Wednesday - August 19, 2009

a post while on hold

Gee, aren’t web browsers with tabs awesome? They let me write a post while I am on “hold” in a chat session with the cable company on another tab.

They are changing the cable service, again. Now they’re going to an all digital signal, so I have to get several Digital To Analog converters. What a pain.

What makes it painful is that we have a complex TV setup here, with a home theater rig, a DVR, and an SVHS recorder. I’ve got a cable box, but we don’t use it, since all it does is decode the premium channels that I don’t subscribe to. But it came with the package, so it needs to be there.

My issue is that the new “DTA” converter requires us to use it’s remote control to change channels. No, that’s not going to work. The DVR needs a full bandwidth signal, so that it can a) pickup the useful but annoying TV Guide channel for scheduling, and b) select the channels it needs to record the shows we’ve got programmed. Similar deal for the SVHS.

And the chat room guy can’t tell me if their DTA can do this. Heck, he’s telling me that the new box will convert the analog signal to digital, which is the exact opposite of what the device does. Oy!

Oh, and my cable bill is all screwed up again. My wife writes the checks to them, so we’re a little behind in the payments. But when that happens, a glitch in their software “unpackages” our services, and bills us individually for all of them. Which sucks, and has given great grief over the years.  It gets even worse too; the last time it happened, the cable company went back and reran our bills for the better part of a year, calculated that we owed them over $700, then shut off our service because we were so much in arrears. After a really long and angry phone session it turned out they were wrong, and they actually owed us $125. But they still haven’t fixed the software bug. And now she’s a month and a half behind with the check again, and the bill has gone to heck.

Arrggh. Ain’t computers wonderful?



Update: Perseverance pays off! This only took a total of 4 and a half hours, both online and on the phone. But I got what I wanted.

Bill before: $305.16

Bill after: $0.00

Plus I got my services rebundled, and got a one year extension on the package (TV & phone & 16Mbs internet for $99.99/mo), and got a free upgrade to 22Mbs internet in October when they get the new modems in. Plus a $16 credit on my next bill. And they’re going to mail me one of those DTA things, which I can install.

I was in a chat room session with 2 employees. Then I was on the phone with 4 employees, finally winding up with the guy in Customer Retention.


The only bad news is that the DTA is a single channel output device, and may not work with the Infrared channel changer device that came with my DVR. Their technician read to me from a service note that says “nobody knows if this works with TiVo or similar devices”. So I may be stuck on one channel, which is really going to screw up recording my shows. But that’s what they’re offering, so I’m stuck with it.



Someday this TV is going to die. I’ve had it for 10 years, and it works just fine. But it won’t last forever. At that point I’ll have to switch to an HD flatscreen, and I’m hoping that by then a) the prices will have come down a whole lot more, let’s call it $700 for a 42” set, and b) I’ll have that much money to spare. And maybe by then the cable company will have brought their “digital solutions” up to modern specs, so I won’t have to use this 1975-ish solution they’re offering. I mean, come on: the first instruction for installing the DTA is “set your television to channel 3”, like we used to have to do with VCRs. Dinosaur!!

Posted by Drew458     on 08/19/2009 at 09:44 AM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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