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Learning to Love the Cable Guy
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times and C|Net are reporting on new good will gestures from big cable companies. As service monopolies increasingly became the norm, quality of service began to decline across the board. Now, though, with a number of alternatives cropping up, cable companies are beginning to realize the need to ensure customers say with the often imposing service companies." From the article: "[As] service has improved slowly as satellite providers, upstart phone carriers and cell phone companies have provided attractive alternatives. And now that cable and phone companies are starting to sell similar bundles of phone, broadband Internet and television products--known in the industry as a triple play--they risk losing subscribers forever if they do not keep them happy."
I have a pretty spiffy DLP TV, and all I use it for is watching DVDs. I haven't bought any cable or satellite service because nobody will just sell me the channels I want, without insisting on bundling in all the bible-thumpers and home shopping network crap. It feels like getting spammed, and it just pisses me off.
I'm convinced that IPTV is the future, and that's mainly because the cable vendors SUCK.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Unfortunately for them, it's too late. There's a whole generation of people like me who have -zero- interest in TV of any kind, and probably never will again. There simply isn't anything on TV worth watching. Everything on TV (yes, including Discovery channel, History channel, etc.) all appeals to the lowest common denominator. Cable has completely failed to offer anything of any real interest from what I've seen. I only use a cell phone, and my business has a partial T-1. I haven't written a check to a cable company for about 10 years now, and I don't miss them one bit.
Of course, that being said, people like me are a *tiny* minority. The masses are as dumb as ever and will continue to buy whatever cable companies throw at them. They just don't have the market that they could have if they actually tried to have content that appealed to people with an IQ of over 80.
Cox cable in Hampton Roads has lost me as a customer forever. The inability to provide a reliable broadband connection just screwed the deal. I liked the speed, but over a 6 month span, 50% uptime just didn't make it. VerizonDSL, while slower, is vastly more reliable.
As soon as feasible, dropping the cable TV and going to satellite.
and the quality off cable is not great, even digital cable ( I hate having them have to reset the cable box to get the digital cables). It will take a lot for me to stay on cable when I can save a bit by switching.
A shame cable's fixed costs are so much higher than sucking a signal down from the sky, I don't see how they'll compete on price.
Perhaps when the local cable company decides to stop having arbitrary, confusing, and most importantly secretive policies about what I'm allowed to do with their service and what I'm not allowed to do, I'll believe this, but they don't want me on their network since I actually use it.
;)) to account for this. Every 20 minutes it'd take a 10 minute break. Yep, capped again within two days.
Case in point: recently they upgraded my service from 10mbit / 2mbit to 15mbit / 2mbit. To do this, they had an unannounced, planned outage for 6 hours starting at midnight on a Friday night. I called and had to talk to someone before I could even verify that my service was interrupted, the person said that it was their policy to not announce these things since security systems might rely on the cable connection, and they wouldn't want potential thiefs to know when to strike. Oh, and even if they DID announce them, no one would listen (if it was on a web page) and they might not have the $(cable_company)'s email account so they couldn't use that either. Great, so now I can't find another way to protect my home (if my security system uses the cable internet / phone service), way to go guys.
The worse one though: If I use "more than my reasonable amount" of upstream bandwidth, I'll have said bandwidth capped to 20kbyte/s. I've had this happen to me, I called and they said they'd reply to this issue within 24-48 hours. 117 hours later (and three phone calls from me counting the first) they called me back and said that they sell "burst, not stream". They couldn't explain that any better, but said that long connections were against the rules and that games like World of Warcraft (I asked specifically) were ways to get capped. I apparently need to take a break every so often or else I'll have my connection throttled?
A friend has it happen to him, he actually got numbers out of the person. Outgoing connections (wtf?) can't last more than 20 minutes or else risk being capped, so he set his bittorrenting (probably not at all legal either
Screw cable, when they pull crap like this.. Now if only DSL here in America (Fairfield County, Connecticut especially..) didn't suck.
NTL in the UK have started airing lots more on demand stuff, from recent tv episodes (from the BBC) to entertainment and series.
Some are pay per item (similar prices to itunes) but theres a lot thats free.
Its like having a PVR in the box and is very cool (try pressing your on demand button)
*i know that sounds like an advert, but its the first new feature I've seen in a while.
liqbase
I think that the same can be extrapolated for Microsoft, don't you?
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Ever do a comparison between cable and satellite? The quality is like night and day. Comcast and Adelphia both have lots of pixelation and the first 80 channels are still analog feeds. They are grainy as hell and one with Adelphia had permanent ghosting from the local UHF channel. Flipping through channels on cable takes longer for the picture to fill in compared to satellite. My parents had a cable modem and it was fine for a few years and then they had tons of disconnects and signal problems. The final straw was the bill increasing $10 in one month. I got them DSL and called to cancel the cable modem. I told them going up $10 was my reason for cancelling. The guy told me it was because we were now on the "silver" plan. I told him it was the same thing as before but under a new name and just cost $10 more. Then he tried telling me their cost for ESPN went up 500%. Well make an ESPN package then, when was the last time you watched a major sporting event on ESPN? Never. Ooops sorry for the rant :)
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
When you set up appointments for our cable guy to come fix something, the company will only narrow down "when will he appear" to one day. Can you imagine a dentist working that way? "Come any time during the day for a tooth cleaning". Yeah right. Is the service this abominably bad, where they even refuse to make timely appointments, elsewhere?
Where were you when the voynix came?
Eeeeh, When I were a lad, we had wires coming in to our houses, and down those wires they pumped cheap TV. Nothing but rubbish it were.
