Showing posts with label cord-cutting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cord-cutting. Show all posts
5/5/17
Animal on the Street - Huge pay TV losses in Q1 2017.
https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/04/worst-quarter-for-paid-tv-subscriptions-points-to-a-cord-cutting-future/
9/18/13
Supplementary Sidebar - The Cord Cutting Chronicles, Pt 4. - Secret ROKU settings screens. Controller codes revealed! Special attack ACTIVATE!
Today we're having the kitchenette updated in Employee Lounge B of GO! Tower. We're switching from avocado to burnt orange for that "Brady" look. As a result of all the sawdust and hammering, there was to be no post today. HOWEVER...
As our more loyal (or unemployable?) readers may know, I "cut the cord" with annual Worst Company in America contender, Comcast, back in the spring. Here's a link to that little three-part rant on the subject of systematic customer pillaging, for those who missed out on all the vitriol. Anyhoo, I called Roku support on my day off today to ask about a wee problem I'd been having with my Roku, which, I'll remind you, is my only TV-harvesting device.
The problem is this: at least once per day, the Roku would simply drop internet connectivity. The show I was watching would try to buffer, and eventually throw an error message telling me my router had apparently exploded itself into a smoking crater. Funny thing is, the router, being an inch away from the Roku, was clearly in a non-exploded state. My phone and a few other devices connected to the router via Wi-Fi and hard line all attested to the router's happy non-explodedness. The problem obviously was with the Roku. Repeatedly cycling power on your TV puck is not how most people like to spend their evenings, begging the damn thing to re-find the internet, which, I hasten to point out, was being jammed into the Roku via every available orifice. Yes, The Roku was connected to my router via Wi-Fi and a bright yellow Cat 5 cable. Still, one to three times per day, the Roku would suddenly and randomly become as unaware of the internet as a standard issue 80-year-old senator.
So, yeah, after a mere six months of this, I ran out of patience, screwed up my courage, and braved the dark reaches of the Roku Customer Discouragement Telephone Labyrinth. A couple of button presses connected me, surprisingly quickly, to "Andrew", which must be short for "Andreshkarvatharan". Sorry, but the accent definitely reminded me of my deep love for tikka masala and lamb samosas. Wow, it is almost lunch time. Hmm.
Anyway, Andrew asked me to access two SECRET Roku settings screens to do a system update and download a patch. Say what? Yep, controller codes. For some reason, Roku engineers chose to hide two screens of what I would call REALLY IMPORTANT STUFF behind two sets of unguessable buttons presses. WHYYYYYYYYY?????
Apart from the secrecy of these important menus, the Roku claims to do a "system update" on a daily basis in the middle of the night. Why the secret update function on the secret settings screen? Andrew told me that the plain old system update, as seen on the non-hidden settings screen was just to check for new channels and content, but not for system updates. WHHHHHYYYYYYYYYY?????????? Sigh.
Anyway, here are the secret controller codes to access these super-double-secret settings, and how to mess with some of those settings, just in case you have a Roku that has a love/hate relationship with the internet. All of these key presses are done on the Roku remote. In case it's not obvious, when I say "HOME 5x", that means press the HOME button five times.
SUPER SECRET SCREEN #1
HOME 5x
FAST FORWARD 3x
REWIND 2x
Here is where you can tell your Roku to use the right update server. If it's like mine, the server's name was BETA. Change it to RELEASE. I guess unless you specifically tell it to use the good server, the Roku will use the crappy old test mule server that is full of bugs and sloppy code. That's nice.
Then, go down to SYSTEM UPDATE to download the latest system software, complete with any patches. Then, go to REBOOT SYSTEM.
