The cable company has confused me

[chicken]

This morning all the channels had changed. BBC America is no longer 105, but instead channel 149 or something. Fortunately my 'favorites' were not keyed to the channel number, so those still work at least.

And lots of other channels changed, too, and they added new ones, but if you want to opt out of half of the new package (i.e. keep the BBC/Lifestyle channels and dump the stupid ESPN crap), you were not allowed to do so BEFORE they implemented it. They told me to call back in February AFTER they implemented it, i.e. so I would be forced to pay one month's worth of the extra charges.

Asshats.

Also, their new Sorting Algorithm sucks ass, and not in a good way.

Now, if you want to see a list of programs sorted by Genre or Title, it takes SO SO SO SO SO SO long to sort, and if you get tired of waiting and hit 'Exit', nothing happens. ARGH! It used to be so much better. Now it seems as if they re-read their DB every single time, instead of, god forbid, caching anything. Oh. My. God.

You used to be able to click 'Guide' and then go to 'Buffy' and then hit 'Guide' again twice, QUICKLY, and see a list of all the Buffy episodes showing during the next several days, what channel and time they are on, etc. Now, it takes so long that you could run down to the corner store, buy TV Guide, come back, and have the info. the old-fashioned way, and the stupid thing would still just say "Sorting ..." OK, maybe it isn't really quite that bad, but dude, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. They just made it worse.

Comments

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

Wow! That is so cool.

What about all that stuff the cable company says in their ads to try to make people hate satellite, like installation and support problems, only one TV hooked up, all the channels change at the same time on all TVs at one if more than one is hooked up (bunny's mom's house has about six TVs, for example), etc. ?? Is it all lies?

[keever.livejournal.com]

It's totally lies. We have Dish Network and love it. I've heard others rave about DirecTV, too.

We had some problems with reception at the beginning, which were fixed when we finally ended up with an installer with a clue. He adjusted the dish position and gave us a new receiver, and we never had any more problems. It's been a couple of years since we've so much as had a blip in reception, even during severe storms. As for support, we've not had any more troubles than you might with any other utility such as the occasional billing snafu fixed with a phone call.

It's markedly cheaper than cable; quite frankly, there was no way that we could have afforded either of our cable options. We got our equipment for free through a special, and we have some neat programming options, including the one that gives us WB's in multiple time zones (goodbye Wednesday 9PM conflict!) as well as pretty much every local channel.

Okay, that was gushing, but seriously, the dish puts cable to shame.

[keever.livejournal.com]

Oh, and as for multiple TV's -- you still only need one dish, but you do need a separate receiver for each TV. But aren't there still some cable companies that charge you per set, anyway? We actually just have ours rigged to work with our two TV's, although obviously, we can only watch one program at a time.

The other cool thing that I forgot to mention is that if we move, they take care of taking down the dish and reinstalling it at the new place, free of charge.