That were in the days before bitTorrent and MythTV mind, things were very different back then.
They want you to take half a day off from work to have cable hooked up, even if the house/apartment is already wired.
My cable bill has doubled in the last ten years. DOUBLED. No new service. Just more money.
GIT R DONE!
Pagan? Geek? Check out #paganism on Freenode IRC
"GIT R DONE!"
BR. Larry, with his can-do-and-do-it-quickly attitude is rather unique among cable guys. I remember 15 calls over much of a year to get the cable company to BURY the cable that snaked over the surface of the front lawn. The calls were always answered with "We'll do it by Friday".
Where were you when the voynix came?
I called our cable company, Insight over a lag issue and was given the BS run-arround and said flat out NO, your problem, fix it! they said they wouldnt help unless I plaid ball with their BS so I hung up and called back. I got the same rep so in stead of just jumping in, I said "I am a private network consultant calling on Mr. (my last name)s behalf, here is the problem..." she sent a sync signall to the modem and it fixed it.
---Posted Anonymous for Obvious Reasons
I wouldn't want to attach my name to such a rambling, incoherent post either. Oh wait, you did!
I had Verizon for years, but I pretty much had to have them. There are 2 local cable companies in my area, but neither had 2-way cable going to my house. So it was get the phone and the cable service, or just get DSL from Verizon who already supplied my phoneline. Now there are numerous other ISP with DSL, but you need to get a Verizon line, because they are all subcontracted for the fibers. So I told everyone to just forget the alternative and just go with Verizon. You only had to call Verizon, not the Cable company and then Verizon. It ended up being cheaper anyhow. Then the cable companies got moving (and so did I), and now I have 2-way cable and no phone. Its more then Verizon DSL, but now Verizon doesn't offer DSL in my area. I don't have the outages I used to have with DSL, and the cable company is there that day to fix the line if there is a problem. The cable company is one of the oldest anywhere, but its small and has good customer service.
So what has been bothering me about this whole thing? I want the service, and I don't care what the infrastructure looks like. I want to connect to the internet really fast. So I don't care if its DSL or Cable. I always thought there was a better way to deal with the infrastructure, but all I could ever come up with was government run telecommunication lines, kind of like the national roadways. A system not owned by a company, and one which any service provider could use. The problem being this smacks of communism/socialism, and even beyond the political ideals we all know what the roadways look like. I don't know what a pothole looks like on the internet, but its probably got Paris Hilton in it. The government, without another competitor, will probably take forever to fix the problems, and never completely fix it right which returns me to the previous problem.
So what are we left with? I guess I'll stick with my 2-way cable until something better comes along, because at least its better then dial-up. One day everything will be wireless and million little bits will be whizzing by my head, and give me a tumor.
Selex
Making friends with the cable guy...
On one hand, he should be able to tell you about all that high tech stuff: "The future is now! Soon every American home will integrate their television, phone and computer. You'll be able to visit the Louvre on one channel, or watch female wrestling on another. You can do your shopping at home, or play Mortal Kombat with a friend from Vietnam. There's no end to the possibilities!"
On the other hand, he might show you the evils of all his years of TV watching and have an emotional breakdown: "You were never there for me were you mother? You expected Mike and Carol Brady to raise me! I'm the bastard son of Claire Huxtable! I am a Lost Cunningham! I learned the facts of life from watching The Facts of Life! Oh God!"
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
Maybe some cable companies are talking about providing better service and maybe a few are actually doing it.
Meanwhile, my dad is still on dialup even though he can get competing broadband from his phone company and his cable company. The problem is how to decide, because he can't figure out which he loathes more. If either shows glimmers of decent service he'll probably sign up.
I do admit that cable does have its ups and its downs at times, but concidering the # of Redbacks that go down and the constant instability of the ATM cloud DSL has a ways to go before i am a coustomer. although they do seem to have a way better ability to monitor and trouble shoot a network connection from their tech support office then a cable does. the new DSL modems with built in routers are even more advanced and in my opinion is way better then what is comming outta sientific-atlanta's labs. at least on the modem side.
(yes i know i suck at spelling fell free to correct my grammar and/or spellin i dont care, im still not going to change
I see the basic problem with bundling being that it does not work, because you end up buying more than you want to. (Like those sales in the grocery store where you can get each yogurt for 40 cents if you agree to buy 20 of them at a time...)
For me (all taxes, fees, etc included - none are 'introductory' level prices):
Monthly Dish network- all digital "Top 60" with HD pack on 2 TVs: $50
Monthly House phone service and DSL high speed internet thru Qwest: $48
Monthly Wireless phone (for emergencies) thru Virgin: $5/mo (really, one $15 "top up" every 90 days)
Apples to apples- None of the bundling packages with Cox or Qwest/DirectTV out by me come anywhere close to what I can make separately...
I thought about getting DSL, but just got through reading all the fine print. They make you take "inside wiring" insurance even if you rent your place. Charges and fees out the wazzoo. Increase cost after the introductory period. And I believe you have to commit to a contract. We may complain about cable , but they're the easiest to get installed, and the easiest to disconnect. Plus they're faster.
If television and communication companies want to keep their customers, here is what I think they need to reflect on.
1) I am sick and tired of poor quality television on cable. If I understand how it works, analog would be a better quality picture than digital. When digital loses some info, it really messes up the screen. This happens to much and makes me yearn for yesteryear's age of television.
