Cable service providers

[gmarshall]

With comcast you have to threaten to leave, and ask for their retention dept. They upped my bill about $40 per month when my old contract ended. I called and got $30 taken off. I'd switch but we really like the DVR service.

[cowpuc]

Seems how your still stuck on riding a 2nd Gen Raggy I am not sure this will help but, if one of my 1st Gen's had ever needed Cable Service I would have gotten ahold of @yamagrl and inquired about one of her Cable service plans. Personally, I keep a good battery installed - cable's and starter cleaned and havent needed the service yet (knock on my wooden beaner). Wanna hear something cool Raggy? Gonna be down after some medical snipping real soon. Got ambisious today, went out - hook the battery charger up on our new scoot, filled the bowls by toggling the kill switch, she rolled about 3 times and VAROOOM:missingtooth: = no strain on the cables what so ever:thumbsup:!!

Not sure where all the Internet type responses are coming from here but we been using Frontier DSL for a long time. 25 bucks/month for internet and 40 for "all we can eat" landline service (gotta have a hard line so those tuner guys can keep an eye on my tuner). Xfinity has been after us for ever to switch to High Speed voice over phone/internet with a beginning monthly charge of $50 plus "fee's". I would do it but, not including obvious reasons for needing a hard line, we love our phone guys service - always happy to help with issues even if its something inside the house at no xtra charge and I just dont see how some person in India or Istanbul or Egypt could afford to come here and figure out what wires I crossed for 50 bucks a month

[snyper316]

I miss DSL..... At least my bills stayed consistent this creeping the bill up is disturbing.

 

Living life one curve after the other. Vroom scooting, thru the countryside.

[snyper316]

Sorry for going off subject earlier but I would shop around honestly, basically make them compete. I'm stuck with my cable because uverse don't offer TV on my area... I also don't have clear view for a dish but don't matter.

 

Living life one curve after the other. Vroom scooting, thru the countryside.

[Midrsv]

At my Florida place we have Comcast. I'm generally satisfied with them until you need to get them on the phone. The rates seem competitive with Time Warner. The internet is good. We have friends here with Uverse and their internet is much slower. It would not work for me.

 

Dennis

[snyper316]

At my Florida place we have Comcast. I'm generally satisfied with them until you need to get them on the phone. The rates seem competitive with Time Warner. The internet is good. We have friends here with Uverse and their internet is much slower. It would not work for me.

 

Dennis

 

You know I am starting to wonder, They shipped there call center to india or where ever... Wonder if shipped all there servers there too. They used to be so good here when they merged with southwestern bell, never a hold time always seemed to be americans answering there phones. There DSL was way faster then anything else around. Now everytime You call you get a foreigner who hardly speaks clear english, Then when you actually get service try to call with questions you get crazy hold times. They always wanted to walk me thru rebooting my router or modem....

[ragtop69gs]

Well... I'm taking the plunge into the unknown, comcast was unwilling to do much to retain us as customers so tomorrow AT&T is coming to do an installation of their services. PLEASE wish me luck on this 1 year experiment. After tomorrow I will all new email addresses, the hard part will be updating that info on many forums and web accounts

[cowpuc]

Wishing you all the very best Raggy on this upgrade!! Hopefully it works out! Please keep us updated as to how it goes brother!

 

PS - I been using "gmail" for my e-mail services for a good while now and have found that by doing so I dont have to switch email stuff around in the event of switching service providers. My current provider (Frontier) offers free email stuff but I avoid them just for that purpose.

[ragtop69gs]

Wishing you all the very best Raggy on this upgrade!! Hopefully it works out! Please keep us updated as to how it goes brother!

 

PS - I been using "gmail" for my e-mail services for a good while now and have found that by doing so I dont have to switch email stuff around in the event of switching service providers. My current provider (Frontier) offers free email stuff but I avoid them just for that purpose.

 

UPGRADE??? That remains to be seen! As long as it's not a leap backwards I'll do just fine. I have no desire to re-live those dial up days !