SUPER DOUBLE SECRET SCREEN #2
HOME 5x
FAST FORWARD 1x
PLAY 1x
REWIND 1x
PLAY 1x
FAST FORWARD 1x
This should call up the other extra-super-turbo-secret screen. I think this was the important one, because it's where you can disable network pings. See, with pings enabled, the Roku will constantly check with your router to be reassured the internet is still there. The router may interpret this as a threat, and block the Roku from connectivity. It's like an insecure girlfriend who demands constant assurance that she is the very prettiest girl in all the land, who eventually irritates her boyfriend who then becomes someone else's boyfriend. Why is this constant pinging set to "on" by default, when, apparently, a very popular model of Netgear router will get irritated and block the Roku? Why is this menu, which enables you to turn this off a extra-super-double-fingers-crossed-turbo-secret setting concealed in a hidden screen? WHYYYYYYYYYY?????
Anyway, I'm off to try and watch The Daily Show. We'll see if this did any good. I wish there was an Indian restaurant around here that delivered. That's lunch, everybody.
[-Mgmt.]
As our more loyal (or unemployable?) readers may know, I "cut the cord" with annual Worst Company in America contender, Comcast, back in the spring. Here's a link to that little three-part rant on the subject of systematic customer pillaging, for those who missed out on all the vitriol. Anyhoo, I called Roku support on my day off today to ask about a wee problem I'd been having with my Roku, which, I'll remind you, is my only TV-harvesting device.
The problem is this: at least once per day, the Roku would simply drop internet connectivity. The show I was watching would try to buffer, and eventually throw an error message telling me my router had apparently exploded itself into a smoking crater. Funny thing is, the router, being an inch away from the Roku, was clearly in a non-exploded state. My phone and a few other devices connected to the router via Wi-Fi and hard line all attested to the router's happy non-explodedness. The problem obviously was with the Roku. Repeatedly cycling power on your TV puck is not how most people like to spend their evenings, begging the damn thing to re-find the internet, which, I hasten to point out, was being jammed into the Roku via every available orifice. Yes, The Roku was connected to my router via Wi-Fi and a bright yellow Cat 5 cable. Still, one to three times per day, the Roku would suddenly and randomly become as unaware of the internet as a standard issue 80-year-old senator.
So, yeah, after a mere six months of this, I ran out of patience, screwed up my courage, and braved the dark reaches of the Roku Customer Discouragement Telephone Labyrinth. A couple of button presses connected me, surprisingly quickly, to "Andrew", which must be short for "Andreshkarvatharan". Sorry, but the accent definitely reminded me of my deep love for tikka masala and lamb samosas. Wow, it is almost lunch time. Hmm.
Anyway, Andrew asked me to access two SECRET Roku settings screens to do a system update and download a patch. Say what? Yep, controller codes. For some reason, Roku engineers chose to hide two screens of what I would call REALLY IMPORTANT STUFF behind two sets of unguessable buttons presses. WHYYYYYYYYY?????
Apart from the secrecy of these important menus, the Roku claims to do a "system update" on a daily basis in the middle of the night. Why the secret update function on the secret settings screen? Andrew told me that the plain old system update, as seen on the non-hidden settings screen was just to check for new channels and content, but not for system updates. WHHHHHYYYYYYYYYY?????????? Sigh.
Anyway, here are the secret controller codes to access these super-double-secret settings, and how to mess with some of those settings, just in case you have a Roku that has a love/hate relationship with the internet. All of these key presses are done on the Roku remote. In case it's not obvious, when I say "HOME 5x", that means press the HOME button five times.
SUPER SECRET SCREEN #1
HOME 5x
FAST FORWARD 3x
REWIND 2x
Here is where you can tell your Roku to use the right update server. If it's like mine, the server's name was BETA. Change it to RELEASE. I guess unless you specifically tell it to use the good server, the Roku will use the crappy old test mule server that is full of bugs and sloppy code. That's nice.
Then, go down to SYSTEM UPDATE to download the latest system software, complete with any patches. Then, go to REBOOT SYSTEM.
