Portland, OR - Comcast - Page 158

Well call or chat again because for me they just applied promos that were current when I called, they didn't add any services or internet speed as we all know that when your promo for the new goodies dies you pay a lot more then you did before.
Last time I did a live chat and just said my monthly bill was getting too high so he added a promo for the net for 6 months and one other deal, dropped my bill about 60 a month and nothing new added. Later a guy walked up and offered a deal on a full HD and phone package, we added the numbers and even after all the promos die we'd pay less for better phone and HDTV service then we had before with much less extras so we jumped in. I figure I'll do a chat and see what happens soon as most of the promos have died and we're still barely paying less for more then we had before but still it seem large when it's all on one bill.
If you don't like what they tell you or try to add don't take it and call or chat again as another rep may have a better deal in mind and it doesn't cost you anything to try. If you say screw you guys I'm getting a dish I can just about guarantee they'll offer some really good deal to get you to stay as the rep gets paid by how many customers he gets to stay or upgrade.

Anyone local with premium programming plus just CableCARDs from Comcast? My Fios contract is up and I'm considering alternatives. But I have TiVo, so don't want a DVR from Comcast.

The problem is that I've read that they have recently changed their policies. You can't even order a CableCARD from them on the web. Instead they only offer various digital adapters and DVRs. However, I've read that if you "bring your own TiVo" they will rebate part of this cost to you.

I'm looking for the best deal I can get. Frontier makes their pricing easily understood. Comcast goes out of their way to confuse things.

They will let you walk in to any office and request a card, that's what I did but I also had my Prime with me so we could both make sure we got the right card and all that.
They charged some extra for the service upgrade the first month, took away 2.50 for customer owned equipment, then added 8.95 for a "digital outlet" which appears to be their way of screwing you over even if it turns out to be your first card is free deal. My bill went up about 10 bucks a month or so with the card, but I also am keeping the one free HD box they gave me with my upgrade and the rent for the combo phone/modem went to 7 bucks a month here recently from 5.
They never tell you about the extra taxes and fees when they get you to upgrade or you add a card so that's part of it too. If your not renting anything else and just using the card with your own box you MIGHT actually save some money depending on the deal you have now as most folks are getting charged rent for their HD boxes too, just depends on your luck and the deal they make with you.
Like I said you can always call or chat later and you can probably argue them into a better deal as they appear to be trying to actually keep customers but hoping most will just shut up and pay whatever they charge.

Modems are so cheap to buy, I don't understand why people rent. Even if I were going to switch back for just one year, I'd buy.

The only fly in the ointment is that they previously *required* you to rent if you wanted their phone service. I don't know if that policy still applies.

When I switched to the phone service a year or so ago, they required me to rent the phone/modem. Can you actually buy those things?

Only in some areas, and only at Best Buy in those areas.
It's also my understanding that they cost $150 and you are required to pay an additional $50 for a tech to install it.

I currently have digital starter with my Tivo Premiere with a cablecard. It is my only cable box in the house. There is no charge for the first cablecard and I get a $2.50 "bring your own box" credit on each bill.
I believe if you have a second box (be it from Tivo or Comcast), that the digital outlet fee applies.
Comcast charges you this outlet fee for each additional box hooked up after the first, or at least I think that's how it works.

I'm a comcast customer without phone service and I rent a modem. I'd like to buy one and was looking at the Motorola SB6121 which seems to be a popular choice for comcast customers. However, I saw an amazon review for this modem from a PDX resident (4/9/12) who tried two of these without success. Any specific modem recommendations from you guys would be appreciated. Thanks.

I've been using a SB6120 for two and a half years with no problems.
The only real difference between it and the SB6121 is the latter includes a MOCA filter. They both even use the same firmware.

Hard to say what trouble the reviewer had.

Another popular choice seems to be a Zoom.

Here's the Comcast approved modem list...
http://mydeviceinfo.comcast.net/

Earletp, thank you for your response and the link. I went ahead and ordered the SB 6121 from Amazon. My next step is a wireless router. If you have any ideas please PM me. Thanks again for your help.

Hi guys,

I'm off my FiOS contract and they don't seem very flexible on pricing. Comcast is quite aggressive, at least for 1st 12 months. So I will probably switch.

But there is one channel, Speed TV, that isn't in Comcast below the Digital Premier service (at least according to their website). I'm wondering if anyone local has this channel without paying for Premier (which includes stuff I don't want, like HBO).

