Video on Demand...you want me to what???

[XCashier]

csrindy, you do have some interesting customers. I think too much time with the TV rots their brains. How the hell is the cable company to blame for a power outage? And why would the cable operator want to have phone sex with some sleaze?

Crapcast has been moving channels onto their more-expensive HD service. Sorry, but I can't justify spending roughly $100 (~60 for basic service, and then an additional 40+ for the basic HD package) per month for TV. That's why there's usually not much on TV, but at least I have a half-dozen shopping channels or variations of ESPN Considering that I don't watch much TV to begin with, I'm actually considering dropping it totally.

Same here. Roughly ¼ of the channels are Spanish, ¼ are sports and most of the rest I just don't care about. The one channel I did want -- BBC America -- they only carry in the most expensive package.

It would be nice if we could pay $X for, say, ten cable channels and pick the ones we want. But that's probably too difficult for today's technology to do.

sounds like that caller is in need of a priority re-write

if he/she can barely stay afloat it's time to reconsider what entertainment really costs.

Precisely. Besides, you can always go to the library and borrow books (and sometimes even movies) for free.

[Andara Bledin]

the only ones that are worse are the T-Mobile prepaid call centers in India...

Are they worse, even, than the ones that Earthlink uses? They'd regularly hang up if you talked to them and then asked for an escalation.

csrindy, you do have some interesting customers. I think too much time with the TV rots their brains. How the hell is the cable company to blame for a power outage?

Oh, that one's easy. The power goes out and their tvs stop working, so obviously it's a problem with the cable.

... yeah... my brain nearly rebelled just writing that... >_>

It would be nice if we could pay $X for, say, ten cable channels and pick the ones we want. But that's probably too difficult for today's technology to do.

I'd bet cold hard cash that an a la carte system could be set up for people to build their own packages without much difficulty. But it won't happen because a lot of stations use the hot tickets to help get their crappy affiliates on the air. Otherwise, there are some channels that would never be chosen.

^-.-^

[Sapphire Silk]

I'd bet cold hard cash that an a la carte system could be set up for people to build their own packages without much difficulty. But it won't happen because a lot of stations use the hot tickets to help get their crappy affiliates on the air. Otherwise, there are some channels that would never be chosen.

^-.-^

They have a la carte programming in Europe, IIRC.

The cable companies here have no competition, and therefore no incentive. They claim prices would actually increase because some channels would have to charge more than consumers would pay.

Duh! If it is a crappy channel I won't pay high end prices for it. In fact, I won't get it at all.

I want my local channels, and about 20 others. The rest are crap, or of no interest to me (sports, digital music)

[Andara Bledin]

Hey, they could even do a semi a la carte and let people build their own packages, so we'd still be stuck choosing a bunch of shitty little affiliates, but at least we'd get to tailor which ones we got saddled with. Like no foreign language channels for those of us who don't speak the language and aren't interested in learning, no sports for those who hate them, etc.

^-.-^

[tropicsgoddess]

And I thought tech support had some dumb ones...welcome to , csrindy!

[Geek King]

Like no foreign language channels for those of us who don't speak the language and aren't interested in learning, [...]

But the Japanese channels have some of the best commercials, even if you don't understand a lick of Japanese.