Wound up working from home today waiting on Time Warner Cable to arrive and upgrade me to the digital bundle with 7mb roadrunner. I’d been contemplating going digital anyway, and I figured replacing my $50/mo 3mb DSL + $40/mo basic cable with $60/mo for digital classic and 7mb cable was a smart move.
But digital classic is more hassle than its worth: The remote is hideous, the set-top box is slow and unresponsive – it takes upto 8 seconds to change channel, the channel line up is padded with on demand, latino and lifestyle channels. Over 67 of the 150 digital channels I received I don’t just not want, I don’t want them. So much for the cable people’s claim to deliver us with more choice…
I also don’t see any difference in quality between the basic and digital channels – I’ll have to see whether they fair any better than basic next time it rains.
The advantages of digital are probably the channel guide – which TiVo was already doing a fine job of for me – and on Demand – again, TiVo…
In all, I gained 3 channels that are potentially of interest to me: BBC America (which I’ve already found I’m not interested in), National Geographic and The Science Channel.
Since ordering the upgrade, I’ve heard really terrible things about Road Runner, and it dawned on me that they are probably the old “rr.com” that had a really bad reputation amongst ISPs and online game providers some years ago. Sigh.
Haven’t had chance to try it out because the guy who did the install noticed the cable splitter I use for my TiVo which he decided to use for splitting my tv/internet rather than going to his van and fetching the one he’d forgotten to bring in.
My order expressly stipulated “customer can cancel without charges at any time”. If Road Runner fails to impress me, I might go back to basic cable. Having worked on Set-Top Boxes while I was at Granada TV I find the STB particularly annoying.
kfsone's pittance 
9 Comments
I’ll live with DSL so that I do not have to deal with Cable ever. Cable here in the metroplex used to come in a few different flavors.
Timewarner has followed this route in comming into the area.
TCI
Enter the crazy internet hey day TCI turns into @home name change only same crappy service.
@home turns into ATT. ATT needs the last mile of copper to get into homes to compete with the local bells.
ATT turns into comcast. SBC didn’t need the last mile of copper they already have that.
Comcast Timewarner swap local monopolies while splitting up adelphia to avoid anti trust scrutiny.
All of this hasn’t done a thing to upgrade the strand of cable that has been taking a beating under the Texas sun for 30+ years.
Then you have to deal with all of their attempts to keep network traffic down since they will truly never be able to handle full peak demand between 7pm and 9pm. I gave it up as soon as I had DSL available.
Now a friend of mine lives in McKinney and they are getting Fiber straight to their house by ATT (SBC). It’s some kind of test trial. Comes with HD digital Channels plus internet, and phone, etc. I’d almost move for that.
It didn’t like my TCI entry.
TCI it sucked wouldn’t broadcast stations in steareo>
sucked because it used set top tuners technology from the 70’s
placed local channels on different numbers from their local
number. 4 on 5 5 on 4, so ghosting from the other local
channel made it impossible to watch.
Bro, I sympathize with you. My buddy out in Forney hates his cable internet. Luckily we don’t have those problems where I live. We are serviced by Cox and I’m very happy with my HD service, highspeed internet and phone. Don’t think I told ya, got a new TV. I’ll post pix tonight…
“My order expressly stipulated “customer can cancel without charges at any time”.”
That is probably the “installation order”, and not the “subscription plan” you have now begun, which probably also has an early termination fee.
The digital channels should look better on a better TV.
Slow remote suggests you’re using Infrared rather than RF or whatever. My stuff has an option to have the remote use either, and the Infrared does suck.
Digital broadcast should give you picture quality in line with what is sent out at the head-end at the cable company. Digital =! HD broadcast. Most channels are digital above ~62 so they can compress more channels in less bandwidth.
HD broadcast is by nature, digital. It’s also rebroadcast at 1080i and downconverted by the STB (if needed) to the highest HD resolution your TV will accept. But, that doesn’t mean that it won’t be 330/480 lines upconverted to 1080i and then sent to you. My local affiliate KFOR does that. I think it’s because the crotch-roach of an anchorwoman would display too much of the skinbag around her 95 year old neck. If she came in HD, people would cringe like John Lovitz did when he saw Megan Cavanagh in ‘A League of Their Own’. Remember the photoshoot scene?
Yeah, I ended up canceling all of my cable TV access. I’m now entirely Netflix, iTunes and download.
New sig: “We are serviced by Cox and I’m very happy” – Easting
oh my!
That’s a negative, Bloo.
I have had no problems with rr.com been using it for 3.5 yrs.