I don't want Comcast cable boxes. Do I need them?

oblioman

yes a good post. And comcast has seemingly lost that loyal customer base.

The problem: Comcast lost 233,000 basic cable subs; analysts had been expecting something closer to a 150,000-sub loss. More worrisome, the company added only 247,000 high-priced digital subscribers, which is less than half of what Wall Street was expecting.
And it wasn’t as if Comcast’s customers were ditching HBO and MTV and programming their own TVs via Web services like Hulu and Boxee, either: The company only added 184,000 high-speed data subscribers; Wall Street was looking for 250,000.
http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/2009...-guy-the-boot/
posted for the 4th qtr of 2008.

looks like a lot of people are reading the fine print,,,and dumping comcast.

Sykotic

That article does fail to provide any speculation by either the company or the expert as to why. Can you honestly say it was due to poor customer service, shoddy contract language or maybe competition. Maybe all the above? I am glad that TWC has replaced Comcast in my market. But with any provider, you cant please everyone all the time.
BTW, I have Direct TV, 91 channels of HD. A 2 year contract. And I pay more for just the video service than 2 lines of business from the local cable provider. But I get what I pay for. If I didnt, I would be switching, not complaining. GL

bicker

And maybe, at least in part, any number of other factors. One of the big criticisms of Verizon, in recent years, is that they are dumping customers (whole states full of customers, sometimes). There is a new realization in business, that not only are not all customers "worth" the same (that's been well-understood for years) but also, now, that some customers are simply not even worth having at all.

One of the big motivators for Comcast to engage in customer dumping was the subscriber cap, but that's now (at least temporarily) been revoked, when the US Court of Appeals declared that satellite providers are indeed effective competition for cable in every municipality in the country. However, I cannot help but wonder how much of their recent subscriber losses could be attributed to some preemptive effort to dump worthless customers, to give the provider more headroom under the subscriber cap.

JB Antennaman

To see where this post went, I had to go back to the first page to try to read and understand what Bicker has posted and try to make some sense of it all.

I believe that Bicker has some sort of Axe to grind with someone or something and that he or she has a bitter life and spends most of his / her time trolling on the internet picking a fight - so they can have someone to talk to.

It makes no sense, that I would sell you a automobile on Monday and then tell you on Tuesday that after you bought the automobile that the tires did not go with the automobile and that you have to rent the tires off me for $10 a month if you wish to use the automobile.

Or that it can got 200 MPH, but once you bought it and drove it for a month, that they recalled the offer and put a governor on the engine and cut back the power so it would only go 65 miles a hour.

That my friend is deceptive business practices and should not be allowed. If I sell you a cow, you are going to get the meat, the head, the hide and the hoofs and tail.

I am not going to sell you a cow today and tell you that I still own the rights to the milk and if you want to drink the milk that you have to pay me $2 a day.

This all reminds me of a old television program called Green Acres and a actor named Mr Haney. - Pat Buttram.

As I remember it, first he sold the Douglas family his ancient, dilapidated farm - for several times what it was worth - which was nothing. Then he came around on frequent visits with his peddler truck and kept tying to sell them more worthless goods and services they didn't need or want at inflated prices, despite his past shady dealings with them.

Sometimes taking a worthless item and giving it a new name and suggesting that it had some use around the farm and that it was in some way valuable. Maybe you can remember the Hoydt Clagwell tractor - which was actually a Fordson. The oil well that produced water. The telephone system that did not work and where you had to climb up the pole to talk on the phone. The water well system where when one person drilled a deeper well, other people in the valley lost their water.

The truck with the pull down curtain that usually had the item Mr. Douglas needed, Mr. Haney already had on his truck.

The Grabwell washer is the one item of significant interest to me.

I was in the hospital with a collapsed lung. I was in a near fatal automobile accident and I spent several days in intensive care. When they moved me to a private room, someone paid the television bill for me and that was the first time I ever had cable television.

The doctors tried to get me to cough, because the lung refused to inflate and they said that if it didn't happen by the next day, they were going to have to operate. I was watching Green Acres and Mr. Haney came over and delivered a bathtub with a wringer washer attached to it and a outboard boat engine. He said it was a statue. Zsa Zsa Gabor said the pig must have signed for it and that she bought him a ball point pen for Christmas.

Mr. Douglas refused delivery and went to the general store for some satisfaction and found out that Mr. Haney had sold this item all over the county as different things. One guy had it as a sports car, another a washing machine etc. I laughed so hard, I almost cried.

The laughing caused my lung to re inflate and 3 days later they released me from the hospital. TRUE STORY

Being able to laugh about a situation when it is on television is one thing, but another thing when it is the television cable company that is doing it to you!

The Satellite Dish is the West Virginia state flower!

__________________
Where is the Kaboom? There is supposed to be a earth shattering Kaboom!

bicker

Incorrect. Rather, I believe strongly in people addressing the life they're living in recognition of reality and without self-centered myopia. Reflexively, I believe that some people myopically believe that they deserve to have the world delivered to them on a silver platter -- that everything they want is therefore an obligation on anyone else they choose to impose that obligation on. It's called Entitlement Mentality. It is why people cut you off on the highway. It is why some people neglect to declare income that is required to be taxed. It is why people lie to get some advantage that they're not entitled to. It is the natural evolution of the infamous "Me Generation". You can try to justify bad behavior as much as you wish, but that doesn't obviate the destructive impact that behavior has on society.

zip2play

I agree completely except for the fact that the 1% approval rating might be a tad inflated.

