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?

[iammani]

If only Comcast was not a monopoly in my area.

Re:Lawyer?

[commodore64_love]

You've been unfairly marked troll. (Not that I agree with you, but everyone should have a right to express an opinion without having their karma stabbed.)

Anyway, a free market WOULD fix in this case, because when Comcast pulls this shit, you would then be able to switch to Cox cable or Time-Warner cable or AppleTV or Verizon TV or anybody else you desired. Comcast's poor decisions would drive it into bankruptcy as customers would flee in droves. (As happened to Circuit City not too long ago.) BUT because Comcast operates a virtual monopoly, they know they can force customers into upgrading to Comcast DVRs, simply by turning off standard features...... like a VCR Timer.

Also it's not just VCRs, but also DVRs this affects.

I have a Panasonic ReplayTV that can switch the old analog channels just fine, but ever since the analog-to-digital transition, it's lost that capability. I now rely on an external box with a "VCR/DVR Timer" to switch the digital stations. If Comcast removes that capability from their set-top box, than DVRs like mine will no longer be able to record anything but a single channel when I'm away from home.

IMHO.

Please don't mod me "troll" just cause you disagree (like you did to Lekh).

Re:Lawyer?

[Valdrax]

I'm pretty sure that getting you to open your wallet was Comcast's goal in the first place.

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?

[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?

[coldmist]

That's funny. Even Galbraith later admitted that he was wrong on this point.

link

Galbraith’s magnum opus was The New Industrial State, in which he argued that large firms dominate the American economy. “The mature corporation,” he wrote, “had readily at hand the means for controlling the prices at which it sells as well as those at which it buys. . . . Since General Motors produces some half of all the automobiles, its designs do not reflect the current mode, but are the current mode. The proper shape of an automobile, for most people, will be what the automobile makers decree the current shape to be.”

Well, not quite. Although GM would have loved to “decree” the shape of automobiles in the 1980s, it seems consumers had different ideas. That is one reason why GM, which did produce about half of all U.S.-bought autos in the 1960s, sells only a quarter of all U.S.-bought autos today.

Interestingly, in his autobiography Galbraith presented the very evidence that should have talked him out of his conclusion in The New Industrial State. In 1954 Galbraith was on a consulting team hired by Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), Canada ’s dominant railway at the time. He saw quickly that CPR’s most promising assets were its forests and land, not its railway. Yet CPR basically ignored the team’s advice. He wrote, “The railway men did not look with favor on such passing fads as airplanes.” This should have clued him in to the idea that large firms like CPR could “decree” virtually nothing.

To his credit, Galbraith ultimately admitted, with a 15-year lag, the major problem with his thesis. In July 1982 the steel and auto companies he had claimed were immune from competition and recessions were laying off workers in response to both foreign competition and recession. Asked on “Meet the Press” whether he had underestimated the extent of risk that even large corporations face, Galbraith paused and replied, “Yeah, I think I did.”

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?

[Trepidity]

How would you argue the free-market approach to cable television should work? Should cities let anyone dig up the road whenever they want, even if 10 companies are doing it constantly? Should they let nobody dig up the roads, and force cable companies to piece together rights of way by individually negotiating with private landowners, even though it's nearly impossible to actually piece together rights of way in that manner? Should they pick some arbitrary number, like top 3 bidders get to dig up roads? Should the city bury its own lines and sell access to multiple ISPs? I'm not quite sure what the most free-market approach is for something like that, which has physical constraints on getting to the market.

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?

[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.

VCR owners revolt!

[CyberSnyder]

Both of them.

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).

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?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

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...

Although I hate to admit it - tivo. Despite the absolutely craptastic nature of their interface (it was great like 10 years ago, but hasn't kept up at all) at least on verizon fiostv they are great because verizon never sets the "do not copy" bit, so you can pull all your recordings off your tivo - hbo, cinemax, hdnet, anything but pay-per-view (which tivo doesn't support recording in the first place). I have a perl script that just regularly polls my tivo and downloads anything new to my linux box. Apparently tivo doesn't count these downloads as viewing of the programs either, so my tivo isn't even snitching on my viewing habits either. As far as they know I never, ever watch tv.

It may also work to use the firewire port on the verizon set-top box, if it has one - I haven't tried it since I don't have a set-top box, but typically the firewire stuff is limited by the exact same "do not copy" bit as the tivo uses to decide if you can copy too.

"VCR Enthusiasts"

[pushing-robot]

I'm a part-time VCR enthusiast and a card-carrying member of the Classic Video Equipment Club of America, you insensitive clod!

Re:"VCR Enthusiasts"

[Valdrax]

I'm a part-time VCR enthusiast and a card-carrying member of the Classic Video Equipment Club of America, you insensitive clod!

Agreed. Everyone knows that analog produces a warmer, more beautiful picture free of the deleterious effects of the analog-to-digital conversion process. A properly configured analog video setup produces a superior experience to a digital setup. Anyone who disagrees just doesn't have sophisticated enough eyes.

Re:That's interesting...

[MasterOfMagic]

I didn't know you had a Slashdot account! Tell me more!

Television?!?

[Krelnor]

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

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.

