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FU Comcast price increase - I'm Cuttin the Cable

If I could get live sports I'd do it too. There is just no way I can live my life without college football in the fall...
 
frowertr said:
If I could get live sports I'd do it too. There is just no way I can live my life without college football in the fall...
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If your ISP supports ESPN3, that has A TON of college football games every Saturday. I don't follow college football myself so I'm not aware of location or conference-specific blackouts.
 
I'm tempted to also, but I'm currently spending $20 for basic (channels 2-23), but their filter lets in quite a few other channels (FX, History, VH1, ...) and I get my basic stuff crystal clear. However I'm still tempted because 20 is still 20 back in my pocket and I am using XBMC to get a lot of content.

My cable provider (Cox) has access to Espn3 with the internet package which right now gives access to college basketball, I wonder if they do the same for college football (didn't check during the season).
 
I just bought the new components for a new htpc, with a HDHomerun Prime, and was going to get the cable card from Comcast when I looked at my account and realized the last time they raised rates I was so disgusted with them and I canceled the extended TV package. It was one of those TV + Internet @ $50 for one year, then they billed me around $140 for the next 8 or so months and I didnt realize it. So instead of just getting internet the Comcast gal made it so that I could get Blast! plus, which has limited basic for $40 a month for a year, but if I changed it I'd have to pay retroactively or some shit. $40 was cheaper than the $60-70 for Internet alone, and at the time it was a good deal. So now I'm in limbo. I can probably work it so that I just re-up for another year or something. But anyways, dont make decisions in disgust or it might come back to haunt you.
 
Yeah... Comcast is pissing me off. At this point, I'm paying $95 for little more than basic digital cable, thanks to all of the extra charges for their HD cable box and DVR hardware.

Sadly, I live in a condo and they make you jump through approval hoops to get a satellite dish installed. Man, I hate HOA's.
 
looking to cut cable this year myself. waiting on the new apple TV and if it looks good i'll probably dump my DVR as a first step. and sometime around september look into dumping cable completely.
 
Well got it working for about 12 channels over the air - good enough for me.

Never heard of "Cool TV" before but first thing I saw was an old Neil young concert
Then they started playing an old Soul Train rerun 🙂
 
vtx1300 said:
Never heard of "Cool TV" before but first thing I saw was an old Neil young concert
Then they started playing an old Soul Train rerun 🙂
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I had never heard of it either until a couple months ago. They seem to play tons of music videos, something MTV hasn't done in ages 😉
 
ESPN3 is awesome but they don't have the SEC games shown on CBS, which as we all know will always have some good ones every year. They also won't have some other big games on various other networks. I'm using my parents info to use it though because if you have ESPN3, you have ESPN, and therefore cable and a TV to watch all the games.

That said, I get cable for the ~four months of CFB in the fall and stop after that since most bowl games are viewable online.
 
I canceled a few weeks ago when I got the notice for an increase. I only had cable internet, but it was up to 63 dollars a month just for 15mbps service. I took the speed hit and went 6mbps DSL for only 19.99 a month. Actually my ping is better, so online gaming is better. It's just downloading steam stuff that take a bit longer now.

Screw comcast.
 
Subyman said:
I canceled a few weeks ago when I got the notice for an increase. I only had cable internet, but it was up to 63 dollars a month just for 15mbps service. I took the speed hit and went 6mbps DSL for only 19.99 a month. Actually my ping is better, so online gaming is better. It's just downloading steam stuff that take a bit longer now.

Screw comcast.
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Just got back from Comcast. Turned in the phone and cable.
Ofc the bastrds had to raise my internet price up to that same $63 you were paying.

$19.99 sounds good - is it just for 6 months?
What does the price go up to after that?

Could you also run the speedtest results
http://www.speedtest.net/

PS: never realized how popular AT is - typed "FU comcast" into gooogle and this thread was the first hit already 😀
 
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I have checked into ESPN3 but they still don't offer enough. Besides it's like other online streaming - low quality and blocky at times. I'll probably never move to 100% streaming as I just can't stand the quality when compared to even the highly compressed signals coming from my cable provider.

As soon as Ceton comes out with the "Q" and Echo devices I'll be moving over to that from my SageTV setup. The "Q" is an M-card MCE device that has six Digital/HD tuners built in, a blu-ray player built in, and a 2TB HD built in. The Echo is an extender that interfaces with the "Q" so that you can connect every TV in your house to it.

Having a whole house DVR has saved me some cash from my provider (although really I had to pay for my HTPC server initially so I'm probably at break even by now) as I only rent 1 regular digital HD box with no DVR functionality as I rolled my own with my SageTV server. But as soon as the "Q" is here I can take back my HD cable box and just pay the M-card rental which is $4/month. I'll convert my SageTV into a unRaid box for my ripped Blu-ray movies and should be all set for the near future.

For all the functinality the wife and I get from my DVR system, we would be easily paying $200+/month from my cable provider. That is nuts!
 
