Sorta OT: Comcast v. Century Link

[Sedatedfork]

Is the Comcast monopoly on the Blazers over? Century Link just was canvassing my neighborhood in Seattle and I come home to my wife changing our service. I'm kind of despondent... and she asks why? I tell her I can't get the Blazer games on Century Link, but the reps tell me that CSN is available on Century Link now. Maybe this is coming to Portland too?

 

[Orion Bailey]

Is the Comcast monopoly on the Blazers over? Century Link just was canvassing my neighborhood in Seattle and I come home to my wife changing our service. I'm kind of despondent... and she asks why? I tell her I can't get the Blazer games on Century Link, but the reps tell me that CSN is available on Century Link now. Maybe this is coming to Portland too?

Not that I am aware of, but very interested if anyone else picks it up so I can get rid of commiecast. Wife did that to me when we moved into our new home last year. They insisted to her we would get the Blazer games. I told her to confirm. She found out that they meant through NBATV, but still no CSN. Now this was direct TV not century link. There are some ways they word it that make you think you get the games, but they are withholding the details. Assholes... I told them to come get their shit and I wasn't paying them a dime.
As much as I hate Commiecast, they are still the best option as of I know.

 

[blue9]

Yup, that happened to my step dad - he was told he'd get the Blazer games through Century Link. He signed up and quickly found out that what they told him was false. They are either uninformed (definitely) or liars (probably).
Also, there are many CSN networks. You may very well get other region's CSNs, but not CSNNW.

 

[rasheedfan2005]

I have centurylink. Be careful. They lie and sneak extra charges on bills. Unfortunately they are still better than the competition.

 

[Boob-No-More]

As much as I hate Commiecast, they are still the best option as of I know.

Frontier FIOS in some areas. I've had them for five years now and never miss a Blazers game. Comcast still has two more seasons left on their near monopoly deal they signed back in 2007

BNM

 

[Sedatedfork]

It is the new Prism. Hopefully they didn't lie about CSN being available. I guess I will find out soon and let you know.

 

[blue9]

They lied - you won't get 'em on Prism.

 

[Sedatedfork]

So, I just did a little google search and saw these two articles that say it is available.

http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/index.ssf/2015/05/centurylink_prism_cable_tv_qa.html

Does CenturyLink have the Blazers?
Yes. It carries Comcast SportsNet Northwest – despite the fact that it's owned by rival Comcast.

http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/index.ssf/2015/05/centurylink_launches_cable_tv.html

Prism subscribers can expect a full channel lineup, including the Pac-12 Networks and Comcast SportsNet Northwest, which carries most Portland Trail Blazers games.

I am going to give it a shot. I will be your guinea pig. Worst case scenario, I will just pay to go back to Comcast.

 

[Draco]

So glad I finally cut the cord. Have all my broadcast TV for free over HD antenna. Use Roku3 over my new 70" TV with sling TV ($20 month) that gets ESPN and TNT. They had a promo with SlingTV to pay for half the Roku3. I have it hardwired to router so no wifi connectivity issues. Netflix $9 a month.

Bought NBA league pass for the season. If I was in Oregon I'd need to setup a VPN or something. With the money I save it'll pay for the TV in a couple years and I don't have to worry about a stupid cable box with a crappy interface. Internet service is very fast and reliable in my downtown area though. Still get more sports than I need even the baseball playoffs on TBS. If there's a Pac12 networks football game or whatever I don't get I go to the sportsbar there are only a couple per year. Not worth spending a thousand bucks a year on cable for a couple sports games and hundreds of channels I never watch.

 

[Denny Crane]

So glad I finally cut the cord. Have all my broadcast TV for free over HD antenna. Use Roku3 over my new 70" TV with sling TV ($20 month) that gets ESPN and TNT. They had a promo with SlingTV to pay for half the Roku3. I have it hardwired to router so no wifi connectivity issues. Netflix $9 a month.

Bought NBA league pass for the season. If I was in Oregon I'd need to setup a VPN or something. With the money I save it'll pay for the TV in a couple years and I don't have to worry about a stupid cable box with a crappy interface. Internet service is very fast and reliable in my downtown area though. Still get more sports than I need even the baseball playoffs on TBS. If there's a Pac12 networks football game or whatever I don't get I go to the sportsbar there are only a couple per year. Not worth spending a thousand bucks a year on cable for a couple sports games and hundreds of channels I never watch.

From what I've read, SlingTV broadcasts in 2 channel AAC stereo. If you have a home theater sound system, it's going to suffer from lesser quality audio. The PPV stuff is in 5.1.

