General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe cable box is the most primitive worthless piece of technology in my apartment.
This article about Al Jazeera America reminded me of how horrible the cable monopoly is for consumers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/06/business/media/al-jazeera-network-in-turmoil-is-now-the-news.html
I used to watch AJA, and liked it. The problem is, it gets assigned some random channel number far away from the other news channels, and the "favorites" function on my Time Warner Box is so bad as to be useless. So over time, out of laziness, I would just go to MSNBC instead, because I got sick of forgetting the channel number for AJA and having to look it up.
This is not the only problem with the box. Its response time to remote buttons is often very slow (so even if you know the channel number, it's even a pain to key it in). It's not customizable and reconfigurable at all. And it hasn't improved much if at all in 5 plus years.
All it would take would be the government requiring that the company that runs the cable line into your home not be the same as the company that gives you the cable box. There would be tons of alternatives, there would even be some open-source Linux cable boxes. And anyone who built a cable box as bad as Time Warner's would be out of business tomorrow.
OK, rant done.
CBGLuthier
(12,723 posts)They have several multicast channels where you can see what is on many channels at once. Not too bad for about 10 to 20 bucks a month for the cable itself.
rock
(13,218 posts)But what does she know about human interfaces. She's been brought up on some of the worst in history. I'm retired from the Tech Business and was rather good at computer interface, although most systems that I had to work on were really bad. Design is not taught to computer programmer/analysts. In any case your complaints are right on target! You can rant for me any time you want.
Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)An innocent little cable box can suck up more electricity than your actual TV. The most galling part though? Up to two-thirds of its power-hogging actually happens in "idle" mode, when you're not even using it.
To put it in more wallet-hitting terms, Americans pay $3 billion a year to power set-top boxes, $2 billion of which is wasted on boxes whirring away when the TV is off. Yikes.
http://gizmodo.com/your-cable-box-is-an-energy-sucking-monster-but-it-doe-1658187752
check out how much wattage and amps your box uses
KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)FlatBaroque
(3,160 posts)you find that the telecom monopolies/oligopolies are quite similar to blood-sucking banks when it comes to value for price.
snooper2
(30,151 posts)hunter
(38,362 posts)I had a satellite box for almost two years, but I sent it back, along with the dish receiver. (They didn't want the dish itself back.)
My slower DSL internet connection is good enough for one channel of video at something just less than DVD quality, which is better than anything I ever had on "analog" cable or satellite.
Cable television is an obsolete business model that survives today (as many obsolete U.S. businesses do) by paying off corrupt politicians.
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