SUPER DOUBLE SECRET SCREEN #2
HOME 5x
FAST FORWARD 1x
PLAY 1x
REWIND 1x
PLAY 1x
FAST FORWARD 1x
This should call up the other extra-super-turbo-secret screen. I think this was the important one, because it's where you can disable network pings. See, with pings enabled, the Roku will constantly check with your router to be reassured the internet is still there. The router may interpret this as a threat, and block the Roku from connectivity. It's like an insecure girlfriend who demands constant assurance that she is the very prettiest girl in all the land, who eventually irritates her boyfriend who then becomes someone else's boyfriend. Why is this constant pinging set to "on" by default, when, apparently, a very popular model of Netgear router will get irritated and block the Roku? Why is this menu, which enables you to turn this off a extra-super-double-fingers-crossed-turbo-secret setting concealed in a hidden screen? WHYYYYYYYYYY?????
Anyway, I'm off to try and watch The Daily Show. We'll see if this did any good. I wish there was an Indian restaurant around here that delivered. That's lunch, everybody.
[-Mgmt.]
3/1/13
Supplementary Sidebar - The Cord Cutting Chronicles, Pt 3. The long kiss get lost.
When we last left our hero, I (Hey, it's possible.) had just been disappointed with stuttering issues trying to use Hulu Plus or Amazon Instant through my Samsung "smart" TV, and a call to Comcast didn't reveal any clues. The Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 both have apps for Hulu Plus and Amazon Instant, so I powered up the PS3 for the first time in months to give it a whirl.
Success! Video playback was buttery smooth and the toast of my eyes welcomed the melty playback goodness into their every nook and cranny. The reviews I had read about my TV had said how useless the internet connectivity was, but I had thought "How bad could it be?" Really bad. My 2012 model Samsung's smart TV functionality is so bad as to be unusable. Buy it for the picture. Not the internet feature. It's weird that Samsung, a company that makes smartphones, could get it so wrong in scaling up the exact same functionality to their TVs. My guess is that TVs and smartphones are handled by two different arms of the company, and they don't share their secrets.
Anyhoo, with this victory fresh in my experience, I ordered a top-of-the-line Roku for 90-whatever dollars. It's smaller than a sandwich and can be connected via WiFi or cat 5 cable. Both types of connection flow smoothly, which surprised me a little. I tried going three days of no cable TV, using only the streaming services. It was fine. There's lots of stuff available in the streamers, and Hulu is even creating their own original programming. Better still, the production values are good. It's not ghetto-hillbilly reality TV stuff. Roku seems to have a handful of free "channels" that don't require a Hulu or Amazon membership. After all, the thing has to be able to do something on it's own, right? Good news, troops! The Thunderbirds series is available on Crackle, Roku's free movie channel. They are GO!
It was time to call Comcast for the cable TV break-up. Their phone maze questions led me to the "remove services" option, which in turn led to a recording reciting their regular business hours. Guess what? You can get ahold of a Comcast worker bee 24 hours a day for anything EXCEPT cancelling a service. You have to call them during their business hours to do that. The people who handle your cancellations don't want to hear from you that badly. Shocking!
Following day, I called in the afternoon to catch the "customer retention" or "too little, too late" department while they were still on the clock. I talked to a very nice lady, oddly enough, who asked why I was cancelling. I explained that I was tired of their channel packages and paying for things I don't want. She said she could understand that. When she asked me what Comcast could do to keep me, I said "a la carte pricing", and we both had a good long laugh. I told her that I would happily pay $5 per channel for each of the six or so channels I used. She then explained that my current deal was a better value, because I was getting over six hundred channels, and in my fantasy world, that would cost over $3000 per month. I then explained to her that I am a fire engine named Sylvia and my house is made of cabbage, because she clearly hadn't listened to the last five sentences I had said to her.
So now my Comcast bill should be about $54 per month, down from over $150. With their five megabit per second speed, I can watch a show while using a web browser on my phone without any problems. Amazon Instant Video comes as part of my Amazon Prime membership, and Hulu Plus costs $10 per month. This is better.
Next thing I plan to do is buy a digital TV antenna to see what's HD programming is flying through the air in my town. It's free. I might as well get some local traffic reports and weather (which Hulu and Amazon don't do, sadly.)
