Freakin' Cable

This post could be about the myriad issues I have when dealing with the cable company. From the second rate technical support for the high-speed internet (yeah... it's faster than DSL... when it's WORKING!), the outages, the gall of the technicians to try and make up what the "activation" of an outlet is (I had already wired them, and tested it, but they wanted to charge an activation fee per outlet. Consequently I had the minimum number "activated", which is 1. Strangely all 6 outlets I have running a feed [only 4 go to a TV] work perfectly without activation...), but that's not what this is about.

Today's entry is about their seemingly constant need to shuffle the channels. According to them it's for "customer satisfaction" and "better grouping of stations", however I believe it's because they have something against TiVo (mainly that it takes away from their own DVR sales). I'm a big fan of TiVo, despite some of the directions they've taken, but hey, ya gotta make a buck to stay in business, right? And a big thank you goes out to the TiVo folks for scrambling to keep up with all the ComCrap's constant lineup shuffles. I finally gave up on them for highspeed once DSL was available. (Verizon for as many problems as I've had with them commercially, their DSL support is out of sight!) And in the time I've had it, I think it's only been down when the power has been out over a large area. I can give them that one...

And to be fair, it's not just ComCrap. I had Cocks cable in another region, and they were guilty of the same thing, especially once they went to digital and sold their own DVRs. Although they did do it before they went digital, to mess with the folks that didn't want to pay monthly for their stupid switching box, but that was back when it was 2 wires, and I didn't mind pushing the button on MY homemade switch box to swap ranges of channels. And for as much as I fear the impact it will have on my internet speeds, I'm ready to have my DSL circuit push TV to me instead of ComCrap, so I no longer have to deal with them and still get to see the shows I want to see.

400 channels of TV, and still nothing is on.