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Comment by chopsueyar | Hacker News Reader

Die Comcast, die!

Why? I know hating Comcast is popular, but I've actually found them to be quite good, although expensive.

With Comcsst I get a lot of HD channels. I get a dual tuner DVR w/ no upfront fees or commitment, just a rental fee. They have a pretty good sized on demand package, with the ability to continue watching content from any TV in the house. They've recently added the ability to control my DVR over the web.

Comcast at the half the price is a pretty good service, IMO. I certainly wouldn't want them to die, as I currently have no other service giving me 4 HD ESPNs, Big 10 sports, HD Nick, HD Nick Jr, HD Sprout, and HD on demand for many network shows I watch.

comcast internet is slow in my experience. Much slower than advertised. Comcast has also done a lot of bittorrent throttling, given there are legitimate uses for bittorrent.

Also in my local market there is comcast or att dsl. ATT dsl is slower than comcast, so I'm forced to pick the lesser of two evils.

If your Comcast internet is much slower than advertised, there's a problem, and it's likely fixable. It can be bad cables or splitters in the house, poor signal from being too many splitters from the source, a bad modem, wrong service settings for your account on Comcast's end, many things. If you call Comcast and are willing to do some serious troubleshooting with a technician at your house, you should be able to get the advertised speeds. I've done so at 7 different homes in the past 6 years, but only after doing some work at each one.

I just need you to be available between noon and 5pm.

This is fine for personal use (if you have the time to spare), but for a client's business this is impractical.

How many hours of serious troubleshooting would you bill a client for?

The last business I worked with had to have the tap at the pole replaced, plus new connectors and removal of many splitters.

I hear what you're saying here. But I get to pay $40 a month... to have to troubleshoot and fix my own connection?

I think comcast should stay on top of their shit, isn't that what we pay for?

It's much more the packaged content model that big cable props up. It's good it you watch tons of TV. But what if for instance you hardly watch TV, but only have a set of favorite shows? For instance, I really want to see BoardWalk Empire. But I can't without paying some $60+ month, because I have to buy the HBO package on top of a cable package. My only recourse is 1) see it at a friend's place, 2) wait at least 6 mos for it become available on Netflix/iTunes, or 3) illegally stream it.

AMC does not have this problem, and I gladly buy HD seasons of Mad Men and Breaking Bad on iTunes the moment they're available (I actually prefer to pay for them, as I want to support this great content). But not with most other premium content, esp. HBO and Showtime where contracts with big cable preclude this activity.

What is your monthly Comcast bill AND what is your upload/download bandwidth?

I have Comcast for both business (at 2 locations) and for personal home use.

To clarify, I only use Comcast for data, and I am reticent to call it an Internet Service Provider.

Their business class service becomes saturated at the same time each day. They cannot guarantee any upload capacity. Clients are very hesistant to pay your hourly rate onsite while you wait for the Comcast guy to show up, so you can tell him to check the signal at the tap and run a new drop and new ground block and check every coax connection and splice (which should have been done during the original install).

I do not watch ESPN or Nickelodeon, but you could probably spend less using medication to zombify yourself.

Also, I was at a friend's house this Easter and was watching some Comcast using their DVR channel guide, and guess what? The channel guide now has banner ads on each page of the channel listings.

You pay to rent a DVR that has banner ads? WTF?

Is this what Stockholm Syndrome looks like? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

[UPDATE] I forgot to mention, one of my clients had 'inadvertently' agreed to a 4-year Comcast business agreement with a $4,000 termination fee...and the guy next door has FioS (they won't write any contract for longer than 2 years), so yeah, fuck Comcast.

Not to mention the set-top-boxes also show all the premium channels, and not just channels you pay for. They're shooting for the up-sell (or their backend is just that antiquated), but it's clear there exists a conflict of interest that won't result in better boxes from your cable-tv provider.

I do not watch ESPN or Nickelodeon, but you could probably spend less using medication to zombify yourself.

Thanks, I come here to have snide remarks directed at me.

Sorry I keep replying (am I really?)...I was looking at dish network, and they offer pretty much everything you listed with a better DVR that can stream to Android or iPhone devices...

http://www.dishnetwork.com/tveverywhere/vip922/default.aspx

http://www.dishnetwork.com/tveverywhere/remoteaccess/

Here is a list of HD packages, and if you scroll to the bottom, you can add all those othr HD channels for another $10...

http://www.dishnetwork.com/hdtv/default.aspx

Dish requires an upfront payment of $199/$299 for the DVR. And you still pay for a monthly DVR service, per DVR. The monthly bill is comparable to Comcast except you have a big upfront payment that isn't refundable if you decide that you don't like Dish.

Also Dish regularly battles the major networks, presumably on affilicate pricing, so its not uncommon that you'll lose ABC or CBS for a few days to weeks. I've never seen this happen with Comcast.

And their On Demand content is puny, last I checked, compared to Comcast -- and it requires an internet connection.

> "Why?"

A few reasons I'm not their biggest fan:

* I have no choice in my area.

* Comcast costs more, for less, than it does in neighboring towns where they compete. The brashness and sheer monetary disconnect between what they charge when they compete and what they charge when they don't casts a certain light on the rest of their shenanigans. (approximately 50%)

* I can't get a residential cable internet package without paying more than if I got cable internet and television service.

* They moved essentially all the popular cable channels out of the 'basic' television package during the DTV switch, under the auspices of people needing their digital set-top box anyway. Except that's a lie and they know it. It was just a convenient excuse for them to push popular channels into a higher-priced package. Channels that, conspicuously, are still basic in neighboring towns where they compete.

* CableCARD nonsense. I never got a working card from them. The cards they're legally required to provide upon request. So a newer TIVO wasn't an option. And every conversation regarding the CableCARD involved a sales pitch to just get their (ad-bearing, convoluted monstrosity of a) DVR.

* Their backwards router policies from yesteryear: when they would lie to, threaten and refuse service to their customers, because they didn't feel like providing the service they were advertising (an internet connection), but rather the service they felt like providing (an internet connection to a single Windows PC.)

* The bandwidth caps and (more troubling) their inconsistent enforcement.

* Their traffic 'shaping'. AKA screwing up my ISO downloads because they're on an anal quest to outmaneuver people they refuse to simply cut off or charge more. They just up and decided that they could 'shape' my traffic to not only prevent it from harming their network, but that they could 'shape' my traffic to prevent someone else from harming their network. (If I'm not in their 'extreme downloaders' demographic, why is my traffic getting molested?)

* They decided to change their shaping policy without telling anyone. And to add insult to injury, they then denied doing what they were quite clearly doing for months.

* And what were they doing? Effectively impersonating my devices. If they want to delay or throttle a stream, that's fine. But inserting data into the stream as if that data came from my devices? That is not OK. That is a violation of the trust principles the damn network is built on.

* The DNS ads. I mean, really? Intercepting and perverting standard protocols to show ads? Incredible weak-sauce. It essentially removes "DNS lookup" as a service their subscription price pays for.

And that list is by no means exhaustive.

Those are good reasons, although I must admit that I've hit none of them. I'm probably not as demanding a user, but compared to people I know that have DSL, Comcast seems like a godsend.

On CableCard, I had a great experience with them. I got two CableCards from them and they gave them to me for free. They worked fine, although I no longer use them.

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