[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Goodbye, Comcast (or 'How I Learned to Love the Internet') here

[mjd420nova]

Darren: I admire your tenacity in meeting this thing head on. I presently have far too much hardware in my home now and really don't look forward to building another machine to just act as a collection or feed through point for the TV shows I want to watch. I also have no desire to watch TV on the tiny screen. Instead, I dumped Comcast after they had run out of new ways to keep me hooked in and insisted on raising my bill and not offering anymore continued bundles or discounts. Adios. I got the DirecTV setup with DVR and have never been happier. Their procedures to search and record my favorite offerings was too simple and I don't miss a single show. I have one machine on my home network that has Media Center and after adding the DVR box to my network, I can access everything through it and send it to the TV. What a godsend, I can even get my Netflix downloaded through one unit, across the network to the big 50 inch set in the family room. I bow down to DirecTV and their fully capable system that has finally filled the last piece of the puzzle and let me dump the cable.

[geraldz]

Lots of folks are discovering how easy and affordable it is to bring the Internet to their TVs.

[greyaburton]

hulu only works for united states

[glassmaster]

I dumped Cox cable TV eons ago, kept their broadband access for web video watching, and have saved a ton of money. Cox then, of course, raised my broadband bill a few months ago, but no worries, I still saved lots of dinero. And, the slew of free over-the-air digital channels doesn't hurt either.

[coastie65]

:D Around these parts, Comcast has been going from door to door surveying and offering up " Fantastic" deals. When the guy came to my door i had a good time with him. He was trying to sell me while at the same time, I was countering with all the negatives. I have a DirecTV dish out front next to the porch and he tried to convince me why the cable was better than satellite and I told him he would get no argument from me on that. I finally told him, I wasn't interested in Comcast as I had switched to FiOS, which was faster AND cheaper, with no bandwidth issues. He did admit that Comcast was losing customers to FiOS and they were trying to get then back or keep the ones they had. I told him, that Comcast was behind the curve and couldn't compete with FiOS, unless they went to full Fiber to the house. I get everything through FiOS and am perfectly happy with it. There is always a way around Comcast. coastie

[HarveyDanger]

I wish the ways around were easier, though. I'm a college student and I'm trying to convince my parents to save money. They considered FiOs, but Comcast would have made them pay huge transfer charges. They won't consider satellite for whatever reason, and I'm the only one in the house with a fast enough computer for internet TV.

To top it off, my school uses Comcast cable as well. :|

Hopefully by the time I'm living on my own the internet TV selection will be good (and free) enough that I can use that and only that.

[coastie65]

Hi, That is the way of Comcast with the trnsfer charges. I am not even sure if that is legal or not. A person has the right to chose whatever service they want without penalty, unless you have signed a contract for service for a set period of time. In that case, you can be charged a fee for early termination. As someone who is on a fixed income, I find that FiOS fits my budget much better than Comcast by far. The fiber runs all the way to the router and the COAX for the TV comes off of that. The landline is branched from the box on the outside of the house. As with cable, they are concentrating their builds in the heavier populated areas. My guess is, once that has been covered, they will start building out into the rural areas ( unlike cable). It is much cheaper to build than cable and according to the Verizon guy, not much difference in running that and running standard phone line, except that that by the foot fiber is cheaper than copper. As I had earlier stateted, in this area, and this is according to the Comcast guy, they are steadily losing customers.

[Adama]

Well, I guess I have one point for Comcast today. When I went to their office to talk about the stuff I needed for the digital conversion, they gave me a boxset and another smaller box for my 2nd TV. They offered me their of $29.99 a month - for one year, to which I said yes to.