It's a little weird and scary, but it can be done. You can survive without cable. I suggest trying a streaming service for a few days before making the final cut. I guess I could have saved us both some time by just saying that to start with. Ah well.
Monday, we will return to our usual snarky-jokes-about-old-pictures program.
Success! Video playback was buttery smooth and the toast of my eyes welcomed the melty playback goodness into their every nook and cranny. The reviews I had read about my TV had said how useless the internet connectivity was, but I had thought "How bad could it be?" Really bad. My 2012 model Samsung's smart TV functionality is so bad as to be unusable. Buy it for the picture. Not the internet feature. It's weird that Samsung, a company that makes smartphones, could get it so wrong in scaling up the exact same functionality to their TVs. My guess is that TVs and smartphones are handled by two different arms of the company, and they don't share their secrets.
Anyhoo, with this victory fresh in my experience, I ordered a top-of-the-line Roku for 90-whatever dollars. It's smaller than a sandwich and can be connected via WiFi or cat 5 cable. Both types of connection flow smoothly, which surprised me a little. I tried going three days of no cable TV, using only the streaming services. It was fine. There's lots of stuff available in the streamers, and Hulu is even creating their own original programming. Better still, the production values are good. It's not ghetto-hillbilly reality TV stuff. Roku seems to have a handful of free "channels" that don't require a Hulu or Amazon membership. After all, the thing has to be able to do something on it's own, right? Good news, troops! The Thunderbirds series is available on Crackle, Roku's free movie channel. They are GO!
It was time to call Comcast for the cable TV break-up. Their phone maze questions led me to the "remove services" option, which in turn led to a recording reciting their regular business hours. Guess what? You can get ahold of a Comcast worker bee 24 hours a day for anything EXCEPT cancelling a service. You have to call them during their business hours to do that. The people who handle your cancellations don't want to hear from you that badly. Shocking!
Following day, I called in the afternoon to catch the "customer retention" or "too little, too late" department while they were still on the clock. I talked to a very nice lady, oddly enough, who asked why I was cancelling. I explained that I was tired of their channel packages and paying for things I don't want. She said she could understand that. When she asked me what Comcast could do to keep me, I said "a la carte pricing", and we both had a good long laugh. I told her that I would happily pay $5 per channel for each of the six or so channels I used. She then explained that my current deal was a better value, because I was getting over six hundred channels, and in my fantasy world, that would cost over $3000 per month. I then explained to her that I am a fire engine named Sylvia and my house is made of cabbage, because she clearly hadn't listened to the last five sentences I had said to her.
So now my Comcast bill should be about $54 per month, down from over $150. With their five megabit per second speed, I can watch a show while using a web browser on my phone without any problems. Amazon Instant Video comes as part of my Amazon Prime membership, and Hulu Plus costs $10 per month. This is better.
Next thing I plan to do is buy a digital TV antenna to see what's HD programming is flying through the air in my town. It's free. I might as well get some local traffic reports and weather (which Hulu and Amazon don't do, sadly.)
It's a little weird and scary, but it can be done. You can survive without cable. I suggest trying a streaming service for a few days before making the final cut. I guess I could have saved us both some time by just saying that to start with. Ah well.
END
Monday, we will return to our usual snarky-jokes-about-old-pictures program.
2/27/13
Supplementary Sidebar - The Cord Cutting Chronicles, Pt 2. The Dawn Breaks, or, The Night Dawns on Comcast.
So, back in December, I took advantage of the ridiculously good and cheap crop of television options we now enjoy and got a new one. It's a Samsung, which got great ratings for picture quality and horrible ratings for it's "smart TV" functionality. Since I was cable-cutter-curious, I figured the "smart" part of the thing would be enough to satisfy the part of me that wanted to give cable the finger, which, truth to tell, was most of me.
