems, you had to buy your own. So, of course that is what I did. Eventually, the company I had service from was bought out, and then the area was swapped to Comcast who took over the service. Okay, aside from being incompetent hacks whose service was spotty and support was clueless, all was well and good. Then I moved. The demanded I give them back "their" cable modem. I told them they never gave me one. They did not believe me and required I dig up a 4 year old receipt to prove I had bought one. In the end, I did get my credit card statement and they said okay. A few weeks later I got another bill and called them. They said it was their mistake. That happened a dozen times easily, over the course of the next year and then I started getting collections notices from agencies, who I called and told my story to and who all then went away. I was threatened with court numerous times, which I would have welcomed at that point, but they would never follow through with their legal threats so I could get it cleared up.
I have no idea how much this damaged my credit rating, but I assume significantly. I should be able to bill those bastards for the hours and hours I spent on the phone. You know what the worst part is, right now where I live my choice is Comcast or the local phone co. who wants $60 more than Comcast just for internet service. The fact that my tax dollars subsidized this lousy service and insane prices makes me want to kick a congress critter in the balls. We seriously need telecom reform.
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah, I know it's easy to be snotty about TV and all that, but she's a professional (I assume); how much time does she have to actually watch the bloody thing anyway?! I know it's nice to sit on your arse after a hard day and watch your favourite show, but when you consider the horrendous amount of crap and being f***** about she's putting up
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My package is the 'standard' one with HD being another $10/mo, I think. It includes all the channels you expect like Comedy Central, Discovery and Scifi Channel, but none of the premium channels like HBO and Showtime.
So, yeah, for people who are into both TV and Internet heavily, $2k a year is pretty standard.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
$102.99 for the DIGITAL GOLD Package which includes: standard cable (limited basic and expanded basic), digital special interest channels, music choice, Starz, Starz Plex, Encore, Encore Plex, HBO, HBO Plex, Showtime, Showtime Plex, and Digital Converter and Remote where applicable;
$11.95 for DVR with HDTV;
$45.95 for high speed Internet
So $46/mo ($552/yr) was for Internet. But to answer your question, I'd say it's fairly common for people to pay something close to what she's paying. Lots of people get the premium channels packages. A few years ago, I had it. Then I moved in with a friend who was a cheap bastard, and all we had was the non-digital expanded basic. Got used to not having all the premium channels, and I got along just fine. Now that I've moved into my own place, I didn't bother with the premium channels. No need, there's plenty of stuff to watch as is.
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Well you're a far better man than I am. I once had to live with just basic cable. I thought I could do it. I thought I was tough. I told myself they have nothing but basic cable in Africa, and since I'm a rich Westerner I should be thankful for what I do have.
I was wrong. SOO SO wrong.
The trouble started right away. Shaking, sweating, constant stomach pain. Soon I was having splitting headaches and constantly masturbating. Then, I we
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I wonder how all of this is going to change when the airwaves go di
Hell, people shell out a $1200 for cell service. (Score:5, Insightful)
Combine that with all the other monthlies people tend to accumulate and no wonder most are always "broke"
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Re:Hell, people shell out a $1200 for cell service (Score:3, Insightful)
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I just love how every year, like clockwork, they increase
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we have different definitions of low budget.
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For less than two months worth of cable you can get a machine significantly newer than your 7 year old PC. If you're that strapped, maybe you should reconsider whether you really need "all the HBO's, Cinemax's, Showtimes, Starz, Encores etc including On Demand channels."
Just saying.
Is this EVEN LEGAL ??? (Score:5, Funny)
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There is. It's called Libel. However to be Libel, it has to be untrue. Posting the truth in your consumer relations is call Freedom of Speech.
If I said Comcast cut 50% of my channels and doubled my fee only halfway through the 1 year subscription agreement and it was false, that would be Libel. If it were true, that would be freedom of speech.