2) Two tier pricing system based on the customer's income. The rising cost of these packages needs to be offset for those who are low income. These companies need to consider giving discounts to low income households for the cost of telephone (VOIP) and Internet service. I mean, come on. If water companies have a special rate for low income families, why can't communication companies do the same? I consider communication, i.e. phone and Internet, to be a bit on the necessity side of things as it would be so hard to live without. (Job applications tend to require phone access for example.)
3) Some cable companies, well, one, which I won't name, need to stop cutting off Internet access to their customers to work on it WITHOUT prior notice. People get sick and tired of having it cut off when they are either gaming or surfing the web. One hour notice would be fine. A simple automated phone call the night before would do it. At the very least, reimburse the customers one free day for each 24 hours or less it goes out without warning.
I might have picked up cable for IP service, but Comcast would only sell IP service as an extra along with TV service, so I got DSL instead. My broadcast reception totally sucks, and I might have gotten cable to remedy that... but my local TV news is a travesty and I can't bear to watch it anyway. I might have picked up cable to get just the SciFi channel and a maybe a couple others, but the cable company didn't want to sell me only the channels I'm interested in and the packages were too expensive.
The only shows I want to watch are available on iTunes or - eventually - on DVD. I don't need my channels a la carte any more, because now I can get my shows a la carte. Each full season of the shows I want to watch costs me the about the same, if not less than, a month's cable bill.
So screw you, Comcast. You missed your chance. If you'd given me channels a la carte a few years ago, I might have bought and been a loyal customer. Now, it's too late. I doubt I'll ever get cable.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
TWC provided us with the proper splitters and a two-way amplifier..for free.
I have a SA 8300HD (running the Passport OS, which is supposed to work better than Scientific Atlanta's SARA OS).
In nearly three months of having the box, it's only crashed 3-4 times total -- and never when I was actually watching something (only when I was wasting my times on the stupid card games or surfing channels).
They recently updated the firmware to support the eSATA port as well.
buying cable or satellite a channel at a time might seem like a good idea, but its like buying an album on itunes 1 song at a time .99 cents sounds great till you see that the album is now 14 dollars rather than the $9 it costs at Best Buy. I have seen two implimentations of "ala-carte" programming in both cases less than 1/3rd of the channels included in the standard" digital tier ended up costing quite a bit more than just taking them all and not watching the channels you dont like.
"So I just offer them this message: Stop overcharging and forcing people to buy things they don't want, or people will find alternatives, or even, gasp, go without!"
Hi! I'm a windows user and I've just thrown my computer out the Window.
The sight of burly installers in dainty slip-ons might induce snickers.
Um... What was this writer thinking the cable companies were going to do to attract business?
You take it, I don't want it...
I continue to read these comments about choosing which channels you pay for...and this weekend it hit me: nobody would have any channels that they liked if people only payed for the ones they wanted. There are far more people interested in ESPN than there are techies who like SciFi.
Cable companies must carry local stations. If the specific shopping network is over the air, the cable provider(in the US at least) must carry it.
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
CABLES!!!!111!!!eleventy!!!! its not cables, its tubes!
monopolies don't care about customers and charge whatever the hell they want, and companies that have to compete at some level will exhibit concern about what their customers want. The only variation on this theme would be a heavily-regulated monopoly (ala the old Bell System) that has enforced service standards. This is hardly news.
Too bad that the FCC doesn't understand something so basic to any economy. Somebody in law enforcement really should take a look at the Commissioners' bank records for the past few years.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I've recently investigated the possibility of building my own MythTV (or similar)-based PVR machine. My requirements are pretty simple:
1. Onscreen guide with no ads showing only the channels I actually receive
2. Ability to record as much video as the hard drives in the box will hold
3. Multiple tuners so I can watch and record a couple different channels simultaneously.
I would also optionally like the ability to record HDTV content in the anticipation that someday I will have an HDTV.
I do not want to do a single illegal thing with my DVR. I want to do timeshifting of programs. That's all. I promise I will not even copy them to my computer or share them with friends. This is a purely selfish project.
I can get a dual-tuner DVR from my cable company for $SMALLNUM per month, but they've recently put ads on my non-DVR box's guide, won't show me just the channels I get (instead of channels I don't get, which are an ad for those channels), have limited storage capabilities, and a maximum of two tuners.
Unfortunately, it's 100% impossible to build such a box - at least, not cost effectively. In my area, they've basically cut analog cable service down to channels 2-13, plus eight bible stations, five home shopping stations, and ten foreign language stations. So, if you want to watch, say, Mythbusters, you MUST subscribe to digital cable. You have no choice.
I could get a decoder card that can decode a digital cable signal, which may or may not work, depending on whether my cable company has decided to encrypt the signal. If I'm extraordinarily lucky, I will be able to decode basic cable, but I will not be able to ever decode a premium channel like HBO. Even if I'm lucky, my cable company could (without notice) decide to encrypt the channels at any moment.
But but but, you say, CableCARD is coming, and that will let you get three CableCARDs for your three tuner boards and then build your ultimate DVR! Ah, if this were true. Sadly, it looks like you won't be able to install CableCARDs in anything the Cable company doesn't sell or authorize. Oops.
The only reasonable option is to rent one cable box per tuner. For a three tuner system, I'd need three digital cable boxes. Even if I were willing to pay the exorbitant monthly fee, then I will only be able to record HDTV from a small number of channels and not premium channels. And then only if I get the cable box that already has a DVR built in, because that's the one with the firewire port on it.
As much as it sucks, the DVR from the cable company gives me a two-tuner DVR that can tape all my premium channels, even HDTV programs, directly off the digital signal (i.e., I don't even believe it's turned into analog as it would be in a MythTV setup) with a single box. This is just plainly unacceptable.