I had done some research, and knew that almost all of my must-have shows were available through either Amazon Instant, Hulu, or both, just with (with some shows) a bit of a delay between first-run air date and the episodes' appearance on the streaming services. Bummer, but getting Top gear six months earlier than Hulu was not worth $1200 a year.
Desired shows: (Mix of free and not free, depending on newness of episodes.)
-Top Gear
-Walking Dead - Getting a little slow and tedious in its budget-cut 3rd season. Can live without it.
-Breaking Bad
-Game of Thrones
-How It's Made - Equivalent shows are all over the place on the streaming services.
-Mythbusters - Not available streaming, but the show is getting more and more scripted and lame.
-Wheeler Dealers - British car restoration show. Not available streaming. This one really hurts.
Adding up the cost of the infrequent seasons of the shows I would happily pay for, it's still less than the $150 per month I've been paying. Most of the time, when I flick on the TV, it's a rerun of something I've seen anyway. Any yes, I'm one of those tree-killers that turns the TV on while cooking, or working on the computer and stuff. When the house is silent, the voices come. We don't like the voices.
Found shows I wasn't looking for on Hulu Plus: ($10/month)
-International news from all over
-Numerous nature shows
-Loads of obscure anime
-Lots of guy brain-candy similar to How It's Made and Really Huge Bridges, or whatever.
-Lots of documentaries
-Weirdo B-movies I've never heard of
-Actual movies normal people would want to see
-5th Gear - Another British car show only slightly less good than Top Gear
It's pretty cool pressing a button on your remote and seeing a whole new screen filled with Netflix, Amazon Instant and Hulu logos, along with Samsung's idea of a home page. As it turns out, Samsung's idea of a home page is this: Start adding logos to click on, and when the screen gets full, make the screen slide left and right. This is a lesson that everyone else in the world learned was a bad idea back in 1998, in the prehistoric years of Web 1.0. Anyway, Samsung has been concentrating on making TVs all this time, so maybe they get a pass.
Since I was already an Amazon Prime member (something like $60 a year gets you free two day shipping on lots of things, and also includes free streaming content like movies and TV shows), I tried watching a few episodes of Top Gear. The thrill of watching something through an artery other than Comcast's main vein quickly wore off when stuttering and disconnects happened with disappointing regularity - about every 5 minutes. "TV has no internet connection. Please check your settings." Since I wasn't using wi-fi to connect to the web this was surprising. I had a cat 5 cable stuck in the back of the TV and my modem and router were doing nothing else at the time. How could there be traffic problems? I wondered if Comcast was throttling my connection, or I had reached my monthly data ceiling or something like that. I had never had to worry about streaming video before, so these were both possible.
Fast forward to me on the horn with a Comcast worker bee who verified that I had 15 megabit per second of download speed. I had done enough homework to know that services like Hulu recommend no less than 1 megabit download speed, and I had 15. That shouldn't be a problem.
I could taste the streaming content cake, but it often disappeared mid-chew and had to be re-bitten over and over again with only the occasional swallow. What was to be done?
Coming soon - What was to be Done.
I had done some research, and knew that almost all of my must-have shows were available through either Amazon Instant, Hulu, or both, just with (with some shows) a bit of a delay between first-run air date and the episodes' appearance on the streaming services. Bummer, but getting Top gear six months earlier than Hulu was not worth $1200 a year.
Desired shows: (Mix of free and not free, depending on newness of episodes.)
-Top Gear
-Walking Dead - Getting a little slow and tedious in its budget-cut 3rd season. Can live without it.
-Breaking Bad
-Game of Thrones
-How It's Made - Equivalent shows are all over the place on the streaming services.
-Mythbusters - Not available streaming, but the show is getting more and more scripted and lame.
-Wheeler Dealers - British car restoration show. Not available streaming. This one really hurts.
Adding up the cost of the infrequent seasons of the shows I would happily pay for, it's still less than the $150 per month I've been paying. Most of the time, when I flick on the TV, it's a rerun of something I've seen anyway. Any yes, I'm one of those tree-killers that turns the TV on while cooking, or working on the computer and stuff. When the house is silent, the voices come. We don't like the voices.
