Boston, MA - Comcast

Regarding Comcast's 3-way bundle (cable, internet and phone) mentioned in the old thread: I would think this is also available in non-Fios towns. You should call Comcast and ask for their best price on the bundle. You could also tell them that "Fios is coming" to your town. Can't hurt.

Mickey

I thought this was a national marketing effort... $99 for 12 months. I don't live in a FIOS town, and get pelted with this once or twice a year via snail mail.

I thought if you had the OLD comcast phone you didn't qualify for the triple play bundle. I have the OLD digital phone, digital classic, and HSI.

-Ken

I was offered the triple play with HBO, Starz, and an HD dvr for $116 ( $123 with tax) and I already had Comcast for cable, internet and phone.( not on one bill) I thought it was because FIOS just came into Lynn and they were trying to hold on to customers. They called me with the offer.(second time they called ). I was waiting to see what FIOS had to say and turned down the first offer from Comcast which wasn"t as good.(no HBO or Starz). I accepted this one as the talk on Boston- Verizon seemed to turn negative. Plus they didn't budge on the $.

I'm not sure about who/what/where but I DO know that FIOS has been available where I am in Middleboro for a while but TV service is getting close to being available (local charter red tape as usual). I just assumed Comcast was touting this package to both migrate the legacy phone customers and to lock in as much customer base as possible.

I went to watch the NHL All-Star game on 881 and to my surprise got the Celtics instead. Could another channel have been used? This is where we miss INHD2 because in previous years the Celts would be on 882 and Comcast would have put the Hockey game on 881. Granted they put the 3rd period on after the Celts were over but I couldn't help feel like we have gone backwards with HD programming lately. I hope they start to add dedicated channels like VS soon to avoid situations like these or I'm going to start getting PO. Our HD options should be getting better not worse.

BTW watching the C's lose their 17th out of the last 19 is really not too enjoyable anyways.

$116 for the bundle and the HD DVR? And they called you?? Wow, That's really good. I was looking at the bundle on line and it lists $129.99 but no mention of the DVR. I figured another $9.95 on top of the bundle plus various other fees and taxes.

I'm in the same situation as a few others here, Comcast for cable, internet and phone (but not the digital voice thats being pushed.) I have been thinking about droping the phone service and going cellular for the cost savings. I'll have to get my bills and info in order and give customer retention a call. This offer would be something to keep me as a phone customer.

I currently have the Basic Cable package (no Expanded Basic Cable AKA Standard Cable), plus an HD Box, and Digital Classic. From weeding though pages and pages of the previous incarnation of this thread, I know that people in the past have been able to get NESN HD through this configuration. For me, however, channel 851, NESN HD, is blocked.

I did Comcast's online support chat (which has be extremely helpful in the past) and was told that the only way to get NESN HD is through the Digital Starter package, which includes Expanded Basic Cable. I don't want to pay for, nor do I want to watch the Expanded Basic Cable channel lineup.

When I added on the Digital Classic package, I did it at my local Watertown Comcast office without a hassle. Can anybody tell me if I am out of luck or do I just need to go back to my local office? If the latter, which package do I ask for? Is Digital Plus now called Digital Preferred?

Deez

NESN HD Sox games used to be on 881 before NESN got its own channel. Now it's part of Extended/Expanded/Standard/Starter/Whatever package. So, no, you (and I) don't get NESN HD with only Digital Classic.

Argh! Was worried that Expanded Basic was required now. You want to split the cost with me?

Deez

Requires Classic only:

TNT,Discovery,UHD,ESPN,INHD

Requires DIGITAL STARTER:

National Geo,ESPN2,NESN

Requires Digital starter AND Classsic:

MHD

Locals only require basic and premiums comes with the corresponding channel.

Thanks chitchatjf, but here's where I get confused: I have Digital Classic, without having the Extended Basic... is it possible to have Digital Starter without having the Extended Basic similarly?

Deez

Digital Starter is the same as Extended Basic + a box or CableCard, so you can't have Digital Starter without Extended Basic.

Great summary, perhaps a mod could add this to the first post in this thread.

Well I called customer retention this morning, and I'm very happy to say it was a breeze.

I ended up going with the Preferred Plus Bundle for $129.99. I asked about the $116/118 (with HBO and Starz, + HD DVR) prices mentioned above. Initially I was told that wasn't an option but with a bit of polite asking she checked and said I could have that if I really wanted. It would have meant down grading from digital preferred to digital classic. I would have saved even more money, but in the end I'm happy with what I saved plus the addition of Starz for a year. The bundle goes into affect on Tuesday after they come out and swap out the modem. If it helps anyone here's my price breakdown,

$129.99 (Preferred Triple play bundle with HBO and Starz)
$9.95 DVR
$7.50 Second cable box
$3.00 Cable modem rental (I had previously owned my own)

A one time charge to change phone over $24.95 but she waved some other $99 charge.

If you do it before 02/01/07 you can also lock in at the current equipment charges.

Edited to include : I forgot to mention I had no leverage like FIOS to use. I just asked it I could have the bundle.

My Comcast bill right now is ~$60 a month, which is for Basic, Digital Classic and the DVR.
As soon as they add HDNet I guess the tiers are going to change or I'll add the $7 sports entertainment package just to get that channel. I don't watch sports much, but I do want HDNet. It's well worth that.

is it me or did they add a channel to the guide? we get five per page now, I think it was 4

Does anyone know what subscribers of Family Tier get for HD other than the locals? None?

