Sacramento, CA - SureWest

It's nice to see Surewest coming into the trend. Personally, they should have offered it a year ago...but better late than never, Unfortunately too late for me. I've just written in my 2 HDTV receivers from Comcast so I can get some Kings. But, like I've told gtree10, I most likely will go back to Surewest. In the mean time, I'd like to keep up with this new thread. I'd like to see which new areas Surewest is currently tearing apart. Maybe catch a glimpse of what is to come. I really wished Surewest did something like this long ago...but oh wella balsam. I'm going to wash some hair.

It is interesting to see the old Roseville Telephone Company lead the nation, again. Looks like you won't be able to get this unless you are in an area that has fiber.

Do you know a general timetable to deploy into Citrus Heights? I've tried to check the website but there is not a lot of info on the buildout plans (there used to be some info prior to the website redesign).

And somewhat related to gtree's question, in the old Roseville Telephone areas like Cirtus Heights, Roseville and Granite Bay, do they need to tear up the street to run the fiber, or is it something they can feed through the pipes they already have?

So it's a requirement to have fiber to the house? I'm across the street from the Washington Blvd Surewest bldg. Anyone want to take bets that it will be years before this is available to me?

The last I heard no carriage agreement has been signed between KXTV and SureWest. A SureWest fiber has been installed to KXTV but no equipment has been installed to feed anything down it. There are/were? an assortment of issues about carriage of ancillary information such as closed captioning and program guide information from our PSIP that needed to be resolved. We have not heard from the lawyers that this has been resolved.

Our agreement with Comcast stipulates that they will not do anything to degrade our HD picture. Hopefully SureWest will do the same.

Rory @ KXTV

Anybody know what areas of Carmichael have service? I am on the edge of Carmichael and Fair Oaks (around Fair Oaks Blvd & Marshall). Any chance that there is service in this area (I just moved here a couple of months ago)?

Thanks!
Don

Cool! I was one of the early WinFirst digital cable subs a few years back and used to help with troubleshooting and testing in the inital rollout (and even then I was asking when they were going HD ). I later switched to Comcast, then Voom, now E* and might be coming back for TV (SW is my broadband provider). I'm guessing by now the frame-rate issue for the digital cable service has been fixed?

It actually makes sense to have OTA and the different providers split into separate threads. OTA threads deal with a variety of different tuner and antenna issues, Comcast threads cover the STB and DVR options/issues and there is a bit of crossover between the two if there is a problem (to see if it's a city-wide, provider or local household reception issue). If I end up back at SureWest I'll probably be in both threads as I'll be using both the SW STB and also a supplemental OTA tuner.

hearth- I'm not sure where the boundaries are (since like gtree10 mentions the old rollout map is gone) and I'm not that far from your area but if you call them they can tell you availability for your area, or you could try entering your zip code on the site to see what comes back.

Is there any update on which channels are going to be offered by Surewest? I moved out of Surewest territory a year or so ago, and now waiting for them to come to my current area.

I was wondering the same thing given this from the Surewest website:

"We expect our HDTV product to be available in the 4th quarter of 2005. The reason you see the channels loaded on the program guide is that we are currently beta testing the product with our customers and vendors to bring you HDTV as quickly as possible.

The product is now very close to meeting our standards, and we are running the final stage of tests. We believe it will be a terrific and dynamic product that will delight our customers. SureWest will have the best HDTV package in the market and it will be worth waiting for. It will have more benefits than any other provider and will be priced very competitively. We appreciate your patience and will have more updates available to you soon regarding our planned HDTV service."

http://support.surewest.com/surewest...archTerms=hdtv

The Amino HD boxes they are testing are not DVR capable. I checked Animo website they don't even have an HD DVR product listed. How soon will Surewest plan to offer a functional HD DVR? Are they required to have firewire for recording to HDVCR?

I e-mailed SureWest and they replied that I have beed added to the waiting list. The e-mail said that their service will be available by the end of the month and that the price will be $10.99 per month for the service.

I checked the programming guide and I saw ABC-HD, FOX-HD, CBS-HD, NBC-HD, PBS-HD, ESPN-HD, TNT-HD, Discovery-HD, Starz-HD, HD-Net, HD-Movies and Universal-HD.

Interesting. I thought with the fiber link, they could add all the HDs under the Sun and then some more Maybe by that time more will appear.

Still no HDDVR in the pipeline?

I'm trying to keep this thread alive, but I'm still waiting for SureWest's HDTV service and it's getting close to the end of the month.

I did find this on another website....
"SureWest has already rolled out Amino's AmiNET120 HD set-top box to a core group of subscribers in the Sacramento, California region."

The Amino 120 STB supports MPEG-2, whereas the new Amino 124 STB is supposed to support MPEG-4. It's too bad that they couldn't utilize the latest broadcast technology with their HDTV service.

I had Surewest service until about a year ago when I moved, and they were actually using standard cable technology at the time to push TV, fiber for telephone and internet only. Not sure if they have migrated to fiber for all services yet.

With the recent Comcast rate increase, I'm wishing Surewest was available in my new neighborhood.

Can someone update this thread? I am wondering how the Surewest feed looks and if it is worth waiting for.

I am only about 1 mile from Surewest on Washington Blvd, but they indicated service WONT be available for at least 6 months.

If you are referring to SureWest HDTV service, they haven't rolled it out yet, as far as I know. I'm still waiting for it in Elk Grove.

I thought it was being beta tested by a few lucky customers. I can't even get the digital feed at my house.

I called Surewest last week to inquire about their HD offering. Was told it's being rolled out very slowly to insure it's working properly. They placed me on a waiting list and was told they would call me when it becomes available. They have run fiber to the house and I'm currently using them for my broadband access.

They also told me that they may contact me to participate in testing the service? That made me feel as though the service is far from being ready for general consumption.

I see today they have some pricing details posted on their Website. Looks fairly appealing, but no word on an HD DVR yet. That's a deal-breaker for me.

I was looking on SureWest's website over the weekend and found a page that allowed you to check if their HDTV service was available in your area. I put my address in and their website said the service was available. I called this morning, and they are sending a tech out to swap out my current Amino box with their HD-compatible box on February 22nd. I'll update after the 22nd.

This is really starting to annoy me. It seems that Surewest is offering FIOS throughout the Sacramento area, except in Roseville At least I can sign my parent's house up for the service bundle while continue to suffer with good old DirecTV and their stupid HD-Lite.

Hey Lloyd, How did the install go? How's the quality of their HD signal?

Thanks...

The installer came out yesterday...very nice guy, but it took a while to get all the bugs worked out. The only real glitch with the install was that he tried to figure out a way connect my digital coax cable to the L/R analog audio. I had to show him how the digital coax connected to the SPDIF port on the back of the Amino box. Their system was very slow to "recognize" the box, but when the picture finally did come up, it looks very good. I hope that the Kings/Lakers game on TNT tonight is in high definition. I believe that the non-HD channels also look much better than the S-video connection that I previously had hooked up to my projector. I got home late last night, so I didn't have a lot of time to spend with it. I'll give a more comprehensive review over the weekend.

What channels are available?

ABC-HD, FOX-HD, CBS-HD, NBC-HD, PBS-HD, ESPN-HD, TNT-HD, Discovery-HD, HD-Net, HD-Movies and Universal-HD. If you subscribe to any of the premium channels (i.e. HBO) there are HD channels for those as well.

Thanks for the update Lloyd. Once they get of their behinds and start offering an HD DVR solution, or at least announce what they will be offering as far as a DVR goes, I'll be able to schedule an appointment for my install.