If anyone has a good alternative for me or will point out something I'm missing, PLEASE let me know.
I do not pay cable or satelite TV at all. But I do have big screen HD TV. A friend of mine pays $80/m for the cable and has very poor picture quality. He was schocked when he saw what he could see on my TV. He just could not believe that it was public over the air TV thorugh my antena. Maybe I'm not a typical TV watcher. I do not watch too much anayway but it looks too few people are even aware that one can get quality HD digital signal over the air.
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
Get Dish. Providing they work something out for their DVR service, their channel guides DO have a setting for "All Subscribed Channels", and you can actually have up to four "favorite" lists per TV, where the guide and the up/down flip of channels only go through channels you -like- having. I was really sold on those features - it's just that Tivo won the injunction against Dish Network, so I'm waiting to see what sort of DVR service they'll offer before I try to upgrade my service plan.
Ok, I only read the posts that were rated 4+, but give me a break, what a bunch of whiners. Learn a little on how a cable system works and have your problems fixed. The majority of the time that a cable modem is slow is because the drop to your house is bad, the line to your cable modem is bad, or the cable modem is bad; or a combination of those.
I'll admit there are a lot of naive/lazy installers out there, but if your service is bad complain.
As far as the telcos go, fuck em!
--A cable installer that cares if you do!
or did Youtube just get Slashdotted?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
For what it is worth, Bright House Networks cable in the Tampa Bay area (also in some other markets I think) has been good to me. I happen to live in a townhome where the homeowner association dues include basic cable TV, but I telecommute from home so I pay extra $ for the "virtual office" internet package (fast connection, no restrictions on servers, etc). I can't recall any downtime in the 2 years I've been using them. I'd imagine the first downtime is coming this week, but more likely due to power loss, since unfortunately it appears hurricane Ernesto may be heading directly for us.
I can't remember where I read this, but I read somewhere about a year ago that the Federal Government was going to require that (pardon inacuracies, can't remember specifics) by something like 2010 all Cable Television service providers would have to be fully upgraded to a completely DIGITAL system, with the ability to allow people to pay per channel or two, not by the handful. The article I read indicated (w/out specifics as to prices) that it would be like you would be able to choose a base package of 10 or so channels (locals, movies, sports, news, science, games, etc), and then you'd be able to add single channels for like $1 each.
Again, I can't remember where I read this, though I know I saw more than one article about it about a year ago, probably online, maybe even in a newspaper or something.
Having been a "Cable Guy" myself, It would really simplify things. Basically everyone would be hooked up through a Digital line, and us Cable Guys would no longer have to remember which system used the A42-filter to give HBO, and which one used it to give Playboy chanel. (no joke, I ran into problems like this). Rather once you're plugged in and have your digital box, it would have your information downloaded, and you'd get only the channels you ask for, nothing more.
Who knows, maybe this will actually happen, but at the rate the Cable companies where I live now are going, they'll not be done until 2150.
My cable started macroblocking like crazy and dropping the audio, so I called for service. They said it would take a WEEK to get someone out to look at it. It was much worse the next morning, so I called back to see if they could speed things up. Instead, they made things worse: the new service call was scheduled for a week and a day later (apparently, Comcast has to drop an appointment to look for a better one(!)).
The cable went out entirely later that day, so they finally came out to look at it. I asked for the technician to call me back when it was fixed. The cable came back after a couple of hours... and had the same macroblocking problem. The technician called... and before I could even say "it's still broken", he started a friggin' ADVERTISEMENT: "I noticed that you have DSL service from "Company X": wouldn't you like to switch to Comcast." After interrupting the guy three times (only to have him restart his spiel each time), I hung up and called the main office. They called the technician and went back to work, and I FINALLY got my cable fixed.
I'm still not sure how Comcast found out that I have DSL service (and from which company). And I'm *really* like to know how a field maintenance technician had access to that information.
SARA is better than Passport. But truth be known, they're both buggy as hell. Now that Cisco owns Scientific Atlanta, let's hope the code will be cleaned up in future revisions.
Personally, I'd rather them scrap it and start all over for an OS based on a Linux or Tron kernal.
Life is not for the lazy.
I am ready to get a Dish PVR (HD), but am waiting to see how the tivo thing goes.
As for myth/pvr it is a hard row to hoe. My son just returned the WinTV card to me , he was tired of trying to make it work.
Either with XP or WN2000.
I tried with half a dozen linux distros and never go a PVR. (worked best with Slack 10.2).
When I was subscribing to Telewest in the UK I felt exactly the opposite. I'm paying for the connection, the adverts are paying for the programmes, why the hell should I pay more to see more channels? The cable company are already pipeing all 200+ channels to my set-top box, £10 extra a month to be able to view those channels seems silly.
The cable/satalite only channels have way more adverts, I assume to make up for the lack of viewers compared to the terestrial channels. The adverts are also far more intrusive and annoying. If Channel 4 can buy and broadcast SG-1 and, I assume, break even by showing enough adverts to pad the show out to 45 mins. Sky 1 pass the broadcasting costs over to the subscriber and yet need 15 mins extra of advertising per episode...
I would like to see a standard all-in subscription price, where you pay for the connection only, and the channels then compete for advertising.
I agree with your conclusion: Cable vendors SUCK.
Most of you will be buying your entertainment from telco's in 10 yrs. or less.
1 22
Telco's are creating a "national overlay" which will get them into the entertainment business. Here's a hard-spinning link that lays out the so-called "benefits." I'm too lazy to find something more objective http://www.nam.org/s_nam/doc1.asp?CID=161&DID=237
fsck em all.