[Flyinfool]

Ya what Cowpuc said. do your email thru someone other than you internet provider. That makes it easy to switch providers at will and you never have to remember all of the places that you used that email. There are a lot of "FREE" email providers that are not associated with any internet service provider. The free ones will bombard you with advertising and the paid ones will not, choice is yours.

[BlueSky]

When I was working in Homestead, FL and the apt complex I was in switched to AT&T Uverse, I was happy with the service except I had to reboot the box about once a month. If I didn't I would lose the signal and be forced to reboot. I also tried Uverse here in NC but of course the speed wasn't what was advertised much like all of them. I switched back to Time Warner cable. I'm now probably overpaying at $189/month for cable and internet that includes speeds (up to?) of 300 down and 50 up and 5 premium tv channels. If my wife quits working, I may have to get a lesser service.

 

But all of the providers are trying to merge and get monopolies, so the price will go up.

[ragtop69gs]

When I was working in Homestead, FL and the apt complex I was in switched to AT&T Uverse, I was happy with the service except I had to reboot the box about once a month. If I didn't I would lose the signal and be forced to reboot. I also tried Uverse here in NC but of course the speed wasn't what was advertised much like all of them. I switched back to Time Warner cable. I'm now probably overpaying at $189/month for cable and internet that includes speeds (up to?) of 300 down and 50 up and 5 premium tv channels. If my wife quits working, I may have to get a lesser service.

 

But all of the providers are trying to merge and get monopolies, so the price will go up.

@BlueSky

When you were with att in Fl. what was your internet service speed? The tech that was here this morning but couldn't do the install because a bucket truck was needed to do the service drop told me, every tv thats on will take bandwith away from the internet connection speed, so if two tv's are on and someone else is using a computer to connect to the net the speed available to the PC will suffer. Did you ever notice this effect ? The speed they are offering me is 45Mbps down, 3-6Mbps up.

[BlueSky]

I don't remember what it was in Homestead. I'm not sure I ever knew. The apt complex first provided free internet/tv service provided by a guy in a trailer across the road. It was awful. Then they made a deal with U-verse and paid for part of the service.

 

But, I tried it when it became available in wilmington NC and it was supposed to be 50 down and 5 up. It was usually about 22 down and 3 to 5 up. That was probably ok but my wife claimed she had problems downloading her Russian tv shows so we switched back to TW.

[djh3]

I'm on crumcast. I go thru the call up ***** and ask why new customers get $??? cost and I have to pay X. So then we go around and around and I get my bill knocked back for a year. Then they jack it back up and I have to call again. But I had DSL and it just wont work for me. My some has basic cable (crumcast) and some kind of kody box thing he watches some sports and programing off somehow. I dunno how it works, something like streaming off internet and guys set up cameras or something so when they are watching say a NFL game he can find one on this box thing and sort of see the game. The stuff I saw was pretty skippy and sometimes low grade graphics. Best thing I have seen him find was some 1960's & 70's flat track racing. Hurricane & Roberts ruled

[ragtop69gs]

Comcast rep contacted me Monday morning and is trying to keep my business, my reply was to tell him what att is offering me and to get competitive with their offer to me or stop calling. He said he'll have an offer for me on Tuesday afternoon. I'm not holding my breath , they have already given me 3 best offers, each less $ than the one before.

 

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[snyper316]

I have suddenlink here where I am, they tell me I am getting 100 mbs I get that. I just wished with 100 mbs up I would get something like 30 mbs up. they advertise 7.5 up I get 8-9... now the download side i get 98-101... I am just tired of my Tv service Hijacking my price every month!!

[ragtop69gs]

On my current plan with comcast I have 105Mbps down and it consistently nets me mid 80's to mid 90's download speeds. If I go with att I'll have 45Mbps. If I go with comcast on a new plan it will be with 75Mbps to reduce costs. I'm still waiting on the service offer from comcast.

[ragtop69gs]

Comcast could not compete, so I showed them the door today. Their "BEST" offer to me was $50 more than what att is going to be. My cable bill will now be less than half of what I was paying. Kinda early to give an opinion, but so far TV is good and internet doesn't seem any slower, but I have not tried any large file transfers yet and I suspect that's where I'll see the performance hit.

