So far I’ve been living with a TV with the sole purpose to watch movies on. I’d like to actually start watching TV on the thing, but I don’t know which service to get. I live in New Jersey, so there are a few options available. Comcast (digital and regular), DirecTV, and a bunch of other companies are out there. Are there any recommended solutions? Do any of these places have notably poor customer service? Anyone ever been screwed by hidden, attached strings? Thanks for the help.
Here in Minnesota, we have Comcast, currently. We originally had, I dunno, Some Cable Co., followed by MediaOne. Both of those sucked, mostly due to wacky outages with no warning, explanation or compensation.
Comcast has been really good so far. Rates are reasonable, and we get broadband service with it. I don’t indulge in the pay channels, so I can’t speak to those. We have the standard cable rather than digital, but until I get that HDTV I can’t see the difference, so I’m skipping it.
I do highly recommend TiVo if you’re planning on watching television – the ability to take control over your viewing habits is simply amazing.
Another vote for embracing Tivo and, in my opinion, the best way to do that is to go DirecTV and get one of the DirecTV/Tivo combo receivers. I have 3 of them now and I can’t imagine life without them. They really have revolutionized the way we watch TV.
Jammer
TiVo is very handy and definitely adds to the value of whatever TV service you have. Especially since the “home media” features that used to be $99 extra are now part of the basic TiVo service - you can play music files from your home network, and schedule recordings over the internet.
I’m happy with Comcast’s customer service and their high speed internet service. The rates were great during my promotional period, but now that it’s over, they seem a little steep.
I was fully prepared to hate Comcast when they bought out my local provider, but I must admit their service has been surprisingly good. With basic cable TV + broadband internet, it runs ~$90/month. I’ve had good luck with customer service, I can’t recall spending more than 5 minutes on hold and they have been fair about crediting my account during rare periods of outage. Have not heard great things about the digital cable option. Supposedly picture quality is compromised by the compression method they use to deliver the large number of channels. Digital also requires a separate tuner box for each set on the line (I believe).
I already have DSL, but I noticed on Comcast’s site that it’s only $20 more for internet once you subscribe. All I really want is really basic cable (Comedy Central, A&E, AMC, ESPN, MTV, etc). I don’t really need anything else besides those. Computer already takes most of my time as it is. 
That’s a promotional price, right?
Comcast has two levels of what you might call basic cable, at least in my area. One is just local channels, public access, and a handful of cable networks like Discovery and maybe CSPAN. The other is all the analog channels, including the ones you mentioned (HBO and other premium channels are only for digital cable).
I have all the analog channels and high speed internet, and now that the promotional period is over, it’s like $90 a month, which seems like a lot to me.
I’m in New Jersey. We have DirecTV and TiVo. A good combination. My family watches what we want, when we want it. We are able to seperate the wheat from the chaff. TiVo is set to automatically record great stuff such as the Daily Show, Reno 911, and Arrested Development. We watch it when we want to.
If I could only afford HDTV for football, my life would be complete…
Another Jerseyian checking in. Through Comcast, we have:
[ul]
[li]Cable – about 70 channels (everything but the Pay channels [HBO, etc])[/li][li]HDTV[/li][li]DVR – basically Comcast’s version of TiVo – can’t live without it now.[/li][li]High-speed internet[/li][/ul]
All told, it runs us roughly $90/month.
When we decided to move up from basic cable last year, we did a lot of price comparing. We found that sattelite really wound up to be quite a bit more expensive. The only way they would have beaten out Comcast would have been if we were interested in HBO, Showtime, etc. Once you add those packages, then satellite comes out a bit ahead.
The other thing to look at is your internet service. Comcast High-Speed Internet is almost twice as expensive if you don’t use use Comcast for your TV. That’s a pretty significant difference which has to be factored in, based on if you want to use a cable modem, or if you can get by with DSL or the like.