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I've thought about it considering how expensive Bell TV is getting. However, online streaming in Canada hasn't matured to the point of being viable yet. Netflix has limited content and network sites often only offer up sub-HD video. It's more supplement than a replacement.
 
Hmm, I pay $31.50/ for all the channels, 2 DVRs, a standard def box and a CC for my HDHRPrime + Blast internet service 😉
 
frowertr said:
I have checked into ESPN3 but they still don't offer enough. Besides it's like other online streaming - low quality and blocky at times. I'll probably never move to 100% streaming as I just can't stand the quality when compared to even the highly compressed signals coming from my cable provider.
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You wouldn't be able too stream 100% anyway, all the major ISPs have bandwidth caps, exceed them for 2 straight months and they ban you. Comcasts cap is 250GB. If you only have one ISP in the area, then it's time to hit up those net cafes!

The ISPs dont actually have a bandwidth problem--if they did they wouldn't be offering 50MBps services!--they just want to kill Netflix and other streaming services and make you go pay $150 a month for cable TV.

I've personally already been warned for going over the cap already by Comcast, but with my download speeds I can hit the monthly cap in about 13 hours! ISPs HATE streaming with a passion.
 
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Astrallite said:
The ISPs dont actually have a bandwidth problem--if they did they wouldn't be offering 40MBps services!--they just want to kill Netflix and other streaming services and make you go pay $150 a month for cable TV.
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Sure you know what you're talking about? 4 x 1GBPS fibers supplying a node with 350+ devices on it can have traffic issues on occasion.
 
Plugers said:
Sure you know what you're talking about? 4 x 1GBPS fibers supplying a node with 350+ devices on it can have traffic issues on occasion.
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? So what are you implying? Comcast 40MBps is actually 0.2MBps? Do tell more.

I didn't realize when I was downloading a game on Steam at 4.5MB/s that nobody within a mile of me could use the internet.
 
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Depends on how saturated the node is. There is not the expectation when engineering a network to always be under 100% load.

There's only so much bandwith to work with. If everyone was streaming on a node at once the speeds may not be that great.

That being said, I have seen 250Mbps speedtests on a newly converted DOCSIS3.0 node with few 3.0 devices on it, but more commonly 50-80Mbps.

Now if a node feeding a neighborhood is only fed by 4 1Gbps fibers there is limited bandwith to go around depending on the time of the day and how many are streaming.

Now there are 10Gbps XFP ports, but the supporting equipment is expensive and all the upstream equipment would need to be upgraded also.
 
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Astrallite said:
I didn't realize when I was downloading a game on Steam at 4.5MB/s that nobody within a mile of me could use the internet.
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Also, when downloading from Steam, Comcast isn't the only network you are passing through.

Do a tracert to one of Steams servers. I guarantee you will be out of the Comcast network within 4-6 hops (and ping times usually increase significantly after that) and Steam may limit per connection speeds through QoS.
 
I think we had this discussion once and streaming does not really take that much bandwidth. If they can stick 120 channels of TV through the Cable for TV then it must not be taking up too much bandwidth. Might be more traffic on the left and right coasts.

There is more bandwidth on the downstream because that is how Cable is designed. They shove a whole lot of channels through different frequencies.
 
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I get basic cable + HBO for "free" with my apartment, and I just leave it at that. Although, I would like to switch to a HD box, but I don't think that's possible without an actual HD package. A large HDTV with awful looking SD content on it just makes me cringe. I do use an OTA antenna for the local channels.

I actually spent awhile fighting with my receiver just getting the cable box to work. There's some idiotic bug with it where I have to hit "Select Source" prior to hitting "Menu" or else the menu will not appear. It got bad enough that I just used my tablet to access the settings through the web where I finally found that the input I needed was being removed.

I think my Internet is only $53 for their 20Mbps package. The speeds may be decent with Comcast, but the overall service is rather sub par. It isn't uncommon to just have my connection randomly drop for a few minutes or simply stop sending data. It resumes a minute or two later. I'm actually worried that this is going to kill my modem. I have a Motorola Surfboard DOCSIS 3 modem (6121) and it seems to get really warm when it constantly tries to connect. At one point, I swear I could smell what reminded me of burnt plastic.
 
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piasabird said:
I think we had this discussion once and streaming does not really take that much bandwidth. If they can stick 120 channels of TV through the Cable for TV then it must not be taking up too much bandwidth. Might be more traffic on the left and right coasts.

There is more bandwidth on the downstream because that is how Cable is designed. They shove a whole lot of channels through different frequencies.
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They could, that is why most carriers are moving toward IP TV. Currently, in the USA, a single carrier frequency is 6mhz wide (8 in Europe) . On a 256QAM digital carrier (1 analog carrier width) you have a maximum bandwidth on 42Mbps. Docsis3 lets you bond them for more throughput, but is more susceptible to noise. You still need the supporting equipment upstream though as analog video modulator doesn't support data transfer.

4 bonded channels =168(ish, actually a little mer than that)Mbps Max under lab conditions.4
 
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