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yet another Microsoft blogger

# Monday, February 06, 2006

Sticking it to the man (aka Comcast)

In this case, "the man" is Comcast. I am now on Standard Cable. No longer can I stand their horrible DVR box which can barely record lo-def TV. For the past 2 months my box has been recording shows and every 1-2 minutes inserting audio and video drop-outs and pops. I have replaced the box once, which was very painful to set up all my recordings again, and have had a service guy come out and replace almost all the wiring in my apartment saying my problems were signal related. Something is really broken with Comcast as they wanted to send me a guy again with another replacement box... do they hope if they do this enough times the problems will magically fix themselves? This is a software, and it sucks big time...

...the Motorola box with the TV Guide software sucks worse than any product on the planet. I'd rather have lo-def TV then crappy, choppy time-shifted HDTV. And I sure as hell am not going to pay $95 for an unfinished product... I will happily wait till the end of the year when I can get a Vista Media Center with CableCard support. In the mean time I may try and see if I can get OTA HTDV in my MCE box.

I've also managed to ween myself to only 1 hour of TV a day, which made this decision much easier. That extra savings (my new bill is $50) will go to a Cingular Wireless Broadband connection for my laptop.

Hmmm, this is a really lame way of sticking it to the man. I should just get rid of them completley. Where is my IPTV?

 

Monday, February 06, 2006 8:28:23 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)
Get DirecTV and its DVR! They recently dropped TiVo, but it's still supported if you can find a retailer that has it in stock. And their new DirecTV-branded DVR is nice too. Dual tuners, etc. Don't put up Comcast!
Tuesday, February 07, 2006 1:00:09 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)
I've heard similar stories from others with the Comcast DVR. Sorry to hear about your problems though.

On a related note, I love my ReplayTVs! 3 of them...1 for each TV in the house. :) Unfortunately they stopped producing them. Once they go to the big TV room in the sky I'll probably switch over to a Media PC in my server closet with extenders at each TV.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006 1:58:44 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)
I dunno... I've had the dual tuner HD box (Motorola 6412 -- newer software than the tv guide crap) for almost a year now... and other than some lockups (which my Tivo definitely had) and slowness with 40+ "season passes," I've not had too much trouble.

I did have to install a signal booster/splitter though to get rid of the freezes and stuff on the HD side... The new series III box in my media room is faster and has better SD quality as well...

I am in Dallas though, so that might make a difference? (and I can download from windowsupdate at 800kb/s+ as well with my cable modem, so I'm pretty happy!)
Sean
Tuesday, February 07, 2006 2:21:37 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)
Cut TV entirely, you won't miss it.

The HSDPA (3G) Cingular card is great, I love it.

I'd like to hear more about your fuji P7. I very nearly bought one but the new SZ series from Sony (dual core, nVidia graphics, 3.7 lbs, LED screen, 7 hrs) sounds like a big improvement. I know the P7 is smaller and I don't like the 'rootkit' bizness + crappy preinstalls... but it's be nice to have a laptop that performs well.

Anyway, the questions are:
- When does the P7 bog down? In the Fry's demo model of the 7010 it was slow with high-bandwith video, for example. Where do you see it not performing as well? (I'm a dev too, so chances are we have similar styles).
- Do you run any games at all? WoW is my main question. I'm guessing you haven't tried Vista either...?
- What was your bad experience with Sony ordering? I can't follow the links to your VAIO odyssey.
- How much memory? Is the 4200rpm drive noticeably slow?
JD
Tuesday, February 07, 2006 6:35:12 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)
"I dunno... I've had the dual tuner HD box (Motorola 6412 -- newer software than the tv guide crap) for almost a year now... and other than some lockups (which my Tivo definitely had) and slowness with 40+ "season passes," I've not had too much trouble."

I hate my 6412, it's really terribly designed! Just read stuff like http://mypvrsucks.blogspot.com/ to get an idea of what's wrong with the box. I don't watch that much TV, so I'm putting up with it patiently! :)
Wednesday, February 08, 2006 6:50:16 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)
JD-

1) I have yet to see it bog down. It's a completley different laptop than the 7010, for example mine has DDR2 memory and a faster bus
2) Never run a game, no time for that. Visual Studio runs great
3) Sony is slooooow at shipping and very expensive
4) I have 1 GB. Laptop came with 512 and I got another 512 for cheap
5) not at all.
Omar Shahine
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