Apparently Comcast has changed all my channels around, and I can not get MSNBC in my home office anymore (I don’t have a HD box on that tv). Weird, although maybe a blessing in disguise.
On the upside, I do appear to have a bunch of new HD channels on the living room set. Sadly, one of them has Pat Robinson on it, but I think I remember how to block channels.
cleek
in HD, you can actually see the demons that control him, working just beneath the skin.
The Earth-Bound Misfit
There was a story in the local fishwrapper the other day which reported that ComBastards is shifting a lot of the cable channels to HD, just because they can.
John Cole
Well, HD is the future. And it looks so damned good.
Sarah
According to the radio show I listen to, it’s been moved to Siberia somewhere up in the 100’s.
dave
hate to thread jack, but this is too good not to share.
best political campaign donation pitch, ever?
from a kansas state rep candidate!?!?
seantevis.com/kansas/3000/running-for-office-xkcd-style/?helphim
Catpain Haddock
I don’t know about that. Some (most?) channels look like they just shrunk the picture — compressed it somehow, rather than made it true HD.
Our local morning news show, on the other hand, is the most vivid HD broadcast I’ve ever seen. Though, not sure why lottery updates and weather need to be that clear.
Mary
I cut back to basic cable a month ago, which means I get CBC Newsworld and the local all-news channel, but no CNN. Somehow, life goes on without Lou Dobbs.
But I’m getting MSNBC and a pile of other channels free for the summer and — wow. I never realized what utter, cheap shit MSNBC was. Apart from Countdown and,in a car accident kind of way, Hardball, The Verdict and Morning Joe, they don’t spend any real money on these shows. Most of the programming on evenings and weekends are a series of schlocky true life crime documentaries. It looks so freaking bargain basement.
PaulW
This may be a good time to drop cable altogether and take the more enlightened route of getting all your news from the blogs.
(long pause)
May wanna keep that subscription to the St. Pete Times going.
Davebo
Comcast bites.
I’m actually taking back my 2 Comcast DVR’s today. I went Dish.
Gabrielle Reynolds
Same thing happened to me, no Morning Joe on the bedroom TV yesterday. I am NOT buying another box just for that that. I think this whole digital thing is just another way to line Comcast’s pockets, which I refuse to do any more than I already am. I cut back on some services too. Assholes.
Jake
There was something on Kos the other day suggesting ComCast was dropping MSNBC altogether, but keeping FoxNews.
THOSE BASTARDS
dave
Comcast is something close to pure evil, agreed.
But it is extremely unlikely they are dumping msnbc.
I am looking forward to switching to Verizon FIOS tv very soon.
I’ll take Verizon’s incompetence over Comcast’s contempt, and save a few bucks in the process.
Zach
If only Comcast in Baltimore would decide to permute their channels and give me some more unencrypted HD cable on the $10/month “roulette plan” … I think that’s worth the couple minutes it takes to do another channel scan, right?
Jake
In other news, the Wall Street Journal can suck it. Obama raised $52M in June, as opposed to the $30M the WSJ had “reported”. Fucking hacks.
Wyrm
Verizon FIOS is awesome!! (Of course, it will take you a couple of days to get it installed because they always noshow their first appointment. I STRONGLY recommend you get a morning appointment).
RSA
One of our local news stations is always advertising that their broadcast is in HD. Shortly after getting a new TV, I tuned in early one morning to see a reporter standing alone in the near-dark in front of a factory that hadn’t yet opened for the day, talking about something that had happened there the day before. In HD, wow!
Rick
I have suckcast and they sent a letter saying they were moving MSNBC to digital and I need a digital box to get it. My bills gone up $5 this year and I get less channels!Screw them.
Dreggas
you just need digital cable to get MSNBC again, there was a diary on this over at the GOS. You need a digital box, not HD.
Bob In Pacifica
I had a Comcast moment last week. We’d lost our internet for about twelve hours and when it came back on I’d mentioned it in my blog. The next day I get a phone call on the machine from Comcast explaining that they read my blog and were wanting to know if I was still having problems.
Now, the phone isn’t even in my name. The Comcast detectives must have scanned the net the for negative commentary, found my blog, extracted my email address, went into their files and matched my email address to my girlfriend’s phone number. That or the NSA called Comcast to complain that they couldn’t monitor my porn-watching with the net down.
We haven’t made the leap to HD, and considering the degradation of our personal economy around here, it’s not likely any time soon. So any attempt to squeeze out regular channels to force people to buy HD may bring negative results to the great corporate entity.
In fact, I suspect similar decisions are being made all over the country. New clothes for school this fall? Not if you haven’t grown out of the old ones. New car? Not until we can afford a Prius, and park the F-250 on the street. The only vacations around here are the tourists coming TO the U.S. People aren’t even visiting Tijuana for the day anymore (well, there’s also all that drug gang gunplay down there). The economy is screwed. There’s no sweat left for the corporations to wring out of the towel in America’s corner of the ring.
God, I can’t imagine investing a couple of thousand bucks just to focus in on Pat Robertson’s seething pores. And where are they hiding Survivorman and Bear Grylls these days? These men have skills we need. Someday soon we’ll all be biting the heads off snakes and making beds of grass and hiding from the bears.
