I don’t know what we’re going to do about television at my house. We’re with Cox Communication and along with everybody else have been notified that Cox is going all digital and it would be necessary to request a digital box fromCos or stop by their store and pick one up. To punctuate that point Cox began dropping channels. When you clicked on one of these dropped channels a large notice on the screen would inform you this channel is no longer available. You need digital to view it, and all channels would go digital by July 12th. After four or five channels had been dropped including one of my wife’s favorites, we decided it would be best if if we go ahead and get the box and install it so we wouldn’t miss out on anything. I stopped by the Cox store and picked up a digital dos package which included two or three cables, a small remote, and a small instruction booklet. I was told it was easy to install, anyone could do it and to have a good day.They said the box was free for two years. I couldn’t figure out how to install it. I read and reread the instructions three times but it appeared the ends of the cables didn’t match up so that I could not do what the instruction said I needed to do. By now I have invested thirty or forty minutes into this digital venture with no good results. We decided to wait until our son install this for us. In due course our son came over and installed the digital box, scanned the channels and showed the missus how to us the remote. I asked my son why it was I couldn’t hook up the remote properly so that it would work. He said I apparently didn’t follow directions. I will admit to not understanding what they were telling me to do or how to do it. On top of all this the missus could read the print on the new, smaller remote control. She hated it, hated the city digital box and stated flatly, she didn’t want the digital. Our son unhooked everything and put the TV back as it was before we ever heard of digital. We, the missus and I, discussed buying an inside antenna , hooking it up and see what we could get without benefit of Cox Communication. So that’s what we did. We went to Best Buy, consulted with a Best Buy employee the proper antenna to get and brought one home to see how it would work in Norman. The Missus suggested I wait and let our son hook it up. I readily agreed. So our son, being the good son that he is, came over and hooked up the antenna for us. It didn’t work well for us. We couldn’t get many channels and most of the channels we could get we have never watched nor will we want watch them. And we couldn’t get PBS, a channel the missus spends much time with. We discussed returning the antenna to Best Buy but decided to wait until the weekend is over before making a decision. The missus is unhappy and by now I don’t care if I ever watch the television again. We decide to wait until the weekends is over before making a decision. I’m wondering how life suddenly got so complicated. It’s not always easy being an old senior.
Things are definitely different today from yesteryears! We had to get a digital box for our small bedroom tv. I finally got it hooked up, but it did take some time.........and, I'm a fairly "techy" person. Another thing we found out and had to get it: If a person buys a HD tv, have to spend out a pretty penny for cable connections upgrade (like almost $100), PLUS, have to pay a higher price for HD TV subscription. Not all tv stations are HD! Love watching HD, but that sure costs us.
We were having trouble with Comcast cable. They kept changing things and raising our monthly payment. We ordered an external antenna from Amazon that cost around $30+, and Bobby set it up outside on our roof. It actually worked just fine when he had it sitting on the front porch; but he thought it would be better on the roof. It gets all of the local stations, and also the PBS one. Then, my daughter switched her cable to dish, and got a good deal and told us about that, so we switched to DirecTV also. We signed up at Sam's Club; so we also got a $300 Sam's gift card as part of the promotion. We have more channls than we had with cable, and the price is almost $40 less per month. The downside is that when there are storms, the satellite goes out; but then we just switch over to the roof antenna, and we can still watch the local channels to see if there are going to be any tornadoes in our area, which is about all we watch when the storms are bad anyway.
I have had satellite TV before too, including satellite Internet, and it depends on where you live and what's around you. When I lived in Parkton, North Carolina, we had satellite from WildBlue, and that worked pretty good. The Internet service wasn't very fast but the television packages worked fine. But when we first moved to Millinocket, Maine, there were no other options for high-speed Internet so we got satellite Internet and Dish TV. They set it up in the fall, after the leaves had fallen from the trees, and it worked okay. The next spring, however, the Internet would hardly work at all and we were having trouble with the television reception. We let them cut down one of our trees and trim a couple of others, because they said the branches were interfering with reception but that didn't help much, if at all. About then, other options became available, such as cable TV/Internet and DSL, so we dumped satellite. But if you live in an area where there is clear access to the satellite, satellite TV works pretty well and might be an option.
@Ken Anderson Sounds as though you were kinda in the same boat as us, when we left Phoenix and moved to Missouri. Deep in the Mark Twain National Forest, no cell signal for a 15 mile radius, no internet service at all, HughesNet not yet available, the local phone co., IT&T sold out to CenturyTel which provided no internet service at all. Plenty of public outcry, many months later, CenturyTel agreed to provide dial-up internet service. Novices, we had no clue, but took it. Download a maybe 5 minute video, half an hour, or more! Email? Got lost while awaiting transport. Couple years of this and Hughes tried to market in our area, about $150/month, uh, uh, no income, no outlay like that. I was, (and still am), pretty nerdy, trained technically 50 years earlier in a hierarchy of electronics entirely "pre-Information Revolution". Still, I could reason out some of the things going on. DSL (Digital Synchronous Logic) never made it to our farmhouse. DSL requires "copper" (metallic) conductors to the exchange (T-1) no longer than 15,000 feet. We were at 40,000.
I had Comcast in Naples, and had bought a new TV. When sitting watching a program my eyes were watering, sneezing, and could smell a chemical smell. It was coming from the Comcast server. I disconnected everything and looked on the back of the server it had an issue date of 2008. I took it back and they issued me another. This time I bit the bullet, paid for one of their techs to come and installed it. Shortly after this was done same problem. Returned everything of theres. Told them I didn't want their service or equipment. Of course they wanted to know the reason, and told them they have shoddy servers and I didn't want a fire or an almost brand new TV to be ruin. I went with Dish, and even though our weather is changeable by the hour. I'll take a little inconvenience. I have a new server, no weird smells
That digibox is becoming a necessity now with the tv. Our cable provider had installed a digibox before but when they shifted to the so called HD (high definition for the resolution which means fully digital), they replaced the digibox with a newer model, saying that the old digibox is good only for the SD (standard definition). Well, the main difference of HD with SD is that SD gives you a fatter image because the telecast video is in HD which is fit for the wide screen while the SD is fit for the square screen. That's the explanation of the cable guy.