COMCAST DROPS FOX NEWS FROM BASIC CABLE

Stonenots

[Stonenots]

Comcast changes channel line-up March 1.

[leadpenny]

It won't be back. Stonenots was probably one of those who complained about FOX being on it's cable system.

I have Comcast and am close to the tipping point that has me telling them to shove it.

I want a sytem that gives me nothing but MSNBC and C-SPAN 1 and 2. In fact, I don't think there should be any "packaging." I should be able to pick and choose what I want and pay for it accordingly. Stations like CNN, BET, and MTV, to name just three, would die.

[Neets]

I know...another "One-post Wonder"...It gets tiresome being lecutured to about these poopers...there have been dozens of them the past few months...

I resent having to pay upwards of $50+ for TV when most of the time you are stuck watching infomercials ...I should have to agree to accept CNN when all I want is FOX or C-SPAN.

[leadpenny]

They must have heard me talking bad about them. My cable just went out. They have 13 minutes until Imus.

OK, now they're back.

[Fledermaus]

Anyone with full cable and/or basic satellite is going to pay $28-45 a month.

I pay $12.50 for "basic" cable of which I have no clue as to what it offers. And I pay another $30 for "enhanced cable".

All I know is I pay $42.50 a month for all the channels I get and that includes a free HBO and Showtime channel. Sounds fair enough. I know I'd spend as much or more with a satellite that I can't install anyway (apartment facing the wrong way) and I use the cable modem.

[FourtySeven]

I'm sorry it appears you were right. I was 100% wrong. Please accept my apology.

[FourtySeven]

Did you happen to ask them if they're going to remove all the news channels from their lineup, or just FoxNews?

[IYAS9YAS]

And once you've had TIVO, you will never go back.

As you watch TIVO, TIVO watches you...

As does the computer network it's tied to.

Muahahaha! Muahahaha! Muahahahaha!

[IYAS9YAS]

Is that 49.95 a month just for internet access??? Or does that include some cable tv as well? That's a lot of money.

[Mannaggia l'America]

Is that 49.95 a month just for internet access??? Or does that include some cable tv as well? That's a lot of money.

No, that's just Internet. The cable TV is additional. Actually, it's $42.95 - I was wrong in my initial post.

It's worth it to me. I have a part-time home based business and I need Internet access for it. Even without that, I'd keep it. The speed is awesome and the only alternative is dial-up hell at a maximum of 21.6Kbps.

[IYAS9YAS]

Yeah, true. I was looking at Comcast (moving to NH in a few months) and to get HSI and Expanded Basic (no premium channels) would be about 90 bucks plus taxes. Right now we're paying Dish about 55 bucks (two receivers and Top 100) and have no internet. To get DSL we'd have to get a phone line (use only cells now) so that's 30 bucks plus the DSL access of about 40/45, so it's a trade off I guess.

[Mannaggia l'America]

That's what my bill is right now - $90.70 per month for Comcast TV+Internet.

I have all channels they offer on their extended basic package (no pay channels, like HBO or Showtime, but I get Fox News, HGTV, Disney, etc.).

I'm still renting the cable modem for $3/mo., which I need to address at some point. I rented it because I knew I was the first one in my cluster of homes to get a cable modem and I thought there might be problems and I didn't want them blaming a third-party cable modem. And I was right - there were problems initially. It didn't work at all. They couldn't blame the modem becase it was theirs, so they blamed my wiring. They came out and ran a home run back to where it came in the house and it still didn't work. They tracked it down to a problem at a pole. It took about a week to get it resolved initially, but since then, it's been flawless for over 2 years.

I'd like to get Digital Cable for the inDemand features, but I don't like the idea of the set top box.

[IYAS9YAS]

Question, with all your stuff, do you have to have a landline for the digital cable to hook in to? I got rid of mine and it was a pain in the butt with satellite to not have it. Couldn't order pay-per-view or get updates. Didn't really want pay-per-view as we often get rental incentives from the local stores that offer 3 for $0.99/each for 5 days on new releases (DVD and VHS).

[nickcarraway]

You can now get broadband from the sattelite, then you can give up your DSL and cable. I don't know every company that has it, but Direct TV definitely does. Click Here

[Defiant]

I'm aware of that. Luckily, I don't watch porn or anything that I care if someone knew. I doubt anyone will give me a hard time about the Simpsons or Discovery Channel. But for those of you who do watch questionable material, and don't want anyone to have a database showing that you do, I agree--don't use TIVO. For the rest of us, it is fantabulous. Muahaahaa, muaahaahaa back at'cha.

[Mannaggia l'America]

Question, with all your stuff, do you have to have a landline for the digital cable to hook in to?

I don't have Digital Cable - that's an option with Comcast. You get some extra channels (and a lot of music only channels) and the inDemand feature, but you don't need Digital Cable to use Comcast Internet.

By landline, do you mean a phone line? As far as I know, you do not need that with Comcast Digital Cable - everything is done through the set top box using the remote control.

Before Digital Cable, you did need a phone line to order pay-per-view movies, but that's when cable was one-way.

[Mannaggia l'America]

You can now get broadband from the sattelite, then you can give up your DSL and cable.

I looked into the sattelite thing before, when all I could get was dial-up. (I don't want to give up my cable.)

It's not better than DSL or cable, at least not for what I need. The max you can get out of DirectTV is 500Kbps and that's not guaranteed (I'm getting almost 3 Mpbs from cable). Then there were issues of their "fair access policy" or something like that, where they monitored your usage and lowered your speed if you used too much bandwidth, and a one-year commitment.

There's also a latency issue with satellite (time for the packet to go up to the satellite and back down) that would kill me on some of the things I need to do, like running VNC, PC Anywhere, Remote Desktop, and telnet between other system.

But it's not a bad option if you can't get DSL or cable. At least they eliminated the need for the modem for the upstream data.

[tgslTakoma]

Did you happen to ask them if they're going to remove all the news channels from their lineup, or just FoxNews?

Have you been talking to Kristinn? That's the same thing he asked me. No, I didn't think to ask them that. I will in the next day or two, as soon as I get a free bit of time at work. It would look really bad for them if they dropped Fox from Basic but kept CNN and MSNBC, wouldn't it? Please remind me in a couple of days, in case I forget to call them. I always write little "things to do" notes to myself... and then I promptly misplace them. It amuses my kids.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

It's true. I saw it in a news article.

[leadpenny]

Yeah, I made further comments starting at 178.

IIRC, you live up that way. Do you have COMCAST cable?

[IYAS9YAS]

Thanks!