The above is an example only
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-Mike
Re:Is this EVEN LEGAL ??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Is this EVEN LEGAL ??? (Score:5, Interesting)
-- Ralph Nader
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Starting a inde cable (Score:4, Interesting)
I have wondered what would it take to start a community cable service, which provides basic HD (OTA reception is bad) and basic cable. Internet service offloaded in bulk to a competing ISP. Has any one any experience in such project, any links on how one can achieve this ?
I know one has to get licenses from the local municipality for providing utility, besides the politics, what are the technical challenges. Is it even doable ??
Re:Starting a inde cable (Score:5, Funny)
You might try here [vatican.va] and click on the "Request a Miracle" link.
but what??? (Score:2)
but *what*?....talk about a cliff hanger
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Ahhh. 'Click here to read the rest of the story'. I didn't notice that...I just read right over it thinking it was something to do with the comments/etc. doh!
Cable companies will soon be parasitic relics (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is the future of content provision--over the internet, straight from the content companies' websites. Speed and quality will increase, the content companies will start charging on a pay-per-view or subscription basis for the good stuff/good quality, a large number of individual plans will proliferate, and the cable companies will be reduced to ISPs.
just cancel (Score:3, Informative)
So, why not just cancel? You have alternatives: DSL, satellite, OTA, other cable companies.
Re:just cancel (Score:4, Informative)
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No satellite dishes? No DSL?? No DVD rental stores??? No Netflix???? Get real!
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The only DSL in town is done by the local phone company, who is bundling with the satellite provider and requires a 2 year contract with a $500 get out of contract clause. Time warner has been using that little bit of information in it's advertising like mad.
Both companies want your complete package, internet, phone, and TV trying to get less than those three items they ch
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We have a law in Florida that prohibits landlords from denying tenant's use of the dishes, as long as they're the small version. It's comforting to know that there's at least one thing about my state that isn't completely screwed up. Someone in your state should start a petition drive to enact the same sort of law.
During our last round of hurricanes 2 years ago, I got lucky and the cable line was the only t
Re:just cancel (Score:5, Interesting)
If the landlord tries anything, you're entitled to either petition the FCC directly, or sue in your District court for an injunction, during the process he is prohibited from taking enforcement action against you either.
If you'd like more information, feel free to e-mail me at jkoebel#gmail.communism and we'll talk.
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Your perspective is skewed from the blind hatred of large corporations that is harbored by so many readers here.
The costs of building and maintaining an efficient broadband network on a nationwide scale is tremendous. Just how many companies do you think could afford to build a system of that scale? Now, the FCC limits Comcast and ALL other cable providers to a MAXIMUM of 30% market penetration. This means in order to provide the entire country with high-speed cable internet, you would need FOUR financi
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Your perspective is skewed from the blind hatred of large corporations that is harbored by so many readers here.
Gee, what would it take for a type of organization to get indifferent, uncaring americans to hate them? Oh yeah, piss us off by combining the worst bureaucratic aspects of the DMV (paperwork, employees who are clueless and don't care, expense, lack of internal communication, inability to perform) with all the worst aspects of a ticket scalper (high prices, gouging, differential pricing, bribing police). Large corporations have earned the way we feel about them.
The costs of building and maintaining an efficient broadband network on a nationwide scale is tremendous. Just how many companies do you think could afford to build a system of that scale?
Do you mean with or without the hundreds o
Comcast HD receivers soon available for sale? (Score:5, Interesting)
I recently added HD to my Comcast subscription, and admit to still being a bit confused by the specifics of Comcast's scheme. On their channel listing, they indicate that with their most basic digital cable package, the HD versions of the broadcast networks (NBC, FOX, CBS, ABC, and PBS) should be accessible. What they don't tell you in that listing, is that currently the only way for you to decode the HD signal transmitted by Comcast is to get their tuner (either in DVR, or standard tuner models), and presently, the only way to do that is to rent the device from Comcast. Now, as I understand from the Comcast sales rep, the only way to get that device is to upgrade to a more expansive cable package, which includes SDTV channels such as ESPN, MTV, etc, and naturally costs more.
