I Now Hate Comcast

They are moving Sci-Fi from standard lineup to the digital one, which means I will need to nearly double my cable bill if I want to continue to get Sci-fi.

For anyone interested my house watches mainly 3 channels: Sci-fi, Spike and Animal Planet. (Plus the odd show from TLC/Discovery/History).

God bless our capitalist overlords

The only reason I have comcast digital is to get the Science Channel and Discovery Civilization Channel. Both are great. But yeah, Comcast is pricey and their upstream bandwidth for internet service is pretty lame.

If I werent in an apartment I could get the channels I want from DishNetwork for about $10 - $15 cheaper per month, and it would be digital (I like that it tells you what the show is) and I would get pay per view.

Oh yeah, and this change to my service - I now get the Golf Channel, TV Land and Outdoor Life Network, none of which I want in the slightest - is going to cost me more per month too.

haha, yep. We've had Golf Channel for quite a while now here. They sent out a questionaire asking for people to vote on what they most wanted added. It ended up being the golf channel and the gameshow network. I just took it as proof that most people are boring and stupid If it wasn't for the fact I get my internet access through cable I'd switch over to Direct TV.

I get TV through DirecTV and my internet through CableVision. Yeah, CableVision charges an arm and a leg because I don't get TV through them, but, I don't care. I hate their TV service, and I love DirecTV's. My good friend has Dish, and they absolutely hate it. I've used it, and I don't like it either. I wouldn't recommend it. Get DirecTV.

I have *cringe* Adelphia, I hate it, but its my only option really, its a freaking monopoly, you don't get a choice between one cable company or the other its just "If you want cable, you people over here get this service and you people over here get this one, and you're going to like it or die!".

I've been considering getting some dish service but always worry about stuff like weather interfearing or a bird flying into it or some sort.

I had DirectTV - they pulled the same stunt Comcast is doing now and moved SciFi to a higher line up, and raised fees at the same time, that would cost an aditional $15 a month to get. I switched immediatly to Dishnetwork and liked it better than DirectTV. The base package for Dishnetwork includes a lot more than the base one for DirectTV. I suppose if you want a higher package the situation may be different - however for the budget package Dishnetwork beats DirectTV hands down. And I don't watch enough TV to justify a higher package at all (my total TV hours per week is probably around 3 - 5). Given an actual choice I would sign up for Dishnetwork in a heartbeat.

However! I now live in an apartment with a very small patio/deck. I am not allowed to attach to the building so dishnetwork or directTV would mean a cement bucket with a pole in it - which aside from taking up a considerable part of my very small deck, and being very ugly, is absolutly horrid for getting any decent signal on satalite.

So that leaves cable. And cable means comcast.

Oz,

If you have the dish properly attached to the house and don't experience any tornados or hurricanes then the signal on the dish is fine. In fact the signal I got on my last dish, even when it was raining, is better than the signal I get on my cable sometimes. The biggest detractor I hear is rain or snow actually collecting on the dish. If it snows a lot there then I hear putting the dish under an overhand will aleviate all problems - its not the snow comming down that does it, its that when anything collects on the dish it changes the 'shape' and thus effects the signal.

Most of the concerns about dish are FUD (fear uncertainty and doubt) spread by the cable companies. Sorta like DSL does to cable (re: speed and your neighbors taking your bandwith).

Get Dish Network, its Cheaper and better

Oops just saw this post... I live in a 3 bedroon condo and on the 2nd floor... I have dishnetwork.. talk to your landlord, most people dont mind

Trust me sensual if I could, I would.

There are specific rules. I can have a dish as long as:
1) I don't attach anything directly to the building.
2) I don't drill any holes in the wall.

So yes you read that right, I would have to put the dish on a pole in a cement filled bucket on my very small back porch AND I would have to run the coax through the back door. Yes I already asked (when we first moved in) about some other way to do it. No they won't allow it. Bastards. And yes there are people in the apartment complex that do have dish network or direct tv following these rules.

I think it is more NBC's (they own SciFi Channel) merger with Universal that is to blame than anything Comcast is doing, but if enough people start bitching, they could just change their minds.

Wow, this from an in game capitalist, the irony is clear even to this ignorant soul.....

I guess hating a 3Meg duplex conection is a bad thing, I love mine. Comcast may charge a bit more, but they DO have a better mousetrap at this time...

Ah, see, I have the highest package on DirecTV, plus High Definition service. I also get some discounts, since I've been a member for the last eight years. It's expensive, of course, I have all the options, but, I enjoy my Tivos and high defintiion and 900 channels.

(For all I know, Dish has all that now...)

Um do I know you? A few points:

- I havn't been an 'in game capitalist' (at least not an active one) since about 5 months before your account was created (ie Dec 2003 when I gave EVERYTHING away)

- My Arcade/Casinos were entirely about competition, the premise was always that my Arcades/Casinos were a place where anyone who wanted to make a gambling or other small game could put them out.

- I can't get comcast high speed internet. Yes you read that right. Which must mean, that is not what I'm complaining about. I actually do like their high speed internet service, and before I moved it is what I used. In fact a few of my posts on this forum have been spent dispelling phone company FUD about cable internet connections. However their high speed internet is not available in this area. So I am locked in a DSL contract paying about the same for half the speed (1.5mbit instead of 3). And yes, I DO notice the difference in speed - there are 4 computers in my computer room (desktop and laptop each for my wife and I) and we simply can not do as much multi-tasking as we used to.

- My complaint is that they are moving the channel I want to a higher package, basically replacing it with a worthless channel, at the same time they are increasing the rates by $3. And labeling it as an improvment in service. All the 'competition' is unavailable to me, satalite simply will not work in my situation which sucks. If I could switch I would.

- This is the Rants n Raves forum.

- I am still a capitalist in and out of game. That does not create an irony in me ranting about service changes by my cable company. In fact the two are unrelated. And any included side rant about a lack of competition (if it can be read that way) fits my capitalist nature entirely.

- Whats with the deleted PM?

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Heh James, I don't see paying $100 a month for a service I use so minimally. That is the difference though - the services people want from their Cable/Sat providers can differ greatly and depending on what is wanted, different providers are better.

Ah well, I think I'm done whinning.

Ama, I lived in a place with similar rules on sat dishes. We did the pole in a concrete bucket trick (not exactly pretty, but it works). As far as the hole in the walls, you might want to check how your cable connection comes into the place. We sent the wire through the same hole that cable came in. Or the phone line, my place was pretty old (previously military housing) and it was amazing how many pre-drilled holes were around.

I toyed with the idea of hooking up the dish cable to the cable input to the house itself, thinking I could hijack the cable wiring and get the sat stream throughout the house (still would need multiple decoders) but I heard somewhere this doesn't work, but I never tested it.