Comments on: The other digital-TV transition

As the cable industry ramps up its migration to digital TV, confusion mounts with some cable customers seeing basic cable channels disappear from their analog packages.

If your cable company moved all of those channels without giving you 30 days notice, you can file a complaint with whomever in your city is responsible for the city's contract with the cable company. FCC guidelines require that the cable company give you 30 days notice when they move channels. See http://publicservice.vermont.gov/cable/fcc_cablecustomerservicerules.pdf, §76.1603, page 5, item (b) for details.

[denzii2006]

When the misinformed agent at time warner said "Government Mandated" you know that Congress is part of the Government right?

When did you think that your "TV" would pick up Digital TV? When it clearly states that "any" TV will require a converter box to recieve the channels that your cable provider would provide you and you would no longer recieve any analog signal that your TV could pick up.

So you're complaining about something that has been drilled into your head for the past year and you act surprised. Hummm... Interesting.

[Shaun822]

Channels disappearing from one tier to the next is not the government. Hmmmm .... interesting.

[someguynamedbob]

why are the converting to digital in the first place anyway?

[Dragon_Myr]

Call up your cable company and ask them why a channel disappeared from the lineup. You can even make up the channel name/number if you want. Their response will clearly and beyond a reasonable doubt show that they are indeed positioned to take advantage of people. It's their goal and part of their phone and office representative training. Some close family that lives in a nearby town started watching channels drop like flies from their Comcast lineup. They called in and immediately the first representative attempted to sell them the digital cable box and blamed everything on digital transition. Then they called me, the family tech guy, and I told them it was all a ruse to get them to pay more for digital. They called the cable company 3 or 4 more times and then had the nerve to tell me I'm wrong because not all those representatives could have lied to them, or so they thought. They got tricked into locking in a 2 year commitment to digital cable and were even promised their Tivo would play nice with it. 6 months later and they still hate all the input switching, plethora of remotes, advertising, and lack of an affordable DVR option.

Comcast and other companies will gladly come on sites like this with their PR people and proclaim how they're not taking advantage of anyone and that this is all just coincidental timing. They'll say how they're improving service and opening bandwidth and all that usual sugarcoating BS to clear themselves. That is in NO way representative of how things are for the rest of us. Maybe you people at CNet get preferential treatment and definitely people at the FCC, but we average Joe TV viewers are getting screwed big time.

Currently Comcast sends about 6 OTA HD local channels to my home. There's about 40 regular analog cable channels (was around 50 at the beginning of the year). Then there's an absolute jumbled mess of digital music crap coming through. There's easily over 150 channels of that stuff coming through. Instead of getting rid of the music crap they just keep taking away TV channels. I bought cable and a TV to watch TV, not listen to all these absurd music channels that aren't even supposed to be broadcast on our plan.

With Hulu and other online services, the necessity for cable is dramatically decreasing. This whole digital cable transition thing absolutely pisses everyone in my immediate family off, particularly me. It's infuriating to watch a channel one night and then find out it's been removed the next day without notice so that it could be put on a more expensive digital lineup. I don't know what digital plans are out there for CNet employees, but it's definitely not a simple $7 or $12 increase here (on top of increases in October of this year). It's more like $20 to $30 over basic cable, plus all the extra boxes.

The FCC needs to do something about this. Complaints thus far have gone unanswered. It's clear nefarious things are going on here.

My CNET Comcast Rant

Personally I am so glad to have found this forum to see that others have been PAYING for the same hellacious service and billing. I thank all for posting problems and options here.

Quoting from this post:
"Currently Comcast sends about 6 OTA HD local channels to my home. There's about 40 regular analog cable channels (was around 50 at the beginning of the year). Then there's an absolute jumbled mess of digital music crap coming through. There's easily over 150 channels of that stuff coming through. Instead of getting rid of the music crap they just keep taking away TV channels. I bought cable and a TV to watch TV, not listen to all these absurd music channels that aren't even supposed to be broadcast on our plan."

