Comcast Disables VCR Scheduling In New Guide

An anonymous reader writes "Comcast has quietly launched a new on-screen guide for its cable boxes. What they're not advertising is that they've removed the ability to schedule VCR-compatible channel flipping any time more than a few hours in advance for people who don't buy the $20/month DVR service. What this means is that VCR owners are now forced to pay for Comcast's $20/month DVR service or else start their recordings manually. For us techies there might be a way around this, but ordinary VCR enthusiasts and owners of other recorders are left in the dust. Anyone know a good antitrust lawyer?" Raise your hand if you regularly use a VCR these days, too.

Comments

Lawyer?

[girlintraining]

Anyone know a good antitrust lawyer?

Your wallet.

Re:Lawyer?

[Lehk228]

'cause the free market fixes everything. the invisible hand of the market will even stop invading tanks as long as you wish it hard enough

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny how you got modded "troll"

Libertardians obviously hate it when they're presented with evidence that the invisible market fairy doesn't fix everything.

Or perhaps they honestly believe that a service company that is renowned for poor customer service and near-universally loathed will suddenly change its tune because a half-dozen owners of obsolete equipment will finally decide they've had enough.

Re:Lawyer?

[causality]

Libertardians obviously hate it when they're presented with evidence that the invisible market fairy doesn't fix everything [google.com].

I find it more interesting to consider why it doesn't generally work that way. I have only one answer: we care a HELL of a lot more about immediate convenience and instant gratification than we have ever cared about being consistent with our principles. So we'll buy from abusive companies that deliver poor service before we'll do without their products/services. We'll patronize a company that is known to engage in extremely dishonorable business practices so long as their products are 5% cheaper than the competitors'.

The market idea really could work, except that it requires a people who are both more noble and have a far stronger backbone than our general population. Such a people would individually and voluntarily refuse to ever support any business that takes actions which are not in their interests, at all costs. In turn, the corporations would understand this which would both raise the general standard and guarantee that actually proving this to them would be a relatively rare event.

But we want our shiny and we want it now and we don't care what sort of behavior we are rewarding by voting with our wallets. That's the only reason it doesn't work. There is none other. Corporations cannot act against our interests except that we provide the funding by which they do it.

Re:Lawyer?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It's worse than that, though. Not only does Comcast have a functional monopoly(or at least cozy duopoly) in a large number of its service areas, infrastructure construction is fundamentally subject to economic phenomena that encourage monopoly formation.

Building infrastructure has very high barriers to entry and substantially greater build-out costs than operating costs. This means that any prospective entrant needs deep pockets just to lay the wires, and also means that the incumbent, who has already had time to amortize build-out costs, can generally threaten to undercut possible entrants quite deeply for a period of time.

Once you add on the not-strictly-economic-but-hard-to-eradicate-in-the-real-world issues of easements and things(since building most kinds of infrastructure more or less necessarily requires trampling all over other people's property, building towers, putting up poles, or digging ditches, you either have the truly epic barrier to entry of having to negotiate individually with all propertyholders, or the local state-entity uses its power to take and bundle compulsory rights-of-way, which substantially lowers barriers to entry; but makes control over all rights of way a political football at the state or municipal level, which generally comes down to a further advantage to the incumbent).

Frankly, I suspect that we would have a much freer market if building out fiber were generally treated as a state function, as roads and water lines are. The municipality would run the fiber from you to a peering point. By default, the fiber would just sit there, possibly offer access to some municipal web sites. If you chose, you could contract with any private party operating at that peering point(which would make room available on a RAND basis) and a simple router config change would allow traffic between your fiber and one or more of the parties at the peering point. You want internet access? Talk to any of the ISPs at your peering point. TV? Any IPTV provider, whether at that peering point, or through an ISP, can sell you that. Phone? VOIP through your ISP, or a dedicated provider if you don't want to get your hands dirty.

