Frustration with Cable Companies

Hi everybody!

Well, yesterday I moved in to my new house! I finally got everything set –up and ready to go late last night. Unfortunately, I had to give up DirecTV for my new home due to a community policy that does not allow satellite dishes or large antenna. It’s a pretty strange policy, but my wife loved the house and I figured I could go ahead and get cable. Boy am I disappointed.

I know many of you probably share my frustrations with the cable companies, but I just wanted to share my story with you all. Many cities have a couple different cable providers in the area to choose from such as Cox or Time Warner. Well, I’m not nearly as lucky as those people. My city only has 1 cable provider to choose from, and it’s not even one that I’ve ever heard of before now. It is Mediacom. These guys are a serious downgrade from DirecTV in both quantity of channels, and quality of the service, picture and price.

My first problem was immediate. When I called for service, I asked for a HD box and a HD DVR box, as I have 2 HDTV’s. I wanted the HD DVR for my main TV for my entertainment center and the HD box for my other HDTV, which is actually used as a computer monitor, and video game TV as well as the bedroom TV. Well, they of course only arrived with the HD DVR and no HD box for the second TV. The cable guy immediately tried to convince me that I could just run the cable to the TV for time being. Well, the second TV is really a HD computer monitor, so it has no built in tuner. His solution was to hook up the TV with the HD DVR and simply run the cable straight to the main TV until he returned with another box (which of course he did not do). Needless to say, the picture quality is exactly what you would expect for the cable to run straight to it, but the real problem is this method only gives you 20 channels on that TV without any real channels (such as SCI-FI, TNT, TBS, or even ESPN).

My second problem, although it was expected is the channel line-up and HD line-up. DirecTV has hundreds of regular channels and around 100 HD channels alone, and they include nearly every major network for $70 per month. Well, my total cable line-up is about 80 channels (standard definition of course) with the local’s channels, ESPN, and 1 HBO and 1 Showtime channel in HD for $60 per month. Needless to say, this was even hard for my wife to swallow!

I’ve read many, many posts and articles about how unhappy people are with their cable services. I now totally understand and feel your pain. Hopefully, you have Time Warner or some other major cable company though, as it seems the smaller companies really don’t care about what they offer. Now, I just need to find a way to somehow get past my communities rules so that I can get away from this cable dependency. Wish me luck and remember, it could be worse!