Amen to this! We were forced to endure the transition from Time Warner last February to Comcast for Cable and Internet in the Houston TX market. If anyone here thinks that Time Warner is bad, without exaggeration - from our personal experience, Comcast is 1000% worse and never has any answers other than "I'm sorry" over the phone from the service managers.

We have subscribed to the HD Channels since they have been available and have witnessed Channels being Dropped instead of added. INHD was the 1st to go and was replaced with MOJO. MOJO Removed 12/1/08 which we will miss Zane Lamprey's Three Sheets program, et al.

Our latest Comcast bill listed under the heading "Demand more at Comcast"
Channel Changes: 12/1/08 MOJO will no longer be available.
12/31/08 - channel 298 will be Versus and channel 294 will be Golf
12/31/08 HDTV Pack and HDNet Movies will no longer be available. HDNET will move service levels from HDTV Pack to Digital Classic.

HDNET was another channel we used and DVR'd a lot that seems to be ending soon in the near future under the guise of the digital conversion confusion.

I share with all here: READ YOUR BILL IN DETAIL!!! In the last 6 months their have been additional charges and the overall creep increasing our basic monthly costs for the same service. My best example is the past bill in which I had to eat up more personal time with a billing rep and low and behold ANOTHER $49.24 and $7.00 "One-time charge" was credited back for a total of $56.24 FOR ONE MONTH"S BILLING ERRORS!!!!

I don't feel like I won anything though, as it cost me more than $100 of my personal billable hour cost that I could have devoted to business and not correcting Comcast's billing errors!

We will be ?Voting with our feet? and finding another provider for HD programming. We have retained COMCAST mainly for the 5.1 DIGITAL SURROUND Sound programming in movies, concerts, Miami CSI, etc. the Sports Package and High Speed Internet.. This is no longer a valid incentive for us to stay as more and more Drop-outs, Black outs, and frame freezes are occurring on a daily basis. We use HD viewing for entertainment and to relax?but more and more find that the COMCAST programming is causing us STRESS instead of the relaxation one finds with a good movie, good programming or a good book. The upside, we?re reading more books!

And we too have noted the sudden bandwidth restrictions with Comcast that point to their further strategy to limit options within their network. We have 2 HD TV?s, one set box (required for their HD programming) a DVR, and 4 Analog TV?s that I personally connected to cable I installed years ago. Comcast continues to run the advertisements (again during my composing this message) that ?as Comcast customers we don?t have anything to worry about with the HD switch? . Yeah, right! The part they leave out is the 4 analog TV?s that current work and receive the basic cable (that we are paying for!) will EACH require a set top box that will be billed each $6.95-$9.95 a month for another potential $40.00 Not for us!

And we will win and the cable companies will continue NOT to hear their customers? complaints and witness their industry?s death, slow but sure as they watch us go elsewhere. Daily we receive and are bombarded with offers from AT&T U-Verse, Dish and Direct Network, etc. etc.

[alexplore11]

I live in Massachusetts and had this same problem with Comcast. We received our vouchers from the government, went out and got couple digital converters. We now receive even more channels over the air. So, I'd recommend this to anyone in my area who is frustrated by Comcast removing some of our channels.

However, what makes me angry is that on the channels that have been removed, Comcast shows a statement saying that this removal from basic cable is because of the move to DTV; which is not true! Oh, well.

[Shaun822]

Yup same thing has been happening in my town in MA for a couple months now. Channels will disappear and Comcast will tell you its the DTV transition and then when you call them out on it they tell you to "call the government." Well the largely inept troglodyte I spoke to told me to "call the government" anyway.

[Retro_Junkie]

I recently began looking into the free over the air digital broadcasting in my area. I was surprised at what I found. I quickly got a hold of an antenna and cut my ties with my local cable provider. I have around 30 digital channels in my area that are free over the air. Unless you are into the mega sports channels, news channels, or movie channels, you will not miss the cable provider and will welcome the extra money in your pockets. With the money that I have saved so far, I can pick up that movie on DVD that I want to watch. I am very satisfied and have not looked back with any desire or regrets. The quality of the broadcasts are substantially better than anything that I received through my local cable company.