All the municipality would have to do is keep the fiber lit, and pass traffic through it. Competition at the peering point could be nice and stiff(since laying fat pipes to a single location, properly chosen, is way cheaper than laying thin pipes to hundreds of locations, and because various service providers could lease bulk bandwidth from each other to offer services). As with rule of law and other flavors of infrastructure, the actual line-to-premises is arguably one of those places where state intervention is the foundation of a good free market, not the opposite of one.

Re:Lawyer?

[schon]

I find it more interesting to consider why it doesn't generally work that way.

Two words: Market Power

It has nothing to do with "backbone", or "caring". It has to do with the fact that consumers really don't have as much power as free-market proponents believe.

Re:Lawyer?

[OrangeCatholic]

Indeed, the free market is designed to give people what they want. Unfortunately, a lot of times, people's desire runs counter to their long-term self interest.

I've had enough experience selling products to know that the majority of customers are not shopping optimally. There's one class of customers that just wants the cheapest crap available, and damn the consequences. There's another class that is smart enough to ask for "the best," but it's how they define it, and they will pay an exorbitant price.

Relatively few customers are buying the right products for the right prices. They are smart enough that they could probably open their own business...if they weren't already involved in something else.

In short, the market is a competition that creates far more losers than winners. It does educate everyone along the way (did that crap not work out? Try something better next time.)

But the losers are still among us. Let's say you're smart enough to avoid buying Chinese wallboard, but you go to a friend's house who does, and you get sick. You made the right choices, and you still lose.

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

what i find really is your argument for a truly 'free market' is really reminiscent of a lot of arguments for communism that i've heard, in the sense that "it would work great, if only human beings thought and acted differently than they actually do."

Re:Lawyer?

[gtbritishskull]

Oh, I understand Libertarians now. It is not their beliefs are wrong. The people are wrong for not living their lives "correctly". If you could make the people in the country act "right" then the country would be Libertarian and perfect.

So, they are just like communists. The communist system didn't fail because their system didn't work. It was because the people did not act "correctly". If only they could have acted "right" and sacrificed their own self-interest for the interest of the whole, then communism would have succeeded.

The truth is, that you have wonderful ideals, but they have no place in reality. The reason why the US constitution is such a good document (not perfect, but pretty good) is because it does not assume that people will be perfect. It is designed for imperfect people, and will survive their imperfection. Your system is designed for perfect people, and when it meets an imperfect person it will completely fail.

Re:Lawyer?

[Bartab]

No, it has to do with the fact that we don't have as much free-market as anti-free-market whiners like to tell us we do. You can't strongly regulate an industry and then claim that free market failed.

e.g. cable television, insurance, pharmacuticals, power production, power distribution, etc, etc, etc.

Re:Lawyer?

[migla]

For free markets to have any chance to make the world a better place, i.e. to give people good stuff as cheaply as possible, consumers as a group must be informed. They're not, by and large. Consumers in general consume what the constant barrage of propaganda tells them to consume.

Money is power: Power to form monopolies, power to persuade, power to shape ideas and world views.
   

Re:Lawyer?

[aekafan]

It is just that we libertarians have no illusions that this country, and especially the broadcast system, operates in a free market. What comes to you through your television or computer hook-up is a government granted monopoly. In a true free market, we could have a hundred choices coming through the same wire. But you probably accept the illusion that we live is a "free market" of two or three service choices. Careful who you call a retard, troll

Re:Lawyer?

[Count Fenring]

There's also the minor issue that, when one does nothing but "vote with one's dollar," the company has no way to know why. Or that without some sort of overarching organization, people find out about things that piss them off at different times, and so the relation of action to reaction is spread over time to the point that it, again, becomes completely opaque.

We've tried laissez-faire capitalism - it's called the Gilded Age, and it was TERRIBLE for 90% of the population. Previously, we tried it in Edwardian/Victorian Britain. It was horrible and soul-crushingly destructive then, too. Sensing a theme? Pure free market economies are no better an idea than communism, if somewhat more efficient at producing products.