So now, instead of paying $65.+ I'm paying about half of that. That made me very happy. :D

[coastie65]

Hey Adama, Be sure to get ready to bail after the year is up as the price will spike big time. This is normal for Comcast. Also make sure the thing doesn't have a provio in there, that says those rates are good with an additional year at the "Regular" rates. Comcast is tricky that way. If it is in fact just one year at those rates then be happy. :D coastie

[jimg]

I've had for years a big cband kuband dish. I subscribe to an all digital pack. I think the big dish is much better then the little dish and cable. I do have the local cables internet, but I just subscribed to there tv channels because after not having them for years, they offered me basic channels and HD for 33 dollars for one year. I will probably get rid of them by the end of that year.It's not Comcast. I did this because I have to hookup a special box to my 4dtv Cband receiver in order to get tru dolby sound. So, when I do that, I will get rid of the cable company box.

[ffrog]

Dump everything, invest in a quality rooftop antenna, save money, and most importantly you will get a much higher quality picture from the antenna.

[jimg]

Most of what you say ffrog is true. I tryed just a cheap small antenna in my house. The most powerfull station came in fantastic. The other networks did not. Of course if I would put a deeper fringe antenna on the house I would probably get more stations. You see I live about 40 some miles from my local networks and more from other stations, and that is in between large hills. Even so I still would keep my big dish. I must have my discovery channels and History channel. I don't like to much prime time shows on the networks. Just a football game.

[hhandyman]

I have digital to analog converter box and a digital tuner unit built an antenna and i see more than i want spent a total of 90 bucks for the rotor outside of that my internet is my tv. spend 10 bucks a month for high speed. skip the cable connects..
I mainly watch 7 pbs stations (channels actualy 2 stations in KY and southern IN) but can get abc cbs nbc fox and fx as well off air who needs more? well go on line if ya gotta fill in your day with more junque.. pay the light bill not the cable dish guys..

[JimH443]

ffrog said:

Dump everything, invest in a quality rooftop antenna, save money, and most importantly you will get a much higher quality picture from the antenna.

I rent, so that's not an option. Even if I were allowed, I doubt very much that it can get TBS, TNT, USA, History Channel, Discovery & Science Channel. That's about 90% of what I watch. Local stations rarely have anything that even remotely interests me (other than new episodes of House, Bones or Law & Order - but those are done until at least the fall).

[barrem01]

I'm not a fan of cable, but my TiVo HD came with two cable card slots. It also has Netflix, Amazon on demand and a dozen other online sources of video. The DTV upgrade gave them an excuse to offer me an upgrade on my old TiVo - Something like $400 with lifetime tivo service. I doubt you could build a Windows ME computer with two tuners for that.

[CEC1951]

I believe that I see the end of my 25-plus year relationship with Comcast coming to an end. I have gotten by, thus far, with no silly cable boxes as I have their basic extended package. But come June 24 (changed from June 10), in order to get channels 32 to 71 I will need an additional box. Now, if I can get 2 through 31 without this box, there is no reason why shouldn't continue to get all of my basic, basic-extended services the same way. These add-ons render my Replays and VCRs useless, according to Comcast. Every year, my cable bill rises about 5% (though the price on their phone and Internet services remain static), yet the service stays the same--or gets worse. My phone company offers DirecTV, but I have found them to be worse than Comcast. Unfortunately, because of where I live, a rooftop antenna will not work. I hate they are taking away my convenient way of getting my enterainment; the upside is a savings of $60 per month....

[mjd420nova]

CEC: As I understand it, Comcast is also going digital, meaning you have to get their decoder box to get any channels. They will no longer be putting any analog signals over the cable. I recently switched to DirecTV for the Tv and AT&T for DSL. I am very happy and get more channels, even a few cable doesn't carry. The DSL line is slower but unless you have multiple PCs downloading at the same time, you won't notice the difference.

[jayfest]

The key phrase in the article is "the three shows I want to see". It's true that paying all that money to Comcast is definitely not worth it for someone who only watches three TV shows. There are no statistics on how much TV those 13 million non-box-owners watch, but for those of us who watch 30 or more shows regularly (not all in the same week), including some on HBO or Showtime, watching via the web is way too much trouble or just not feasible. I agree that the trend is towards the internet, but I think there's a long way to go before that will be the solution for the all-but-13 million of us who actually watch a substantial amount of TV.