[faison23]

Let's not forget to throw in some hate for Cablevision....In the last 3 years out of 84 basic cable channels, 23 have been removed to the "digital" area while the price for basic has gone up $6. And being the equal opportunity screwers that they are, they're not just forcing the basic subscibers into getting the digital box. Even if you HAVE the digital service, when they come to set up your equipment the VCR runs off basic. So now the digital customers can no longer record the removed basic channels, forcing them to upgrade to their DVR box for another $10-15/ month. When is enough enough?

[One-Eared Gundark]

When Comcast dropped The Discovery Channel from their basic analog service, it was the last straw. For two years, they had been dropping channels from my plan and increasing my monthly bills. The only reason I stayed with them was because DSL was not available in my area (poor telephone lines), and basic cable with internet was only $1 more than internet by itself.

Then, finally, DSL service was available in my neighborhood. I dropped Comcast like a hot potato.

For the same amount of money I was shipping to Comcast, I got Dish Top 200 and 1.5 DSL. Sure, the internet service is much slower, but I have a TON more channels AND a sweet DVR.

I agree with Rusty (ferricoxide) in his comment above. Digital transmission is cheaper for the cable companies, so why do they jack up the rates? Because they can. Definitely a money grab.

[wrongwy]

Years ago, before the digital cable revolution, Time Warner offered HBO type premium channels for $9.95 a month. They turned on the HBO switch without the need for an additional cable box. Welcome to the "digital tier" which runs about $30 more a month if you want to pay an additional $16.95 a month for HBO. My current Comcast "Standard Cable" service is $53.99 increasing to $57.50 a month in January. What am I getting for the increase? Well, nothing. In fact, I've seen lots of channels migrated off the Standard tier into the Digital tier of service. The only thing going for Cable over satellite service is one line into the house serves every television in the house. I think the country is coming around to the notion that "Regulation is Good," and the cable companies will lose their freedoms like a lot of other companies which engaged in predatory pricing over the past 10 - 15 years. Their business model could go the way of renting movies at the corner store as more programming is streamed into the house on the internet. But, hey, they'll figure that out and get the broadband pricing jacked up ever higher and higher while providing diminishing speeds to my neighborhood.

[rowdyguy124]

I feel everyone's anger with the cable companies. After Comcast jacked up the price on all our services to make us pay an extra $15 a month here in Central PA. I canned everything except for my cable modem until a better alternative comes along. We didn't watch 95% of the crap they had anyway.

With the QAM tuner in my Samsung LCD I pick up 15 channels with about 10 of them in HD which are 100% free. I have our roof antenna and affordable digital converter boxes giving us nearly 40 all digital channels (Many in HD) from all over the region feeding all of our other tv's in the house. Bye bye Comcast.

Once a decent unlimited internet alternative Comcast will loose the $60 a month plus $5 "access" fee for not having cable will be gone as well. But the 250 gig download cap is enough to stream or download some shows to dvd and not get us in trouble "yet"...

[tech_junky48]

There is a third option. If you're paying an extra $7 for one room for less channels, why not get a satellite dish? Dish network will get you 100 channels, plus locals, in 4 rooms, for roughly $25/month. DIRECTV will give you 150 channels, plus locals, in four rooms, for roughly $30/month. They both also have better DVRs than the cable company, and they both deliver all digital signals already (no transition). Unless you have problems with having a dish on your roof due to your local community, you may want to try it.

