Are you fed up with Cable TV?

[FreddyE1977]

I am in full agreement with the guy who said "Comcast made me dump cable".
I dumped them a few years ago due to very egregious lapses in customer service.
Got a dish, which mainly I have for sports programming. I do notice that many
times there is nothing else on there I would want to watch, even with a couple
hundred channels. If there were just a couple of channels that consistently showed
old reruns of shows I actually enjoy it would be great.

As far as the FCC ending broadcast television next year, that will come as a rude
surprise to all of the broadcast television stations who are expecting an ROI on the
digital conversions they just went through. Can't see that surviving the gauntlet of
the courts or Congress.

 

[vchimpanzee]

I've had no real problems with Time Warner, but over the weekend I saw pink and green squares for the third time. The first time was when Julia Roberts died on "The Cleveland Show". Channels 10 through 13 were affected. Same thing happened Thursday night. And over the weekend a proram I had taped had this in the middle. I'll ask next time I pay my bill. The women there are really nice.

Last night with DTV I got "No Signal" right in the middle of the Hallmark Hall of Fame. I wonder how bad the problem was? I'll ask on the market's board here. So I still depend a lot on cable. I have two CBS affiliates, so I got to see the rest of the movie. For CW and NBC, I pretty much depend on cable. Plus recording off the air is no longer possible without manually selecting channels.

 

[LKellerIII]

I am in full agreement with the guy who said "Comcast made me dump cable".
I dumped them a few years ago due to very egregious lapses in customer service.
Got a dish, which mainly I have for sports programming. I do notice that many
times there is nothing else on there I would want to watch, even with a couple
hundred channels. If there were just a couple of channels that consistently showed
old reruns of shows I actually enjoy it would be great.

As far as the FCC ending broadcast television next year, that will come as a rude
surprise to all of the broadcast television stations who are expecting an ROI on the
digital conversions they just went through. Can't see that surviving the gauntlet of
the courts or Congress.

I've had quite the opposite experience. I've had cable TV in San Francisco for over 25 years, which means I've dealt with Viacom, TCI, AT&T, and now Comcast. The worst customer service by far was from Viacom. It has improved with every owner since then, and Comcast is the best - not perfect by any means, but the best of the four.

I've looked into Satellite alternatives, and have found that I'll only save a few dollars a month at best, and then have a dish attached to the side of my house that will need maintenance, and might blow down in a storm.

On the rare occasions that I've had problems, Comcast has provided decent customer service. After about 4 years of faithful service my cable box (HD with DVR) went out a couple of months ago. I took it into the Comcast office and stood in line for about 20 minutes. A nice lady helped me, and I got a new box that I hooked up myself. No problem....no complaints from me.

 

[landtuna]

I've looked into Satellite alternatives, and have found that I'll only save a few dollars a month at best, and then have a dish attached to the side of my house that will need maintenance, and might blow down in a storm.

I've had multiple 3-meter dishes and multiple pizza pan dishes and only once since the mid-80's have I ever had to do "maintenance" on any of them. Unless they are damaged by physical contact or something to that effect you should never have to touch the pizza pan dishes.

And the pizza pan dishes don't produce a large enough footprint to make wind of any reasonable strength worrisome. If properly installed you'd have to have something like a small tornado to rip one of those off its perch. A more realistic event would be the wind whipping a piece of debris into the LNB and knocking it off alignment but I would think that would be equally rare.

 

[rwells2265]

I have Qwest DSL at the 1.5 Mbps speed and have had no streaming issues.  My service (as measured by Qwest and others) runs a consistent 1.4xx Mbps downstream and .8xx Mbps upstream. 

I also have landline service.  For long-distance I use either a calling card (when away from home) at a cost of .02 cents/minute or Google Voice (at home) which is free.  I've had no problem with either.

Several years ago I placed my number in the Do Not Call list and, aside from a very few local companies who obviously are not checking the list, have had no telemarketing calls.  Before the list was implemented we had hundreds.  I do get political calls (mostly robo or recorded messages) and non-profits calling but maybe only twice per month on average.

If you're getting 1.4 out of 1.5, all I have to say is "wow!" - either that, or else you're in the same room as the "central office."   At my old location (suburban county of Savannah, Ga.), we had Windstream phone service - I was able to get a dry DSL pipe rated at 3 Mbps down, and the best I could get out of it was 1.6 ... with occasional gusts to 2.  It was okay, but I run a website on the side, and the upstream (usually .5-.7) got tiresome. 

