[ale] [OT] A vent and whine - ignore with dignity

[Byron Jeff]

On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 07:26:39AM -0400, Geoffrey wrote:
> Jim Kinney wrote:
> > I feel your frustration, brother. I can chop my bill down and up my 
> > bandwidth by jumping Speakeasy ship and going Comcast Business class. I 
> > can't bring myself to do it.
> 
> I dumped Comcast (TV) because they were complete idiots.

Comcast has me steaming mad right now and I have all my services with them.
I'm completely ready to kick them to the curb.

I'm a MythTV junkie. I have a mythtv server with 3 analog tuners and 1.5TB
of disk, 2 analog Media MVPs on the network running mcmvp, and a host of
desktops and laptops around the house. With Schedules Direct and a bit of
planning, it records everything I want to see.

Comcast worked well because no extra boxes were required. Tie the cable
into the tuners, and off you go. 

I had no worries about the digital transition because Comcast promised that
nothing would change.

Then the crap started rolling downhill. First they started their own
digital transistion. Month after month analog channels in the Expanded
Basic Tier started diasppearing. Annoying but understandable with a 5 to 1
digital to analog ratio for the same bandwidth. Clear QAM digital tuners in
modern TVs (and therefore tuner cards too) can tune these in with a bit of
work.

Then the channel shifting. Instead of keeping channels stable, Comcast
would move them around the spectrum. No good explanation given.

And then the final insult/straw: THEY ENCRYPTED THE ENTIRE EXPANDED TIER!

Now of course they try to explain that this is for the customer's benefit.
But that's a bunch of horsecrap. The only purpose in encrypting is to force
everyone to attach a box to every device that uses the signal. They offer
two absolutely crappy digital to analog freebies. But everything else has
to be rented on a per month basis.

At that point in time I had 7 direct consumers of the analog signal, 4 TVs
and 3 Myth tuners. I had 2 boxes, then it expanded to 4 (for the TVs).

But at this point in time, the MythTV box is virtually (and for the moment
due to a upgrade glitch literally) out of commission.

Dealing with another company's box, be it Comcast, Uverse, or satellite,
creates another potential point of failure in the process of something that
should be simple: digitize the correct video signal and store it to disk.

I don't want to use any of their DVRs. I absolutely cannot stand any of
their DVRs. They charge to expand and want to limit their usage to only
their equipment.

I WANT MY MYTHTV!

So I'm back to ground zero. It's looking like I'm going to move to Dish
Network. Just got off the phone with them. The price isn't too outrageous
and with RF remotes for the second SD tuner (which is find because all our
TVs are SD at the current time), all the boxes can be put in a central
location with the MythTV server and cable run to each of the TVs.

Now if I can just figure out what to do with Internet and Phone.

BAJ


> 
> I went with AT&T Uverse and I have been perfectly happy ever since. 
> I've dealt with both AT&T Uverse and AT&T DSL support, and I can 
> honestly say they are most definitely from different worlds.  The AT&T 
> Uverse techs know their stuff.  The DSL folks must have been trained by 
> Comcast, they're idiots.
> 
> YMMV
> 
> -- 
> Until later, Geoffrey
> 
> "I predict future happiness for America if they can prevent
> the government from wasting the labors of the people under
> the pretense of taking care of them."
> - Thomas Jefferson
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-- 
Byron A. Jeff
Program Coordinator: IT/CS/CNET
College of Information and Mathematical Sciences
Clayton State University
http://cims.clayton.edu/bjeff