Big E
Comcast blows……. glad I got rid of them, and, that there was actually another provider to go to….. in my case Verizon….. much better signal and picture….fast i-net…..better support.
felt like I had escaped from the FARC when I switched…..
zoe from pittsburgh
The whole thing is actually more sinister than that.
I live in the same comcast coverage area– all of the news channels are in a row in the 30s. Well, except for MSNBC. That is now all by itself at 183. It’s like they sent it to siberia.
My housemate was livid since it just makes no sense. He did a little research and found out that Comcast did the exact same thing in Oregon and Atlanta– they reshuffled all their channels and put MSNBC in a place where people have to have a better service package to get it AND then have to really go looking for it. I don’t understand why MSNBC isn’t going bonkers over such a clearly discriminatory practice.
It’s an election year. MSNBC has the loudest, angriest liberal on every night– Keith Olbermann– as well as frequent visits from the lovely Rachel Maddow. It just can’t be a coincidence. Imagine if they had done this to FauxNews.
I’m writing Comcast a letter and letting them know exactly why we’re switching to Verizon fios.
Original Lee
Verizon FiOS is terrific. The only thing they’ve done lately to annoy me is to drop a voicemail into my inbox about once a week to remind me that I need a digital box. We actually have a digital box, but it’s not the one we ordered months and months ago. That digital box is still on backorder, and we have no idea when we’re supposed to get it. Verizon customer support is very nice about it when I call to check on our new box, though, which is already an improvement over ComNasty.
John Cole
I honestly do not know what is going on with my service. CNN is 32, fox 33, MSNBC 266.
And the HD stuff is all over the place. 180-198 is HD, with CNN HD at 197, then you have 701-780’s with HD channels all over the place, although some of the new channels claim to be HD but are not.
Then in the middle ranges you have music channels and on demand shit, and who knows what else. You also have this range of channels you might watch once a year for five minutes that are from like channel 60 to channel 150.
There just seems to be no organizing principle whatsoever. If you watch more than a few channels, you literally need an eiditic memory to remember what the channels are, it is so unorganized.
Joshua Norton
Comcast sucks big time. They’ve got a monopoly contract on cable in San Francisco and they don’t give a rat’s ass about anything. My bill increases every month. I’d try DISH, but having a big old satellite dish hanging off my balcony absolutely reeks “trailer park”. And sometimes it gets so windy up here on Twin Peaks that they get pretty much banged up.
I don’t know if you have the same kind of box I do, but it has an option to set up a smaller favorites menu so you don’t have to scroll through 300 channels of drek to get to the channels you want to watch.
Bulworth
Pat Robinson?
I think you mean Pat Robertson.
Kevin
I have Comcast, and for me, the news channels are
56 – CNN
57 – Headline News
58 – CNBC
59 – Fox News
60 – MSNBC
dan robinson
John says:
BA says:
Sloegin
Probably just the channels tailoring what offering they give to customers per local viewer analysis and ratings, rather than any right-wing collusion or cunning plan. I get MSNBC in my ‘standard’ offerings in Western WA, but only FOX and no MSNBC for my ‘standard’ cable Mom in Eastern WA.
Tho… if there were any collusion to keep teh libruls off the standard cable channels, the cable clowns should get burned.
Joshua Norton
Fox gets thrown into every package because they undercut what every other channel charges the cable provider to be included. The cable companies get to charge the same for all channels, so they make more of a profit off the Fox stations.
Big E
re::
Bob, you found me out !
I must openly confess to all that I have guilty pleasure watching those guys…
Delia
In Eugene last year Comcast up and moved MSNBC from the basic cable lineup to the second level without telling anyone. They’re the only cable provider in town, and if you live in the hills and the trees, like I do, satellite providers are iffy. I have the second level, so I still get it, but I don’t have HD, and I don’t have any pay channels. And I won’t be getting them. So I’ll be stuck with this comcastic crap until I decide food’s just too expensive to watch TV anymore.
tom.a
That happened to us awhile ago, they moved all their digital only channels up out of the broadcast zone. If you have TiVo and they’re networked you can transfer from one to the other, that’s how I watch Olbermann every day, transfer it from the living room TV (full digital, HD, etc.) to the office TV (basic cable only). Can’t watch live but delayed an hour you get to skip all the commercials.
Bob In Pacifica
Big E: I’m having trouble with the other reality stuff. I was hooked into the crab guys for a few episodes but now I don’t care so much. I can barely afford king crab claws anyway. There’s the guys who drive trucks on ice, the guys who cut down trees. They just don’t interest me. Even if I know that Bear Grylls is sneaking off after shooting every night to sip brandy next to the fireplace in some bed and breakfast I still like seeing him stick his head inside of a dead sheep to keep himself warm.
As it is, the women of the house have taken over the tube for the “America’s Top Dancer” thingie, so if I need something else I go upstairs to my man cave and watch “Law & Order” reruns.
Mike
Do you mean Jackie Robertson, the baseball player?