My (long) Time Warner Cable story

[borghe]

a couple of corrections to summerfun's post about TWC vs directv..

first, if you are a good "current" subscriber with direcTV you can get two DVRs and an HD box for $300 total. Just in hardware costs alone you would make that back in 21 months, and that isn't including your monthly savings in program costs, lack of franchise fees, or the waiver of a DVR fee if you carry the biggest package.

second, yes you need an antenna for the HD box, but it can usually be as simple in the metro area as a Radio Shack Double Bow tie for $20. And you don't need to switch inputs. The OTA channels show up in the Advanced Program Guide right along with the satellite channels. 4-1 is listed right below ML4 with program info and everything.

RR service is nice, but I wouldn't praise it as highly as you are.. over the past year alone it has gone down three times, one time for over a day. the year before that is what I like to call RR hell. The service went down 3 times where the signal died, 2 of those times were for almost 48 hours, and 2 more additional times (for a total of 5) the DHCP server died for almost 12 hours each time, so if your DHCP lease expired during that period you were without service... not to mention RR USED TO allow port 80 (among others) through so you could host your own non-commercial servers, but since then has removed all such stipulations from their website and contracts (despite me having an original contract that says otherwise) so now I have to redirect everyone to port 8080 because as the CSR AND manager said "that's is always the way it has been".

on that note, I would honestly consider switching to DSL if it were uncapped at my CO.. unfortunately I have three email accounts tied to rr right now... hopefully by this fall I will have my own domain name (borgh.org expires in october.. man... I've been waiting 5 years for this.. hopefully he doesn't renew) once I register my domain name (either that or a different one if he does renew) I will work on moving mine and my wife's email over to addresses at our own domain and then I won't be tied to RR and I can shop around at DSL places if I want to...

anyway, the one thing cable does have is hooking up toother TVs with no extra charge, but don't kid yourself... TWC (and every other cable co) is VERY hot to get rid of those analog channels as soon as possible.. what a waste of 1000 digital channels worth of bandwidth (at least in their eyes). and once plug and play does come around for HD sets, hopefully satellite will be included in that.. after all, once you actually modulate that QPSK signal from the directv satellite, as I understand it it's just a cable-like QAM256 signal anyway... it can't be too hard to make a plug and play box compatible with that, as long as you have a modulator sitting between your dish and the tv..

[summerfun]

Originally posted by borghe
a couple of corrections to summerfun's post about TWC vs directv..

I didn't know about the "not changing inputs" issue for the OTA channels, but I stand by my opinion on renting vs buying. Keeping equipment 21 months seems like an eternity in the world of tech. It is all just about preference.

I'm glad we have choices. It wasn't to long ago cable was your only choice and it was terrible. I do thank satellite for making the whole field competitive and ultimately making cable much better.

I don't know if RR being "down three times, one time for over a day" last year is a bad thing. I think I would say we were only "down three times, one time for over a day" all of last year. I guess it's the glass is half full idea. Anyone that has been around this internet business for long can remember when service was "down three times, one time for over a day"  once a week.

[The Law]

Ford or Chevy? :p

[kjnorman]

Originally posted by The Law
Ford or Chevy? :p

Neither!  Audi

[oz]

You are right, choice IS good. I used to hate two big companies equally: Ameritech and Time Warner. Bad customer service, high prices, lots of extra fees.

Then one day, TDS Metrocomm appeared and I immediately switched phone companies. My monthly phone bill dropped by about $20.

I also considered switching to satellite until I bought by HD-ready projection TV. Since I already had the basic cable package (for $12/month), I could add the HD channels for the cost of the box rental. So my total bill is now about $20/month and I think that's just great.  As long as I don't have to deal with their customer service department, I am very happy with TWC and I think the package I have now is a great value.

But if I want to go to a digital package, that bumps my bill up over to over $50/month, and I don't feel that is a good value, since I will still mostly watch the local HD channels.

The satellite packages are also much more complicated. The pricing seems to vary greatly depending on where you buy your equipment or if you are a new customer or not. If I could see a clean and descriptive write-up of satellite service that includes the channel line up, total price, and phone numbers to call, I might reconsider.