Imagine, worse customer satisfaction than even the IRS!
I for one find Comcast to be the worst company I have ever dealt with in my entire relatively long life. If it were ONLY incompetence I could be a bit forgiving becasue people can be stupid, but it seems more like planned fraud.

To the initial question: YES, you MUST rent the box to get what you are paying for...Comcast sees to it.

bicker

I'm posting a few updates on the facts relevant to this thread...

Comcast has begun using the privacy mode in some of its systems in the Northwest. Privacy mode is a weak form of encryption, the use of which the FCC approved a month or so ago, to help secure the second tier of service, often referred to as "standard cable" "expanded basic cable" or sometimes "basic cable" (in areas where the first tier of service is called "limited basic cable"). We can expect that all cable companies using DTAs from any of the companies that received waivers from the FCC (Motorola, Cisco, Thompson, Pace) will follow-suit, and eventually all cable networks will be encrypted on cable systems, just like they are on satellite services and most fiber optic subscription television services.

It is therefore even more critical that if you're buying a host device of your own (a television, DVR or stand-alone QAM tuner) that you ensure it is a CableCARD-compatible device. It is important to remember that this is exactly what the FCC provided for: That cable companies provide a means for subscribers to have their own host equipment by means of a separable security device. If you purchase your own host device to receive cable television service, and it does not have a CableCARD slot, you've deliberately chosen an economy solution, that may eventually not work for you. If you want to be sure you're not buying a paperweight, then only buy devices with QAM tuners if they have a CableCARD slot.

Currently, there are only a few host devices that are CableCARD compatible, a reflection of how many customers insist on the economy solution instead of the full solution. Hopefully that will change over time. Until then, if you care about having your own host device (instead of having to rent one from your service provider), then let manufacturers know that, by buying host devices that do support CableCARD.

oblioman

and some more information on those "critical" cablecards - http://www.broadbandreports.com/show...leCARDs-104768

"But if there's a primary culprit for a lack of CableCARD adoption, it's the cable industry itself."

bicker

Thanks for that link to that anti-cable industry editorial. It isn't surprising, though, that an anti-cable commentator would say bad things about the industry.

oblioman

http://www.multichannel.com/blog/BIT...Taken_Off_.php

just another take on it. also understand that if you be running linux,,,forget about using a cable card for HTPC. MS will be looking to sew that up with Win7.

bicker

Yet another anti-cable industry columnist. Look at all the anti-cable articles this guy writes:

http://www.multichannel.com/blog/pro...d_Spangler.php

oblioman

And a wiki -

[edit] Adoption
There has been much resistance from the cable companies to cableCARD rollout across the United States with the cable companies preferring to support their own set-top boxes. This has changed somewhat with the July 2007 FCC integration ban, which required all new set-top boxes to use CableCARDs as their decryption mechanism. Prior to this adoption had proceeded slowly with 141,000 units by February 2006</ref>. By June 2009, there were over 14,000,000 cableCARDs deployed including 437,800 of which went into retail equipment.[7] Currently almost all the retail equipment is not capable of two way communications (tru2way).

There are still many in the cable industry who are advocating that physical CableCARDs be dropped entirely. These cable companies prefer to move away from physical cards, and have proposed that a downloadable security component known as [Downloadable Conditional Access System] (DCAS) be used instead. The FCC has not yet approved it.

CE companies advocate their proposal for more unfettered access to cable company networks, with CableLabs' role reduced to addressing only cable company interests of maintaining network stability and security.

bicker

DCAS would be better for everyone....

....except it would require everyone buying all new televisions, DVRs, and STBs to capitalize on its advantages.

zip2play

Yep,

Everyone who hates Comcast is an "editorialist" or an "anti-cable columnist". But on the other hand everyone who LOVES Comcast is named "bicker!" That's why I said the 1% approval for Comcast is an inflated figure.
In truth everyone who hates Comcast is a FORCED customer and almost all forced customers receiving rotten service at inflated prices hate the monopolist.


Comcast is the worst large company in the United States, and most forced customers realize this and say so frequently. It is not only a monopoly but a rapacious and poorly run monopoly. I'm sure however, being a media company, they have several people on staff who are paid to defend the company no matter how preposterous the defences.

<I guess it's trying to buy up NBC...shades of AOL trading its stock for Time Warner before the last person on the planet realized that AOL was a catastrophe.>

oblioman

As much as me does not like the comcast business model, me does agree with bicker on a few points. it is there business, and how they choose to run it, again, is there business. This is why they are losing customers, or in other words, comcast is dumping whom they don't feel are financially viable enough to fit within their product mold. That be one reason. Another reason for customer loss might be torrid customer service. Another reason might be the incessant price increases without viable return for what the consumer purchases. Another reason might be that just maybe Dish and Direct actually do offer more for less $$. Another reason might be that OTA is simply of better HD quality than comcast .

With this being said, me does like their HS internet. fast and reliable. Me does not like the fact that in order to get HS internet, we also have to purchase basic cable. And as you know, is absolutely worthless. If me had a choice on high speed provider, it is certain that we would explore other options - only because of the basic cable requirement, not due to the service.