Saturday, August 25, 2007

Comcast Strikes Again

I'm guessing this is the conversation that took place earlier this week at Comcast Cable's offices:

Comcast's Head Honcho: Hey, you know what we haven't done in a while?

Sniveling underling: What's that, sir?

Comcast's Head Honcho: We haven't f*cked with that Lugosi guy.

Sniveling underling: Gosh, you're right sir. Not only will I get right on it, I'll make sure we devote the company's full resources to pissing him off!!!

Comcast's Head Honcho: Have I told you lately what a wonderful ass kisser you are?

That's the only possible explanation for this oversize envelope I got today from Comcast. Upon opening it, I discovered their new channel line up. And it's not simply a matter of adding a few channels; no, they moved just about ALL their channels around! And there really doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to what they did.

For example, they used to have all their HD channels grouped together in the 700 range. That apparently made too much sense for the braniacs at Comcast. While local broadcast channel 4's HD signal used to be at 704, now it's at 211; channel 7's was at 707, now that's at 210; HBO HD was 750, now it's 228.

Even less popular channels got shifted around. The History Channel moved from 54 to 41. So who got the new 54 slot? The Travel channel, which used to be at 51. But I guess they had to move because now Animal Planet is at 51. And where was Animal Planet before, you ask? Patience, my young Padwan. Animal Planet used to be at 60. But of course it couldn't stay there, because MTV was moving to 60 from 48, and MTV had to move because the Disney Channel was moving to 48 from 68!!!!

Jesus H. Freakin' Christ!!!!!! There is absolutely no possible logic to this except that Comcast was trying to piss everyone off.

Ah, but it gets even better: If you have a DVR from the cable company, you now have to reprogram every single program you were previously planning to record. And while you can use the "EDIT" setting to change the times of a scheduled show, you can't do that to change the channel. I had to sit down with a pad of paper and list every single program that I had each of my two DVR's set to record and copy the information down. Then I had to look up the new channels and schedule them from scratch.

However, I could only do that with the shows that are scheduled to air during the next seven days. Bones and House are NOT, so I have to keep an eye on the TV schedule for when they do show up again.

What the hell is the deal? Are all those White House staffers who recently resigned getting jobs at Comcast? Because all these damn changes make about as much damn sense as invading a country that never attacked us.

To be fair, there is one nice thing I can say about these changes: Comcast has finally added the HD broadcast of WDCA channel 20 here in DC. That's important, because channel 20 has been airing the remastered episodes of Star Trek. Now I can finally watch Kirk make out with those olive-skinned Orion slave girls in true high definition! Now I just have to remember to put the Vaseline next to the recliner.

Do I sound overly bitter? Well, yes. I've been that way ever since Comcast dropped HDNET and HDNET Movies. If they had at least returned those two channels to their lineup, then I could have stomached the rest of these bullsh*t changes.

0 thoughtful ramblings: