I hate Cable!!!!! and dish and everything else!

Ack! The USA Cartoon Express disagrees !

Bravo used to be good, but it sucks now.

I definitely don't need the Homo (not that there's anything wrong with that!) Network, or several versions of MTV, but all things considered my Comast Cable/internet package is pretty good.

I think our DirecTV bill is a little over $100, but we get a lot of channels (including all the movie channels except Cinemax).

That doesn't mean there's anything worth watching on those channels, but we get them at a decent rate!

Our Time Warner bill is $109 a month. We have their DigiPic 1000 package, and HBO. If we removed HBO, the bill would be $105 a month, and since HBO's the only premium channel that shows great stuff (IMHO), I'd rather at least have that. Without the digital box, I can't get HBO, or I'd just go basic and get it, but even then that would be $81 a month with poor quality. Over the Air signals don't get to our apartment in any recognizable fashion, and we can't get satellite. You just can't win.


J.

I have the cheapest plan they have, it's $15 for the limited package. And the only reason I have that is so that I can have cable internet. I watch mostly dvds from netflix or tv on the internet. It's not worth the extra money just for a few channels.

The only reason I use Comcast is that I hate AT&T even more.

^ I'd love AT&T more if they'd get that Advanced TV up here where I live. They keep working on it, but no dice yet. They're offering everything Time Warner's DigiPic 2000 package gives, plus HBO and Showtime for $45 a month, non introductory rate. I have their DSL service and I get 6-10 (depending on the day) for $35 a month. I love that.

J.

I've got a decidedly love-hate relationship with AT&T. On the one hand, their DSL is best described as monkey excrement, and of course the fact that they tap all subscribers' internet traffic for the NSA.

On the other hand, stay with them long enough and you get massive price breaks on affiliate products. The Dish Network package was offered by AT&T; we're getting a $109 package for something like $68 after HD DVR. Not that I'll ever watch many of them, but still, occasionally there's some diamonds in the rough. Just discovered Ovation TV (whether I ever find it again on the channel line up is questionable), and History International is almost as good as History used to be.

On a side note has anyone else seen those fake game show TV ads for Comcast? Called something like "You might think DirecTV has more HD channels than Comcast but you're wrong". If there was ever more misleading advertising, I never saw it. I mean seriously, they actually compare the number of real (if overcompressed) HD channels DTV has vs. the number of real plus On-Demand and PPV HD channels Comcast has. How the hell is that comparison in any way, shape, or form, valid?

I believe the sneaky claim doesn't mention 'channels'. I think it says something like "The most HD content at any given time" or something snarky like that.

It's still disingenuous. DirecTV has On-Demand and PPV too.

^ When did DirecTV get on-demand? I'm curious, since I've had to put up with Time Warner Cable for 3 years.

J.

A la Carte sounds good at first blush, but the problem is that the current system makes it possible to have niche channels like Military History (All Hitler, All Day!) GAC and Reel Channel, which otherwise wouldn't bring in enough revenue to make them feasable.

However, in the case of the religious stations which I don't watch and in some cases find offensive, that would be a GOOD thing.

With a la carte, I think the bottom line would be that you would have less choice and after you got through picking the stations that are available you'd end up paying as much as you do now for a smaller lineup. I bet we all have stations that we like that wouldn't make the grade under a la carte pricing.

eta: I'd be interested to see what happened if some upstart cable system somewhere with nothing to lose offered a la carte pricing as a promotion, just to see what would happen.

Agreed.

A La Carte sounds great until you are told how much you have to pay for each channel. Let's say it is five bucks. You now have 20 channels for $100. Plus some of the channels you liked are now gone because they can't get enough support.

So now Cable looks like it did during the 1970s and 1980s with not a lot of channels. Except for the pricing.

Right now I pay about $100 for DirecTV but I have hundreds of channels and HBO and Cinemax.

So you actually pay the same or more as you are paying now but you have less to choose from.

And no ain't no cable channel gonna charge a dollar.

Oh and I guarantee that they will charge for local channels.

Think we pay £35 a month for our Sky digital package (everything apart from sport)

Just talked BT broadband down from £26.00 a month for my 2mb to £19.99 for 8mb and they are throwing in one of there hubs and line upgrades for free.

I still have analog cable. No boxes. Somewhere around 60 channels for $50 per month. Cablevision just took a bunch of channels away from me, including SciFi. They want me to rent a box, but I won't do it.

They do provide unencrypted QAM digital signals for the basic cable channels, including 2,4,5,7,9,11,13 in HD.

But the bottom line is that Cablevision sucks donkey balls.

Or the cable company uses QAM and he doesn't have a QAM tuner in his TV.

Or the company is lying (like Cablevision does) and saying he needs a box when he really doesn't.

Yep, I was agreeing.


@Mike:

A la carte programming is going to happen anyway, although it might never happen with "channels", just with individual shows. I'd argue that with better mechanisms for "trials", less-popular channels wouldn't be in danger. In fact, some small stations that only appear on the very most expensive packages might find themselves having MORE viewers.

Then just receive them over antenna... digital transmission doesn't suffer quality loss when transmitted over the air (unless its a REALLY bad signal). One of my relatives holds a lot of parties when big football games are on. He has satellite and can receive the games in HD. However, the channels are compressed, so we actually watch the games on antenna because it looks better ANYWAY (totally uncompressed full HD broadcasts).

Oh, and apart from a very small number or shows, local channels suck anyway.

Oh, and a big chunk of satellite users don't get local channels anyway, and have to either do without or use an antenna.

But the better channels are not on the basic cable.
Just yesterday (make that the day before - still on work time) they moved Discovery Health and National Geographic to Digical Classic - not even Digital Basic and that would increase my bill $15.00 PLUS the box they claim I have to have, even though I have a digital television (bought this year) and a digital DVD recorder (also bought this year) because "the television and dvd can't handle digital"
Yep that is is what the clump told me when I politely asked why I needed the box - and he denied that anything was scrambled.
So again, I ask.

WHY THE BLOODY HELL DO I NEED A BOX TO CONVERT A DIGITAL SIGNAL TO A DIGITAL RECEIVER???????????????

"Because we promised Scientific-Atlanta we'd move more of their crap!"

J.

I already answered your question.

Uh - whats a QAM signal??????

See, with your answer, I think the problem is I am speaking English, and you are speaking Technospeak.
Can we get a translation here? Please?

Why don't you start by telling us who your cable provider is (if you did, I missed it, sorry) and the make & model number of your TV.

I'm certainly not going to argue over whether it's technically feasible. If you say it is, that's good enough for me (no sarcasm intended). The problem is that kind of move from the cable companies would take serious thought about trying to figure out what the customer really wants and how to serve them better, instead of using their monopoly position to tell customers "take it or leave it". What's going to have to happen first is a shift away from the mentality of getting as many people signed up as possible, to slowing down the customer "churn" rate and doing what it takes to hand on to customers, whether it's with more prompt response to service complaints, more flexible channel selections or whatever.

I'm sure plenty of cynics are saying that will never happen. But it is starting to happen in the cell phone industry where Sprint's CEO made a startling re-discovery of one of the oldest truths in retail: it's a lot cheaper in the long run to keep customers happy and using your product than it is do go all out in sales and neglect basic services to the point where people get fed up and go to your competition. If it can happen in the cell phone industry, it can happen anywhere. When? Aye! there's the rub!

Because the box converts the signal so that your TV will see it. It also interprets what you've signed up for like Pay or certain digital tiers. If we just let everyone plug directly into their TV everyone would see everything regardless of whether or not they pay for it.

A Digital TV, I think, just has a better picture and allows you to see DTV broadcasts.

That's not entirely true. On the cable system here (Slime Warner) you don't need a converter box to get HBO1 or Showtime1, but if you don't pay the extra money for them, those channels on your teevee won't have anything on them.

Comcast - which has caused many of my friends to go to Direct or Dish.

My problem is that with the plan I have, I don't need anything but the cable coming into the house. No %^&%$ boxes. I can split the cable to my DVD recorders and record several programs that would otherwise overlap.

I have been told I can't do that with the flipping box.

I have one TV that was bought in 2004 and is supposed to be HDTV ready (maybe yes, maybe no). The other TV was bought in 2006 and has a selection for digital (but which is turned off right now - have to reread the book to see how to turn it on).

The DVD players are all around 2 years old and don't say digital. Just had to recently buy two to replace two that konked out that ARE digital tuners - I can already get the HD channels for the local stations.

So tell me, what kind of argument can I give the - ahem - customer service reps that are going to try to convince me to get the box.

Or do you think I can split the signal?

Cause I know for a face I don't want the pay per view anything (usually sports) anyway. I wait until the movies come out on DVD and buy them.

The short answer as to why you need the box without getting into all the specific technical details is that the digital signal for most of the channels that come over the cable are a different flavor of digital than the digital that comes over the antenna, and a lot of TVs can't understand this kind of digital. A lot of newer digital TVs can understand the digital cable format, but other than local channels, most are encrypted. In order to decrypt those channels, you need either a CableCard (if your TV supports it) or you need the box.

Without the box, you can only receive analog and unencrypted digital channels. The advantage to using the box over the CableCard is that it also gives you access to the cable company's program guide and On Demand content.

Does anyone know how to file a fcc complaint for trinity broadcasting network.