Rant of the week: cable TV!!!!
 

What kind of cruel trick is this? We have digitial cable through Time Warner with hundreds of channels. Count 'em....hundreds! So what's the problem you may ask? NOT ONE OF THEM HAS JACK SH*T ON! WTF! Not even HBO! :confused: How the heck does every TV station broadcast a bunch of garbage at the same time? What a waste of money. :(

Putting aside the fact that cable sucks, there was all sorts of good stuff on tonight, from one of the greatest first-half performances of a quarterback ever, to a great mentor vs. student basketball game, to a chance to catch up on <i>Las Vegas</i> episodes, to plenty of great syndicated stuff on the extended channels, and quite a few good movies on the premium channels.

You're right, though. If you have cable, you're wasting your money. ;)

das

i know how you feel. i used to have cable with all the premium and pay per view channels, and yet there was still nothing to watch. now, i save my money and buy whatever i like to watch on DVD ;)

Paging Bandoman to thread 337180...

Like he'd be any help here..oh wai..

I don't get why cable companies don't allow you just to pick and choose the channels you want to subscribe to. I'd be willing to just to pay for the six or seven cable channels I watch outside of the regular broadcast ones.

Because no one would know about most of the channels if they didn't get them packaged with others. I found many great shows when I just surfed past them. I wouldn't have known to order those channels had I not already had them. It's like the people who wander into TV Talk and say, "I never watch TV. There's nothing good on." Well, if you never watch it, genius boy, how do you know there's nothing good? :)

das

Two words... Tivo.

I know what you mean. I'm glad I get all available cable channels + premium channels for free.

HD Discovery is my new cable friend

Indeed, my father gets digital cable for so cheap with his work that he has it. There are a few channels I love, but there is still rarely anything on.

My rant isn't about the lack of programing, but the crappy "quality" of my local channels. You would think the good old analog 1-13 channels wouldn't have pixelation like the "Digital Quality" crap they stuff into the upper 300 channels, but not my cable provider. Somehow they digitally compress my local channels and introduce a bunch of pixelization into the signal. Thank you Adelphia, now all my football games look like I'm watching a streaming .mpg.

If I wasn't so lazy and cheap I could put up an antenna and get most of these channels at much better quality. But unfortunately that isn't the case.

We got digital cable when we moved, because Dish couldn't find a signal. HD looks awesome on our 60" HD WS tv, and some of the non-HD channels, depending on original content [newer movies on say HBO] look pretty good, but a lot of it looks like crap [VH1 Classic for one.] I also notice a *lot* more pixelation, dropouts, and freezeups than I ever did with Dish [we had Top 100 with Dish, and have virtually everything with cable, so that might make a difference; also, I'm using the TW DVR, which I don't like as much as the DishPVR, and that might also have something to do with it.]
What I like about cable is that they gave me an awesome deal, because they 'stole' me away from satellite. I'm getting virtually everything except for the new HD suite [which is only InHD and InHD2], inclucding the 4 premium families, a DVR, an HD box, and the premiums on demand for like 60 bucks. [After 12 months, it goes to regular price, which is something like 120, which we will *not* be paying.]
The only thing that makes tv watchable nowadays is a DVR [Tivo, etc.]
The bad thing is, the EPG isn't searchable like it was on Dish, and there's so many channels, unless I know what I want to watch, it's tough to just 'browse' and find something to watch. Then again, I haven't been watching much tv for the past 2, 3 years, so that might have something to do with it.

I've never paid for cable myself, so I can't complain. In college, one year, the cable was already connected and they never sent us a bill, when I graduated I just used rabbit ears until I picked up the Dish Network in '97 (switched to DirecTV a couple of years ago, cheaper than buying a new remote for the Dish Network).

*laugh* Cheaper to switch than to buy a new remote; now those are some new-customer discounts ; ).
I would like to see a la carte pricing, but in a way, those QVC-type networks, and the Angel networks on Dish, help subsidize the costs for the other more expensive channels. If we went a la carte, in order for it to be profitable, each channel would be much more expensive. Plus, I guess *someone* watches QVC; if we went a la carte, all they'd do is sell the channels that greater than 30 or 40 or 50% of their subscribers would want. Of course, then why does the cable bill go up every six months...
With a DVR and On-Demand, and Netflix, I can always find something to watch--I've currently got about 20 movies on the hard drive to watch, things that Oh, I haven't seen that in a while or Hmm, let's check this out, rather than stuff I *want/need* to see. And I've got two or three going on On-Demand. Again, it's not stuff I'd buy the dvd of, but I'll give it a shot, especially when I can watch 15-30 minutes at a time.

Back when I was in college senior year I stayed in the dorms (because of the LAN, as a CompSci student I did half my work online) without cable, because it was quite a rip off for a single. My last week at school I was bored and I wanted to see what was in this closet across the hall that was locked. I easily jimmied the lock with a credit card and inside were the LAN, phone and cable switches. All I had to do was hook up a coax wire conveniently labeled with my room number to the switchboard and I had cable, but I unhooked it after 5 minutes. Not that I have morals or anything, but I figured with only a couple of days left it would be stupid to risk getting caught stealing cable.

(in regards to nothing being on cable) Congratulations! You've learned what I learned 15 years ago!

It was a RF remote, which costs ~ $50 or $60. And at the time my Dish system was ~ 4 years old, and Dish and DirecTV were supposed to merge, so I figured that if I wanted a new system for free (including a new remote), I needed to make the switch then because if they did merge I would never be able to get a free system since I was an existing Dish customer.

As it turns out, DirecTV has a better English / Spanish mix package for my needs (less Spanish than the Dish package, many more English channels).

There's alot more involved than cable providers simply being able to charge more for multiple tiers of stations (although its pretty convienient for them how it all works out). There is actually a lot of politics involved in it all. State representatives and special interest groups actually lobby the cable companies to have certain channels included (not to mention placement of the channel). My town (just outside of Rochester, NY) is going nose-to-nose with Time Warner over the offering of more Public Access space.

I had a "Dish Buyback" deal from TWC - it was supposed to last for 12 months - they finally changed my pricing over this past month....30 months later.

Well, I was shocked to see my cable/RoadRunner bill jump from $69 to $95 a month. I'm starting to look at DirecTV, specifically this 5 room deal with Tivo for $50 - http://www.expertsatellite.com/catal...roducts_id=137

And then Earthlink Cable Modem for $29.95 - I figured if I come anywhere close to $95-$125 (with HBO and Cinemax) I'll jump to get out of TWC's clutches.

What do you guys think?

fixed :p