Found shows I wasn't looking for on Hulu Plus: ($10/month)
-International news from all over
-Numerous nature shows
-Loads of obscure anime
-Lots of guy brain-candy similar to How It's Made and Really Huge Bridges, or whatever.
-Lots of documentaries
-Weirdo B-movies I've never heard of
-Actual movies normal people would want to see
-5th Gear - Another British car show only slightly less good than Top Gear
It's pretty cool pressing a button on your remote and seeing a whole new screen filled with Netflix, Amazon Instant and Hulu logos, along with Samsung's idea of a home page. As it turns out, Samsung's idea of a home page is this: Start adding logos to click on, and when the screen gets full, make the screen slide left and right. This is a lesson that everyone else in the world learned was a bad idea back in 1998, in the prehistoric years of Web 1.0. Anyway, Samsung has been concentrating on making TVs all this time, so maybe they get a pass.
Since I was already an Amazon Prime member (something like $60 a year gets you free two day shipping on lots of things, and also includes free streaming content like movies and TV shows), I tried watching a few episodes of Top Gear. The thrill of watching something through an artery other than Comcast's main vein quickly wore off when stuttering and disconnects happened with disappointing regularity - about every 5 minutes. "TV has no internet connection. Please check your settings." Since I wasn't using wi-fi to connect to the web this was surprising. I had a cat 5 cable stuck in the back of the TV and my modem and router were doing nothing else at the time. How could there be traffic problems? I wondered if Comcast was throttling my connection, or I had reached my monthly data ceiling or something like that. I had never had to worry about streaming video before, so these were both possible.
Fast forward to me on the horn with a Comcast worker bee who verified that I had 15 megabit per second of download speed. I had done enough homework to know that services like Hulu recommend no less than 1 megabit download speed, and I had 15. That shouldn't be a problem.
I could taste the streaming content cake, but it often disappeared mid-chew and had to be re-bitten over and over again with only the occasional swallow. What was to be done?
Coming soon - What was to be Done.
2/26/13
Supplementary Sidebar - The Cord Cutting Chronicles, Pt 1
Herein, find the chronicle of a man yearning to invite Comcast to remove their straw from his checking account. I've been a Comcast subscriber for basically 18 years, and the price of having a 600-channel spigot of raw entertainment leaving puddles of excitement, hilarity, and adventure on my carpet has risen just slightly faster than the subjective value of those puddles. My channel lineup includes over 600 channels, but I doubt that anyone really watches more than six or ten, unless they're unemployed, or a shut-in. By my reckoning, to actually use all 600-something channels, I'd have to house a random selection of 900 people, each watching television for sixteen hours a day (assuming they slept for eight hours per day and they all ate and excreted in front of the TV). I'll go out on a limb and say that those 900 people would have access to all the entertainment they can stand, but that they wouldn't necessarily be entertained. Also, my aforementioned carpet couldn't handle such high-frequency excretion.
What was fifteen years ago a sixty dollar monthly bill has ballooned up to a $150 monthly bill. Mitigating factors include the addition of broadband internet, HD fees and additional channels which, admittedly, I called and invited into my home. However, Comcast's decisions to spread similar content throughout different tiers of channels isn't a mistake or something I can control. If, for example, you like sciencey programming, you'll find yourself paying for tens of channels worth of sports, cooking shows, and at least one channel solely dedicated to reality slapfight mind poison types of content that you aren't interested in, just to get several channels you do like. Sometimes, Comcast migrates a favorite channel into a new group of gotta-pay-extra channels, for your satisfaction. It's also worth noting that the sports channels are the single most expensive type of content for pay TV providers to license from the NFL, NBA, etc. If you have pay TV, you're paying for at least a few sports channels. I hope somebody in your house likes to watch sports, because you're paying extra for them, like it or not.