-Sell your giant screen whatever,
-tear down the "media center" shelf system
-get rid of the ring of couches,
And replace it with book shelves and a table you can do -anything- on. (as in even accidentally drilling a hole through the thing)
You'll wonder what in the hell you were wasting your time with.
A 19" tv and dvd is much better, because entertainment is good sometimes and you aren't -drawn- to it as much as a monstrous TV. When you want to watch it, you sit around the table and watch.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
It is truly amazing how business keeps "re-discovering" competition. It's kind of like that Star Trek episode where the 200-year-old ship appears before every commercial break.
"We're losing customers!"
"Maybe we can get them back with a really arrogant female SUV-driver announcer voice in our commercials"
"Just don't mention the price"
"Quarterly earnings are up."
"DOWN 50% ACROSS THE BOARD!!"
"COMPETITORS TAKE 35% MARKET SHARE!!"
"CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER 11 ALL HANDS UPDATE RESUMES ALL HANDS UPDATE--"
...
"We've just been granted a nice chunky monopoly over one million customers. Accounting thinks we can price-bloat all three of our services even more if we can just figure out a way to charge non-customers fees..."
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Most of you will buy your entertainment from the telcos in 10yrs. You'll pay more and get less too.
_ verizon_uses_rf/
They are creating a "national overlay" that will allow them to sweep most of the cable/sat companies away because a phone and Internet monopoly isn't enough.
http://telephonyonline.com/fttp/marketing/telecom
We all know how -great- telco customer service is.
Who wins here?
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
1.Phase out analog cable as soon as possible. Specifically, (if they havent already) immediatly cease any new installs of analog cable period. Also, no new analog channels should be added, any new channels should be digital only.
Also, if you move house, add cable outlets etc, you have to go digital.
Also, if you want to change packages (add channels etc), you have to go digital.
i.e., they continue to maintain analog cable & do the minumum work on it to keep it working and keep subscribers from saying "I dont want to spend money to go digital, I will drop the service" but they dont actually make any improvements to it.
Then, as more and more people switch to digital cable, they can start decommissioning analog cable.
OK, who's the ass that thought by putting "[As]" in place of the original "But" would be the right way to edit this sentence? Is bad grammar so ingrained at Slashdot that we must make incorrect the quotes from other articles?
If you must strike the "But" from the start, at least read it before and after inserting new words. "[Cable and phone]" would have been an acceptable alternative, but it is still a perfectly fine sentence without "[As]":
An error like that is disrepectful of the source site and of the article's author, especially as this site regularly borrows much of other site's stories for their mention here. You should be ashamed for trashing the correct grammar of another site in a quote! No one likes to be misquoted; they certainly don't like being made to look incompetent by having their quote mangled!
(I don't profess to be perfect, but you should be professional.)
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I'm reasonably sure that the department heads at Adelphia had competitions to determine who could best annoy customers. My biggest peeve was the regular internet outages. At least two or three times a month service would go out, sometimes for multiple days at a time. The worst part was that you had to call each time to REQUEST a refund for the lost days of service. Requests could only be made after service was turned back on. Only about half of my requests were ever approved by the powers that be. Most of the time they knew about the outages when I called, so they should have known for at least those time to credit people's accounts. But hey, they were money sucking leeches.
Maybe things will get better with TimeWarner.
Get off my lawn.
When I was a kid we had five channels and had to get up to change between them with an analog UHF tuner and rigged up antennas that looked like Gieger creations. And we liked it. We watched the same reruns of 'Giligans Island' over and over like we were hypnotized by the flashing screen.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
OK, I haven't got any e-mail for 4 days because Comcast is blocking my domain email
forwarding service - I'm pissed enough, but still trying to straighten things out.
Here is a transcript of todays chat with the tech support:
advanced_tool_log> analyst James has entered room
advanced_tool_log> user Bruce has entered room
Analyst>Thank you for contacting Comcast, my name is James. How can I help you today?
Bruce> You are blocking all my incoming mail, and I need the block to be removed
Bruce> I sent mail yesterday morning to blacklist_comcastnet@cable.comcast.com but nothing has
been done and I am still not receiving any mail
Analyst> I'm sorry to hear that you're having difficulties with you email, Bruce.
Analyst> The reason nothing has been done is because you are not supposed to email the blacklist
address, as your address is not the on blacklisted.
Bruce> OK, who does it go to?
Analyst> The administrator of the email servers that are blocked from sending to Comcas.net addresses
need to send the message to the blacklist department.
Bruce> NO, I use an email forwarding service and *all* my mail from anywhere and everywhere come through
that server (so people can use email address of ???@). Comcast is specifically
blocking mail from their IP so nothing is getting through. They have a statement that says they are trying to work
with you to fix it but that you refuse to fix it. I am writing you as *Your* customer, who is paying you to
get email and whom you are specifically denying it.
Analyst> Email is a free service to our High Speed Internet customers - you are paying for the connection itself. As
for the block, it will be lifted once our blacklist department determines whether or not it is safe to allow mail from
your email forwarding service, and not before.
Bruce> Who is a contact in your blacklist department?
Analyst> The only blacklist contact that can be supplied is blacklist_comcastnet@cable.comcast.com
Analyst> Thank you for contacting Comcast. have a nice day!
Analyst> Analyst has closed chat and left the room
Worst digital cable menus ever.. Incredibly slow to display (page up/down) that is littered with ads that take up abit more than half the screen so you can only see about an hour total per channel. When the box needs to be rebooted it can take anywhere from 1-30mins to restore the TV guide data.