But we want our shiny and we want it now and we don't care what sort of behavior we are rewarding by voting with our wallets. That's the only reason it doesn't work. There is none other. Corporations cannot act against our interests except that we provide the funding by which they do it.

This is a particularly bad argument when talking about cable TV - often, the consumer doesn't HAVE an alternative readily available; I can count the number of places I've been that offer multiple cable TV services on one hand, and I've lived places where satellite wasn't a real option because of geography or various out-of-my-control circumstances.

Corporations can act against our interests in a variety of ways without being immediately funded by those affected, particularly when a corporation has existed long enough and had enough pull to shape society or law in its favor. A good example is credit card companies - while there's no de jure requirement that I have one, if I don't build a credit history, I can't buy a house or car or get loans for school or...

Regardless, even if everything you said was correct, that's still a problem with Libertarianism, not with consumers. Because, well, any system that only works in the platonic world of perfect ideals is a stupid, worthless system, and not worth consideration in this, the real world.

The market idea really could work, except that it requires a people who are both more noble and have a far stronger backbone than our general population. Such a people would individually and voluntarily refuse to ever support any business that takes actions which are not in their interests, at all costs. In turn, the corporations would understand this which would both raise the general standard and guarantee that actually proving this to them would be a relatively rare event.

No, it requires a people infinitely resourceful, a people infinitely knowledgable about the actions of the corporations (and parent companies and subsidiaries) they interact with, even tangentially, and a people that can make their primary activity "making purchasing decisions" rather than work, or raising a family, or anything that is actually central to a real human's life. Also, these mythical people would still need to build a solid method for communicating the reasons behind their purchasing decisions, en masse, to the companies. Making purchasing decisions based solely in a political manner isn't some beautiful, virtuous thing, and doing so based on your own needs isn't immoral.

People not only won't buy things and services primarily according to abstract principles and disagreements, they shouldn't have to. There's no reason why, when deciding what car to buy, I should have to do thirty hours worth of research to see if the company making my car purchases child-slaves in East Examplia and grinds them up for lubricant - the laws of my country (and the world) should make unethical behavior illegal. That's what laws and regulations are for.

Re:Lawyer?

[denzacar]

The market idea really could work, except that it requires a people who are both more noble and have a far stronger backbone than our general population.
Such a people would individually and voluntarily refuse to ever support any business that takes actions which are not in their interests, at all costs.

Hey, that's funny - same goes for communism. And major religions, achieving world peace, ending hunger and poverty...

No... really. All we need for those to work as intended/described is a better class of humans.

Re:Lawyer?

[im_thatoneguy]

Even if it's a monopoly there is no guarantee everyone else wouldn't do it as well.

Re:Lawyer?

[Khyber]

"It has to do with the fact that consumers really don't have as much power as free-market proponents believe"

Want to bet? If we quit buying everything but food, energy, and our clothing, watch how fast every other economy on the planet would suffer.

You cite Wikipedia as if it could be used as a RELIABLE source to explain something as unpredictable and random as human behavior.

What if every consumer just decided 'fuck it' and took up arms and ran every corporation into the ground via lethal force?

Consumers ARE all-powerful, no matter how corporations try to spin it. Without US, they do not exist.

Re:Lawyer?

[DesScorp]

'cause the free market fixes everything. the invisible hand of the market will even stop invading tanks as long as you wish it hard enough

If you'll permit me to interupt your trolling for just a moment, I'd like to point out that cable companies are not monopolies. You DO have a choice. It's called satellite, and it's similarly priced. Things like DirecTV are available in places where even cable is not. Cable is just a medium for delivering the service. The service is enhanced television.

So if Comcast does something you think is unworthy of your dollars, take your dollars elsewhere.

I'm not a Libertarian, but I'm sympathetic to some of their ideas, and they're generally correct in stating that markets tend to be better off without overbearing regulation. You're always going to have regulation of some kind. A sales tax can be viewed as a form of regulation. But what Libertarians are justified in fearing are people like you telling the government "make this company give me everything I want at the price I specifiy!".