However, the installation technician clued me in to a possible new option. He thought that the tuners would soon be available for sale at Best Buy stores. Now, from Comcast's own channel listing, I'm presuming that I should be able to purchase one of those tuners at a one-time cost, drop back to basic digital cable, and reduce my monthly bill by some $40 a month while still getting at least the broadcast networks in HD. Of the channels currently available to me with my chosen package, the only HD channels that really are of interest to me are the broadcast networks, ESPN (occasionally), and Discovery HD. So it's certainly not worth an additional $40 a month. Were my cable TV subscription not also tied to a lower rate for my cable internet connection, I'd probably just plunk down the cash for an over-the-air tuner and antenna. Come to think of it, at $40 a month, that option might quickly become more cost effective.
Sets with QAM tuners work fine (Score:5, Informative)
When I was shopping for the HD set, I specifically made sure that what I was buying had a QAM tuner. I was not about to take a salesman's word for it.
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I can't believe that people take this crap. I'd take the following steps:
Comcast Horror Stories are Common (Score:5, Interesting)
#1) I often had to go for months without internet service.
#2) More than half of my digital channels didn't work.
I had to buy a new phone every month because their customer service (or lack thereof) had me so frustrated, I would throw the phone against the wall, and I would scream so loudly, my neighbors would call an ambulance.
I eventually returned their "Digital" box, and told the rep that their service wasn't ready for prime-time. The nail in the coffin for me was when most of the channels showed up as pixelated blocky bits with no sound. It was a waste of time.
The internet problems, as well as the Digital TV problems, all turned out to be a lack of signal coming into my building. I repeatedly had technicians come over, determine the signal was bad, and proceed to clip the cable coming out of my wall another inch shorter and then leave.
Finally, they couldn't make the cable any shorter.
I called Comcast time after time to explain to them that the problem wasn't the short cable in my wall, we'd been through that already. I wanted them to run another cable in from the street, since the cable from the street split 20 ways after it came into my building.
After about 2 or 3 years of this back and forth issue, a guy came by with an amplifier that sat under my couch to try and amplify the 1/20th of a signal I was getting. That worked for about a week and then I couldn't get the internet.
A technician replaced my cable modem. That worked for a week, and then stopped.
Then I was told that they'd have to replace the wiring in the building. That was unfeasible.
So, again I complained. By this time, I was seriously considering moving.
By the time they installed the amplifier in the basement as well to amplify the signal before it was split 20 times, I was house hunting (I needed a garage anyhow, and I'd outgrown the condo).
That worked for a while. But not long.
I can only wonder if they EVER ran a second line into my building. All I know is that I now have Verizon DSL and Direct TV.
The only way I'd ever go back to Comcast is if they paid me. I spent more time teaching their tech support people how to do basic networking than I spent at my own job. Frankly, I should send Comcast a bill for $72,000 for consulting.
They are possibly the WORST corporation I have ever had to deal with. How they got so big with such crappy service I cannot understand. They make Verizon look competent, and that's saying a lot.
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A number of possibilities occur:
1. They didn't. The crappy service is a result of recent cost cutting, prior to that it was OK.
2. Relatively few people include "customer service" in their list of things to consider when choosing a provider.
3. A monopoly in some areas.
As I'm not an American, and I know zero about
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Money way of solving problems (Score:4, Interesting)
"Sure, I'll consider that
Comcast isn't the only one who's guilty of this... (Score:3, Interesting)
Revenge: (Score:2)
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A utility screwin with you, mercy me !!!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
MCI - My MCI Neighborhood phone line. It started out at $49.95. Now it's up to $54.95 for 100% exactly the same service. Of course between junk fees and taxes the true cost is about $77/month
Sprint - My cell phone bill has 'errors' in the vicinity of 5% every month. Every month. For the last 3 years. I would rank customer service somewhere between Gitmo and prison rape. And the retail stores are in fact useless for anything other than new customers. That's actually a fact they will verify if you ask them. It's debatable whether the level of lying they perform when you try to buy something from them crosses into the realm of fraud. In either case they don't care. As an experiment ask them to verify the price they tell you with what's on their website. They will simply hang up on you without comment.