I tried CBS All Access and it's stereo, too.

Also, I was reading about the new TiVo Bolt yesterday. It does 4K streaming (e.g. Netflix, Amazon Prime for now). It will have out of house streaming capability in 2016 like their Romaio product line. You can get TiVo mini boxes to turn it into whole home DVR. And it has cable card that works really good with Comcast - you can ditch all of the Comcast set top boxes and the like for the TiVo gear.

The out of house streaming feature allows you to watch your cable channels and DVR content anywhere in the world on handheld devices. Using AirPlay or chromecast, you can then watch on TV outside the home that has an Apple TV or chrome stick.

The downside is you have to pay $150/year (1st year is free) for their cable guide data.

 

[blue32]

Yeah I just play the 2-year game with DTV and Comcast. Every two years you just switch providers and get their 99~ month for all channels deal.

The reason I do this, is that we watch a bunch of shows on show/hbo/etc, and ala-carte doesn't save enough when we keep flipping every 2 years.

 

[julius]

Frontier FIOS in some areas. I've had them for five years now and never miss a Blazers game. Comcast still has two more seasons left on their near monopoly deal they signed back in 2007

BNM

Fuck, I thought this was the last season.

 

[Draco]

Yeah I just play the 2-year game with DTV and Comcast. Every two years you just switch providers and get their 99~ month for all channels deal.

The reason I do this, is that we watch a bunch of shows on show/hbo/etc, and ala-carte doesn't save enough when we keep flipping every 2 years.

Yeah I've done that too but for me I was really glad to cut the cord and still get 98% of what I want; could use less TV watching anyways.

HBO Now is $15/mo and I believe Showtime has something similar or will soon through Hulu.

 

[Draco]

From what I've read, SlingTV broadcasts in 2 channel AAC stereo. If you have a home theater sound system, it's going to suffer from lesser quality audio. The PPV stuff is in 5.1.

I tried CBS All Access and it's stereo, too.

Also, I was reading about the new TiVo Bolt yesterday. It does 4K streaming (e.g. Netflix, Amazon Prime for now). It will have out of house streaming capability in 2016 like their Romaio product line. You can get TiVo mini boxes to turn it into whole home DVR. And it has cable card that works really good with Comcast - you can ditch all of the Comcast set top boxes and the like for the TiVo gear.

The out of house streaming feature allows you to watch your cable channels and DVR content anywhere in the world on handheld devices. Using AirPlay or chromecast, you can then watch on TV outside the home that has an Apple TV or chrome stick.

The downside is you have to pay $150/year (1st year is free) for their cable guide data.

I got a decent Marantz receiver setup but only using stereo Klipsch speakers so fine for me. Some of the channels are so compressed through cable they look bad; antenna can be far better. The league pass Roku app has DVR like archives. The cable league pass channels were terrible here last year; only one of them was HD so I ended up just watching half the Blazer games on a computer. A DVR would be handy but haven't seen any I like worth the money; besides the Blazers I don't really need to be watching every second of TV. I can normally find a show on Hulu or somewhere if I really want after its aired. I only have a 70" TV so 4K wouldn't make a real world difference with my setup.

The Sling TV isn't without hiccups. I've had issues where it lags or freezes or cuts out. Not the end of the world but can be annoying if people are over. I can use the watchESPN Roku app for their content but it can lag too. I was so sick of cable and the way they force you to bundle crap its refreshing to ditch it.

 

[Denny Crane]

I got a decent Marantz receiver setup but only using stereo Klipsch speakers so fine for me. Some of the channels are so compressed through cable they look bad; antenna can be far better. The league pass Roku app has DVR like archives. The cable league pass channels were terrible here last year; only one of them was HD so I ended up just watching half the Blazer games on a computer. A DVR would be handy but haven't seen any I like worth the money; besides the Blazers I don't really need to be watching every second of TV. I can normally find a show on Hulu or somewhere if I really want after its aired. I only have a 70" TV so 4K wouldn't make a real world difference with my setup.

The Sling TV isn't without hiccups. I've had issues where it lags or freezes or cuts out. Not the end of the world but can be annoying if people are over. I can use the watchESPN Roku app for their content but it can lag too. I was so sick of cable and the way they force you to bundle crap its refreshing to ditch it.

Understood.

I do think the cable companies are really working hard at getting better.

They're rolling out very fast Internet, and delivering high bitrate content over those for TV programing is the plan. They just can't upgrade all the physical infrastructure everywhere and pull fiber optic cable fast enough

 

[Draco]

Understood.