[stevenj2]

Why bother with an expensive HDTV? Yo do NOT need that tuner if connected to cable box and video components. Pic qualtiy is very good enough on some widescreen LCD computer monitors with video inputs [such as the Gateway I have] that goes to 1080i though I usually use it with PC and video on picture in picture.----- RE TimeWarner cable and RoadRunner- I am dumping them for RCN service I can get for such things as discussed above, plus constant cost increases [seemed to be one this summer I got NO noitce of] , PLUS forcing box to display their NY 1 channel on box power PLUS Roadrunner migrating exist 10 mb max home pages to other servers where FTP seems NOT to work tho they say it should [but they are giving home users second opetion to crreate all new pages in other server with 25mb space tho forcing them to use menu-pretty icon driven template tool to create a page!]. PLUS the way they cut off with Usenet with NO notice [their web site only said it was for 'lack of use' and the company saves the cost of those newsfeeds as they dumped their own news servers years ago..] actually in response to ATTY GEN Cuomo's anti child porn crusade. ENOUGH!

[tjmm1234]

For many years the cable industry has been hated. Their have been regulations placed on these pirates. But, they contine to rape the customer. I had enough with Comcast and switched to Direct Tv. My landlord was not happy about a dish on the roof. However, it was worth the chewing out I got for doing it. I don't have t wait for the cable repairman, my signal is better overall, my choices are better, the service has been first rate, they keep throwing more channels my way for no extra cost, I get non-compressed HD, I have real sat. radio (XM, Sirrus), etc. The only complaint has been with bad weather. But, looking out my window can explain why my service gets fuzzy, unlike cable where on a clear day I get boxes that freeze up, service outages, poor HD signals, and bills that keep going up for no real reason. Cable is dead!! In most areas, there are choices and when cable gets this fact, they may offer and deliver what they say they do. Right now, we all have some kind of choice. I say cut the cable and go for Sat, or, internet or over the air. I can tell you one thing after getting Direct Tv, I will never go back to these monopolistic cable outfits again. Cable is old technology and it's time on earth is limited when you consider fiber, sat., and other types of delivery in the future. This is why these people are doing this. They have to soak you now because, they won't be able to in the future!!

My CNET Comcast Rant

Personally I am so glad to have found this forum to see that others have been PAYING for the same hellacious service and billing. I thank all for posting problems and options here.

Quoting from this post:
"Currently Comcast sends about 6 OTA HD local channels to my home. There's about 40 regular analog cable channels (was around 50 at the beginning of the year). Then there's an absolute jumbled mess of digital music crap coming through. There's easily over 150 channels of that stuff coming through. Instead of getting rid of the music crap they just keep taking away TV channels. I bought cable and a TV to watch TV, not listen to all these absurd music channels that aren't even supposed to be broadcast on our plan."

Amen to this! We were forced to endure the transition from Time Warner last February to Comcast for Cable and Internet in the Houston TX market. If anyone here thinks that Time Warner is bad, without exaggeration - from our personal experience, Comcast is 1000% worse and never has any answers other than "I'm sorry" over the phone from the service managers.

We have subscribed to the HD Channels since they have been available and have witnessed Channels being Dropped instead of added. INHD was the 1st to go and was replaced with MOJO. MOJO Removed 12/1/08 which we will miss Zane Lamprey's Three Sheets program, et al.

Our latest Comcast bill listed under the heading "Demand more at Comcast"
Channel Changes: 12/1/08 MOJO will no longer be available.
12/31/08 - channel 298 will be Versus and channel 294 will be Golf
12/31/08 HDTV Pack and HDNet Movies will no longer be available. HDNET will move service levels from HDTV Pack to Digital Classic.

HDNET was another channel we used and DVR'd a lot that seems to be ending soon in the near future under the guise of the digital conversion confusion.

I share with all here: READ YOUR BILL IN DETAIL!!! In the last 6 months their have been additional charges and the overall creep increasing our basic monthly costs for the same service. My best example is the past bill in which I had to eat up more personal time with a billing rep and low and behold ANOTHER $49.24 and $7.00 "One-time charge" was credited back for a total of $56.24 FOR ONE MONTH"S BILLING ERRORS!!!!

I don't feel like I won anything though, as it cost me more than $100 of my personal billable hour cost that I could have devoted to business and not correcting Comcast's billing errors!

