i just bought an awesome LCD TV. Sony Bravia, 46" LCD… beautiful.
I get the DirecTV guy out there to install my dish and he says “no way you can get HD signals with those trees where they are.” It’s a shame really since I’ve been a customer of theirs for 11 years and have really liked the service. He told me I can try Dish Network but he thinks the trees would be a problem there too.
So I check out my last option. Comcast.
For less channels than I have today, I would have the pleasure of paying $30 more a month after my introductory rate runs out. Even the introductory rate is $10 more than I pay now. With adding the HD channels and reciever I’m pushing up to almost $100 a month.
I am pretty close to saying “Screw HDTV” and just sticking with what I have.
Over the Air won;t work because of my hills and trees, unless I get one of those big old school powered antennae installed.
It strikes me as strange that you can get regular dish service *in spite * of your treeline and yet can’t get HD service from the same provider *because of * your trees.
I had the same issue when I moved here: I initially wanted a dish provider, but the trees in my backyard (south-facing) are far too tall.
I also now have Comcast, and with the exception of the occaisonal inexplicable outage of all my services at once (cable/phone/internet) and crappy customer service (in the sense that it seems well nigh impossible to ever actually talk to a person, and a couple times I was on hold for over twenty minutes and the machine at the other end politely informed me “we are unable to place you with a representative. Goodbye” and hung up on me!), it’s been pretty good.
I am not sure why your bill is so high but right now I have unlimited long distance phone, DVR Cable with all the HD channels, a couple premium services (HBO, Starz), pretty damn fast internet and I pay $165 a month for all those combined. And I have an extra digital box on another TV. Seems reasonable to me.
Beware their customer service when you try to call them with a problem,though (oddly, when you punch a number for an extension when you are setting up installation or upgrading your service, they answer right away!).
The HD satelites are at a different position in the sky which is much lower to the horizon based on where my house is. So while I can hit the SD sats just fine, the HD would be under the tree line. That’s how he explained it anyway. Since he got paid by the job and not the call I don’t assume he was in any hurry to drive out to my place on a Sunday just to do nothing.
Well I haven’t signed on yet, but I was basing the numbers on the info on their website. The package closest to what I want lists itself as $89.95 after the introductory period (I still need to call to see if I can get a package without the movie channels to see if that changes things much). Tack on 6.95 for the HD and 13.95 for the HD DVR and it adds up quick.
To contrast were I able to get HD added to my current DirecTV package I’d be paying about $72.
Ask them about their “triple play” option, if they’re still offering it. You are on the hook for two years but they can’t increase your prices during that time either. That way you bundle all your services through them like I have and it’s relatively reasonable. I don’t think you get quite as many channels as satellite (I suppose it depends on your package tier) but man, I’ve got way more than I can ever watch. 200 channels or so is more than I can really ever use, and that’s not counting all those PPV and music channels you get that I also never use!
How good is the Comcast phone service? We’ve just moved into a new house and I got the double play, internet and TV deal but still went for a traditional wire phone which is intermittently noisy. We’re hassling the phone company about it but I’m beginning to regret that I didn’t go for the triple play with the Comcast phone.
How much is it affected if you happen to be downloading something just when the phone rings? Can anyone report how well it compares with Skype?
Oh man, it’s WAY worth it though. I have Comtrash and although they suck ass, the HD channels on my JVC 47" LCD are just pure bliss. Absolute beauty, man.
Phone service is excellent, IMHO. The only way I can tell it apart from a regular line is that there’s about a half second pause when I answer a call - enough that I usually have to say “hello” twice and the caller only hears the second one.
I think that the bandwidth dedicated to the phone line is seperate from that which is used by the Internet connection. Even with my upstream and downstream completely saturated at the same time, I never have any issues with the phone and my Internet speeds don’t suffer when I get a call.
I’ve never used Skype, but unless it’s so good that you can’t tell it apart from a regular land line, then Comcast is better.
As far as customer service goes, I long ago learned that dealing with labyrinthian messes of automated prompts is more trouble than it’s worth, so when the automated system picks up, I just start pressing zero over and over and over. Or saying “operator” or “help” or “customer service” repeatedly. Sometimes you have to keep doing that for up to a minute, but it has eventually worked on nearly every customer service line I’ve tried it on.
Comcast will raise your rates a couple bucks every now and then. It is never their fault. After a while you realize you are paying a hell of a lot more than you started. You quit them and use WOW or DISH. If you go back then, you get a good rate again. Then it creeps up slowly again.