E.g. Comcast offers something called a "Sports Entertainment Package". I wonder if I would get Speed TV if I got Sports Entertainment on top of a lower package like Digital Starter or Digital Preferred?

I plan on going in person to Comcast on Nimbus on Monday. Perhaps they know more than their lame website. But in the meantime I'm wondering if there is any hope for me. My F1 viewing hangs in the balance. Most years F1 is very predictable, but this year it's as competitive as it's been in decades.

Thanks for any info or advice you might have for me.

Yes, I have it with Digital Preferred, and you get SpeedHD as well as NFL Redzone HD and some college sports channels some in HD most in SD, tennisHD and for what ever reason Fox Movie Channel.
It also includes some channels like NFL, MLB, NBATV and the Outdoor channel that are also included in the Digital Preferred package.

But you are paying extra for that Sports package .... Right?

Runs about $7 per month.

Yes, I pay extra for it and they just raised it to $8.99/mth

Thanks for the quick response on the Sports Entertainment Package. Maybe someone will be able answer more questions.

With my luck, dslreports is down, just as I'm trying to figure things out. They are a great resource in getting answers to questions like mine, and accessing the site thru Google cache is relatively painful:

Code:

dslreports.com is offline 
-------------------------

Fri Apr 20 09:05:55 EDT 2012

If I had any firmer idea than two days ago on when things will be up, I would post it
but so far, I can't say for sure. When I get a solid date I'll post. Have a great
weekend. My eldest son has his 6th birthday party on sunday. I've got two tasks
to juggle :)

When I go to Comcast and try to figure out what I would need to pay if I didn't want any of their equipment and just had one or more TiVo HD boxes, I'm confronted with the page in the image. (I can't link to it, must post an image, because it's dynamic content and isn't visible to a random web surfer).

There is a plethora of "options":

HD Service
HD DVR Service
Digital Service
Digital Adapter Service
Connect TVs with Basic Service

I'm confused, but that is of course their intent!

So my question is, which option(s) do I need if I have exactly 1 TiVo HD and don't want any of their equipment? How about if I have 2 TiVo HDs?

As I mentioned previously, no CableCARD choice in that mess.

I'm hoping that someone here has 2 TiVos, no Comcast equipment, and can tell me how much extra my service would cost.

Right now I'm hoping? that what Dartman mentioned previously is what applies. Each outlet is $8.95 minus $2.50 credit. But why, e.g., is there a $10/mo "HD Service" charge?

Thanks in advance.

They never seem to add the HD Service Charge to my bill and they say their DVR equipment fees include that particular charge. My guess is they reserve the right to charge TIVO owners an exta 10 bucks, but you best talk to Comcast directly about that and a face to face visit at their customer center is usually more productive than using the phone from my experience .... plus they seem more willing to throw in some extra 3 to 6 month freebees like higher tier internet, etc.

Hey everybody. I wonder if anybody else has these issues, and knows if it is possible to fix them.

1) When I go to set a second program to record, a box pops up that tells me that two programs are already scheduled to record, and that one of them will have to be canceled, then it lists them. Of course by "them," I mean it lists only one, because I only have one set to record. Why can't I record two programs at the same time???!!!???

2) This seems related, and I'll explain by way of example. Let's say I have "The Office" set to record. (Again, this is the only program set to record.) I'm watching American Idol, and it's nearing time for The Office to start. Suddenly a warning comes on screen that says a recording is about to start, do I want to change the channel to it when it starts, or do I want to cancel the recording. Why can't I just keep watching AI and have the recording start in the background!! I feel like I'm paying Comcast a lot of money every month for this crappy device.

By the way, I've done the turn off power to re-set already, and that doesn't fix it. Any help would be appreciated. I know, buy a TIVO! But I'm not ready to do that yet.

Believe it or not, my TiVO also does both of these things. It asks me if I want to cancel a recording when only one is scheduled and it bugs me when I'm about to watching something that I'm about to record.