Why would anyone want to run a business in that kind of environment? And more to the point, when did you gain a right to Comcast's products and services, let alone the right to tell them HOW to offer those services? What else will you demand the government make them do, and for how much? Can you please point out to me where in the law you have a right to Cable TV? Cable/Satellite is a luxury. It's non-essential. It's not like a hospital where they HAVE to serve you.

If you think they suck, fine. You've probably even got some legitimate points. But it's a private business. If you don't like them, do business elsewhere. Or don't do it all.

Re:Lawyer?

[SuperAlgae]

If we quit buying everything but food, energy, and our clothing, watch how fast every other economy on the planet would suffer. ... Consumers ARE all-powerful, no matter how corporations try to spin it.

... and the world's insects have the power to join together and destroy humanity, but it's not going to happen. Hypothetical power and real power are two different things. As long as a company can control enough consumers, then the others can vote with their wallet all they want-- it won't do much. That's the problem with a lot of arguments for free market. They assume that large groups of consumers will act with the same cohesion as their corporate counterparts. This rarely holds true.

If only there was some organization by the people and for the people that could represent us in a more unified way... oh wait, we have something that is supposed to do that... it's government. We just need to stop thinking of the government as the enemy and start thinking of it as a tool that needs to be maintained and fixed when it is broken.

Think about how many times large companies have behaved poorly. Now think about how many times those behaviors have been stopped by consumer boycotts. It's very lopsided. Changes are more often achieved by pressuring the government than by simple consumer power. In cases where there have been successful boycotts, they usually relate to a small aspect of a company rather than a fundamental change.

I do like the idea of consumer power. It's comforting to think that we can fight an entity much more powerful than any one of us alone. But we need to be realistic about what can be achieved and how. A nice idea without practical teeth is just a placebo.

Re:Lawyer?

[Valdrax]

I am not sure you have a correct understanding of Libertarians. Libertarians. . . believe in as little government as possible. . . [and that] an individual is responsible for him/her self and shouldn't count on government for anything.

I'm pretty sure he gets Libertarians completely. The problem is that people don't act responsibly for themselves much of the time, that people are in fact incapable of acting as perfectly-rational, well-informed economic actors in all markets, and that society crumbles without some form of check and balance on people placing their own interests above the expenses of others.

Much like communism, libertarianism relies on the notion that the world will be a utopia if everyone acts properly or that a large enough group of people acting according to the tenets of the philosophy will be able to mitigate or eliminate the negative effects of those actors who work against it. Both systems drastically underestimate the knack that unethical people have for pushing off the costs of their behavior on others in ways that are difficult to effectively police without a mix of strategies outside the province of "pure" systems.

Re:Lawyer?

[tc3driver]

A much better idea would be to have the city lay out it's grid (cable, internet, telephone, etc) and then lease its usage to competing companies, The infrastructure becomes an investment that the community has, and is able to profit from. All potential lessees would be charged the same amount for usage of components of the grid, thus you have the same base rate for each company, then they each have to figure in the profit margin etc... no need to explain this any further.

I realize this is a corruptible system, at the same time, it would be a self correcting system, as the community can decide which is offering the best service for the price.

There would be a large "up front" Investment here, but would pay for it self, especially when you get a large number of companies on the same grid.

Re:Lawyer?

[mrchaotica]

No, the libertarian free market leads to feudalism as the "haves" buy personal armies and the "have nots" sell themselves into serfdom to survive.

Re:Lawyer?

[ChienAndalu]

What are you talking about? Where is this happening?

Re:Lawyer?

[Jurily]

consumers as a group must be informed

Sounds good on paper, doesn't it? Imagine a group of people putting up honest and detailed information about the products of big companies. Now imagine what they'll spend on lawyers when the big companies in question find out about it. Even if they can prove they tell the truth, they're going bankrupt.

Re:Lawyer?

[Curunir_wolf]

Government is broken. It enacts regulation it will not enforce. It's regulatory bodies are toothless in the face of lobbying dollars.