I failed to mention my biggest gripe about landline - the cost, when factored in with our habits.  $30 with taxes, when my wife and I both have cellphones (with five-bar signal everywhere indoors), is wasteful - no two ways about it. 

Plus, I don't relish that thirty smackers giving a big portal for the vermin to enter our house.  We're on the DNC list - even putting our cellphone numbers on it for good measure.  When we had a landline, it put a dent in the telemarketers ... but too many ignored it.  And the DNC law has a toothless bite.  It exempts political robocalls, charities and "surveys" ...... no sale.  One is too many, until the day they pay for my phone service.

Number of political calls received on either of our cellphones this past election cycle: -0-

Oh, and paying for domestic long-distance is so 20th century.   ;D

Just MHO....

--Russell

 

[LKellerIII]

I have Qwest DSL at the 1.5 Mbps speed and have had no streaming issues. My service (as measured by Qwest and others) runs a consistent 1.4xx Mbps downstream and .8xx Mbps upstream.

I also have landline service. For long-distance I use either a calling card (when away from home) at a cost of .02 cents/minute or Google Voice (at home) which is free. I've had no problem with either.

Several years ago I placed my number in the Do Not Call list and, aside from a very few local companies who obviously are not checking the list, have had no telemarketing calls. Before the list was implemented we had hundreds. I do get political calls (mostly robo or recorded messages) and non-profits calling but maybe only twice per month on average.

I failed to mention my biggest gripe about landline - the cost, when factored in with our habits. $30 with taxes, when my wife and I both have cellphones (with five-bar signal everywhere indoors), is wasteful - no two ways about it.

Plus, I don't relish that thirty smackers giving a big portal for the vermin to enter our house. We're on the DNC list - even putting our cellphone numbers on it for good measure. When we had a landline, it put a dent in the telemarketers ... but too many ignored it. And the DNC law has a toothless bite. It exempts political robocalls, charities and "surveys" ...... no sale. One is too many, until the day they pay for my phone service.

Number of political calls received on either of our cellphones this past election cycle: -0-

Oh, and paying for domestic long-distance is so 20th century. ;D

Just MHO....

--Russell

We've only kept land line phone service because my wife has a business and needs to receive faxes multiple times per day. Her clients are gradually converting to e-mail , so the faxes might become irrelevant after a couple more years.

As for telemarketers - just run all calls through your answering machine. Most telemarketing companies use computers to dial numbers. That pause that you hear when the call connects is the computer routing the connected call to a human being for the pitch. Once the human hears the recorded message, they hang up.

The only thing it doesn't prevent is the political robo-calls.

 

[Neel]

Wow. when I looked into satellite it acutally cost more than cable! With Charter, I only have one DVR/cable box and the rest of the rooms, I can get basic cable up to ch. 99 and HD locals without a box, which is good enough for the other rooms. With satellite, I would have to pay for an additional box so it would cost more. Plus I can get TV, Internet and home phone for about $120/month with cable. Otherwise, I would prefer satellite since all the channels are digital.

I am in full agreement with the guy who said "Comcast made me dump cable".
I dumped them a few years ago due to very egregious lapses in customer service.
Got a dish, which mainly I have for sports programming. I do notice that many
times there is nothing else on there I would want to watch, even with a couple
hundred channels. If there were just a couple of channels that consistently showed
old reruns of shows I actually enjoy it would be great.

As far as the FCC ending broadcast television next year, that will come as a rude
surprise to all of the broadcast television stations who are expecting an ROI on the
digital conversions they just went through. Can't see that surviving the gauntlet of
the courts or Congress.

I've had quite the opposite experience. I've had cable TV in San Francisco for over 25 years, which means I've dealt with Viacom, TCI, AT&T, and now Comcast. The worst customer service by far was from Viacom. It has improved with every owner since then, and Comcast is the best - not perfect by any means, but the best of the four.

I've looked into Satellite alternatives, and have found that I'll only save a few dollars a month at best, and then have a dish attached to the side of my house that will need maintenance, and might blow down in a storm.

On the rare occasions that I've had problems, Comcast has provided decent customer service. After about 4 years of faithful service my cable box (HD with DVR) went out a couple of months ago. I took it into the Comcast office and stood in line for about 20 minutes. A nice lady helped me, and I got a new box that I hooked up myself. No problem....no complaints from me.

 

[WPPCProductions]

My complaint is all of these channels I never will watch.Like ESPN the over priced program provider and other sports channels.Yes,Golf and others.Other channels like the foreign language stations which I sometimes I catch a good looking ladies on them and I just mute the sound.One problem I had with Comcast last summer when my drop line went bad do the tree branch rubbing against the line.It took 3 techs to figure out what was wrong with the line.I kept telling them to just reroute and replace the drop line to my house.