We will be ?Voting with our feet? and finding another provider for HD programming. We have retained COMCAST mainly for the 5.1 DIGITAL SURROUND Sound programming in movies, concerts, Miami CSI, etc. the Sports Package and High Speed Internet.. This is no longer a valid incentive for us to stay as more and more Drop-outs, Black outs, and frame freezes are occurring on a daily basis. We use HD viewing for entertainment and to relax?but more and more find that the COMCAST programming is causing us STRESS instead of the relaxation one finds with a good movie, good programming or a good book. The upside, we?re reading more books!

And we too have noted the sudden bandwidth restrictions with Comcast that point to their further strategy to limit options within their network. We have 2 HD TV?s, one set box (required for their HD programming) a DVR, and 4 Analog TV?s that I personally connected to cable I installed years ago. Comcast continues to run the advertisements (again during my composing this message) that ?as Comcast customers we don?t have anything to worry about with the HD switch? . Yeah, right! The part they leave out is the 4 analog TV?s that current work and receive the basic cable (that we are paying for!) will EACH require a set top box that will be billed each $6.95-$9.95 a month for another potential $40.00 Not for us!

And we will win and the cable companies will continue NOT to hear their customers? complaints and witness their industry?s death, slow but sure as they watch us go elsewhere. Daily we receive and are bombarded with offers from AT&T U-Verse, Dish and Direct Network, etc. etc.

[jbemail]

I found out about this plan a year ago with my provider (Comcast). I wrote my Senator,Congressman, Consumer advocates, anybody who would listen. I even received a call from Comcast corporate confirming the plan.
Do the Math!! ..................................................................................
Family with 3 TV's hooked into cable provider box = $15/month for life
A cable company getting an extra avg $15/mo from its 23 million customers = $345,000,000 month

If you feel bad for possibly taking food away from your cable executive management board's table - check out just three (comcast) exec's compensation packages (courtesy of Forbe's):

Brian L Roberts - CEO/Chairman of the Board/President/Director ( Salary $2,501,000 / Total $26,001,696)
Stephen B Burke Executive VP/COO/President (Salary $2,001,000 / Total $19,053,830)
John R Alchin Executive VP/CFO/Treasurer (Salary $1,026,000 / Total $9,673,096)

[jdraugho]

I am a cable tv plant maintnance tech for a major cable provider. A lot of what he said in the article as far as bandwith is true. Cable providers are constantly trying to figure out ways to stay competitive. HD channels are the new digital. (HD is to standard digital as standard digital was to analog).

To stay competitive with Verizon, cable providers have to free up bandwith. To keep it simple. One analog channel takes up 6 MHz of bandwith. One digital quam 6 MHz wide can fit six to eight channels. One HD quam at 6MHz can carry two channels.

Some cable operators depending on there bandwith limits have to began to drop analog channels.

A cable operator who has a 450MHz system carrying a lot of analogs will struggle staying competitive compared to a system that is designed to 870MHz.

Many of these systems have to carry certain analog channels because of local government mandates but Verizon at least in my area does not. My company also services county librarys and all schools.

Paying extra for a box is going to happen regardless of if you go to Verizon or not. Verizon does not have to carry as many analogs if any. How else could you explain having one hundred HD's by year end as well as your standard digitals. Because most of it if not all of there bandwith is comprised of digital. Unless you have a HD tv with a digital tuner, you are paying for a box.

At the end of the day you will still have problems with verizon that you have had with your local cable operator if the install is not done correctly and etc.

I would be lying if I said money had nothing to do with it. Companys try to generate revenue that includes cable, there competitors and the company you work for. Thats just the way it is.

[Garou]

Comcast in the northern IN/Chicago area has been moving its basic channels to the digital tier for a while now, including local over the air channels which you can now only via cable if you get the higher tier.

What I find even more disturbing is that even though the HD digital channels are soon to be the standard if you want to get them through Comcast you have to pay even more beyond the expanded digital package just to get even the free, local, over the air channels in HD.

HD is great for those that have to have the best quality video but for the average person SDTV was just fine. This whole HD thing seems like a government scam to generate more money for the electronics, cable, and satellite companies.