I was with them for eleven years. Plenty of time in there for them to raise the rates. By the time I cancelled last month I was paying around $160/mo for TV and Internet, which included HD, DVR (2 channel recording at a time if you were watching one of them), and no movie packages. We’d get service interruptions/Internet connection drops whenever there were high winds but of course that wasn’t their fault and we’d have to pay for the service call. Not to mention the at least weekly Internet drops where I’d have to unplug the modem and reboot the router before the service would work again.
I told them I wanted the service cut off after June 30 but I just logged in to confirm and I still have an active E-mail account. One might chalk this up to them being nice and continuing the service for the rest of the billing month as a convenience, if it weren’t for the confusion over returning their equipment.
When I called to cancel the service, they told me they’d send me a DHL box to send back the cable box and modem. Instead they sent a technician - hey, how convenient. I got a receipt with a serial number on it. Days later, I got the DHL box. Then I got a phone call (‘we want our equipment’), so I called back - oh, it’s after hours. Leave message with receipt number. Then another call that my husband got, so he told them we’d returned the gear. ‘No you haven’t.’ Gives receipt number. ‘Oh.’ We haven’t been called back yet but I’m just waiting for it.
We’re with AT&T’s Uverse service now, and I’m happy (especially for the ~$60 price drop and the 4-channel DVR recording) barring occasional issues with viewing HD channels - instead of the bursts of pixellation of Comcast, we get a black screen for a second or two, sometimes with an “out of range” message on the TV. I guess life wouldn’t be interesting if I weren’t calling tech support.
I had an ISP service outtage from them two weeks ago. My ISP was down for about twelve hours. During that time they called me twice to ask if I wanted them for cable television services as well.
I have to admire their chutzpah if not their high prices and lousy service.
I’ve been hearing from quite a few people what there is a lot of pixelization on their HD non local channels and that their SD channels are abysmal on large TVs. I guess I’m going to stick with non HD DirecTV and look into getting an over the air antenna installed. Although I won’t be abel to use my DVR with that.
As for getting a price locked in for multiple years, I’m really not interested in their internet service or phone service so I’d not get that package deal. It’s funny we have friends that say they are paying $120 a month for cable, internet and phone with unlimited long distance.
I’m paying about 60 for DirecTV with a DVR and more thannels than cable (no HD though), 30 for internet, and 30 on my cell which has unlimited LD nights and weekends (which is when I’d use LD anyway. For this I have a better quality picture and very very few service drops. In fact I don’t ever remember ny DSL or phone going out except for that period of time when 80% of western washington lost power for 1 week. So that works out to about $120, but I also have no contract (I believe to lock in the rate for the comcast package you need to sign a contract).
And right on time, we get this repeat phone call. Same MO, they call while we’re at work, I call back right when I get home (6ish), and get voicemail. I left the same message and the receipt number again, but I’m just a tad disturbed that they can’t apparently keep track of where their gear is. I think I’m going to have to call them from work to repeat this - not that this helped when my husband actually spoke to a person about the issue.
Last week, we got a bill from them. Remember I’d cancelled my service in early June, to end after June 30. Our billing cycle with them starts on the 15th of each month, so I was told it’d be about 4-6 weeks and I’d get a refund check. I get the bill and call in, and while working through the menu I hear something about a scheduled service call for my location on July 22nd. When I finally get to talk to a human, she says that the billing system doesn’t get updated about a cancellation until a tech comes out to formally unplug the house, which is what the service call is about. Then the billing system learns that we cancelled last month, and the whole thing gets updated. :smack:
As to whether this works as intended, I’ll believe it when I see it.
There is one problem with their combined telephone, internet, and cable service. When their service goes out, it goes out for all three at once. Comcast took out service yesterday morning for all three services for routine maintenance without giving us any notice. The problem was, I had a phone interview for a job scheduled for 10:30 yesterday morning, which meant I had no phone and no way to e-mail the company. I was able to get to an alternate location in time to send them an e-mail and ask them to call me on a different number, but I have a very low opinion of Comcast right now.
Comcast/Adelphia gave me good service, but they’re so damn expensive.
I wouldn’t give up on over-the-air if I were you. I’m 40 miles from the nearest city and I get 19 digital channels last time I counted, about 1/3 of those in full high def.
I use an amplified indoor antenna. If I were you I’d spend $40 to try it.
Geostationary satellites, like the TV companies use, have to be at a specific altitude (35,000 km) and right above the equator (otherwise they’d appear to wander around in the sky).
Therefore, the SD & HD satellites should be at the same elevation in the sky varying only in azimuth (the angle left to right).
I tried calling today and got voicemail again. It seems like you can’t talk to a live person via that number, but they haven’t called back to acknowledge my statement that I already returned their equipment.
