What is Digg?106 Comments
- mattgilberg, on 09/09/2008, -2/+52And let's not forget the fact that they (comcast) compress the ***** out of their HD channels.
- SpectralSounds, on 09/08/2008, -2/+36Comcast is shady with their commercials around here too. I heard one the other day that was proclaiming Comcast had the best "Fiber Optic" network around. Really? Cause it sure looks like it comes in on Coax to me and no fiber was run to my house.
If they werent the only people in town to offer a nice connection speed, I wouldnt use them. Its either my 16mbit, or 1.5mbit DSL. I prefer the 16. I would really prefer FiOS, but I live in a small town and FiOS probably won't be around here for another decade. - WiseWeasel, on 09/08/2008, -1/+27Seriously, I have Comcast HD cable service, and I get about 10-12 actual HD channels, and no HD pay-per-view. There are obviously a bunch more channels broadcast in HD, even for Comcast subscribers in other cities, but in my city, Comcast's HD service sucks donkey balls. Every time I see this commercial, it makes me want to call up Comcast and bitch them out.
- Murrabbit, on 09/09/2008, -0/+12Many telcoms don't go "the last foot" which is to say that the network itself, from routing offices to the patch box in your neighborhood is fiber - but from the box to your house it's coax.
- imasuperDOTcom, on 09/09/2008, -2/+14Who cares? There's nothing on anyway.
- Spuy767, on 09/09/2008, -0/+12As a former Comcast Cable customer, former DishNetwork Customer, current DirecTV customer, and employee of a Videocentric industry, I can say with certainty that DirecTV's HD channels are by far the best. *****, comcast recently almost doubled their HD lineup, the only problem being that they made zero upgrades to their infrastructure. That tells me one thing. Comcast increased compression on their already pretty ***** HD channels. Comcast can go get ***** for all I care. For 29.99 a month plus a 5.99 HD package, I get all the channels I want in HD. Comcast charget $54.99 for the same package.
- rytr23, on 09/09/2008, -0/+9Comcast = ***** I knew this was BS the first time I saw it.. They are comparing apples to oranges. But of course there are a lot of rubes out there thinking it's true.. People=Stupid
- OfNumbers, on 09/09/2008, -2/+10Advertisement is misleading in general. I want those 2 and a half minutes of my life back.
- elbm, on 09/09/2008, -1/+8Verizon's fiber will be fine in 10-15 years-- it will be fine for the next 100 years if it is not physically damaged. The fibers capacity is future proof for the foreseeable future. Verizon has fiber in the field that is approaching 30 years old. Comcast's problem is they do not have enough fiber in the field and backhaul. Comcast's fiber network is somewhere in the range of about 94,000 miles of fiber as compared to Verizon's network ,which dwarfs Comcast, with 5.5 milion miles of fiber.
- linuxwarz, on 09/08/2008, -0/+6I saw that same ad yesterday. I hope they get sued for misleading customers on about fiber. They also goofed and ran the Verizon version of their VOiP ad when IL is all AT&T from what I know.
- IG64, on 09/09/2008, -1/+6I use DirecTV as well and I've also seen this commercial. The first time I saw it I was amazed at how they could even get away with it.
- GreatSunJester, on 09/09/2008, -0/+4The dish people will never remove the antenna. If they did, they would need to patch the holes the mounting created. Also, that mount and dish (even if it needs to be updated) is an advertisement on the property and a 'come on' for anyone who moves in.
ALWAYS look at the real monthly cost once the honeymoon offer ends. With DirecTV, they will begin billing you at the full price the moment the offer price ends. Every year or so, you can sometimes call in and get a 'special' - credit on your bill, maybe a premium channel for a few months - but you will never be able to get that super low price for new customers. - dirtyfrog, on 09/09/2008, -0/+4That's only for new customers though. I tried to switch my package to turbo HD and they wouldn't let me. They said "it is only a temporary package and they are seeing how it does before offering it to all customers." I told them I would just cancel and asked them when I would be considered a "new customer" again. They didn't have an answer but gave me a discount on my current dish package to get it down to $25 a month for five months. If turbo HD isn't available to me in 5 months I am gone.
- groo68, on 09/09/2008, -0/+4What will you do with it?
- Pimpalicious316, on 09/09/2008, -0/+4I feel your pain. Indianapolis area, I get about 15-20 HD channels (depending on if you count the ***** "music video HD" channels). No HD PPV (I want my god damned UFC fights in hi-def!!!), and the channels we do get are so compressed that USA and TBS HD are nearly unwatchable.
My only other option is AT&T, but I'd rather cut off my left nut and eat it in A1 sauce than give AT&T more money.
***** comcast! (and here's my monthly payment...sorry for being late). - ren1999, on 09/09/2008, -1/+4Drop all Comcast cable television, HDTV, and internet services for limiting its internet bandwidth.
- freediverx, on 09/09/2008, -0/+3Coming soon... The 700 Club - in HD!
- freediverx, on 09/09/2008, -2/+5I hate Comcast as much as anybody, but DSL is slow as balls and unreliable.
- willfe, on 09/09/2008, -0/+3All the "hate" about Comcast is related to their shoddy service and piss-poor customer service. Every product and service they offer is subpar, inferior to the competition's offerings, and more expensive.
* High-speed internet problems
** Despite advertising (and pushing) "self-install" kits, it routinely takes several calls to the support line to actually get a cable modem correctly provisioned and authorized on the network; even when the device appears to be working, it will periodically fall back to the "captive signup" proxy put in place by Comcast to "welcome new customers," while refusing to route any other traffic.
** Outages are common and frequent. Just on my service, which has been active less than 4 weeks, I have tracked no fewer than 14 service outages of 30 minutes or longer. The average outage has been 2 hours in duration. The longest outage was 4 hours. Calls to tech support only result in the same troubleshooting steps offered every time (reset the modem; reset the router), which never solve the problem. The support group will never acknowledge an outage. Many others have similar complaints.
** Comcast had invisible bandwidth caps that, if exceeded, would immediately cause account suspensions or terminations.
*** The actual number was unknown.
*** Technicians and phone agents could not tell you how much you'd consumed or how close you were to the cap.
*** You could not simply pay for "extra" bandwidth -- stay under the cap or lose your account.
*** Because of the BitTorrent debacle, they've finally publicly announced caps -- 250GB per month per account, $10 per additional 10GB billed in 10GB increments.
**** Note on the company's fastest connection it is possible to consume 3.6GB per hour (essentially 1 megabyte per second), meaning this cap can be reached on existing equipment in under 70 hours.
** Comcast silently sabotages BitTorrent connections.
*** When caught doing so, first they tried to deny it, then finally owned up but said it was legal.
*** They tried to "stack the deck" at public hearings about the issue by paying people to fill seats and not speak up.
*** Now that the FCC has ruled against the practice, the company is *suing* to have that ruling overturned.
* Cable television service problems
** Comcast compresses HDTV broadcasts to an unacceptable degree; several comparisons have demonstrated they compress these channels far more than any other provider, either terrestrial or satellite-based service.
** Comcast's DVR offering is overpriced ($13 extra per month, also requiring an extra $16 per month for "digital cable" service) and is the worst offering in the industry. The boxes are unusably slow, unreliable, and extremely limited in functionality.
*** Note that in a few limited markets, Comcast will upgrade existing DVRs to use TiVo software (costing an *extra* $3 per month). This rollout has been a disaster, with bugs, slow performance, and crashes occurring frequently. Complaints about bugs on both platforms go unanswered. The TiVo enthusiasts are essentially unpaid beta testers (actually, they're *paying* to beta test a half-baked release). Sadly, even that buggy release is generally better than the default software Comcast DVRs come with.
All this goes on while Comcast broadcasts advertising materials that paint a rosy picture about their services. They're bad at what they do, they're overpriced, and they offer the worst services in the industries they "compete" in.
Just because you had a billing squabble with Qwest once doesn't make them "more evil than Comcast." Comcast tries very hard to suck harder than even the worst phone companies, and at this one thing, they're very adept. - amenic, on 09/09/2008, -0/+3No no - what you don't understand is THEY enjoy the fiber optic network (that was implemented via a collective surcharge awhile ago). YOU do not get to enjoy the benefits of said network that you help fund, because you are a dirty, evil, firesharing, pirate, p2p douchebag (and customer).
Until these US companies figure out how to completely monitor their precious traffic and protect all the precious content and ensure that everyone gets paid all the time, then you will continue to see speeds that are 1/10th of what they get in Japan.
I remember reading years and years ago about Internet 2 and how it was going to clean up the Internet and be based on a separate but similar network infrastructure, that was going to be provided as an option to Colleges and Universities and employers. Places that wanted all the information but none of the porn / piracy / refuse. It was supposed to be a voluntary option to people (organizations), but apparently those in charge have begun the process of forcing it down everyone's throat.
We can only hope that in time, people will start up their own independent ISPs that allow the Internet to remain free and unrestricted, and that other people will support them and kick the big guys to the curb.
Of course if this were to occur, then the next thing you know the big corps will try to control the traffic that goes over the back bone lines and completely destroy the once extremely exciting prospect of what the Internet was and could be. An indiscriminate intermediary that allows people to share ideas, thoughts and hopefully instill some innovations in a world that so desperately requires them.
Limiting what you can do on the Internet is a Pandora's box that we simple do not want to touch for ANY reason. And being caught with your hand in the cookie jar should be a crime that is not treated lightly. Should be treason, not against your country, but against your fellow man.
If people want to control content, let them do it on an ISP (with FULL public disclosure), a LAN / WAN or client side (via parental controls). No matter what, the people must always have free choice and that choice must be protected at all costs.
It would be a crime to lose something that has so much potential without even realizing it first. - AndrewMoyer, on 09/09/2008, -0/+2If you read the fine print on their website, you'll find that Comcast considers each OnDemand HD movie offering in their library (all of which cost additional money and only have a 24 hour or less rental window) to be a "channel" even though it is not an actual broadcast channel, and is actually streamed to you point-to-point more like how a cable modem works.
Under this approach, they should be advertising millions and billions of HD channels (when you factor in the internet) rather than just 1000. (Even though I think I get like maybe 14-20 *actual HD channels*, several of which are usually just up-sampled standard def. or 720p [extended def.])
It's pretty lame having to pay like $20-30/mo extra just to be able to watch ESPN, ComcastSports, and Fox in HD a few hours here and there when a football game is on, and then having to hear them brag about their thousands of HD channels.
At $150+/mo for cable and internet service that is not impressive in the slightest (and no premium channels), Comcast can suck my balls as soon as a realistic alternative enters the market. - NJank, on 09/09/2008, -2/+4lets not forget: Qwest = only telecom not to comply with the NSA illegal wiretapping.
- bblande, on 09/09/2008, -1/+3Fios FTW? At least when it gets to my friggin neighborhood...
- Nothlit, on 09/09/2008, -0/+2I have had DSL since 2001 in various locations, and have never found it to be unreliable. I can probably count the number of service outages I've had on one hand. Yes, it is falling behind cable in terms of speed, but Verizon now offers DSL up to 7.1 Mbps in certain areas, which is plenty fast enough for the vast majority of customers. I'm still stuck on 3 Mbps DSL because my landlord won't let Verizon install FiOS, and it's really not that bad.
- HappyScrappy, on 09/10/2008, -0/+2DirecTV's ad clearly says "leave the old dish behind". They're not going to come remove it.
- inactive, on 09/09/2008, -0/+2Stare at your sister. Naked.
- lazerasa, on 09/09/2008, -0/+2Have you ever seen those commercials that say "Comcast has you covered", referring to the digital transition in February 2009? What they don't tell you is that if you are a "low-end" cable customer that plugs the coax directly into their TV, you'll be getting nothing but local channels.
As soon as the OTA digital transition happens, Comcast is going to transition all of it's analog channels to digital as well. All those people without converter boxes will have to rent them from comcast if they want to continue getting the expanded basic lineup. In Baltimore, there are already some channels that have been removed from the analog lineup, such as AMC, CMT, G4. I used to get them on all the TV's in my house that just had coax plugged into them, now I need a set-top-box from Comcast on each TV that I want to get those channels on. - adstretch, on 09/09/2008, -1/+3so does direct TV, and dish network, and cablevision. actually pretty much all providers do. a lot of the time the best signal for basic HD channels is OTA.
- Trendy2, on 09/09/2008, -1/+3So happy I switched from Comcast to DirecTV just before D10 went up. I have way more channels in HD than Comcast - it's not even a comparison - sorry but ***** PPV and OnDemand HD content doesn't ***** count!!!!!! I want HD channels, real channels and DirecTV has the most by far and they're nowhere near as compressed as Comcast to boot. It's infuriating to me that they can say ***** like that in their commercials - it's such a mistruth. If you have Comcast, seriously, ditch them if you can - it's a profound freedom that was almost as good a feeling as when my divorce was final.
- mujahideenryder, on 09/09/2008, -1/+3I'm saying bye bye to Comcast in a week and getting FIOS installed.
- smergs, on 09/09/2008, -0/+2I live just outside of Nashville, TN and there are about 40 HD channels available from Comcast. That's counting if you subscribe to HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, and Starz and also count a few ***** channels that I never personally watch anyway. I don't get those four premium channels because I don't want to spend anymore money on cable. The TV is mostly for my wife anyway. I only watch a few shows and then take more advantage of the internet to waste my time. The HD quality is fine for the most part for me. I can see the compression though. I've never had another HD service though so I might be missing something. I'd rather have another company but my wife and I purchased a town home and there really isn't many options for a dish to sit outside of our home. I'm sure we could get it if we wanted but it would look pretty tacky. I'm hoping that AT&T offers their U-verse service sometime soon. I'm pretty sure that is the closest I'll get to Fiber to the home anytime soon. (I realize that service is not fiber to the home. I think it's fiber to the curb. Or neighborhood. Anyone know for sure?) I know AT&T had to fight some type of legislation in the state of TN to even be able to being to offer the service. They won so let's see how long it takes.
Not saying that AT&T will be any butter. But at least it's another choice. - cawpin, on 09/09/2008, -1/+3Um, no. Cox didn't either and that's who I have.
- hangman16, on 09/09/2008, -1/+3If it wasn't for the 24-month commitment that directv requires I'd have it right now instead of comcast..
- deadbaby, on 09/10/2008, -0/+1God damn... does DirectTV have enough sports HDs? I'm counting over 30 and perhaps more if you consider auto-racing a sport. I would say for the average, non-sports fanatic, there's very little difference between the HDs being offered.
- vsaint, on 09/09/2008, -0/+1You are coming off like a complete shill. Ondemand is so compressed you would be hard-pressed to call that HD. It is full of artifacts and generally looks terrible.
- xdevit, on 09/09/2008, -0/+1Called ***** the first time I saw that commercial. I live in a big city and only get ~20 HD channels (i dont count VOD as an /CHANNEL/ like Concast does.).
That commercial picks 1 city, yes that 1 city might have 715 HD /channels/ but not all cities have it (there is not even 700 network channels, ~200 at best). Knowing Concast they count the Music channels as HD.
Now with DishNetwork/DirectTV you get ~100 REAL HD CHANNELS all over the US. On top of that they are not youtube quality like most Comcast HD channels are. Must remember that there are no rules that say they have to use actual HD video to call it HD.. VHS broadcast on a HD channel is.... HD.
In no way am I praising satellite TV as in my opinion the HD everyone is offering is a joke.
-Unhappy Comcast customer with no other option. (id have to cut down a tree to get satellite) - IKORKYI, on 09/09/2008, -0/+1so progress to you definitely is not:
providing a sharper and larger picture with less information? - xyvyx, on 09/13/2008, -0/+1I'd also prefer FIOS, but I play games with my DSL and it's hard to complain about 10-15ms pings!
I may only get 3Mbps downstream, but latency's important too! - twignificant, on 09/09/2008, -0/+1I never cease to be amazed at Comcast's willingness to dump money into bending and hiding the truth instead of investing in their technological infrastructure and providing a better service.
They're far more interested in lying to consumers than actually providing what consumers want. It's a shame that such behavior isn't enough to drive them out of business. - IKORKYI, on 09/09/2008, -0/+1In SE Pennsylvania, Channels 200-240 are all HD, granted a handful are STARZ, HBO, or Showtime. We pay $10 extra for about 30 HD channels. Seems like i'm getting a better bargain than i thought looking at other people's experience with comcast.
Also, we have HD on demand (or PPV). HBO shows come in HD, as well as the occasional NBC broadcast, and then loads of movies. Your everyday sitcom or prime time television is not, however. - fani, on 09/09/2008, -0/+1Comcast sucks in customer service, but their actual service is still good.
My current Comcast gives me about 33Mbps/2Mbps speed which is awesome !! I originally was getting 6Mbps/512Kbps when I signed up and slowly over the last 2 years its gone up to this speed. ( I regularly do speedtest.net )
Verizon FIOS is giving me 10Mbps/2Mbps for $94 whereas Comcast triple play is $99. So overall, comcast is better.
I've never had an issue with Comcast service as such over the last few years, so I think I'm ok with Comcast.
They do have several problems - compressed HD signals so some HD channels look like *****, p2p/torrent fiasco, net neutrality opponents, phone service is just ok, poor customer service to name a few.
However, their internet service is good so far so I'm ok. - sully213, on 09/09/2008, -0/+1I just counted 289 shows in HD available for me to watch, right now, in Harrisburg, PA and I stopped counting because there were so many! And I didn't even count the linear HD channels or even any of the premium offerings like HBO, Starz, Showtime, etc., just the OnDemand services.
The thing about OnDemand is that I can start the shows any time I want and watch them from the beginning. I don't have to wait around for 45 minutes while the current showing of [insert title here] finishes and the next showing of the same movie starts again. It's TV on my schedule. I can even start a movie in my living room and finish it in the bedroom with the new AnyRoom OnDemand service. Even if I previously watched the first 30 minutes of a movie before I got interrupted, I can just fast forward to that point and pick up where I left off next week, not having to re-watch that first 30 minutes.
OK, so your argument is that DirecTV offers more HD "channels", and that is true. But you probably don't care which network a movie or television show you want to watch is on, you just want to watch the show, right? So the bottom line is that Comcast wins the HD battle because it offers more shows and movies in HD than any other service. I think the article's author is letting his fanboism (admitted to in the opening of the article) get in the way of objective journalism. - HappyScrappy, on 09/10/2008, -0/+1If on demand counts, why does Comcast's ad not count DirectTV's on demand? Because they would rather mislead, that's why.
- Nothlit, on 09/09/2008, -0/+1The sad thing is, FiOS is already in my area, but my landlord won't let Verizon install it in my apartment complex, apparently because the installation fees would be "substantial."
- hiltinuts2, on 09/09/2008, -0/+1The hate is all about their shady-ass marketing. More and more people are shopping for HD service and Comcast clearly doesn't have the channels that other services do and they are muddying-up the waters with these false claims.
- TheOtherJake, on 09/09/2008, -0/+1Your argument seems logical at first, but here is my point:
I have comcast and have watched every OnDemand Movie available that I have a desire to watch. Now I won't get another one I want to watch for another few weeks. So yea its 289 HD programs you counted, but are you just going to sit there and watch the same programs over and over just because they are in HD? I would rather have more HD channels... - HappyScrappy, on 09/10/2008, -0/+1The ad counts Comcast's on demand. It doesn't count DirectTV's on demand.
- sully213, on 09/09/2008, -0/+1This is because of an exclusive agreement the NFL signed with DirecTV a few years ago. I believe that agreement is up in 2011, but I'm not sure.
- dexim, on 09/09/2008, -1/+2"If they did a straight shot of Coax all the way from the head end to your house...well...Its just not possible. Unless you lived at MAX 300ft from it."
This would be true for RG6 or "house drop" cable. Larger size cables can carry signal farther. There are larger "feeder" and "trunk" lines. There are also line extender amplifiers and trunk amplifiers that can help the signal travel even farther.
Hybrid Fiber Coax systems did not come out until the late '90s.
@AndrewMoyerAndrewMoyer A cable modem only uses 1.5 MHz of bandwidth, an analog channel is 6 MHz.
BTW I am a National Cable Television Institute certified service technician. - HappyScrappy, on 09/10/2008, -0/+1That's not true. DirecTV has on demand where you get a list of movies and if you like it, it downloads it to your PVR over the internet. It also has the other form you say.
The author is not counting Comcast's on demand. The commercial is counting Comcast's on demand and not counting DirecTV's on demand. -
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