Posted on 06/15/2008 9:37:32 PM PDT by raccoonradio
I have one of those cable boxes for my Comcast cable TV (had to get it to be able to record on my DVD recorder). Now that they're moving to all-digital, they want people to get these boxes ($4/month) and are moving some channels to higher tiers which will require cable boxes (not sure if there will be a higher price for these channels). Channels ranging from MSNBC to TruTV (formerly Court TV) to Boston Catholic Television are affected.
Anyway, now I'm getting periodic interruptions in service. Screen goes black, sound goes out--it still tells you what channel you're on and the program description, but: "the program will resume shortly". This happens on ALL channels. Nice. So if you're watching NBA playoffs, and it's the last second--boom! Cable outage. Trying to find out who won the Tony Award? Boom! Black screen, no sound.
It's Comcast-ic!
And speaking of moving channels to higher tiers, someone on a radio/TV "mailing list" I'm on is complaining because one of the channels affected is...MSNBC. And he loves to watch the "hilarious" (acc. to him) Keith Olbermann. Ha! (Then again, maybe they'll do the same thing to Fox News...)
The wonderful world of digital cable TV (and digital broadcasting in general; some will need converters to get broadcast signals after Feb if they have an analog TV but not cable or satellite)
We went with direct tv, we will never go back to cable.
Comcast in our experience is the worst.
This might be an opportunity to read more.
Yes, there was no interruption of ABC for the NBA... etc!
Wait till after Feb and cable goes out; well, I’ll just hook up rabbit ears...no wait...they won’t do any good without
a converter... etc
Yeah don’t be like those turtles who have DSL. Get Comcast and get more cable outages for your money!
CCRADIO is your friend...
And, all the little hand crank emergency TV's everyone gave me after Katrina won't work anymore.
now that I think of it, if my cable went out I could still get Fox News (audio) on my car’s XM radio...
We always had problems like that with digital cable where the signal drops out, so we went with just all the analogue channels. I wonder when Comcast will put the whammy on us to get a digital box. If cable keeps going up, we might just go over the air, the new HDTV convertor boxes do a good job, I run three TV’s that way, a 1982 Zenith 25 inch color console, a 1964 Sony B&W portable and a Commodore 1702 computer monitor. The Zenith is hooked to cable, but we like Retro TV Network which we get over the air. Looks like we might have to feed the “cable pig” more.
We are trying Comcast instead of Verizon. So far, four different workmen with four different opinions on how to hook up the cable to the phone to the internet. The last one actual replaced a bad splitter and we now have some phone service as opposed to no service.
No phone for much of two weeks. Work left undone and tools left in our house.
Cable TV is okay unless there is a several electrical storm.
No internet yet. Need a wireless card or router or bodyguard. My sons internet was out for days eventhough he had a router/wireless unit, K9 dog, and prayer book.
Comcast wants to rent us a wireless card. Will cost less to buy one at a store.
I love Direct TV but can’t afford it right now. Thought that a Comcast bundle would save us a bundle. We’ll see, but I’m sending a printout of this article/posts to them.
Then wait to see if they bill us for things we never received like phone service, TV service and internet.
You will hear me screaming without a megaphone.
MadMax - I’m not gonna take it any longer.
We have their laughingly-misnamed “high-speed internet,” and it drops offline every 30 minutes to an hour.
Yes, “they’re working on it...”
While it is marginally better than AT&T’s DSL ( yep, we had that, prior... ) I have really, really considered going back to dial-up, which, for all its shortcomings, at least as long as you can get a dialtone, you can get online.
A few months ago, my local internet cable provider, Insight Communicatios, sold out to Comcast. The first thing Comcast did was raise the price. Every sunday, I have an interruption of service, internet and TV. Yesterday it started about 6:30 PM and was still off at 2:00 AM this morning.
I’m looking for an alternative but I have had DSL and it was terrible, besides I haven’t had a phone line in years. Is satellite TV and internet expensive?
This happened to me too. The problem is that digital tv needs a strong signal. If the signal is week you will see nothing at all and it will say just what yours does (that the program will return shortly). You need to call for service. They can put a signal booster on your line. That fixed it for me.
thanks for the advice. My TV is the analog type and I started getting the “box” a couple months back when I found I needed
it for my DVD recorder. The thing is, of course, it’s not just a few channels that go out. It’s all of them. You see the
display telling you what channel you have on and what
program, but just a blank screen and no sound.
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