 

[landtuna]

If you're getting 1.4 out of 1.5, all I have to say is "wow!" - either that, or else you're in the same room as the "central office."

I'm getting a bit off-topic here but want to address your comments.

Qwest just completed a major plant upgrade and now offers DSL speeds of up to 40Mbps to some of their service areas. I am not in one of those (nor do I need that kind of speed) but it is clear that DSL has closed some of the "coax gap". And, at least in my area, DSL is significantly cheaper and more reliable than standard cable. FIOS is not available here yet.

I failed to mention my biggest gripe about landline - the cost, when factored in with our habits. $30 with taxes, when my wife and I both have cellphones (with five-bar signal everywhere indoors), is wasteful - no two ways about it.

My landline costs seem to be somewhat cheaper than yours. Our total monthly cost is about $22 inclusive. No bells or whistles, just POTS. Qwest does offer a DSL-only plan but I don't know how it compares to landline+DSL. You might check with your local carrier and see if they offer DSL-only at a reduced rate. My DSL service runs about $30/month.

Plus, I don't relish that thirty smackers giving a big portal for the vermin to enter our house. We're on the DNC list - even putting our cellphone numbers on it for good measure. When we had a landline, it put a dent in the telemarketers ... but too many ignored it. And the DNC law has a toothless bite. It exempts political robocalls, charities and "surveys" ...... no sale. One is too many, until the day they pay for my phone service.

If you have a DSL-only landline I would think it would not be available for incoming calls so that would solve your irritation with unwanted calls. We don't get many but we also have an answering machine to intercept those that do get through and I do report companies who abuse the DNC. When election time rolls around we just turn off the ringer and let them talk away and waste their time. I have no problem with the charities calling.

Oh, and paying for domestic long-distance is so 20th century. ;D

I agree. But if your long distance is through your cell you are paying for it somehow. That's why I use Google Voice, a free service. It does require you make calls using your computer but since it is almost always on in my house that is no problem.

 

[rwells2265]

Taking a few more steps into the O/T rough....

Qwest just completed a major plant upgrade and now offers DSL speeds of up to 40Mbps to some of their service areas.  I am not in one of those (nor do I need that kind of speed) but it is clear that DSL has closed some of the "coax gap".  And, at least in my area, DSL is significantly cheaper and more reliable than standard cable.  FIOS is not available here yet.

Fully agree - DSL, as a delivery method, is superior to cable.   40 DSL?  Wow ... I'm sure that'll reach Savannah along about the year 2040.  

You might check with your local carrier and see if they offer DSL-only at a reduced rate.  My DSL service runs about $30/month.

AT&T does offer DSL only ... but at a maximum of 1.5 megabits.  That won't work for my own needs ... where we are, I'd be doing well to get an even 1. 

 If you have a DSL-only landline I would think it would not be available for incoming calls so that would solve your irritation with unwanted calls.  We don't get many but we also have an answering machine to intercept those that do get through and I do report companies who abuse the DNC.  When election time rolls around we just turn off the ringer and let them talk away and waste their time.  I have no problem with the charities calling.

If I could get a better speed, I'd go with DSL.  6 Mbps would be fine by me - but, as I stated, the only way AT&T will sell that speed is if I also pay for a landline.  They also have no "pay per call" service, either (I tried that route). 

My choices:  A) $50 total to AT&T for a 6-meg pipe with landline.   or B) $44 to Comcast for 12-meg + cable service we'd have anyway (see: wife).   I bent over and chose B.    

I'm fully up to speed on all the tricks and tips to deal with telemarketers.  The problem I have is twofold - let the machine get 'em, and the phone still rings.  Sometimes I work well into the night, so getting woken up at 9 AM on an off day is most unpleasant. 

Turn off the ringer?  Sure.  Then I'm paying 30 dollars (or, in your situation, $22) for a big junk receptacle.  Sort of like our fax machine at work ... the inbox is 98% spam.  (Speaking of answering machines - political robocalls leave messages.  And in this last election, one of our program hosts was away for a month just before the election helping his convalescent father ... he missed a few important calls because his machine literally maxed out from all the campaign calls!)

*********
Back to my original point: companies with a virtual monopoly in broadband in many places ... with the brute power to thwart any sidestep to paying for hundreds of channels one doesn't ever watch.  There's a reason companies like Comcast are fighting "net neutrality" tooth and nail!

But 40 Mbps DSL ... boy, I'd be delighted with 1/4 that speed.  Without landline, of course. 

--Russell