Digital Cable Newbie
"Nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there." Everytime I visited a friend or relative with digital cable, I always thought "how cool". Yeah, so I have digital cable now, I didn't choose to get it, it's sort of just there, so I sort of use it. And it's somewhat of a disappointment. Yeah, not as nice as the brochure.
Biggest pain: It effectively killed my urge to channel surf. You know when there isn't anything on, but you just want to flip? Now it takes like 2 seconds for the image to display and for the "information" to show. And worse, sometimes the channel doesn't update on the screen, so it jumps like 2 or 3 channels. A co-worker recommended I start flipping through the "tv guide" menu and read the words. Unfortunately, its not quite the same.
The On Demand Movies feature is very disappointing. The free movies are either all black and white or they are those movies that no one really wanted to watch. Chances are if it's good, I have already seen it. So the new movies are all $3.99 - but in 10 minutes I can rent the DVD for $3.00 in wide screen and 5.1 surround sound. Worse yet, the fast forward and rewind are incredibly non-responsive. And to add insult to injury the sound sometimes "blips" and on occasion there is some digitization or loss of frames.
So you pay more for a premium service right? The TV channel guide actually has ads!!! It shows 3 channels and their schedules and in the forth row is a little banner for another TV show or movie. And I watched a (free) On Demand horror movie and every 30 minutes at the bottom flashed an advertisement for Fear.net. Not small - taking up a quarter of the screen.
So everyone who has had digital service probably already knows this, but to me I'm shocked how pathetic it all is. I remember reading in the early 90's how cool this technology would be, unfortunately it has quite a ways to go.
Posted in: Television, Technology,
1 Comments:
Dave Reed on March 14, 2007 ~ 11:11 AM
And I thought I was the only one annoyed by all of that. Recently, the TV Gude channel had some idiotic hollywood special featuring Joan Rivers. The scrolling guide was so small I couldn't read it. They actually had an email address where you could comment on the "new format" - I blasted them with both barrels but I doubt it did any good.
Pop-up onscreen ads during a program is really obnoxious. I hate TV and everyone on or behind it. To add insult to injury, when I try to watch what passes as news, they bring on some hollywood celebrity to offer opinion on foreign policy, healthcare, and you name it. Every TV program is an ad in disguise, whether it's for a political message, movie, or prescription drugs.
I thought Youtube was cool at first, then idiots spammed it with clips from TV shows. I suspect they were agents of the networks, who now want to extort licensing fees from Google for displaying their crappy "protected content". I get on the PC to get away from their content, and it's turned into a spammers flea market full of nigerian hucksters. I don't even care when I get a "missing plugins" message anymore, I thank God.