c ya Comcast don't let the door...

[jedi]

HIT you on the way out

!

I have basic cable + internet ($24 cable + $48 Internet) from Comcast and about 1 month ago I got a notice in the mail that effective 12 MAR 2012 any TV I had that did not have the digital box (all 4 of my TVs) or were part of the xfinity tier programing would need a new Comcast adapter and/or box as they were cutting the analog signals.

Meh... I though at the time. Well I got 2 additional reminders and finally on Friday of last week I called to order the adapters (those are free) but found out that only 3 adapters are free. If you want more it's $1 per month for each one. WT

! So I ordered 3.

Well on Monday sure enough when I went to turn on the TV I got a black screen saying "Sorry your Comcast service has been interrupted. Please call Comcast." Yup knew that was coming and on Tuesday the adapters arrived. So I installed them & guess what? It did not work! Waited the 2 hours that Comcast recommend for the boxes to "update/work" and still nothing.

So I call customer service, they walk me thru some stuff none of it works and then they say they will have to send a tech out to look at it. Tech won't come until Monday. x2 & get this if it is found that it's something on their end outside the house there is no charge. If it's something inside my house it's a service charge of $30!!! WH

!!! x3

So I schedule it anyway and last night I get to thinking. Wait! This house has an old fashion "over the air" antenna in the attic & when my grandma passed away a year ago I ended up with her "digital to analog box" since she never had cable. So A little bit of wiring on my part the past hour and I rerouted the Comcast line for just the internet modem and wired the antenna to the rest of the house. Connected my grandma's old box and bingo! Basic over the air channels that I was getting with Comcast minus a few overs like ION, TV Guide, etc..

So guess what.

you Comcast! I'll be calling you tomorrow to cancel my tv cable all together! Sure my internet will increase by $5 due to no bundle but my bill will still be less.

This

reminds me of the "baby bells" when you had to rent equipment from them (phones) and ONLY them! It finally took a class action lawsuit and the .gov to break up the Bells/Baby Bells. Hope a class action gets slapped on Comcast for this

but for now c ya

!

Rant over
-Jedi

 

[churchmouse]

Wow...you have got to feel better for letting that go...........

 

[88GT]

I've not had cable or satellite for 13 years now. I know there are things on pay TV I would enjoy watching if I had it, but not so much that I feel the need to fork over that much money. If they ever off a la carte service, I might reconsider paying for extra channels, but not until them.

I bet you won't even miss it.

 

[SouthernIndy]

+ 1 88GT

 

[indykid]

I too maintain an "over the air" antenna, and have no problem with just the basic local services. I am finding out that a lot of the pay to view channels have their shows available over the internet, and many are same day, some you have to wait a little while, but they are still available through the internet.

And I think about all the money I save that can go to ammo and other misc. hardware!

 

[3point5]

I am an installer for Comcast...

I hafta say, this has been a long time coming. AT&T, Verizon, Dish, Direct, just about every requires a converter on every tv. Sucks to hear that you had that much trouble with your service, you actually get more channels with the DTA's. Its a shame that watching Kokomo crash and burn (we were one of the firsts to convert to all digital) didnt teach them anything though.

 

[hoosierdaddy1976]

hope to be doing the same thing in about a month, only parting with directv. in the process of researching hdtv rabbit ears; our house still has a big antenna, but i have no idea if it would pick up digital signals, and i don't believe there's any coax still attached to it. the only bad thing is i'm on the far southern end of the viewing area for chicago stations, and too far north for indy/lafayette. hoping to get good signals with a quality antenna. i experimented with a cheaper radio shack antenna, but could only barely get a few stations.

 

[4sarge]

jediagh, et all, check out ROKU 2. No monthly charge but need a High speed Internet connection. Lots of Free movies, docs, FOX News and most all local news. I love it and only spend 8 Dollars a month for Net Flix to get my movie fix

 

[spasmo]

I too like our Roku boxes. We have 2 of them here in the house, an old model and the Roku 2. We still have cable though for the time being that we have running through our TiVos.

 

[K_W]

Rabbit ears + Netflix streaming + Redbox = all you need.

 

[! twitty]

Yeah, I looked at my bill last month and then found out they were charging me $8 a month for renting a modem for the past 6 months and IT WAS MY OWN FREAKING MODEM... they are nothing short of crooks.

 

[IndyBeerman]

Might I suggest one of the new Channel Master HDTV DVR's.

It's internet capable and has the ability to digitally record over the air signals.

It is truly a beautiful thing, I plan on getting one here in the near future.

 

[wabash]

Its a shame that watching Kokomo crash and burn (we were one of the firsts to convert to all digital) didnt teach them anything though.

can you tell the Kokomo story, or link?

I did a G search and did not find anything.

 

[jedi]

Wow...you have got to feel better for letting that go...........

Sorry just had to get that out as it "poured" this week in my world. My primary go to work car overheated 2 days ago and I barely made it into the shop yesterday. I'm waiting to hear what that bill is going to be. It was leaking the coolant so ... oh never mind I don't want to know right now...

Plus my mini-van has to go into the shop next week monday for physcial damage to the front end, hood, etc. Someone (not me) in my family had a metal pole ruin into them.

So more out the door. So as you can see when it rain it pours.

I too maintain an "over the air" antenna, and have no problem with just the basic local services. I am finding out that a lot of the pay to view channels have their shows available over the internet, and many are same day, some you have to wait a little while, but they are still available through the internet.