I do think the cable companies are really working hard at getting better.

They're rolling out very fast Internet, and delivering high bitrate content over those for TV programing is the plan. They just can't upgrade all the physical infrastructure everywhere and pull fiber optic cable fast enough

Yeah; I'm still using cable internet just not TV. They have 300+ Mb here and google fiber is 1Gb but I don't notice any difference when going above 50Mbit. Its normally the site I'm downloading from that's the bottleneck. The real benefit with ~300Mbit is faster upload speed as they cap upload at 10% of download.

 

[Natebishop3]

Frontier FIOS in some areas. I've had them for five years now and never miss a Blazers game. Comcast still has two more seasons left on their near monopoly deal they signed back in 2007

BNM

We currently have Frontier internet. Do they carry the Blazers on their TV as well? I haven't looked into it, but our DirecTV runs out soon and I'm thinking about switching.

 

[Denny Crane]

Yeah; I'm still using cable internet just not TV. They have 300+ Mb here and google fiber is 1Gb but I don't notice any difference when going above 50Mbit. Its normally the site I'm downloading from that's the bottleneck. The real benefit with ~300Mbit is faster upload speed as they cap upload at 10% of download.

You'd notice the bandwidth if you were watching UHD netflix on 2 tvs at once. Or 3 tvs

 

[Boob-No-More]

We currently have Frontier internet. Do they carry the Blazers on their TV as well? I haven't looked into it, but our DirecTV runs out soon and I'm thinking about switching.

They do if it's Frontier FIOS (their fiberoptic service). It's not available in all areas. It started out as Verizon FIOS, but about 6 years ago, Verizon sold their FIOS infrastrusture in Washington and Oregon, and licensed the FIOS name to Frontier Communications. I've lived in the Bethany/Rock Creek area for the last 26 years and about 12 years ago, Verizon spent the entire summer tearing up the sidewalks and pulling fiberoptic cable in our neighborhood. I've moved twice since then, in the same general area, and both the new places (newer construction - current house built in 2009) had FIOS service available.

BNM

 

[Denny Crane]

Do you like your FIOS?

Verizon claims their TV is ranked #1 in terms of picture quality. I can see that. DirecTV does about 6-7mbit streaming mpeg4. You can do much better than that over fiber optic.

 

[Strenuus]

Do you like your FIOS?

Verizon claims their TV is ranked #1 in terms of picture quality. I can see that. DirecTV does about 6-7mbit streaming mpeg4. You can do much better than that over fiber optic.

I remember when it took an hour to download a song on 56k.

Hell, I remember 14.4k baud.

Hell, I remember sunlight!

 

[Draco]

I remember when it took an hour to download a song on 56k.

Hell, I remember 14.4k baud.

Hell, I remember sunlight!

Ha, yeah I was excited to get some fancy USRobotics modem and dial up the local board. Mp3 came out and it was so revolutionary having 97% of the quality at 5% the size. WAV file's were huge! My computer had 4MB ram and an 80MB HD, which was an upgrade. Now my cell phone is a thousand times faster.

 

[Denny Crane]

I remember when it took an hour to download a song on 56k.

Hell, I remember 14.4k baud.

Hell, I remember sunlight!

What's this?

 

[Strenuus]

Ha, yeah I was excited to get some fancy USRobotics modem and dial up the local board. Mp3 came out and it was so revolutionary having 97% of the quality at 5% the size. WAV file's were huge! My computer had 4MB ram and an 80MB HD which was an upgrade. Now my cell phone is a thousand times faster.

It's a trip. I remember when anti-skip on CD players were the THING.

 

[Boob-No-More]

Do you like your FIOS?

Verizon claims their TV is ranked #1 in terms of picture quality. I can see that. DirecTV does about 6-7mbit streaming mpeg4. You can do much better than that over fiber optic.

Yes, I do. I'm not much of a TV guy, my "good" TV is a 5-year old 47" Vizio, but even on my non-state of the art hardware, I like the HD quality. In fact, I ONLY watch the HD channels.

BNM

 

[Strenuus]

What's this?

ROTARY PHONES!!!! :MARIS61:

 

[Denny Crane]

ROTARY PHONES!!!! :MARIS61:

It has wires.

 

[Boob-No-More]

What's this?

POTS - Plain Old Telephone Set.

BNM

 

[Denny Crane]

POTS - Plain Old Telephone Set.

BNM

There's already a generation of people who maybe have never seen one.

Or a payphone.

 

[Strenuus]

At any rate, I am the best thread de-railer since a mixum thread!