[summerfun]

Originally posted by oz
Since I already had the basic cable package (for $12/month), I could add the HD channels for the cost of the box rental. So my total bill is now about $20/month and I think that's just great.  

Your post is intriguing to me. Please tell me how you are getting HD channels and only paying $20 per month including the HD box rental.

I was under the impression that I needed the Digital package first before I would get the HD channels. I never watch the digital channels. I only watch the HD channels on my HT and the analog channels on the other TVs in the house which have not extra cost attached.

[StarvingForHDTV]

Can you buy the premium HD package (INHD 1 & 2) from the $20 level package?  Or do they make you buy all of those other SD channels to get the privelege to buy the "premium" HD channels?

Thanks in advance,

Starving

[borghe]

to get HD locals from TWC you only need the basic package and an HD box... call a CSR and tell them that's all you want.. no digital package, just local HD channels.

summerfun, I misstated... I meant to say that TWC had 3 major outages last year which lasted for a considerable length of time (hours). This is taking into account a few things. First, these outages happened when I was trying to access the net. Who knows how many outages occured when I wasn;t trying to access it (pessimistic I know). To be fair though, I use the net, both for business and personal, more than the average person (maybe even more than the average three people combined). I am saying that three times last year TWC was down for multiple hours.. and ANY time over 3-5 hours is unacceptable... as WAN administrator at my job, if a line is down for over an hour, it better not be mine or my equipment's fault. Now admittedly I had some huge problems with DSL that forced me to switch from DSL to cable (bad enough that the DSL company was required to release me from my annual contract), but I was just saying that in that case, cable was the lesser of two evils, not some great and untarnished service.

as for 21 months being a lifetime in technology.. ummm. for computers, yes. for cell phones, definitely. but to throw that concept around technology in general... how many times have you upgraded your CD player in the past 21 months? How about your microwave? How many times has the average person swapped out fully functioning non-buggy cable or satellite boxes in the past 21 months? I have had my DirecTivo for almost three years. The only reason it is being retired is for the HD unit. My other DirecTivo is going on 2.5 years and it won't be retired until the HD units come down in price dramatically. Before that I had an RCA DirecTV box that was used from 1997 until it was replaced in 2001 with the DirecTivo.. heck, even my HD box is almost two years old, and arguably I jumped on HD late in the game.. to top it off my receiver isn't even obsolete, I just want to pay $900 for a DVR..

there is quite a bit of technology out there that is not upgraded frequently be even hobbyists.. cable and satellite boxes are generally one of those technologies.. ocassionally there is a situation where you have buggy hardware and you just try your damndest to get awy from it (early SA Explorer HD boxes, Dish PVRs, etc).. but as long as you have stable and working hardware, most people will stick with that for 3 years or more.. in that sense, 21 months is nothing.. and note that I said 21 months in just hardware costs alone.. franchise fees can be anywhere from $2-5, and programming costs can add up to another $3-10 on top of that.. you can cut that 21 months to almost a year if you play your cards right...

[btbowen1]

Your right choice is good. I was only letting people here know that there's good alternatives to RR now that is just as fast or even faster then their service at the same price point. If RR works for you great, I'd stick with it but for me, I do a lot of downloading and web hosting so the more bandwidth the better. Upload bandwidth is also a more important feature than a lot of people think.
Samething with cable versus sat.
I had both, I tried dvr compared to tivo, both HD recievers, digital channels, and HBO.
The picture quality is better on sat., tivo is way better, but HD quality is even. My bill is $30 cheaper per month with directv which think that its basically a wash when you compare the upfront cost of sat. equipment ($250 HD reciever, $99 tivo and two extra sat receivers).
I guess it just comes down to what you want and are happy with.

[summerfun]

Originally posted by borghe

How many times has the average person swapped out fully functioning non-buggy cable or satellite boxes in the past 21 months?

As we were talking about ISP and HDTV, my generic term of technology applied to those areas. Not my hair dryer. Although my wife does seem to burn those up pretty quickly.

To answer your question from above. Five times. First was the standard box. Then the Digital box. Then the DVR box. Then the HD box. Soon the HD/DVR box. Who knows what is next. That is the point. Maybe plug and play with no box.