The on demand service doesn't let you stop (or pause for extended periods) w/o having to renavigate the entire on demand menus to select the program again in order to resume what you were watching. It frequently says "Please try again in 5mins" when attempting to watch any on demand and they are incredibly slow at getting new on demand content up. For example HBO on demand shows sometimes take an entire week to put up while my parents w/ Timer Warner have their stuff up the minute the program ends.
The internet upstream for the most expensive (3mb down which you will never get closed to seeing) service is still capped at 128kbps
Very underrated movie, it's hilarious. The part at the Medieval Times restaurant is amazing, as is the part with Owen Wilson.
My favourite line:
Wilson: "you're sexy"
Girl: "what?"
Wilson: "you heard me"
heh... Asian... they were speaking... Asian!!
I've had a C-Band satellite dish for years now. I've always been able to pick and choose the channels and such that I want. There are 'bundles' out there, sure, but I don't want much, so I don't get much.
Add in that the same channels are available at nearly half the cost of the cheapest service out there (compairing cable and small dish), it's really a win-win for me.
The biggest downfalls to it are a large footprint is required (I live in the boonies, so a 12' dish in my backyard is no big deal), and I do remember the startup costs were high (this was a good 12+ years ago, mind you).
Right now, I'm running a 4DTV receiver (basically, standard C-Band, as well as MPEG channels) with a KU LNB (again, standard and MPEG KU), as well as a VERY nice on screen guide. The whole system updates itself every night.
I believe I pay around $200/year for the services I want, and I have literally hundreds of free and clear channels out there, including wild feeds and such (marathon sessions of syndicated TV shows and such, for cable companies to pick up and rebroadcast, as well as the occasional raw news feed, which are FAR more entertaining than anything shown on the news).
Might be something to look into should you live in a rural area.
The more people look about for alternatives. It's an economic truth of any monopoly, including governments.
Deleted
1/ I first got DSL from British Telecom, we were in the pilot area so one of the first in the UK, it worked OK, but one day we decided to change the billing name from her to me. BT said that involved cancelling our existing contract and starting a new one with a new set up charge, 60 quid or so, and meant new phone number and new e-mail address.
2/ I took cable from Telewest / Blueyonder, similar money, similar speed (512/256) no issues, no set up fee, so broadband and telephone package (never had any interest in television, cable or antenna)
3/ About 6 months later I decided to move, took phone number and email address with me, no charge, changeover took one morning.
4/ It's now 4 years later and we're moving again, phone number and email moving with us, offline again for about a morning, oh, and for sticking with them first 3 months in new address is at half price.
5/ Currently pay (all in UK pounds) 10 per month for the telephone, 30 per month for the 10 mbit cable, and 3 per month for refusing to pay by direct debit because I don't grant anyone access to my bank account.
6/ Downtime in 5/6 years have been a total of 3 incidents each one repaired within 24 hours, one the cable modem died, one the local box in the street suffered loss of dB through corrossion of the connectors, one was a technical hitch. Each time I got that month free when I complained mildly about it.
7/ Latency is and always has been very good, only bug bear is upstream at 400k, too asymetric, sometime I have large (ISO size) files I want to make available to friends. Apart from the 3 times mentioned above though uptime has been 100%.
8/ No DSL so no contention ratio, never seen any kind of speed decrease related to my network.
9/ THE BIG ONE, no capping of any kind, unlimited means unlimited, I can pull 50 gigs a day sometimes, a few months ago I downloaded the entire 80+ gigs of wikipedia in 15 odd hours for a friend.... THIS COMPANY GETS IT, they are selling you a pipe, not container space on a ship.
In short, the service is so good and reliable as to be invisible, I'm not conciously aware that it is there, every computer in the house basically has "teh internet" waiting at 10 mbit at the end of the CAT5 I plug in, in much the same way as the power sockets have 240 VAC @ 50 Hz "waiting" for me to plug in.
This, cable, in this area is a monopoly, don't like it go to DSL, DSL is their competitors.
I know this reads like an advert, but I have NO connection with Telewest/Blueyonder other than as a customer, and YMMV if you are in a different area.
HTH etc
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
I just ditched my dish for digital cable ( which I ditched less than a year ago for the dish!). The reason? VOD. VOD is swesome, and it's something the dish companies can not do yet, nor will they be able to do for a while (unless they start shipping their boxes with internet capability). Why? Because for VOD to work you need to have a bi-directional pipe. Dish is one way. Therefore you will neve rbe able to do VOD with a dish, unless they come out with a solution that either a) hogs a phone lin (horrible), or b) Uses your existing broadband connection.
The B option seesm feasable, but I have yet to see it even get off the ground - the dish companies are dragging their feet, meanwhile VOD has been around for over a year. VOD is the future - it's going to spell the end for chains like Blockbuster (why drive way down to blockbuster to rent a DVD, when I can order a *HD* version of the same movie from the comfort of my couch for the same price?)
* Yes I know most of these movies aren't true HD, but are just upscaled on the server-side. They still come out better looking than upscaling yourself. And some of them are true HD.
Better than the 'phone company'? Maybe yes. Anytime you want to insinuate the phone company in this, it's bound to get fouled up. For instance I have cable and I have broadband over cable. The cable is Time Warner and the broadband is Earthlink. It all works pretty well even when something goes wrong, you know to contact TW and not Earthlink which is really more of a branded billing company in this instance. Given that, now because of work I am FORCED to get VoIP over my cable. AT&T CallVantage. Well let's just say that even making sense of the service offering and trying to order it is a challenge. I'm a week in and they're supposed to be sending me a TA any day now. When it gets here I have to install it myself. That in and of itself is no big deal - I could do that with cable too. But here's the interesting part. It will take 5-10 days after I install the TA myself to even get OUBOUND service ONLY. And another 10-15 days to get INBOUND service. Until then I'll have to rely on the landline it's replacing - which by the way is BellSouth + AT&T. So all in all it takes about 5 weeks to get VoIP running. I hope. One line. And my colleagues tell me it's going to suck up gobs of bandwidth just for voice calls.
