Comcast to continue digital cable upgrades Thursday

We requested the boxes be mailed to us because I anticipated long delays at our local office. They arrived within three days, but when I opened them, boxes had no power. Husband took boxes back to Comcast to switch them out and it appeared they had plenty of boxes avaialable. Easy to install. Offers many more channels on our secondary TVs.

By "free" Comcast means that they'll raise your rates regardless of whether you get any additional boxes.

It isn't just TIVO users that lose functionality with the free Comcast boxes. Anyone with a regular VCR will only be able to record the channel they are watching or have left the box set at. You can no longer record two different programs on different channels while you are away. And the instructions that come with the box make no mention of this fact. It took a missed recording and some experimenting for me to figure out how I could at least record one show when not at home. Basically what the boxes do is make your old TV just show channel 3 and the box does all the channel selection. A "small detail" that Comcast has neglected to tell folks about. !

Hopefully this means that the new DOCSIS 3 cable modem service tiers will soon follow once those bandwidth-hogging analog channels are out of the way? I see that the required SB6120 cable modems are on sale at the Lohr Road Best Buy. That'll add 22M/5M and 50M/10M service. It's still slow by Asian standards, where 1000M/1000M service is starting to show up and 100M/100M is common, but it dwarfs anything AT&T will do.

Seasoned Cit -- I went on Comcast's website and finally found the proper instructions about how to use your VCR (it was different from what was with the box). You have to get an A/B switch, hook the VCR up on the A, and the box on the B. You can tape while you're watching something thru the box. To watch what you taped, you have to flip to the A side. (However, you can't just hit "record" while you're watching something... that doesn't work, since you're tuning thru the box and not the VCR). I don't know if this will still work after everything past 14 goes digital, but it's worked for me so far!

@ JAM: this sounds like way back in the day with the A/B switch. Haven't we progressed at all?? :o)

Luckily we have a DVR box that we record shows with on our HD.

I canceled cable TV instead. There isn't much of anything but crap on TV these days. The few shows I watch are all on hulu anyway.

Eh, am I the only one who saw this government mandated "switch to digital" as just another opportunity for money hogging tv manufacturers and cable companies to charge 5X more for EVERY-THING?

What the Comcast scheme is (at least in part) all about is controlling our ability to record tv programs we might otherwise miss or need to re-schedule to fit our own life priorities. It's also of course a "support" for the immense over-charge for something as basic as watching a little TV.

There ARE worthwhile channels: History Channel (when it's not on its Nostrodamus mania) provides invaluable information about scientific and history subjects. But this example of vital informational resource is beyond the reach of MANY who don't want to spend nearly $70 / month (nearly $800 / year) for the mishmash of crap and good stuff sold as a "standard package."

In these tough economic times, it's pretty clear that "corporate America" doesn't give a damn about anything but enriching a few top execs and wealthy investors. The U.S. is below 10th in the area of providing braodband internet access: another point when the charge for DSL and cable is around $40 / month. AT&T charges over $100 / month for phone and DSL: over $1200 per year!

But all the REAL jobs are now being done overseas for less than half what corporations have to pay Americans. Millions of Americans are having to make do in "the service industry" at half median income. WHERE do these corporate geniuses think their sales are going to come from with that arrangement?? Comcast and AT&T: Cut your rates in half and then we'll talk. :-)

If you call to complain all the are programmed to do is "up-sell" you to the next tier. It's time to cut your losses with these con artists. There are plenty of free over-the-air HD channels. Upgrade your TiVo recorder, get a subscription to Netflix, and watch Joost and Hulu. Please stop sending money to Comcast.

There's some other things at play here. If you Tivo has a digital tuner, you could watch the digital channels if they weren't also encrypted. Because of the encryption, you need a Cablecard to view them which requires an installation visit.

While this does stink right now, in the end there should be net benefit to consumers. The additional bandwith opened up by removing the digital channels will help Comcast eventually roll out faster Internet speeds and offer up more channels at better quality. In addition, this will pave the way for more HD channels as well. The 72 analog channels that are being turned off probably represent at least 1/2 of the available bandwidth Comcast has, if not more.

Certainly it sounds like the DTA boxes could have been handled better, as there have been many reports of inoperable boxes. If you have a digital TV (any TV bought in the last 2 years should have a digital tuner) you can find the channels buried in the higher numbers on sub-channels. For instance I'm watching the Red Wings on Fox Sports on channel 78.8.

I've thought about going to uverse, but you need a box at every TV for that too, and I don't know if the internet speeds are comaparble.

Comcast sucks and yet to get internet here in the city its the best way for OK speed. The wiring we have in our neighborhood sucks the modem we have doesn't work so well with our wireless modem...we got forced onto digital a while ago when a service tech showed up to "help" and then cut out a bunch of channels without telling us.

I am interested in good technology but unwilling to be in any kind of silly race about it (my sony component stereo circa 1980s still puts out better sound than anything I've seen currently) our TVs buzz badly with the digital equipment and we have too many "whoops, that will take a minute" messages pop up when we watch the tv.

our next tv room will likely have a reasonably newer tv and home theater but it will be hooked to a computer over some version of internet service and set up for great sound via home theater but not wasting money with the comcast baloney. Really they suck - and mean suck you dry. All with theoretically wonderful technology is baloney. really, what does the tv really matter?