Whee! Today AT&T cable (formerly TCI) finally gave us the upgrade they have been promising for two years.
So now instead of the 35 or so channels of crap to choose from, we have something like 70 channels of crap to choose from. (Four home shopping channels?! Sorry, but if I want to sit at home and use my credit card to shop, I will finally decide to shop on-line. Thanks anyway.)
It might be interesting, though, because we finally have Comedy Central, Sci Fi, and the Cartoon Network.
Yeah, yeah, you love them until you find out that the 35 new channels consist of 6 home shopping channels, 4 “Find the Lord” channels, 7 local access channels, 4 HBO’s, 3 Cinemax’s, 3 Starz, 8 pay-per-views, another 3 public television channels, and 2 decent channels.
And no doubt you’ll soon get an “important information” notice in your next bill, printed in a 3 point font, explaining how they’re going to triple your cable bill because of yada yada yada.
I loathe cable. Well, all except A&E, CNN, CNBC, VH1 and CourtTV. (Anyone else catching the George Shinn trial?)
Well all you cable haters will be glad to know that President Clinton recently signed a law allowing satellite providers to transmit local channels to their subscribers. This means that satellite is suddenly a much more viable alternative to cable (and AT&T will have to reshoot all those annoying TCI Digital Cable ads - hee hee hee).
If you live in a major market, you will soon be able to sign up for the service (if it isn’t already available).
I have Fairfax County, VA cable. It’s 120 channels, mostly crap. About 1/4 of them are computerized info screens. There’s several religious, pay-per-view, premium multiplexed (HBO-1, -2, -3), foreign language, and public access channels.
We have to rent special cable boxes (and at least one remote) to select channels. There’s two coaxial cable that go in, and one output cable that sends out on channel 3. So basically my cable-ready VCRs and TVs are useless. If you opt not to rent a remote (because you have a universal remote), they’ll disable your boxes’ IR receivers.
For only 2 TV’s (no premiums), the monthly rate is $45.
That is weird. AT&T bought our local TCI franchise too, but im in California. Well, can’t say they gave us anything worth watching. Who needs two, three, CNN channels, three spanish channels, etc?
Personally, I haven’t had cable since November of 1995.
When I lived in Denver I had several channels to choose from: ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, 2 PBS channels, UPN and WBS. With 8 channels I personally had all the channels I needed.
About the only thing I miss about cable is Discovery, TLC and a couple of the cable news channels.
For me, it’s either my internet (domain and my AOL – free ISP) or cable, I choose my internet!
After the next rate increase we’ll be paying something like $38.95 for no pay channels.
Sounds like it’s time to get a dish. But not so fast. Last time I checked, if we wanted to put multiple tuners on (we have 4 sets on cable), we’d need a special dish. That’s $199.
You only get one box with the setup. Additional tuners are $145. Then $19.95 for the basic service, and $4.95 for the “extra” subscription because of the multiple sets. Throw in another $99 for installation and by my calculation it would take something like 719 months for the dish to pay for itself.
I’ll quit bitching about the cable company for awhile.
We have the shittiest cable currently available in the nation. Two months ago they took off Comedy Central, Animal Planet, and a few other decent channels. They replaced them with another Jesus Channel, QVC and government access. To their credit, they also now offer the History Channel, which airs one of my all-time favorites, “In Search Of.” (Ranks right up there with Arthur C. Clarke!)
I am buying my husband a satellite for Christmas. We got a really good deal through Dishnet - can’t remember the details but I know we ended up getting the satellite itself and the installation kit free, and another box for the TV in our room for under $100. Until we can get the local channels on it, I guess we’ll be watching the news on the kitchen set.
Nothing can be shittier than ATT/TCI in south Seattle. We are the only one’s in the area without the upgrade. It’s so bad that our town successfully sued TCI. Of course, the upgrade will never get here now. I’d go with a dish if we didn’t have all these gol-durned 100ft trees in the way.
Cable sucks; we got tired of poor service and high prices and went to satellite - more channels, half the cost, equipment and installation free (Dish Network is doing a full court press market penetration in our area)
Our area has a lot of Reserveists/active military.
During the Gulf War, the local cable outfit made CNN a “premium” channel (with higher rates, natch). They were exploiting the fears & concerns of the folks at home for their loved ones overseas! WAR PROFITEERING!
Right about then, the cable company started having trouble with vandals trashing the little green cable boxes that stick out of the ground. How suprising!
Save The Endangered Jackalope! Send Cash Now! If You Do This, I Will Use The Cash To Save Any Jackalope That I Happen To Find! Send Cash Now! Before It’s Too Late! My Bills, I Mean The Jackalope’s Bills Are Due The 15th Of The Month! This has been a message from the Illuminated Committee To Save The Jackalope. Fnord.
Our cable company just switched from Century to Adelphia and there are only 2 English speaking channels they added at all (that I could find), but both of them rock! For one thing, we finally got the TVGuide channel so I know what the heck’s going to be on without having to look it up on the internet (I’m too cheap to buy TVGuide). But more importantly, we got ZDTV - Yippee!! Has anyone seen that channel? It’s awesome. I am not a couch potato, but the first time I watched it I was glued to the set for like 4 hours.
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” - Anne Frank
TCI of the East San Fernando Valley rocks! I have 4 ESPN’s, at least 4 Fox Sports Channels, at least 7 Discovery Channels, TV Land, Game Show Network, IFC, Sundance, Cartoon Network, Odessy, History Channel, 2 or 3 Food channels, BBC America, The Golf Channel, MTV-X and VH-1 Classic Rock, which actually play decent videos, Speed Vision (all auto racing), plus an onscreen guide that I can scroll up about a week in advance and has a search feature, not to mention about 30 music only stations. All for about $45 a month.
Substitute the Sci Fi Channel for the Cartoon Network, and…
We canceled our cable tier a few months ago (standard cable) and just kept the basic (local stations/pbs), which brought it down to $10 a month. They called us up about a month later, and offered to give us the full standard cable for only $20 a month, instead of the over $30 we’d paid before, with the first month free. We agreed. Next bill, they charged us for our supposedly free month, the full $30+ charge at that. We called, got the charge taken off, and canceled the tier again. Well, about two weeks after that, I turned on the TV, and found out we were getting regular cable again, and even some channels we’d never gotten before. And then they upgraded all their lines…and we started getting my beloved Sci-fi Channel. I got to see shows I hadn’t seen in years, and had dearly missed. The original Star Trek, Lost in Space, The Twilight Zone, MST3K…and the one I missed the most… Forever Knight. And I stumbled across Brimstone last week, and fell in love. And on Monday…they took it away from me. They “accidentally” gave me free cable just long enough to get me addicted, and then they took it away.
$145 for a second tuner? Whoa. I just looked at DirectTV yesterday on the web. A one tuner dish setup, $74.00 with installion set and $19.95 month basic 40 channels. AT&T is about $30 a month for 26 channels. $129.00 I think for a multiple receiver box.
One question. I like to change the channels on the vcr, if you use a dish can you still do that?
I enjoyed Seinfeld immensely. When its run finally ended, I wondered “What now?” What will I watch now? It turned out the answer was nothing. I haven’t watched TV for how long has it been? A year and a half? I don’t know. Just cold turkey. Haven’t watched any at all. I listen to people at work talk about this or that they’ve seen on TV and I just can’t believe people are actually watching this crap. But now I’m living in a very unique world, I guess, when I’m the only one who doesn’t “get it”. But I do have to endure second-hand TV, like second hand smoke. In bars, restaurants, sheesh, you can’t escape it. Yeah I’m braggin. I sure don’t miss it. I look back and see all the time on this earth I’ve wasted watching TV. Cable?, Satellite? That’s like listening to smokers debate Wintston vs. Marlboro. A lot more time for reading, playing with the kids, I’m a nut for any outdoors activity. But now I spend too much time on the net…maybe I’ll quit that next.