Now I'm guessing that if I were to start from scratch and just ask Time Warner to deliver everything - cable, broadband and VoIP from scratch it would work a little more efficiently. But isn't that the same old monopoly we've been claiming we remediated with the the AT&T breakup in 1984?
Larry the Cable Guy. Why would I need to learn to love him? Git-r-done!
Did the cable companies send out a press release of how good they're being to customers? Because I'm still not seeing any real change and the competition is only barely there. It's like having three providers of rancid food and trying to pick which one makes you sick the leasst.
"...new good will gestures..."
Is that good-will gestures, or good will-gestures?
having done work on cable and sattelite systems as part of my profession, I've learned quite a bit.
9 7 for more information on what a nominal signal level is.
:/
1. Cable companies' signal sucks because of all the splitters. Many technicians will come up and put in 2way after 2way after 2way, and put the digital boxes on the last ones... WTF are they thinking? the proper way is to do a 2 way (one to your cable modem, rest for TV), an amp for the TV signals, and then all the TVs off of one big splitter. I've found this to be the best way for most houses since the cable companies don't amp the signals the way they should. If you're lucky enough though, you can get away with just one big splitter if the original signal into your house is strong enough.
2. on modems you can check your signal, go to 192.168.100.1 and you can see all of the diagnostic stuff. see http://www.speedguide.net/read_articles.php?id=11
3. tcniso.net offers an interesting deal (the "company" itself is cheezy, but the end product is nice) it's rather illegal, but I err, know a guy who knows a guy, that uses it and he doesn't have any port limitations and gets 9mbps down and 1mbps up, hosts some websites, and has yet to be shutdown, filtered, or anything!
4. Dish sattelite trumps all other services for picture quality and quantity of HD channels
5. Most security systems have a hard time working with VoIP systems do to the way the compression works, and most companies will not support someone who wants to use their security system with VoIP due the the lack of reliability.
6. I should really stop reading/posting to slashdot right now because I'm going to be late for school...
7. check out avsforum.com and search for your cable service thread, there's usually TONS of great information and tips about how to improve your signal, any upcoming issues that the cable co's don't want you to really know about, etc.
because the road runner service is still capped at 384kbps UL, which is just embarrassingly slow. But since my area (Flushing!) has no FIOS, DSL, nor cablevision, TW still holds a monopoly on "broadband"
Always wondered why I got a free upgrade from a 60Gb limit to the 'unlimited' package from the cable company a couple of months ago :)
Allow me to add my cable horror story to the mix.
I recently moved to a home that did not have cable currently installed. Since I am out of range for DSL, I call the cable company to have them install a line. It takes 1 week for him to come, and they narrow it down to noon-5pm (waste of a work day) 1. The guy arrives and tells me he doesn't have enough cable to hook up a line. Grudgingly I accept. He tells me to call the office and schedule a survey.
2. I call the office, and they tell me it will take 3-8 weeks for the survey to be done. Not seeing an option I agree to wait.
3. The day of the survey.... no one shows up but they don't tell me.
4. The next day I'm waiting for the tech that will perform the work the survey crew indicated (I still don't know they didn't show up) 5pm rolls around, and I call Time Warner. They tell me the tech will be there at 7pm. Now it's 8pm and I call again. They assure me he will be there. I wait until 9pm. I call Time Warner back, and they inform me that because the Tech couldn't reach me on the phone, he didn't come up to my house. I am amused and ask them what number they called since I don't have a phone other than my cell. Turns out the Dumbass tech called the phone number that HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE HOOKING UP! Raging, I call again to have them schedule another visit.
5. Another week later, the tech rolls up, informs me that he is a substitute and can't perform the work. I maintain my cool, but lay into their tech support. I am now at a total of 3 days missed work because of their incompetance. And, I haven't had a phone or internet connection for over a month.
6. I get a call back from Time Warner. They will hookup a line properly but here is the catch: It will cost me $1400, and take 6-12 months to perform.
Time Warner if you have anyone reading this, I will personally see to it that I convert every user of your service to Satellite and DSL. Never before was I treated so improperly by a company, strung along and insulted.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
What I have been planning to do for a while is to build a media box - a simple Linux box (maybe a MythTV-like system) with media players for common stuff (DVDs, VCDs, mpeg and avi video, others, and MP3s, etc), a DVD reader and a network card. Movies and other media would be stored on the fileserver (we have a wired Cat5e 100BaseT network). We could also surf the internet from the box. Maybe have the frontend be an RSS feed selector or something.
What I am getting at is that with sites like Google Video and YouTube, plus the plethora of DVDs and other entertainment (ripped MP3s from CDs, VCDs, etc), plus all that is the internet - there is more than enough entertainment out there already. Which would you rather watch: a rerun of Law and Order or some guy thinking he can launch a bottle rocket from his butt? I can already tell you which has more entertainment value (of course, that entertainment comes at the cost of realizing just how crappy and degenerate a country the USA has become).
