According to a tip from a Comcast guy, consumers can get a free HDMI cable if they trade in their component cable. The stipulation is that you have to ask for one. This is great news for people that were stuck by $5 HDMI cables from Monoprice and Amazon, along with the chumps purchasing $100 HDMI cables from Monster Cable. Everyone wins!
Comcast is slowly converting markets into 100% digital, which happens to free up bandwidth for a lot high-def stations. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some HDTV, but how they are doing it will infuriate millions – including myself – with digital set-top boxes on every TV and dramatic price increases. The transition shows the weakness of the companies coax network that relies on copper to deliver the signal to neighborhoods and fiber-optic for the backbone only. Once this conversion hits, cable will lose any appeal over satellite or fiber options.
I had been dreading this call all day. I was going to have to dial-up Comcast and attempt to order a couple of Cable Cards for a TiVo HD XL and I wasn’t looking forward to the ensuing conversations. To my absolute surprise though, the call went well.
The billing specialist listened to my needs, recommended the right solution which happened to be two cable cards and didn’t try to rape me on the price. I simply have never had such a pleasant experience with a Comcast tool before. Even when he offered Comcast Digital Voice and found out that I had been a Vonage subscriber for five years, he didn’t keep forcing the issue – first that has ever happened.
So to the Comcast billing specialist that wasn’t bitchy and rude, thank you. Hopefully more of your fellow associates follow your lead.
Update: I’m back to hating Comcast more than anything else in the world. Anything. The dude mentioned above that I could pick up my Cable Cards at my local Comcast office today. So I just went up there only to be told that, no, they cannot give ‘em to me and they were going to charge me $35 to install them on Wednesday. Gawd, I hate Comcast. Superman and Lex Luther are tighter buds than I and Comcast.
$35 isn’t that much, but it’s the fact Comcast earned a bit of respect after the my pleasant conversation early today, only to lose every last bit of it with a visit to my local Comcast office.
Reader Jason just sent us this e-mail he received from Comcast outlining their excessive use policy change:
Dear Comcast High-Speed Internet Customer,
We appreciate your business and strive to provide you with the best online experience possible. One of the ways we do this is through our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). The AUP outlines acceptable use of our service as well as steps we take to protect our customers from things that can negatively impact their experience online. This policy has been in place for many years and we update it periodically to keep it current with our customers’ use of our service.
On October 1, 2008, we will post an updated AUP that will go into effect at that time.
Read More
So Comcast is implementing a 250GB monthly bandwidth cap starting next month. While some consumers are up in arms about the true meaning of “unlimited” internet access, others have focused on how these caps will affect the innovation of web-based services, particularly video streaming and downloading.
Roku, maker of the Netflix-streaming box (reviewed here), isn’t too concerned, according to NewTeeVee. Tim Twerdhal, VP of consumer products, says:
“It really doesn’t give me a lot of concern. It’s unfortunate that the limitless possibilities are being capped by an ISP, but it has no direct business impact on us.”
Comcast has now jumped into the downloadable video content game with the Fancast Store. It’s a lot like many other video download stores in that you can either rent or buy movies and TV shows, it requires you to install proprietary media management software in order to download and view your content, and it’s not Mac compatible (you can, however, order content from a Mac and download it on a PC later).
Purchasing content allows you to download it on up to three computers, while renting content ties you to whichever computer you use to download the content. Rented video files must be consumed within 30 days and, once initially played, must be watched within 24 hours or they’ll expire.
Well, would you look at that. GalleryPlayer has shut down.
GalleryPlayer® has ceased operations as of July 30, 2008.
According to the founder’s bio, the company has accually been sold, but to who we don’t know.
GalleryPlayer has had its content and technology deployed and distributed to customers by many world class partners including Google, Microsoft, Comcast, Panasonic, Mitsubishi and Samsung. GalleryPlayer was sold in August, 2008. Buyer confidential – transaction pending.
Will we see GalleryPlayer pop back up under new management? Hopefully something will come out of this because with flat-panel sales at an all time high, and the sales are only going to rise, a device that displays artwork on the sets is a great feature. Only time will tell.
GalleryPlayer via twice
Torrent freaks and mIRC monkeys take note. Starting on October 1st of this year, the all mighty Comcast is installing a rock-solid cap on your downloads. This 250GB limit is part of their shift towards “protocol agnostic” network management – or whatever the hell that means. Wait there is more my torrent-loving reader. There might even be an overage charge of $15 per 10GB downloaded over the cap so you might want to keep an eye on your traffic.
Comcast’s statement puts the 250GB cap into perspective and shows why the vast majority of subscribers will never have to worry if they will go over.
