WholeHome

If it has not hit your area yet, it will, and soon. Change is part of life. Before I tear into them, let me say I am a loyal Comcast customer and a huge fan. BUT the latest digital move is a crock and makes me want to rethink my whole relationship with them. i.e. This SUCKS.

Marketing at cable and satellite companies is now completely out of hand – you get about the same thing with any of them yet they insist on trying to compete with each other by making my life harder. The ONE distinguishing characteristic of cable (not having to have a set top box under every TV) is now gone. Just to keep what I have I now must pay Comcast MORE for renting a new cable box for every TV. Really?

Lets examine:

• Do I really need them to “add more bandwidth” so I can get another hundred worthless cable channels? NO
• Does my cable bill go up? YES
• Do people really like having extended basic cable service directly to every TV? YES
• And what did they replace my beloved SciFi channel with ?? You guessed it – QVC – again really?
• BOCS really does make it all better – yeah, I’m shameless, but it is exactly the feedback I’m getting from new customers!

Want more information – I just published a new page describing the whole conversion, what you have to do to get ready, and how to cope.

I also previously did a little presentation on why digital gives you more channels with some cool graphics to make the technology come to life.

Couple of quick comments on the “DTA” (the new little cable box) Comcast wants you to put on every TV:

1. It does NOT have a guide – you get channel up/dn and a very basic Comcast remote.
2. ONLY the new remote works with it – you need to reprogram any universal remote you have – see my XMP posts for more information
3. It does NOT have power off pass through – so if you want analog cable and/or BOCS with it you MUST use the RCA jacks.

So – Comcast… you suck, but like everything else, we Americans have a short memory. We will adapt and forgive you before our morning coffee. sigh…

DF

Lots of new boxes out there including the Cisco PNG200 (which I’m afraid I slammed a bit a couple posts back) that are using the new XMP protocol – INCLUDING some of the new Motorola HD boxes that Comcast is handing out. In the wake of the “silent launch” a couple of things everyone really should be aware of.

1) XMP is SUPER tight on timing – Uh, but who cares?? – ANYONE who uses a universal remote because most off the shelf equipment is not capable of reading and reproducing those codes. Normal learning remotes reproduce within about 2-5% tolerance. It takes at least 1% to make XMP work. (again, in my humble opinion, stupid on the part of the manufacturer).

2) Two-Way protocols are a nice idea, with higher end remotes, you could get show or song info on your remote, you could get new IR codes loaded into your remote and other cool whiz-bang ideas but think about that for a second. You are sitting on the couch and want to change the channel – you pick up the remote and briefly point it at the TV, sometimes not even long enough for the TV to see the code thrown at it and you have to try again. Now consider that to get any kind of meaningful data you would have to consciously point the remote at your set top box for long periods of time to get data back 10, 20, 30 seconds or more.. Remeber the old “loading the program on your apple or TI home computer from casette tape?” Yeah I think you get my point.

3) Good news – Motorola figured out how bad this would all be and made their box “dual code capable” – at least the one I got will process both the new XMP protocol (the grey Comcast remotes) as well as the traditional learnable codes (Silver Comcast remotes). BIG thank-you to Mot.

Looking for thoughts and opinions on XMP and how it applies to how you use home entertainment. Anyone want to share?