We plan on getting a new TV soon - hopefully something bigger than the 27" we currently have (it is slowly dying) - maybe at that point we'll drop the digital cable and move on to InternetInfotainment (or whatever you want to call it) - of course, we will probably always be beholden in some fashion to that cableco, as that is what I have to get my broadband through - but I don't have to watch the television.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Why would anyone pay for television service? I gave it up six years ago and haven't looked back. Get a subscription to Netflix or something similar, then watch TV shows on DVD. Watch when you want, pause to take a leak or get some work done, never see another ad again. Television is for rubes.
my cable company could best impress me by giving me more control over my motorola 6412 cable box / dvr.
it's got ethernet and usb ports, but they don't do anything!
furthermore, when scrolling through the guide grid, every fifth line is an advertisement!
this grid also contains all the channels i'm not subscribed too. evil!
grr.
GIT-R-DONE!
He's talking about internet and phone, not TV. Try getting a job without a phone.
"I know that experience, however it's typical of the phone company too where I live (Embarq). On several occasions I've had lightining strike out the phone lines and Sprint / Embarq take over a week to get a service man out."
He would have taken 3 days to get there, no doubt, if he had not stopped to feed the giant tortoise he rode to your site.
Where were you when the voynix came?
"i work for a cable company as a service tech, and i can assure you that we have set time frames, within a two hour time frame, for appointments."
That's a terrible burden to put on the customer all because the cable company has a "to hell with customers" attitude and can't be bothered to serve them well. You can be sure that if there were competing cable companies, you'd be setting and keeping appointments on the minute (just like plumbers and other service people that have to compete to make customers happy).
I'm just glad that your Screw You Inc cable company does not run restaurants as well: "Thanks for your order, sir. Your dinner will arive at your plate any time between 30 minutes and 3 hours from now."
Where were you when the voynix came?
"Actually, TV has become more and more complicated. A TV show used to have one plotline and a linear progression. You could pretty much sit down and follow any episode of a show without prior knowledge"
What are you comparing things to: the 1950s with Milton Berle and his short sketch comedy? For decades, you've had "many plotlines and many interpersonal relationsships" TV shows. Soap operas as a rule have always been that way. Prime time soaps like Dallas and Dynasty were like this more than 20 years ago. The two syndicated space station sci fi shows (more than 20 years ago) had this, along with numerous other shows.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Come on, you know you were thinking it. Having worked as a cable guy I can tell you that that stuff pretty much never happens. Not that we didn't want it to. Ever notice how cable guys installing at hot girls houses seem to need like 20 assistants.....
I don't watch TV that requires you to be at the screen at a certain time.
Especially with channels that have ads. So I tape them and watch them later. =P
Reply to post #15992138 by Anonymous Coward
1. There are different ways someone can become low income. Someone could have started out that way, or the family just could have been middle class when something bad happened. Maybe someone got hurt and lost their job, mass layoffs, etc.
2. I have a hard time believing that. Nicest cars on the street, flashy cell phones, etc. Some of that stuff could have been acquired before becoming poor, or acquired by friends and family. It someone is truly poor, they aren't going to be making expensive purchases, or at least not often. It's all about budgeting. A low income family might be putting $20 per month away and then buy something nice at year's end. Also, some church groups will donate gift cards and other goods that could total $500-1000 for a family of four.
SLASHDOT BUG, PART OF MY POST HAD TO BE REMOVED HERE
Reply to post #15992253 by ZachPruckowski
People need to be asked for proof of income. An EBT card used by the welfare system for cash assistance and foodstamps would be one method. If someone is on disability or employment, have them bring in a statement. Also, just because someone drives a nice car, doesn't mean they are currently rich. It's possible they obtained that while they were better off, or someone gave it to them.
Anyone who doesn't want to furnish proof to get a lower price doesn't deserve to have it discounted in my opinion. If someone is truly poor, they will make sure they have the necessary documents to get it done because it means a lot more to save that little bit of money (what is it, like $50 in savings, more or less?) which could provide food or other things.
SLASHDOT BUG, PART OF MY POST HAD TO BE REMOVED HERE
One last thing. We could reason that telephony is a necessity due to the communication nature. Same with Internet, although that has other possibilities that aren't a necessity.
Television does provide some valuable information. The national news channels and the local news channels keep people up to date on important matters. It's a civics type of thing. The weather channels may provide information necessary if you happen to be an outside labourer. The broadcast channels are over the air, something free already, which can be coupled in with the above necessities are no harm to large t.v. service providers.
Or else it would die outright. When the HDTV change over happens it means that anything broadcasting past 2009 (Feb 17th I think) for over the air is in HDTV....any tv I think sold from next year on has a digital tuner. Over the air HDTV not only gives you a far far sharper picture than analog but also more stations. With analog only a handful of channels look good in my area but with digital you get around two dozen. Many people I know get cable soley because they want local channels and analog ones look poor. If they are paying $10-15 a month for locals they'll find out in the long run it's better just to get a hdtv and antenna. Also is that technically cable can do anything satellite can do (actually some more given on demand and that cable modems are far faster than satellite internet) but satellite can do them for FAR cheaper. Some of this is due to dumb regulations that made sense decades ago but not now. There's a law that states that cable co's HAVE to give channels that are received over the air. The trouble is in my area I'm not far from another state. So I get MA's major networks and RI's....so the cable co as stupid as it is HAS to give you two of nbc, cbs, pbs, abc, fox, pax, upn, wb etc. It also has to give a univision one and a home shopping one etc. Another option is a FTA dish which would give you free programming granted much of it is foreign, educational or religious. If you combined say a ku band of fta with a c band and a hdtv OTA you'd get all major networks and well over 100 channels (in English)