- Send 50 million emails (at 0.05 KB/email)
- Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song)
- Download 125 standard-definition movies (at 2 GB/movie)
- Upload 25,000 hi-resolution digital photos (at 10 MB/photo)
So what is a habitual downloader to do? Who knows how this cap is implemented. Perhaps some coders will release a work around for us script-kiddies. Alternatively, maybe this cap is only going to be on certain price plans, forcing subscribers up to higher tiers for “Unlimited downloads.” Time will tell, but if history has taught us anything, you can bet your cable modem that other providers are writing up their new policies right now.
Comcast via BroadbandDSLReports
image via
To combat network congestion, Comcast will slow the Internet connection of its heaviest users for as long as 20 minutes. It used to be that Comcast would block altogether certain traffic, including BitTorrent. The FCC said a few days ago that doing such a thing—blocking traffic it doesn’t like—is a big no-no. So now you’ll have to deal with a bit of slowdown.
Even though it may seem just as annoying, slowing Internet service, now Comcast isn’t allowed to pick and choose what it blocks from its network. Now, if you’re found to be using “too much” bandwidth (Comcast says it has the tools to monitor traffic in real time), Comcast will slow you down a bit. A Comcast rep said the slowed speed would be comparable to a “really good” DSL connection.
Somehow, I don’t think people are shelling out X-Amount per month for unlimited Internet access just to have a “really good” DSL connection. That’s a fight for another day, though.
That said, is this enough to calm down the boo boys, merely slowing down speeds for a few minutes rather than blocking traffic altogether? For some light BitTorrent users I’d have to say yeah, it ought to be. You’ll never satisfy the guys hanging around TorrentLeech and Bit-HDTV all day, though.
American households aren’t hook’n up to broadband access like they used to says Wired. The adoption rate here in the States is at a seven year low and it seems that prices are to blame. With $4 gas and Ramen Noodle dinners, high-speed access mustn’t feel like a necessity anymore. So what’s a struggling provider to do? How about dropping the price a bit. We don’t think anyone would complain about a price break and it might even improve some of the provider’s image a bit.
After all, something tells us that if Comcast can install a 25-foot by 83-foot HD LED video wall in their brand new 57-story skyscraper, at least that company can afford to drop ma and pa’s internet price.
Here’s an update to the story about the FCC versus Comcast that we posted on Wednesday. The FCC has officially ruled today and it turns out that Comcast will not be fined for throttling peer-to-peer network traffic, but it will have to stop discriminating against certain internet traffic until the company comes up with a compliance plan “to fully disclose its practices” to customers.
Bloomberg reports that the five-member FCC panel voted 3-2 against Comcast. Critics of Comcast’s traffic-regulating activities are calling the ruling a “bellwether case”. It’s important to note that although Comcast has been ordered to stop throttling traffic, it appears that the reasoning behind the ruling has more to do with the fact that the throttling wasn’t being disclosed to customers, not that the throttling was actually taken place. So it appears that bandwidth management can and will continue, it’ll just have to be more transparent.
In the wake of the FCC versus Comcast brouhaha, wherein Comcast has been accused of illegally slowing down connections to file sharing services like BitTorrent without informing its cable internet subscribers first, the Federal Communications Commission has ruled that Comcast acted outside of the law.
According to a report in the Washington Post, the five-member panel will formally vote this Friday, although three of the five members have said that they’ll vote against Comcast. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin “is not expected to fine Comcast, according to industry insiders and members of the FCC who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the ruling is still pending.”
The ruling is expected to set precedent for future complaints. Roger Entner of IAG Research says, "This is a slap on the wrist for Comcast, but it will be a cutting off of the hand for the next provider who violates rules." It’s important to note that the throttling BitTorrent connections isn’t the issue at hand, it’s that throttling connections without making it clear to your customers is the problem. So the practice can, and likely will, continue. It’ll just need to be much more transparent in the future.
Poor Comcast, now even the Washington Post recognizes how terrible you are.
There’s an article in today’s paper about a Comcast customers who only wanted to transfer his account and services from one home to another. Simple, enough, right? Comcast thought so, too. The thing is, after five weeks of repeated attempts to get the guy’s new house up to snuff, Comcast realized what the problem was: they never bothered to lay cable to the man’s new house. Now, if that’s not the equivalent of calling Dell customer service only to hear “Is your computer plugged in?” I don’t know what is.
Comcast eventually hooked the guy up. How magnanimous.
The kicker, quite literally in journalism speak, is that the customer, soon after being hooked up, switched to another provider.