Re:WHO CARES?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some nerds have to provide tech support for relatives that have VCRs and do not have DVRs. Try explaining that their VCRs are now useless and they now have to shell out $120-$240 a year.

Some nerds also own DVRs instead of renting from Comcast. The "VCR" programming feature is required to use with a non-Comcast DVR.

Firewire may possibly be a solution

[synthesizerpatel]

Digital cable boxes by law in the US (last time I checked) are required to have firewire ports to allow for unprotected content recording -- i.e. anything you can get over-the-air can be recorded via firewire stream. Incidentally, many basic cable channels are unprotected as well.

But, more importantly, you can change the channel through the firewire port.

I hacked together a really, really poor example of this for OSX using Apple's Firewire SDK -- http://www.remix.net/wiki/Clover

It's woefully out of date, but channel changing worked when I put it together. It would stand to reason that this feature would work for any firewire client unless they've disabled that as well.

Re:Firewire may possibly be a solution

[nvrrobx]

Firewire must be available, but it does not mean that the content is accessible.

Many providers choose to use the 5C DRM scheme to block your ability to record via Firewire.

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Firewire_Cablebox_Compatability

Take a look at Myth's compatibility list for examples.

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:That's interesting...

[Anonymous Psychopath]

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/26/28-not-having-a-tv

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.

/raises hand

[Volante3192]

I still use a VCR, and I will until it starts eating tapes. (It's not that I'm some sort of zealot, it's just...well...it still works. Why fix what isn't broken?)

Course, it serves one, and only one, purpose: recording Jeopardy OTA from my DTV box. Which is, incidentally, the only reason I even need the DTV converter in the first place.

Funny story, my VCR is not year 2010 compliant, so I actually have to use a year with the same template as this year to get it working. (My VCR thinks that (as of this post) it's 11 Apr, 1999.) More useless trivia, it doesn't know about years preceeding 1990 either.

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...

Comcast is not my buddy either

[kheldan]

I've got TiVo, and when the FCC mandated digital changeover was about to happen, Comcast made a big point of assuring everyone "if you're on Comcast and have an analog receiver, no worries, we're not changing anything!". Then a month or so ago I get an email from TiVo -- TiVo, not even Comcast! -- telling me Comcast is changing everything over to digital and that I'd have to get a freakin' cable box again. To add insult to injury, I've been reading reports all over the place of the DTA Comcast gives you not being 100% compatible or reliable with TiVo's IR blaster, so I had to get one of each cable box and see which one works: the DTA with no superfluous onscreen displays I don't need, or the full-blown cable box with all the useless bells and whistles. That and they keep raising the rates. I am NOT a happy Comcast customer, and if there were ANY other choices where I'm situated I'd go with them!

If you blink you might miss it.. Firewire solution

[synthesizerpatel]

f you blink, you might miss it.. But I think this backs up my original assertion..

Section 76.640:

(iii) Ensure that these cable operator-provided high definition set-top boxes shall comply with ANSI/SCTE 26 2001 (formerly DVS 194): ? Home Digital Network Interface Specification with Copy Protection? (incorporated by reference, see 76.602), with transmission of bit-mapped graphics optional, and shall support the CEA? 931? A:

?Remote Control Command Pass-through Standard for Home Networking? (incorporated by reference, see 76.602), pass through control commands: tune function , mute function, and restore volume function. In addition these boxes shall support the power control commands (power on, power off, and status inquiry) defined in A/VC Digital Interface Command Set General Specification Version 4.0 (as referenced in ANSI/SCTE 26 2001 (formerly DVS 194): ? Home Digital Network Interface Specification with Copy Protection? (incorporated by reference, see 76.602)).

It's not malicious

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

This isn't a malicious attempt to get you to upgrade to DVR service. It has to do with the fact that the digital cable box you have (Motorola DCT2000 series) has 2MB of flash memory.

The VCR recording feature requires an IR database (that stores the correct power/record codes for each VCR), code to operate the IR blaster, and of course UI and other features. All of this takes space. It may only be a few KB, but Comcast keeps adding features to the DCT2000 boxes and eventually something has to go. The VCR feature is one that isn't particularly popular (it's hard to configure and most people don't even have a VCR anymore), and it takes up more space than many other features, so it gets the axe.

Comcast's guide software (i-guide) is not particularly great, but it's a hell of a lot better than what used to run on the DCT2000. Those boxes are very old at this point, but the i-guide software has given them a reasonable level of functionality for people who don't want HD or a DVR.

If you don't like the change, you are free to do any of the following:
- Return the Comcast box and use a video recording device (TiVo, Moxi, Media Center, etc.) that uses a CableCard. Comcast charges $1.50/mo for a CableCard.
- Use a recording device or software (Media Center, MythTV, TiVO series 1/2) that supports your cable box with an IR blaster.
- Switch to Comcast's DVR.

FYI, Comcast's DVR is $15.99/mo if it's the first box on the account in most areas ($20 if it's an additional box). Conventional boxes are free (first box) or $6 (additional boxes). Some of these rates vary by area, but they're increasingly standardized.

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:Lawyer? How we got VHS

[Nom du Keyboard]

There's one class of customers that just wants the cheapest crap available, and damn the consequences.

And that's how we got VHS over Betamax.