[camos]

I have suddenlink here where I am, they tell me I am getting 100 mbs I get that. I just wished with 100 mbs up I would get something like 30 mbs up. they advertise 7.5 up I get 8-9... now the download side i get 98-101... I am just tired of my Tv service Hijacking my price every month!!

Keep the Internet and dump the TV. Pretty much all the content that is on TV is also available on the Internet for nothing.

[ragtop69gs]

Keep the Internet and dump the TV. Pretty much all the content that is on TV is also available on the Internet for nothing.

 

 

I did look at doing that but for two reasons I did not, The streaming services I'd have had to pay for to get the programming we want were darn near as much as getting the tv/internet package from att. The second reason is it was not worth the aggravation of trying to teach my dear wife how to navigate all those new services .

[camos]

I did look at doing that but for two reasons I did not, The streaming services I'd have had to pay for to get the programming we want were darn near as much as getting the tv/internet package from att. The second reason is it was not worth the aggravation of trying to teach my dear wife how to navigate all those new services .

OK so keep your TV account and if you have an old PC with 2GB or better RAM and a not terribly old Video card with an HDMI port try KodiBuntu or openElec which are easy to use by non techies and easy enough to set up by semi-techies. Good chance you will then dump your expensive and ungrateful TV account.

 

I've been using KodiBuntu for several years, it's easy enough to set up and use although it is stuck at Ubuntu version 14 but Kodi can be updated to the latest version 16.1. https://kodibuntu.en.uptodown.com/ubuntu One good thing about KodiBuntu is it will run on a system with minimal resources.

 

OpenElec is a more modern OS that is being actively developed for multiple hardware platforms so may be preferable. One Con here is that with every new version the hardware requirements seem to go up.

[ragtop69gs]

OK so keep your TV account and if you have an old PC with 2GB or better RAM and a not terribly old Video card with an HDMI port try KodiBuntu or openElec which are easy to use by non techies and easy enough to set up by semi-techies. Good chance you will then dump your expensive and ungrateful TV account.

 

I've been using KodiBuntu for several years, it's easy enough to set up and use although it is stuck at Ubuntu version 14 but Kodi can be updated to the latest version 16.1. https://kodibuntu.en.uptodown.com/ubuntu One good thing about KodiBuntu is it will run on a system with minimal resources.

 

OpenElec is a more modern OS that is being actively developed for multiple hardware platforms so may be preferable. One Con here is that with every new version the hardware requirements seem to go up.

Thanks for that tid bit, I've got a few old PC's around, guess it's time to go card shopping.

 

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[camos]

Thanks for that tid bit, I've got a few old PC's around, guess it's time to go card shopping.

If by card shopping you mean getting a video card, before you pull the trigger check the price and compare with a fully loaded Android box which can be purchased on Amazon for $35 to $80 +/-. These boxes have hardware that is very capable but are made in China so quality varies. Something like this one that comes with both remote and keyboard are usually a better deal. The only gotcha is there is pretty much no tech support with any of them. If you have any clue about computers and networking or have a friend that does then it should not b e a problem.

 

You have a lot of friends on here who can help you out if necessary.

[ragtop69gs]

If by card shopping you mean getting a video card, before you pull the trigger check the price and compare with a fully loaded Android box which can be purchased on Amazon for $35 to $80 +/-. These boxes have hardware that is very capable but are made in China so quality varies. Something like this one that comes with both remote and keyboard are usually a better deal. The only gotcha is there is pretty much no tech support with any of them. If you have any clue about computers and networking or have a friend that does then it should not b e a problem.

 

You have a lot of friends on here who can help you out if necessary.

 

 

I'll check it out. I'm going to Microcenter tomorrow to to pick up a 16 port switch, seems we've outgrown the 8 ports we have now. Maybe they have some cheap Android boxes too.

[camos]

I should have mentioned that Kodi can be installed on a Windows or other OS computer so it can be tried to see if you like it before messing around with creating a stand-alone box.