[gparris]

Originally posted by StarvingForHDTV
Can you buy the premium HD package (INHD 1 & 2) from the $20 level package?  Or do they make you buy all of those other SD channels to get the privelege to buy the "premium" HD channels?

Thanks in advance,

Starving

Just like Directv, you cannot get HD channels without paying additional $$ in a total choice package...+:eek:

You must have the "basic" service which runs $12 and the $7.95 HD box from TWC to get 504-505-506-510-512-540. The basic service prices are different from community to community based on governing regulations, so it could be 10-12 dollars a month plus HD box, still about $20 like was said.

In order to get the 4  HD channel "HD package" added for iNHD 1 & 2 and HDNET/HDNET Movies, you must get the $41.75/month "Digital Basic" package plus the HD box for $7.95 a month.  This Digital Basic package adds Discovery HD Theater Channel 541 to the Basic HD channel lineup along with the 1-99 channels and locals.
If you count the basic service HD package's HD channels plus the HD Package for $6.95 monthly with Discovery HD, you have Eleven HD channels (if you count Fox as HD (soon)for $56.65 a month, plus tax and fees, not $20 plus $6.95/month.

Hope this helps...:wave:

[borghe]

Originally posted by summerfun
As we were talking about ISP and HDTV, my generic term of technology applied to those areas. Not my hair dryer. Although my wife does seem to burn those up pretty quickly.

To answer your question from above. Five times. First was the standard box. Then the Digital box. Then the DVR box. Then the HD box. Soon the HD/DVR box. Who knows what is next. That is the point. Maybe plug and play with no box.

So are you trying to tell me that the average TWC subscriber has upgraded their cable box five times in the past 21 months? mhz40, can we get some numbers on this?

I don't feel I was being facetious by lumping cable boxes in with mundane electronic appliances.. the fact is that upgrades in cable viewing technology don't happen that relatively often. heck, the same analog boxes were able to be used to receive analog cable for around 10-15 years.. digital cable was released (I believe) around 6-7 years ago... DVR was released here in milwaukee last year or so IIRC. so realistically (assuming the "average user doesn't have an hd box currently) that they would have had their analog box for like 10 years, upgrade to a digital box around 5 years ago, up to a DVR last year... I don't think that is an unrealistic assumption for the average consumer.. so we are looking at three boxes over the last 10 years, and probably next to an HD DVR when they get those in.. so I will even say 4 boxes over the last 10 years is a very likely situation... that averages to a box every 30 months.. even just within the last 5 years it is probably closer to 2..

sorry, but no matter how you cut it, the average person doesn't upgrade their tv or satellite box that often... and in that respect, cost generally becomes a non-issue when you aren't talking about the absolute top of the top in satellite boxes...(i.e. HD Tivos, or DirecTivos 3 years ago).

[summerfun]

Been nice chatting with you borghe. I think we beat this horse to death. Gotta run. Off to Chicago for some business for a couple of days.

[StarvingForHDTV]

Perfect explanation, thank you.  If I could buy the $20 package and add the $7 package, I would do it in a heartbeat.  I can't stomach the idea of buying any other channels right now.  So I guess I will stick with my free OTA HD for now.  Thanks for your help.

Starving

Originally posted by gparris
Just like Directv, you cannot get HD channels without paying additional $$ in a total choice package...+:eek:

You must have the "basic" service which runs $12 and the $7.95 HD box from TWC to get 504-505-506-510-512-540. The basic service prices are different from community to community based on governing regulations, so it could be 10-12 dollars a month plus HD box, still about $20 like was said.

In order to get the 4  HD channel "HD package" added for iNHD 1 & 2 and HDNET/HDNET Movies, you must get the $41.75/month "Digital Basic" package plus the HD box for $7.95 a month.  This Digital Basic package adds Discovery HD Theater Channel 541 to the Basic HD channel lineup along with the 1-99 channels and locals.
If you count the basic service HD package's HD channels plus the HD Package for $6.95 monthly with Discovery HD, you have Eleven HD channels (if you count Fox as HD (soon)for $56.65 a month, plus tax and fees, not $20 plus $6.95/month.

Hope this helps...:wave: