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Your TV provider?
- Thread starter imacintel
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Back home, I have Charter, which absolutely sucks.
Here at college, I have a local company called Fidelity which sucks so bad, they make Charter look excellent.
Their suckage is different though. Charter sucks, because while the prices are good, the service is terrible. With Fidelity, the service is OK (Expanded basic is only like 50 channels where it's 80 or so with Charter. MTV2, G4, and many others require digital with Fidelity), but the prices are outrageous. Like, our 1.5m down/256k up is $45, where with Charter, we have 3 down/512 up for $40. 5 mbit with Fidelity is $75, and I think $45 with Charter.
Here at college, I have a local company called Fidelity which sucks so bad, they make Charter look excellent.
Their suckage is different though. Charter sucks, because while the prices are good, the service is terrible. With Fidelity, the service is OK (Expanded basic is only like 50 channels where it's 80 or so with Charter. MTV2, G4, and many others require digital with Fidelity), but the prices are outrageous. Like, our 1.5m down/256k up is $45, where with Charter, we have 3 down/512 up for $40. 5 mbit with Fidelity is $75, and I think $45 with Charter.
Direct TV here.
I've had a couple of problems with them, broken DVR and signal problems. All of which were dealt with promptly, but I must say, I was much happier with Dish network (Not a single problem in 2+ years).
Oh, and the Direct TV UI sucks. It is extremely laggy (Though not as bad as the comcast UI)
I only switched to Direct TV because I bought an HDTV and Dish network insisted on charging me 300 bucks to lease their HDTV receiver. Direct TV sent me the HDTV and a DVR for free.
I've had a couple of problems with them, broken DVR and signal problems. All of which were dealt with promptly, but I must say, I was much happier with Dish network (Not a single problem in 2+ years).
Oh, and the Direct TV UI sucks. It is extremely laggy (Though not as bad as the comcast UI)
I only switched to Direct TV because I bought an HDTV and Dish network insisted on charging me 300 bucks to lease their HDTV receiver. Direct TV sent me the HDTV and a DVR for free.
Time Warner is about to gobble up Comcast here in Los Angeles. They've been running ads implying that customers won't know the difference, but if you read the fine print in circulars they've been mailing out you'll learn that all of the channel lineups and channel numbers will change, which will be a major headache to many customers. That pain will be temporary, however.
comcast basic, we used to have digital with on demand and what not, but we decided we'd rather have tivo than digital. a decision i'm very pleased with.
Doctor Q said:
Dallas is in the same boat... they say there will be no noticeable differences, but I believe Comcast offers 7 email accounts with their internet service, and Time Warner's fine print stats that their "Road Runner" internet service offers only 5 email accounts... it doesn't really matter, but I wasn't very excited to hear I might loose two.
Doctor Q said:
Comcast isn't great but Time Warner is pretty lousy most of the time. Deception is Time Warner's favourite tool. They had some interesting advertising as DirecTV made inroads into Central Floriduh.
I had Time Warner but they switched areas with BrightHouse Networks, so I now have the same minimal, local channel lineup with BrightHouse and the bill is something over $22.00 total.
Time Warner for TV and for Internet. They're great for tv, lots of great channels but for internet they're not that great. Nice and fast but there has been some problems.
I have the ~$15 Comcast basic cable service, which basically only includes locals. The plus side is it includes all the locals in HD as well. It pays for itself with the amount I save off my internet bill for having their cable as well.
Why pay
I forget how many channels I got when I was analog, I went digital a couple of months ago. Now I get about 20 channels crystal clear from my Samsung HDTV tuner for free.
6 of those channels are PBS. 4 are Pax sub-channels or the Worship network. The WB sub-channel is "The Tube" (music videos). The NBC sub-channel is the NBC Weather Plus. The ABC sub-channel is just live doppler which is actaully just a mirror feed of a windows desktop. On friday nights you can see them running Norton AntiVirus.
The only channel I lose from analog I don't really miss. We get MTV2 for free here in Boston.
The signal is suprizsingly clean even during severe thunder storms. The only problem is when the signal is bad (very rarely) it is completely unwatchable. It's like watching a scratched DVD. In that case I just fire up the VCR and watch the analog broadcast.
I'm with you. I love tv, but I wouldn't pay for it unless I was living in the middle of nowhere and only got one channel.iTwitch said:
I forget how many channels I got when I was analog, I went digital a couple of months ago. Now I get about 20 channels crystal clear from my Samsung HDTV tuner for free.
6 of those channels are PBS. 4 are Pax sub-channels or the Worship network. The WB sub-channel is "The Tube" (music videos). The NBC sub-channel is the NBC Weather Plus. The ABC sub-channel is just live doppler which is actaully just a mirror feed of a windows desktop. On friday nights you can see them running Norton AntiVirus.
The only channel I lose from analog I don't really miss. We get MTV2 for free here in Boston.
The signal is suprizsingly clean even during severe thunder storms. The only problem is when the signal is bad (very rarely) it is completely unwatchable. It's like watching a scratched DVD. In that case I just fire up the VCR and watch the analog broadcast.
ghostee said:
I've got the same thing. Comcast Basic Cable is almost "free" considering the discount on their High Speed Internet. I also rent their HDTV box for $5/mo. since my HDTV didn't come with a digital tuner.