Please enjoy the following metaphor to help you understand what a massive prick cable providers are:
If a grocery store worked the way cable TV does, you would walk into a store after navigating a labyrinth, with a one in three chance of finding yourself re-deposited in the parking lot. After your second attempt at the door labyrinth, you hopefully would have memorized it and managed to gain access to the actual store. Hoping to buy oranges and paper towels, you would be confronted with a helpful sales associate. "Oranges?" the sales drone would drone. "Sure, those are in produce, but you'll have to buy some folding chairs, a greeting card, three different kinds of lettuce, some ground beef, two tablecloths, and an ice pick." That's our 'Produce Lover's' Tier of products. For paper towels, you'll also get a three pack of cigarette lighters, some bread (not the kind you like), carrots, squash, shoelaces, a set of picnic spoons, two bendy straws, one more birthday card, instant coffee, and a Chinese made yo-yo that's way too light and flimsy to develop any kind of rotational momentum and is essentially worthless. That's our 'Basic Starter Pack'. It's a great value." The total price for your oranges and paper towels purchase would come to $126.32. You would then take your recently purchased ice pick and ram it up your nose because you no longer want to live in a world this stupid. However, if after this shopping ordeal, you were still thinking really clearly, you'd use the ice pick on the sales drone. "Ow, the cavity where the remainder of my brain is!" the drone would drone. "That's one satisfied customer" you'd rasp to yourself, and then stride confidently away from the store, unflinching, as it explodes in a slow-motion ball of flame for some reason. See? I know my basic cable Saturday afternoon classics.
What was fifteen years ago a sixty dollar monthly bill has ballooned up to a $150 monthly bill. Mitigating factors include the addition of broadband internet, HD fees and additional channels which, admittedly, I called and invited into my home. However, Comcast's decisions to spread similar content throughout different tiers of channels isn't a mistake or something I can control. If, for example, you like sciencey programming, you'll find yourself paying for tens of channels worth of sports, cooking shows, and at least one channel solely dedicated to reality slapfight mind poison types of content that you aren't interested in, just to get several channels you do like. Sometimes, Comcast migrates a favorite channel into a new group of gotta-pay-extra channels, for your satisfaction. It's also worth noting that the sports channels are the single most expensive type of content for pay TV providers to license from the NFL, NBA, etc. If you have pay TV, you're paying for at least a few sports channels. I hope somebody in your house likes to watch sports, because you're paying extra for them, like it or not.
Please enjoy the following metaphor to help you understand what a massive prick cable providers are:
If a grocery store worked the way cable TV does, you would walk into a store after navigating a labyrinth, with a one in three chance of finding yourself re-deposited in the parking lot. After your second attempt at the door labyrinth, you hopefully would have memorized it and managed to gain access to the actual store. Hoping to buy oranges and paper towels, you would be confronted with a helpful sales associate. "Oranges?" the sales drone would drone. "Sure, those are in produce, but you'll have to buy some folding chairs, a greeting card, three different kinds of lettuce, some ground beef, two tablecloths, and an ice pick." That's our 'Produce Lover's' Tier of products. For paper towels, you'll also get a three pack of cigarette lighters, some bread (not the kind you like), carrots, squash, shoelaces, a set of picnic spoons, two bendy straws, one more birthday card, instant coffee, and a Chinese made yo-yo that's way too light and flimsy to develop any kind of rotational momentum and is essentially worthless. That's our 'Basic Starter Pack'. It's a great value." The total price for your oranges and paper towels purchase would come to $126.32. You would then take your recently purchased ice pick and ram it up your nose because you no longer want to live in a world this stupid. However, if after this shopping ordeal, you were still thinking really clearly, you'd use the ice pick on the sales drone. "Ow, the cavity where the remainder of my brain is!" the drone would drone. "That's one satisfied customer" you'd rasp to yourself, and then stride confidently away from the store, unflinching, as it explodes in a slow-motion ball of flame for some reason. See? I know my basic cable Saturday afternoon classics.
Coming soon: The Dawn Breaks, or, The Night Dawns on Comcast.
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