The FCC is toothless to regulate dominating, price-fixing, anti-consumer telecom companies(AT&T, Verizon and Qwest, I'm talking about you.)

It's actually worse than that. Most Federal regulatory bodies are, in fact, controlled by large corporations, and are used not to regulate corporate activity, but to impose barriers to competition for those corporations, and regulate activities such that consumers are more dependent upon those corporations and the government institutions controlled by them.

The FCC, then, is there to protect media giants from competition from pirate radio. The FDA is there to protect corporate food giants from small farmers, and the Fed is there to protect Wall Street from competition by small business.

All while spending the entire country so far into debt that there is no way out.

I think "trust in government" would be some psychotically misplaced trust at this point.

Re:Lawyer?

[AndersOSU]

cable television and power distribution are natural monopolies. Regulated or not, there is no possibility for a free market there.

Pharma companies are regulated because we found out that if we didn't regulate food and drugs, snake oil salesmen would wander the country selling unlabeled tincture of morphine to cure your upset stomach.

Insurance ... well that's a clusterfuck. Insurance is interesting because it is largely regulated at the state level, so, in theory, it should be possible for one state (Texas? Oklahoma? Utah?) to decide that it wanted to try out unregulated insurance to appease the spirit of Ayn Rand. At least that's what people who respond with "tenth amendment" in all caps to my posts tell me. For some reason, however, we have 50 states and not one is actually willing to put their free-market-money where their mouth is.

Re:Lawyer?

[bluefoxlucid]

Wal-Mart keeps unions at bay; keeps a horribly aggressive competition base that keeps other retailers in line (this breaks price fixing); and actually supplies decent salary and benefits to its workers (in 2005 they gave inventory employees $10/hr and decent medical; Best Buy was paying $6.5-$8 in 2008).

Wal-Mart deals with different suppliers than i.e. Sears. They encourage outsourcing of labor to reduce manufacture costs; but they don't carry Land's End, Polo, or Doc Marten. So they have lower quality clothes, at like $20 for a set of pants or a shirt; whereas i.e Land's End sells a much higher quality set of pants for $40, but you can get them at Sears or discount clothing stores for $30 regularly.

Those of us who buy decent clothes will recognize the quality and pay $30, maybe even $40 for good pants; but I'm not paying $80 for those things. If Wal-Mart wasn't around though... $30 cheap jeans or khakis, and Old Navy selling their stuff for $50-$60 probably? Those $2-$3 glasses ... yeah, instead of getting a good set of kitchenware for $50, it might cost you $100. You can get a cheap set from Wal-Mart for about $35.

The poor would suffer most at the demise of Wal-Mart; though the middle class would be notched down a bit since nobody would be aggressively fighting for lower prices. It's hard to compete with a different tier product when you're 1 class above the lower end crap yet your price range is 3 times higher.

Re:Lawyer?

[AndersOSU]

We haven't put it to the test in the last 100 years or so, because we learned the lesson the first time. The industrial revolution in Britain and the United States was a free-market wet-dream. No minimum wage, no worker safety, no anti-competitive status, and no child labor laws.

What happened was that industry found the sweet spot where they were just a hair better than staying on the farm (which also had none of those restrictions) so that they could run their machinery with a constant stream of new-arrivals. The result was sweat shops, child labor, company towns, tenements, slums, the reduction of the middle class (skilled workers), and massive environmental damage - all for the benefit for a few ultra-wealthy "captains of industry" like Rockefeller, Carnagie, Morgan, and Vanderbilt.

Ironically, communist China is in the process of repeating our free-market mistake.

Re:Lawyer?

[eth1]

Cable TV *used* to be a natural monopoly, when it was all analog. Now, it's all just data.

You only need one fiber to each house (owned by the city, an independent non-profit, or even neighborhood associations - anyone but the content/service providers). You could easily have 10 each of cable TV companies, phone companies and internet companies all available over the same bit of fiber.

Re:Lawyer?

