On Wed, 2006-11-01 at 19:50 -0700, daz wrote:
> Ted Gould wrote:
> > On Wed, 1 Nov 2006, Josef Lowder wrote:
> >> They all advertise all great come-on deals, but then they
> >> want to add on $10 for this and another $10 for that and
> >> it just goes from bad to worse.  Every time I call Qwest,
> >> I get a different story ...
>
> Sadly, I kinda prefer this.  I dont use callerID on my land line.  Why 
> should I have to pay for it?   Same with my cable/sat vendor.

I agree on that point, I guess I just never feel that it ends up costing
what I expect it to.  Part of that is me listening to the marketing too
much, and part of it is them setting my expectations too low.

> > In my experience, the cable guys still really haven't figured out HD. 
> > They have a few channels, but they really need to upgrade their networks 
>
> Most sat. companies?  They want mucho money for the same thing.  I'm not 
> going to shell out $500+ for an HD DVR.  period.  So, the cable 
> companies might not have the bandwidth to do it correctly, but they're 
> doing it good enough for me.

It really depends on the box, I think in general the sat companies are
only charging for the high end boxes, the HD DVRs and some of the DVRs.
If you go through CostCo I think you can get a DVR for free (last time I
checked).  The reality is that HD is still a high end product, someone
who pays $5K for the TV is usually willing to pay $500 for the box.
Over time that'll change.  It looks like TVs will be starting to get
affordable this holiday season.

		--Ted