CIGNA Healthcare - Cannot verify over the phone whether I am a subscriber or not, to the pharmacy. I could understand if they refused to because HIPPA is the new holy grail of an excuse to refuse to 'do' customer service. No CIGNA actually can't. Their online systems don't work well enough to do that. But hey my call is very important to them.
Time-Warner - well their service relatively speaking is ok. It works and the bills keep coming. But when the service drops out because of some technical glitch, even in some cases for more than a day they suddenly speak only Ebonics when it comes to rebates.
Xbox support - Just give up. They're in India. They can't understand what you're saying and you can't understand them. They literally cannot speak English well enough to communicate with you. Hang up the phone and keep calling till you find someone who does.
Mitsubishi USA - Their official policy is to have their lawyers send you a threatening letter if you complain about one of the dealerships. In this case Leith Mitsu of Raleigh, NC. Even though they have service bulletins up the wazoo they will not address any of the issues unless you pay for them. And the dealership told me with a straight face that parking my car outside invalidated the warranty. The national network's response to a complaint is to send out a letter telling you to go to hell and if you persist in writing to them they will sue you for something.
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Perhaps it's your local Time-Warner office, or perhaps you just don't get mad enough on the phone, but when my service was out for a week, because one of their technicians accidently disconnected my service while connecting a neighbor, I received a credi
Crock (Score:5, Interesting)
And now the various states are passing legislation to take away regulatory power from municipalities. They're pretty much the only thing that stands between us and monopolistic abuse in many cases, because the states sure don't care.
And some people actually think that net neutrality is a bad thing. What's going on with cable TV should be proof enough that without net neutrality, we're screwed. Lack of enforcement of net neutrality is the same as subtle deregulation of the cable TV industry - it lets the cable companies use their monopoly (or duopoly, if there's a DSL-providing phone company in the area) to abuse their customers.
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In my case, I have a home-built PVR and digital cable (RCN Chicago). Works like a charm. The digital cable is unencrypted QAM, so I have an HDTV card (Kworld HD PCI-115) that supports QAM. No DRM, no encryption, works well. I was worried when RCN was pushing to go
HDNet and Comcast (Score:2)
My experience wit
Comcast is fine for me... (Score:5, Interesting)
When I ordered digital cable, the guy came out to drop off the box and asked if he could measure my signal level. It was just good enough (3dB of margin) so just to be safe, he replaced the cable ends on both sides of the cable from the basement to the jack in the living room, made me a new cable for the TV using their ultra-high-quality coax and ends (they do NOT skimp on cable), and a new splitter in the basement.
A while passed, and I ordered a second box with DVR capability and an HDMI output for my panel. The installer came out and dropped off the box, and when I called to activate it, it wouldn't activate. They had him back at my house within 20 minutes. He again measured the signal and discovered there wasn't enough at the new box. So, he checked the feed into the basement - still too low. He then went outside to the outdoor junction box and measured there, and it was fine. Apparently, my neighbor had some contractors doing work and they nicked the underground cable while they were installing a new sliding door.
Anyway, the technician said the underground cable was bad. I asked what my options were, and he said he could call for a digging crew to come out in 4-6 weeks. He then walked over to his truck, grabbed a shovel, and buried me a new line from the outdoor junction box and the feed into my house, and everything worked fine after that.
So, if Comcast is so universally evil, I've certainly never seen it...
Who is this woman? (Score:3, Interesting)
Simple (Score:3, Interesting)
After getting totally screwed over by Bell's DSL 'service' for several months, I got fed up and dropped back to a third party dial-up ISP. Wow. No more headaches, and I realized that there was very little about the internet which I needed high speed for anyway.
Interestingly, the trouble with my DSL account, (my login and passwords being locked out and nobody on the service help end being able to figure out why or how to fix it, setting up new accounts where the same thing would happen, lots of head scratching, blah, blah, blah), all started when I began posting mountains of political stuff during the launch of the war in Iraq. It had been a fine service up until that point. --The crap the establishment was trying to pull at that time was amazing, and the holes in all the stories were typically open only during the first few hours/days of an operation, so research speed was a priority.