[digitalunity]

His point is valid nonetheless. $8.50 working 40 hours a week is only $1156 after tax per month, and before any deductions for retirement and savings plans.

WalMart touts itself as a perfectly kosher place to work if you're an adult that needs to live off the money, but that couldn't be further from the truth. A disproportionate number of WalMart employees rely on some sort of public social assistance program, whether that be food stamps, daycare assistance or insurance subsidies. WalMart uses razor thin margins, globalized distribution systems and cutthroat pricing to displace retailers that would otherwise pay better.

People buy WalMart's shit not realizing that they're cutting their own Achilles heel.

You could make an argument that some person in China has a job with WalMart where they otherwise would not, but consider this: WalMart directly operates factories in China(they're not just a distributor) and their employees face slave-labor conditions to produce the shit you wanted to save $1 on. If you're going to spout shit about globalization, go all the way and just say you don't give a shit about slave-laborers in China because you wanted to save money.

Re:Lawyer?

[AndersOSU]

It may have been that the conditions during the industrial revolution were inevitable, and it is certainly true that conditions during the industrial revolution made it possible for the eventual largest expansion of both the economy and the middle class in history.

My issue is with that the post I replied to asserted that we didn't know if industries would regulate themselves because we haven't tried in 100 years. This is technically true, the last time we tried was about 120 years ago. That time we discovered that industrialists weren't interested in improving the lot of their workers, they were interested only in their self-interests. Hence the violent reaction to the nascent union movement, and the largest concentration of wealth in history. As FDR would go on to say, "heedless self-interest was bad morals; we now know that it is bad economics." On that note, it's often impossible to separate things that are economically wrong from things that are morally or actually damaging, c.f. Countrywide Financial.

dvd-r

[tivoKlr]

OK, I know most don't use VCR's anymore, but there are those using DVD recorders, and being unable to set the settop box to switch to the right channel would interfere with setting up recordings when one is away.

Comcast sucks though, and this is definitely another example of such.

What's the alternative?

[treeves]

I recorded some movies on HBO on my Verizon DVR then later cancelled the HBO and kept the DVR. Then when I went to watch the movies, I could not. I paid for the service but I can't watch the movies I already recorded because I don't *keep* paying? Well, at least I know it wouldn't do any good to switch to Comcast... I think I need to do some research...

Re:What's the alternative?

[commodore64_love]

I gave-up on cable.

Now I just use an antenna, which gives me about 40 non-duplicated channels. They show lots of movies on Saturdays/Sundays. "ThisTV" shows movies 24 hours a day. "RetroTV" shows classic 60s/70s/80s shows. PBS offers 3-4 channels of history/discovery type programs. Reruns of Deadliest Catch, Star Trek, Regenesis air daily and new episodes of Legend of the Seeker every week. And I have Qubo and Family Channel for the kids.

All free.

The DTVpal that I use includes a VCR/DVR Timer to auto-change channels on schedule, so you can record shows while you're not home.

Television?!?

[Krelnor]

Who cares about the VCR's. People still watch television without downloading it?

Re:Television?!?

[kramerd]

Who cares about the VCR's. People still watch television without downloading it?

Well yes they do. Live sports and news channels don't really make sense to watch weeks or days or even hours after the fact.

Give up a few lattes

[Lije Baley]

DVRs are worth the money. End of story. DVRs and ultra-pasteurized milk are the two best things the 21st century has brought us. Just swallow your pride and get one.

Re:Give up a few lattes

[gtbritishskull]

I completely disagree. Comcast DVRs are crap and I will not pay money for one. But, third party DVRs tend to be decent and worth the money. Too bad they too tend to use the "VCR" programming feature. This is the definition of anti-competitive. They are using their monopoly in one market (cable provider) to influence their competitiveness in another (DVRs).

WHO CARES?

[terjeber]

This is a non-event for anyone who has moved past the stone age. News for nerds? This is News For Cave Men.