And I think about all the money I save that can go to ammo and other misc. hardware!

Well the "good" thing about this move is that over the past 6 months I have been detoixing the family off TV anyways. We have been watching less TV, turn on the radio instead and/or just watch videos online. With the expection of NCIS there is no other program on TV that we watch regularly. So looking at it now there really was no more need to pay for TV channels that were were not watching. The one thing I will miss is the ION channel since they can Pysch and Criminal Minds re-runs but like everything else we will get over it.

I am an installer for Comcast...

I hafta say, this has been a long time coming. AT&T, Verizon, Dish, Direct, just about every requires a converter on every tv. Sucks to hear that you had that much trouble with your service, you actually get more channels with the DTA's. Its a shame that watching Kokomo crash and burn (we were one of the firsts to convert to all digital) didnt teach them anything though.

Big companies rarely learn from their mistakes and even if they do are far to slow to change due to their sturcture.

our house still has a big antenna, but i have no idea if it would pick up digital signals, and i don't believe there's any coax still attached to it. the only bad thing is i'm on the far southern end of the viewing area for chicago stations, and too far north for indy/lafayette. hoping to get good signals with a quality antenna. i experimented with a cheaper radio shack antenna, but could only barely get a few stations.

I got lucky that the previous owner had indeed wired the house with coax and had it hooked up to the house antenna. At some point he must have switched over to Cable and just took the "amp box" off the system but let it on the wall unplugged and not connected. Took me some wiring tracing to figure out what was what but got it to work all right.

-Jedi

 

[3point5]

can you tell the Kokomo story, or link?

I did a G search and did not find anything.

There wont be a link or anything to share, the migration to the all digital service was an absolute disaster. The company was mailing out equipment to people who hadn't had a tech visit since the 70's.

Cable is an ever evolving industry, what was good in 1970 isn't good today, what was good last year, isnt even good today in some cases.

Our backlog was WEEKS out, and we were working 10-12 hours a day, 6-7 days a week trying to fix everything at once. Plus we were running a couple dozen contractors.

As of now for example, time to repair from when a customer calls in (i dont have 100% accurate numbers) seems to be 1 maybe 2 days. We arent running any contractors, and in many cases, we are running service calls same day, and even the occasional install.

 

[IndyBeerman]

Snip...
Well the "good" thing about this move is that over the past 6 months I have been detoixing the family off TV anyways. We have been watching less TV, turn on the radio instead and/or just watch videos online. With the expection of NCIS there is no other program on TV that we watch regularly. So looking at it now there really was no more need to pay for TV channels that were were not watching. The one thing I will miss is the ION channel since they can Pysch and Criminal Minds re-runs but like everything else we will get over it.

Check out this site:
AntennaWeb - Home

It will list TV stations in and around your area. Very great tool for aligning your antenna correctly.

There's also TV Fool, it's a great site also.

You can use both of these site to try and locate an over the air ION station.
I did a quick search based on using Merriville @ the Interstate and came up with a Chicago ION station 33 miles away.

Any decent UHF antenna will pull that signal in with no problem.

I got lucky that the previous owner had indeed wired the house with coax and had it hooked up to the house antenna. At some point he must have switched over to Cable and just took the "amp box" off the system but let it on the wall unplugged and not connected. Took me some wiring tracing to figure out what was what but got it to work all right.

-Jedi

I recommend replacing that antenna with a newer model that will be better suited for today's digital signals. I'm using a Clearstream 5 antenna that I bought off of Amazon way cheaper than the manufacturer and it's capable of pulling in station 65+ miles away. I like using my over the air to pull up local radar on channel 8 here in Indy that is ran 24/7/365, plus it's always nice to have if you loose cable for a short time.

I plan on putting the squeeze on Brighthouse here real soon to see what they can do for me.

 

[jedi]

Thank IndyBeerman but I think I actually am enjoying the "no TV/fewer TV" path better. Too connected as it is now-a-days.

Oh the shop just called. **SIGH** dead radiator & cracked head gasket.

 

[TaunTaun]

There's a question I'd like answered.

I got a similar thing from Comcast. They say that I need digital boxes so that my TV's can handle the digital signal.

We just went thru the whole digital-to-analog box thing and we never had to do it since my family has newer TV's.

So why would we need new boxes to put on the TV to handle the signal when it's STILL just a digital signal.

At least, that's what I thought when my wife showed me the letter. So, is this saying that Cable won't work for me when they switch over to their new system?

 

[jedi]

There's a question I'd like answered.

I got a similar thing from Comcast. They say that I need digital boxes so that my TV's can handle the digital signal.

We just went thru the whole digital-to-analog box thing and we never had to do it since my family has newer TV's.

So why would we need new boxes to put on the TV to handle the signal when it's STILL just a digital signal.

At least, that's what I thought when my wife showed me the letter. So, is this saying that Cable won't work for me when they switch over to their new system?

Here is the way I understood it.
Comcast has/had 2 type of services. Analog or Digital (ie. HD)

The analog service covered basic channels or basic + expended channels while the digital gave you all the channels of basic + expended + all teh digital channels and premum stuff (hbo, etc)

Now if you have a HD TV you could watch either digital or analog with no "box" between TV and wall connection.

Non HD TVs need a box since Comcast is now just going to send a digital (HD) signal down the line and since you are not paying for HD signal you need a box that will downgrade you.

-Jedi

 

[TaunTaun]

Well, since both of my TV's are HD capable, they can kiss my ***, lol.