Comcast Center aka The Citadel. Flickr’d
The FCC wants to punish Comcast for blocking its customers’ access to the Internet. That, of course, in part refers to the company’s practice of blocking BitTorrent.
Kevin Martin—yes, that Kevin Martin—had this to say:
We found that Comcast’s actions in this instance violated our principles [of open access to the Internet]
As you might expect, Comcast has denied all wrongdoing, arguing that it’s merely trying to manage its network for the benefit of everyone. You, protect you from yourself, that line of logic.
Give this story some time, and it’s bound to hot up.
Comcast and Vonage have promised to never fight again and to work together to balance “network congestion” with “ensuring that over-the-top VoIP services like Vonage work well for consumers.”
Wow, does that mean Comcast is promising to stop blocking services like Vonage from running on its network? How sweet!
Vonage Chief Technology Officer Louis Mamakos said in a statement: “This agreement helps Vonage to ensure that customers have the best possible Internet experience. Although we’re competitors with Comcast, this understanding helps our two companies work together to balance the needs of network management with consumers’ ability to freely access the services, applications and content of their choice.”
Comcast also wanted you to know that this is only its “latest” in a series of announcements that “demonstrate the company’s commitment to ensure that its customers’ ability to use any application or access any content they choose while avoiding network congestion situations that could affect the consumer experience.”
Linux to the rescue!
Long story short, Comcast uses an application called Sandvine to disrupt certain BitTorrent traffic. That is to say it’s not always Sandvine preventing your from seeding “distros,” but sometimes. Using the old standby iptables firewall, you can configure your system to, in layman terms, “defeat” the Sandvine nastiness.
Best of all, what you’re doing only affects your BitTorrent port, so no need to fear “messing up” your entire Internet connection.
All that’s involved is modifying a few values, so if you speak Linux, have Comcast and want to improve your BitTorrent experience, give it a shot and let us know how it turns out. I have Cablevision, which doesn’t seem to have as many seeding issues as you Comcast guys do, so I try it out.
via Slashdot
All credit unto Gizmodo for spotting this tragic ad. In anticipation of the new Batman movie, which does, in fact, look pretty good (and I hate stupid action/adventure movies), there’s a cute “fake” Web site for Gotham Cable News, presumably the fictional city’s source of fair and balanced news.
And wouldn’t you know it, Comcast is Gotham’s cable provider! Quick, don’t pass up the Triple Play, so named to trick consumers into thinking they’re getting something rare and beneficial.
Never mind that in the real Gotham, New York City, Time Warner is the predominant provider.
Anyone else tired of “viral” marketing? It was fun the first time; now it’s a little well-worn.
via Gizmodo
Comcast, Verizon, and Time Warner Cable are all sniping at each other, emphasizing the minor advantages their overpriced service has over the competitor’s overpriced service. They’re trading whiny potshots over whether the fiber goes to the house, what “compression” means, and so on, when they should be doing that other stuff cable companies do, like throttling my bandwidth and reporting my usage statistics to the Department of Homeland Security.
You know when there’s this kind of catfight that none of them have anything decent to offer. If any one of them really had a truly superior product, they would be able to say so with authority and the benefits would be manifest. But this kind of little dust-up just means they’ve all got nothing and their lawyers just needed a workout.
Good news for P2P fans! It seems ISPs were touting their new bandwidth control methods at a recent Las Vegas convention!
Most seemed to have distanced themselves from Comcast’s scorched earth policy of traffic management, though.
For example, several companies discussed “Smart” routing technology, which works by routing your requests to the closest physical location. So, presumably, if you’re downloading a torrent file, this smart routing will make it such that you’ll automatically download from the closest IP, thereby reducing stress on the network as a whole. No use downloading “Viva la Vida” from some kid in France when you’re neighbor one town over has it, in other words.
One other solution bandied about was to cache popular P2P content, but this would only apply to legal content.
And as much as we love downloading here and there, you gotta give credit to the ISPs and their cohorts for at least attempting to come up with workable solutions. That, or would you rather your ISP go the ol’ Comcast route? I say give ‘em a chance to figure their stuff out.
I’m not the first technology pundit to think that Comcast is constantly ripping us off, but this is a little ridiculous. Thieves, somehow outfitted with a Comcast truck, broke into a man’s apartment in Baltimore, MD, demanding money. The fake Comcast techs then shot him.
He was then handcuffed. Seeing an opportunity, he jumped through a closed bedroom window and called for help.
A local witness saw the thieves “messing with” the cable box outside of the house first, likely casing the place. There’s no word yet if they were actual Comcast contractors or if it was a stolen van.
A similar plot was part of The Italian Job, where the thieves used a cable company van as part of their heist, but this is just thuggish.