-FL
More Comcast horror stories (Score:4, Interesting)
I've tangled with them a couple of times. The first insult was raising my cable internet bill five bucks but dropping my download rate by about 256 k/sec. But that wasn't the good one. I live in a house that's been subdivided into apartments, and Comcast was the only outfit that consistently got my address wrong. My phone people? Fine. Electricity? Fine. Water? Fine. Comcast? Half the time they'd send my bill to my neighbor, and after a while they apparently got confused and insisted that I hadn't paid a bill at all for one month (I did) and demanded the payment and late charges. I got the check returned from my bank as well as the statement showing Comcast mysteriously cashing this check and taking my money, despite their claims to the contrary. After going 'round and 'round with them on this for over a month their position became "we're bigger than you, therefore it is impossible for us to make mistakes, so it must be your problem." At this point, they quit sending me bills entirely, but felt the need to draft rude and nasty people to call my cell phone at all hours of the day and night insulting me and demanding payment for bills I never got, trying to push me into giving them my credit card number (ha!). I dropped their sorry asses about a week into this and went to Verizon. Even without FIOS, Verizon's higher-tier package is cheaper than Comcast and about half again as fast in my area. Duh.
At my sister's place everyone is a lardass stereotypical American TV watcher, so they have Comcast digital cable. Comcast mysteriously tried to charge my sister for over 300 dollars worth of pay-per-view porno one month. Obviously, my sister was a bit miffed. This is a household of three women and my nephew, who shrewdly points out that he has no need for pay-per-view because he has internet access. Comcast claimed that the charges came from the ID number of the cable box in my sister's room, which is barely ever used and when it is... Is used by my (straight, 35 year old) sister. After threatening my sister with legal action, putting black marks all over her credit report, &c., Comcast finally figured out (not that this was much of a stretch) that this actually precipitated from someone using a stolen/hacked cable box randomly trying ID's until they got one that worked. My sister suggested that she get a new cable box from Comcast, even pay for it, and they refused to do it. Naturally, two months later, it happened again. And despite documented phone calls and a letter from Comcast stating that they knew about the problem, they threatened my sister again, and again refused to provide her a new cable box or ID number.
I'm trying to push them to go FIOS and/or take Verizon's digital cable package when it arrives in their area.
Speaking of Comcast Crap (Score:3, Interesting)
I then pointed out that I had yet to get 6Mbs downloads even on testing sites that can really pump out the bits to you, and why pay more for 8MBs that I also won't get on my very congested local loop? They had no answer for that one, because Comcast had never guaranteed any level of actual service, and in fact I believe their ToS specifically denies any guaranteed level of download performance.
Cancel Cable, go OTA. (Score:3, Insightful)
Digital TV services offer high visual quality high definition broadcasts from the local broadcasters (ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, Fox). The digital reception is a big improvement over the old analog stuff. As long as you can get a strong enough signal (which may require a bit of initial antenna tweaking) you get a perfect picture.. no static, shadows, etc.
If there were more OTA DVR options available (like the HD Tivo, but at a decent price) I think many people would be completely satisfied with OTA-only. With a DVR, you can replace the need for a bunch of channels to surf through with a queue of pre-recorded programs to browse through. Theoretically, those pre-recorded programs should be closer to your viewing preferences than the random garbage on cable.
There are some good roll-your-own options, like MythTV. But, few people want that much effort for TV viewing. Sony and LG both made OTA/ATSC DVRs, but they weren't very popular. Maybe this will be more of a hobbyist thing for a while.
Re:Oh stop whinging (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Oh stop whinging (Score:4, Informative)
I notice as well that the customer rents her HD terminal - hardly like she's being forced to stay.
She could choose Direct TV (satellite) - but oh, wait, they charge $9.99/month for HD content. Hmm.. Isn't the same $120 per year she is complaining that comcast want?
