NY Times is reporting that Comcast voice service sounds better than anything else, including AT&T landline and Vonage.
The differences between the two kinds of digital voice services were brought out sharply in a study released last month by Keynote Systems, an Internet testing business based in San Mateo, Calif. Placing 75,000 test calls among various phone services, Keynote found that not only were Comcast's audio scores superior to those of Vonage, but that Comcast also scored higher than even AT&T's landline service.
Of course, as Randall Stross, the author of the article notes, the service needs to be up for your phone to work.
A strange thing happened at my house, however. No more than five minutes after I typed "reliability hasn't been a significant issue ..." my cable modem's lights blinked out. No connection. No dial tone. I told my wife about the funny timing.
As it happens, HBO encoded the program with DRM--a dated self-destruct mechanism and when Tivo ran it's nightly update and the clock turned over the program was deleted without any interaction from Tivo.
(Side note: Tivo support is really good and very nice. I can't fault the company or the support team for any of this.)
I was trying to think about this a bit and figure out what HBO had to gain by removing a kids show from my Tivo without telling me and making it difficult for my baby to go to sleep. The answer is really nothing.
HBO, like all DRM obsessed companies find it necessary to "control" the content. It's especially odd in this case as HBO owns the content (meaning they wouldn't be paying royalties) and I would think they would want us locked into their service and their content.
And as far as I can tell the terms that one agrees to with HBO (or any other network) are outside the control of Tivo and Comcast, and there is no clear explanation of what might happen when, or under what circumstances when you sign up for HBO through a cable provider.
Was it wrong for me to rely on the program to be in the Tivo? I don't think so. There was no warning, or meta-data or other information that said the program would be deleted. The whole thing is just rude and an effrontery to the consumer.
Last night I ordered the DVD overnight from Amazon so that the blessed child can go to sleep. I am pretty sure that I am going to cancel my HBO subscription but I'm not sure if I am taking this too personally.
My biggest realization is that I now realize that I need to continue to own physical media as I have no idea what these scumbag companies might try to pull over on consumers.
It's pathetic that as the software world opens up, the media world continues to be an evil dark overlord.
For those of you who have young children you know that you need some kind of bedtime ritual to get the kid to go to sleep.
At our house we watch the Goodnight Moon show that we Tivo'd from HBO. I should have bought the DVD a few months back instead of just now but we figured it would always be in the Tivo!
This 30 minute masterpiece does an amazing job calming the savage beast. But today we got quite a surprise when the Tivo deleted the show on it's own and doesn't show it in "Recently Deleted Items" or offer a way to search for deleted items. So now the damn thing is just gone and we had to wrangle the kid to sleep after reading her a book. (Yes, I know we should probably do that anyway, but the video is magic.)
So, who's to blame? I don't know. I checked the Tivo forums and read that HBO is now expiring programs from people's Tivo boxes, and I don't trust Comcast a whole lot so I am sure there is collusion in there somewhere.
I am incredibly annoyed and honestly feel like my rights as a consumer (especially one who has owned 3 Tivos and pays a whopping cable bill) have been trampled. I am sure there is some explanation but it's infuriating. There is nothing in my contract with Tivo (or Comcast) that says they can delete material on my Tivo that I continue to pay a subscription for.
Having been a *very* happy Tivo owner for about 7 years this is the first time where I have been so pissed that I want to throw the thing out the window. I guess I will go check out MythTv.
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