I WOULD add National GEo but it looks like none.

Any thoughts on the impending exclusivity of MLBEI on DTV?

Because, personally, I feel that alienating more than half of their fan base is a brilliant move by MLB executives for a $700M payoff over 7 years...

Boston HD lineup (as of 2/11) along with what is needed to get each channel

Ch # Name of network tier required to get it
============================================================ ====
802 WGBH HD (PBS HD Channel) Basic
804 WBZ-DT Boston (CBS-HD) Basic
805 WCVB-DT Boston (ABC-HD) Basic
807 WHDH-DT Boston (NBC-HD) Basic
809 WMUR-DT Manchester (ABC-HD) Basic
821 National Geographic HD Starter
825 WFXT-DT Boston (Fox-HD) Basic
828 MHD Starter AND Classic
833 TNT HD Classic
838 WSBK-DT Boston Basic
839 Discovery HD Theatre Classic
846 Universal HD Classic
848 Verses/golf HD Starter
849 ESPN Classic
850 ESPN 2 Starter
851 NESN Starter
856 WLVI-DT Boston (CW-HD) Basic
868 Cinemax HD Cinemax
870 HBO HD HBO
875 Starz HD Starz
877 Showtime HD Showtime
881 INHD Classic

Basic is limited basic (local channels)
Classic is lowest digital cable tier (Currently 7.95)
Starter is fancy name for Extended basic with cable box.

Comcast has been allowing people to get digital packages without having to get extended basic. This may change. New HD channels will most likely require at LEAST starter

I still only get 4 with that stupid banner at the bottom. I'm on the South Shore.

I am moving into a house where the CATV was brought into the crawl-space and came up through the floor where the TV was. I am putting the TV in a new location and since I have the walls open, will be installing jacks where the main TV will be as well as each of the 2 bedrooms. My question is - Will Comcast come out and run the TV into the attic instead of the crawlspace? I'll do the wiring in the attic for all the drops, but I hate working in crawlspace and where the TV will be, doesn't have a crawlspace. I'd rather not have more cable than I need to (ie run it don he side of the house into the crawlspace and then right back up into the attic)

Related question: Does anyone have any experiences with Leviton quick-ports? I saw them in HomeDepot and seemed like a good system to hook up the speakers, CATV and FM antenna all into one faceplate. I saw BestBuy had speaker faceplates. Preferences?

From Tvpredictions.com :

Washington, D.C. (January 25, 2007) -- DIRECTV this month announced it will offer 100 national HDTV channels by year's end, leaving some to wonder if cable operators will be able to keep up.

However, Comcast revealed this week that it's testing a new technology that may let cable operators offer a much larger number of high-def networks. (Most cable operators now offer less than 20 HDTV channels due largely to bandwidth restraints.)

Called 'Switched Digital Video,' Comcast says it will likely deploy the new technology in the second half of 2007 -- when DIRECTV is expected to expand its high-def lineup.

"If a programmer comes to us and says, 'We want you to carry new HD channels' we're stuck in that bandwidth problem," Rick Riboili, Comcast's vice president of production platform engineering, said this week at an industry conference. Rioboli's remarks were reported today by Multichannel News.

But with the new technology, the cable op can easily expand high-def capacity, meaning "we don't have to plan two or three years in advance which channels we're going to be dropping to carry HD."
can deliver more channels than regular broadcasting because the signals are sent via video streams only when the viewer turns to that channel. Consequently, a cable operator is not forced to store every channel in its lineup.

Rioboli told the publication that Comcast wants to ensure that the technology is stable before deploying.
"We're done with the vendor evaluation and system design," he said. "Now we need to get to the point where we can realistically deploy and manage it."

He did not reveal where the technology is being tested.

Good news and bad news.

The bad news being that switched digital video renders cable cards fairly moot.

Whatever. All I know is the apartment development right next door to me has FIOS broadband, 2x-3x the bandwidth for less money and I can't get it.

When my sweet $20/6mos basic broadband deal with Comcast runs out I'll be paying close to $80-$90 for just the Basic broadband DVR/etc. Then hopefully I'll be able to squeeze the 3-fer-$100 option with cable/DVR and Starz/HBO or something like that out of them.

Cable tuners for PC were always on their way out what with Vista and CableCard support. They're going to become more and more inflexible.
Thankfully FCC rules still require the cable companies to provide working Firewire ports on at least one model of their cable tuners and that isn't likely to change in the near future.

There are some people on some other forums who are staunching contending that this reality cannot possibly be.

As it is, it simply requires a change to multi-directional CableCards. No fun for people with consumer electronics equipment that don't support them, but that is one of the down-sides of being an early-adopter of new consumer electronics technology.

As a user of cable card I'm concerned about this; does anyone know the status of multi-directional cards and, how do we know what existing devices support these cards? I have not heard much about these cards or devices supporting them.

Thanks

I think we have not heard much about these devices because AFAIK, there are no devices currently on the market that will accept CableCard 2.0. From what I've been reading, so far, all the cable companies are having a tough enough time trying to correctly install and support v1.0.

My installer initially inserted my card in 180 degrees the wrong way, but once it was flipped over, it was provisioned and works fine so far.