I'll also note that on May 7 this same author writes "I'm a Comcast customer, too. But my experience with Comcast, bar some exceptions, has been fairly positive. For one thing, the system is incredibly reliable. Outages just don't happen, at least in my area." (http://www.multichannel.com/blog/1300000330.html
Re:Oh stop whinging (Score:5, Insightful)
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Get an ATSC tuner and a decent small/medium antenna. I get more ATSC digital channels OTA than I do regular analog.
Get a dish. Dish network+DSL is almost 1/2 the price of Comcast cable+Cablemodem and I get WAY-way-WAY better service. All channels are clear so my linux PVR box record them perfectly for recompression to xvid. DSL is incredibly faster than cable simply because the latency and jitter are far lower (Own cablemodem kiddies in online death
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boycott everything? (Score:2)
I'm one of those people who never played the cable TV companies' games. Lot of times didn't even bother having a TV. Closest I got was cable Internet. I wouldn't mind some cable TV access, but they'd have to come way down in price and knock it off with the nickel and dime charging, overly complicated deals, trying to market black as white, insults to intelligence, etc.
I don't like the phone company either, for much the same reasons. I'm stuck with AT&T. Would love to dump the land line, but got t
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Well thats your fault then. You should have thought about that before you started doing everything online shouldn't you.
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Tell me where i can i get one in CT reliably well enough to go to Slater Rd from Brittany Rd.
My roommate had a lexus that we shared...(he was an overpriced Oracle DBA anyway).
I never could find a bus anywhere nearby although i see the bus stop everyday.
Re:Oh stop whinging (Score:4, Informative)
As far as TV goes, it's cable via Virgin Media, Sky (spit) if you want digital Sat and Freeview for digital via an aerial. There is of course also analogue TV via aerial but that's about to be switched off - a pity as a good analogue signal beats the current crop of digital ones hands down.
Many operators are now offering bundles with phone/TV/broadband and mobile (cell) all in one package assuming you can find one that suits your usage.
HiDef is still in its infancy with a handful of Sky and Cable channels at premium prices.
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It's 20Mb now. Or it will be when they finish swapping everyone else over. I switched yesterday and, apart from the the modem crashing a couple of times, things have been good. 94kB/s upload is nice for sending huge email attachments.
It's a shame my LAN can't handle those sorts of download speeds. Damn my old, old equipment.
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Yeah, well, welcome to the US (figuratively, of course ;-) ).
The rule here, so far as I can tell, is one cable company, one phone company, and maybe satellite (if you like the type) in any given area...and speeds of 3Mbps down, 384-768kbps up. For at least $50/month.
To be sure, there are exceptions, but from all I've gathered from what I've seen and heard, that's the most prevalent situation throughout the country. That's why I'm praying that the "third pipe [arstechnica.com]" really happens...though I know it's probabl
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Just like our politics: two options. In our area, that is Comcast cable or DirectTV dish. And when there are only two, they can play the same games together for the mutual screwing of the customer.
Which is why I went with the outsider option: MythTV broadcast. I spend all my time on the net anyway.
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Prices of books, cinemas, fitness centres etc go up in price all the time. You buy or your don't buy. You don't have a god given right to be able to pay the same price forever.
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That's not the point. Comcast cut her service level without notification -- basically like getting slammed on cellphone service. What they did was drop the package that she subscribed to (again, without telling her that her package was discontinued) even though her account was in good standing. Just because that package was "grandfathered in" from AT&T before Comcast took over the cable in that area doesn't mean that Comcast can just drop the package that current subscriber
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I lived in South Dakota in a town with a pop. of 50,000. There were two cable providers and prices were lower and services better because of the competition.
I lived in Lincoln, Nebraska (pop. 200,000) and got a huge cable package with DVR for less than I'm paying now. Again, there were multiple options.
Now, in a metro area with a pop. of approximately 1,000,000, I can't get the services I want at a price I want. I can't get the best deal thru my current provider
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Also, getting a basic phone line (not digital, no call waiting, voicemail, etc) can cut the cost, too. Problem is, phone companies make it very difficult to get this. I had to find an obscure link on Qwest's webpage to get only basic phone service, then the bastards tried to switch it to digital several
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