VCR with IR emitter

[lalena]

Before DVR, VCRs used to have IR emitters that would change the channel on the cable box automatically at the right time. You just need to find one of these.
Granted this might be a bit high-tech for some, but if someone was already programming their cable box to change the channel for the VCR, then they should be able to figure out the IR emitter.

Re:VCR with IR emitter

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Lots of companies think about their customers...

Sort of the way Pedobear thinks about children.

A fairly common, and in some ways elegant, move...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Seen in a variety of places in the tech business, and businesses with a lot of underlying technology.

Here is how it works: Because technology is complex, most users are largely helpless, and incapable of realizing much of the theoretical promise of the technology available. A fairly small population of gearheads(and, if said gearheads happen to be motivated in setting up UIs, immediate friends and family of such) can realize the potential; but most cannot. At this point, you create a product that, by making things easy, gives Joe Sixpack 90% of what Jim Gearhead has always been able to do, available at the touch of a button. The last 10%, though, you take away from both Joe and Jim, in the form of DRM and/or fees. Because the population of gearheads is much smaller than the population at large, you get to look like you are "enabling new capabilities, for which you are charging a fair price/making a few reasonable concessions to content providers", even as you are, in fact, turning the screws a little tighter.

Historically, Apple has been perhaps the most talented player of this game, but there are certainly plenty of others. It's evil, certainly; but it works quite well.

It is the existence, and success, of this strategy that makes me think that user-friendliness may be a necessary survival trait for FOSS. If we can make Jim Gearhead's 100% solution easy to use, then the public at large will see the various crippled or fee-based(often both) almost-as-good-but-easier offerings as the steps down that they are, and protest loudly. If we can't, though, the companies that deliver them will, largely, receive acquiescence or even praise for doing so.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[commodore64_love]

I still use VCRs. For a couple reasons:

- It's Super VHS so it produces DVD quality recordings.
- If I want to keep a recording it's as easy as popping-out the tape and putting it on the shelf.
- (Main reason.) I have about $1000 worth of bought tapes and blanks, and it seems silly to just throw them away that much money.
- Also lots of my home movies are stored on VHS. I need some way to play them.

Re:$20/month DVR service?

[theNetImp]

The DVR service is rental of their DVR equipment, not access to a service. They are renting you hardware that is a DVR. The DVR is also your cable tuner so you are only renting one device instead of 2. Digital cable boxes via comcast are $10/month, so in reality you are paying an additional $10/month for the more advanced box. Box breaks Comcast replaces it. You buy a DVR or build one something breaks and you may have to pay out more to replace/fix it than the $120/yr for the rental. When storage in Comcasts new boxes increases, you call Comcast and can get a newer box without doling out a couple hundred more dollars for a new box or upgraded computer system..

Re:OT

[waspleg]

the worst part is that where i'm at there are no alternatives unless you want to pay to lay phone lines for even worse service. they have local monopolies all over and they know it.

better question:

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Raise your hand if you regularly use a VCR these days, too.

Raise your hand if you bother watching TV any more. I stopped years ago. If there is anything I want to see, I just DL it when I want to.

Here's ABC's line up:

20/20

AFV - America's Funniest Home Videos

The Bachelor

The Bachelor Jason and Molly's Wedding

The Bachelorette

Better Off Ted

Brothers & Sisters

Castle

Cougar Town

Dancing with the Stars

The Deep End

Desperate Housewives

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

FlashForward

The Forgotten

Grey's Anatomy

Happy Town

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Lost

The Middle

Modern Family

Nightline

Primetime

Private Practice

Romantically Challenged

Scrubs

Shaq vs Shark Tank

SuperNanny

This Week With George Stephanopoulos

Ugly Betty

V

Wife Swap

Wipeout

Now, how is anyone's life worse off for being denied exposure to the above noted programs? I'm fine. I'm happy, I'm living a rich and colourful life. And I don't watch any of that crap - not on NBC, CBS, or ABC or even PBS. And I'm certainly not going to pay some cable company the privilege to watch TV commercials.

