Still some good stuff out there on the tube if you make the time hunt it down. "The Wire" was exceptional. I just finished seasons one & two of "Dexter" on Netflix. Another excellent show. "True Blood" from genius Alan Ball.
I wanna do real bad things to - you-oo-hoo.
And now some sad tales of how Comcast git's her done:
This be a long & boring tale, so set your surfing sails now while you still have a chance.
Friday last the cable went out. Saturday I call Comcast and a tech is able to come out same day, on a Saturday no less. OK - let's give them an A+ on that score.
The cable runs from the street to the house 300' underground in a PVC conduit, as pulled by Comcast in the year 2000. The tech finds Saturday that the core wire has pulled itself back inside the cable at the house end. He puts a new end on, and still no signal. "Should we check the pole end? I can dig it out of the snow," says I. The tech replies "It wouldn't do any good, I'll have to turn it over to the line & construction crew." Okey dokey then. It's beyond my Radio Shack sh*tty crimpin pliers ways & means then.
A week goes by, and we're getting along well with streaming Netflix and my mother in law's DVD collection. Friday comes along again, so I figure I'll call Comcast and get a status report. The script reader tells me the original Saturday service never happened, and was canceled at the door. (First - huh?) I explain what happened, and the script reader tells me such a repair cannot even be sent out for scheduling in under 7 business days, (#2 - huh?) and that once they finally do get here, they may not be able to do a repair if there is frost in the ground. (Another - huh?) In other words, there's no telling if it will be another week or month or two before I get cable restored. Thankfully she at least had the sense not to try and upsell a non-working account.
This means I have two choices if I want to watch real time TV - satellite, or satellite. Friday morning I order one or the other of the two satellite provider's packages, (Dish I think?) and the install happens Monday tomorrow. Seems like a decent deal and package for the money, and HD is not held hostage like Comcast does. We have 4 TVs, but the three TV mark holds the price back, and so the 4th TV we'll do without. It's in my workshop anyway, and I have internet radio & PC CDs & MP3s there with some vintage AR 3 perfect condition suspensions are still good paid $2 for em at a tag sale speakers. Sound is far better than my upstairs speakers, but so it goes.
Friday afternoon my wife calls me at work. The Comcast tech decides to stop without an appointment and give it another shot. (Third - huh?) He discovers the connection at the pole IS damaged, apparently during our 4 plus feet of accumulated snow removal. (Didn't we go out to the pole a few paragraphs ago? Maybe not. I'm getting old and my memory...)
Anyway, The Comcast tech fixes the cable service, and urges me to cancel satellite service. Um, yeah. Let me sleep on that. Um, nope. I'm locked down for two years with satellite, and don't feel like playing telephone mind f' with a media provider to cancel and then get a cancellation charge anyway.
We had a Comcast cable box for HBO. Way back when the Comcast installer set our TV to channel three only, and ran all the channels through the Comcast box. Never thought twice about this setup. Turns out our TV, which can get the 3.21 style in between dot channels could have been giving us some buried HD channels all the time. Shame on me for not figuring that out, and shame on Comcast for taking the TV there to begin with. No HD channels come through a Comcast box for free. Now HD in the US is still not quite ready for prime time (IMO) but when it does work right, like for big time sports, it is stellar and well worth it.