You might want to consider a Ceton or HD HomeRun prime with cable card support. They both can use multiple tuners and network one way or the other onto your PC network. I have a Prime myself and have seen it happily recording 2 channels at once with no issues and it should be able to run all three recording at once too.
The Ceton has 4 tuners and runs inside your PC, the prime stands alone and networks into your PC and all that. They both have good factory support and work nicely, plus once you buy it it's yours, no monthly fees other then what extra Comcast tries to sneak in, like a digital outlet fee, and maybe a few bucks for a cable card, mine was free but I got stuck with the digital outlet charge.
I haven't seen mine totally refuse to record one show though once the network part got screwed up and it missed a program. I got it figured out and it's been golden since.
They both go on sale at Amazon and New Egg often so might be another option for you, I love mine as much as the folks happily using their Tivos do.

Does this happen all the time, or only occasionally? I'm wondering whether one of your tuners is bad, or if somehow the box isn't recognizing one of them. Can you use the swap button to swap to the other tuner? If that's a problem, I suspect you need to swap your box for another one.

I think this has to do with the fact you are employing the 2 tuners already. One is engaged in bringing you the program you are watching live as it is always buffering (recording) the program you are seeing. You have asked the second tuner to record the show you want. You would need a third tuner to watch a show and record 2 others in the same time period. The warning alerts you to this. To record the 2 shows you want in the same time slot you need to stop current viewing or watch one of them as it's being recorded.

I suspect this is happening because networks frequently don't start shows on the hour or half-hour any more. Shows will often run 61 minutes so they can add a commercial minute in a higher rated show and remove it from an adjacent lower rated show. This time shift will cause an overlap between recordings and cause the warning of channel change or recording error to come up. Often the shift in timings will occur the week of the broadcast after a recording has already been set.

Oh, this is so cool. Not the odd start and stop times, those are a royal pain. Plus a TiVo isn't smart enough to intelligently use a single tuner when recording two back-to-back shows from the same channel when "padding" is added.

No, what's cool is that Lee apparently exists in both Oregon and Washington. My knowledge of quantum mechanics is pretty weak. Is this an example of quantum entanglement, where two indistinguishable Lee's exist, one in Washington and one in Oregon? Or is it a different phenomenon?

Is this the middle of the night? Is it one minute before the start of a recording? Or, as I just mentioned in the post above, are you perchance using padding between back-to-back episodes? You can examine the "To Do List" to see what TiVo wants to do. (press Tivo button then 2).

I haven't seen a TiVo HD misbehave in terms of scheduling, unless you're doing one of those things. TiVo's algorithm for "locking in" a tuner at 1 minute before the start of a recording is pretty primitive. It gets totally confused if you're flipping channels right at that time.

Years ago, TiVo would constantly schedule recording their stupid infomercials in the middle of the night (they still do a little of this). One time it had two simultaneous "enhanced content" programs that it wanted to record. It kept interrupting me every 5 minutes asking for permission to change the channel. But I haven't seen that particular problem since my DirecTiVo days.

This is a known bug in most of the DVR's software/firmware's programming .... And unfortuately, most of the original programmers left a couple of years ago for jobs at internet startups offering future IPO stock options that potentially could make them instant millionaires in the coming years (like this week's Facebook IPO).

I assume things are OK using Ooma? I have one friend using it and he's satisfied.

I currently still have Frontier landline service, but want to save money since we really don't use it for much.

Space and Time division multiplexing.

I would like to apologize to crossbeaux, scowl, dartman, ridgefamus, Lee Wood, and anyone else who responded to my original post I've neglected to mention. A situation came up that has had me swamped, now I'm back.

To answer one or more of the questions that was raised, starting with ridgefamus's Q, swap works fine, and I am able to record two programs at the same time--although I can now see from the way I explained problem scenario #1 why you would think I cannot. Bad description on my part. I can record two programs at the same time as long as I schedule them in the future, using the guide. (Of course if I want to watch TV during that time, I have to watch one of the two programs being recorded since the box has two, not 3, tuners. Or a previously-recorded event, of course.) As I read my description of scenario 1, I am now having a hard time now understanding exactly what I was saying, even though I knew at the time. Stupid! I will try to recreate the scenario and post again. However, my scenario 2 is accurately described, and suggests, as George-O says, that this is a bug. When you have only one thing set to record that is about to start, and are watching a different program, there is no way a warning should pop up telling you that you either have to switch to the recording or cancel it. It should just record in the background without troubling you. To answer another question, yes these two problems happen all the time. More later after I re-create problem #1, and thanks for all the responses. Dartman,thanks for your suggestion, I may try that.

For those with Android phones instead of an iPhone, Comcast has finally released an app that allows you to stream content to your phone.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...finity.playnow