Do yourself a favour. Get rid of your set. If you MUST see something, watch it online. Otherwise - go find something else to do with your time than waste it in front of the idiot box.

Can someone fact check this or provide a citation

[PNutts]

I love that the discussion is all over the place in true /. fashion (because some of the most interesting points are sidebar discussions). However, if it isn't advertised and the summary is vauge how am I supposed to know how far to twist my knickers? I use a Tivo which uses an IR blaster to change the set-top box. No Comcast P/DVR. My assumption is that Tivo appears to the set-top box no differently than a third party remote control. So is the Anonymous submission saying I can't change my channels? I seriously don't even know enough to start a search other than "Comcast $ucks" which will return far to many hits...

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[pcolaman]

- It's Super VHS so it produces DVD quality recordings.

False. Just because it records 420 lines of resolution does not make it "DVD Quality." VHS, S-VHS, and even Betamax and other tape formats did not handle things such as audio recording and chroma signal as well as true digital recordings do. But even from a simple resolution standpoint, S-VHS I believe recorded at 560x480, which doesn't even touch DVD resolution. Add to that the extra bandwidth for proper color resolution and digital audio, and there really isn't even a comparison.

- If I want to keep a recording it's as easy as popping-out the tape and putting it on the shelf.

The shelf life for the quality to remain similar to when it was recorded is no more than about 10-15 years. Yeah, they'll last longer than that, but the quality of the recording goes down as the tape ages. DVDs last much longer assuming they are reasonably cared for, and video stored in a digital format can easily be copied without a degrade in quality. Copies of magnetic cassettes? Not so much.

- (Main reason.) I have about $1000 worth of bought tapes and blanks, and it seems silly to just throw them away that much money.

So transfer them to a digital medium such as hard disks. Using the right equipment you won't lose a whole lot in quality (as if they are hi-fidelity as they are), and they'll actually last a lot longer.

- Also lots of my home movies are stored on VHS. I need some way to play them.

See my last point. Honestly, your VCR or VHS tapes will not outlive you. If you want to keep those memories, transferring to a digital medium (and making a few backups just in case the worst were to happen) would be smart. Heck, I'd make at least one copy that you store away in a safe deposit box or fireproof safe, so that you really make sure and keep them for a while. If those VHS tapes go up in smoke, adios amigo (assuming you have some home videos in there you wouldn't want to lose).

MythTV + Hulu + Netlix Cable

[Digicrat]

This just adds yet another reason to why I refuse to pay Comcast for TV ... an extra 20-50 a month for the handful of channels I want to watch just isn't worth it. A Linux MythTV Box with an OTA antenna gets all of my broadcast shows, Hulu covers those rare instances that something malfunctions and I miss a show I actually care about, while Netflix (streaming to the Xbox360] gets me all of the cable-only shows that I want [albeit a year late]. Oh, and I also get a handful of random unencrypted channels via QAM from comcast [my landlord has a $10 a month super-basic plan] - subject to the whims of comcast's annual channel reshuffles.

Now, if I could only get both Hulu and Netflix to work well under MythTV, I'd truly be able to have all my entertainment on one device . . .

Re:Firewire may possibly be a solution

[SCPRedMage]

The point the GP was making wasn't to record via Firewire, it's changing the channel via Firewire, which they CAN'T block. It's something I do with my own DVR; it's a HELL of a lot more reliable than an IR blaster.

Re:Lawyer? How we got VHS

[digitalunity]

You are correct.

Cassettes didn't beat 8 track because it was better quality either. They were cheaper and smaller.

And while we're on the topic of media... I switched from VHS to DVD because the media lasted longer and fast forwarding and rewinding is faster. Why is it when I put a DVD in, I have to fuck with the remote for 30 seconds to get to the goddamned menu because of "Acceptable user operations"?

Who the fuck decided the media producers could decide when I can fast forward, rewind, pause or go to the next track?

The most ubiquitous DRM is in every household already and it's obnoxious. Bluray isn't any better either.