Comcast Digital Cable – A Digital Nightmare
I am not a big fan of cable companies. I don’t trust any monopoly – especially one that is as loosely regulated as the cable TV one. However Comcast has provided me a decent analog TV service and high-speed internet, albeit for a steep price. But once you get hooked on high-speed, it becomes a necessity.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am waiting for FIOS. I have resisted getting sucked in to a long contract through Comcast over the past year while I wait. Every two or three weeks, Comcast calls me up and dangles a FREE digital upgrade. While I’m a sucker for “free” just like anyone else, I have resisted it in this case because it comes with an extended contract as well as this:
Take a careful look at this remote. Note the placement of buttons, their sizes as well as their apparent functions.
Now put that remote into the hands of your 80 year old mother-in-law as Comcast did recently. She upgraded because one of the handful of channels she liked, the Gameshow Network, was moved from analog to digital cable, and she needed the digital box in order to see it.
So she went from having 2 remotes – one each for TV and VCR - to three. It wasn’t long before I received a call.
The power had gone out briefly and her TV no longer worked. I went over, assessed the situation i.e. determined which remote went where then punched a few buttons seeing what turned on or off, and figured out that the digital box – which had 2 lights, a red and a yellow, nothing else – was not powered up. So I hit the “All On” button and sure enough, the TV worked.
A week later I got a call again. The TV hadn’t worked for several days. She had called Comcast numerous times to no avail. She couldn’t understand a few of the customer service reps, and others hadn’t been able to solve her problem. So she had done what any elderly woman would do in her situation: she stopped watching TV in her favorite room and instead, watched it downstairs. However her legs were bothering her, so she contacted me in the hope that I could help her again and keep her from having to climb the stairs unless she had to.
Take a look at that remote again.
While she was downstairs it took me about 10 minutes to figure out what had been turned off. Consider: You have a box with two lights controlled by that remote. Plus you have a “cable ready TV” – an analog cable ready TV that isn’t cable ready anymore. Therefore I had to figure out if it received the signal from the box on channel 3 or one of the A/V channels.
Using the power of deduction I determined that the digital cable came through on channel 4 – and the red light on the box meant “power” – which was off. So which button do I press to turn it on? I press “All On” and nothing happens. I try it again, adjusting my angle, and still nothing. Finally I stand up and realize that the infrared sensor was being blocked by the top of the TV because the digital box was pushed back.
And there was a half-second delay that meant that pressing it quickly twice apparently did nothing. So I slowed down, and got the TV on.
The TV defaulted to CN8 - a channel that Comcast advertises heavily on all of its channels but no one watches. So I pressed 65 to switch to Fox News. Two tiny black letters appeared at the top of the screen, but the channel didn’t change. I’m still not sure what that meant.
So I hit the channel + button and slowly made my way to channel 65 – again with a slight delay between pressing a button and seeing its effect.
I then discovered that when you turned off the digital cable, it defaulted back to CN8 regardless of the channel you selected. I tried entering the channel number again, and nothing happened.
Soon the mother-in-law came upstairs, wanting to see how I was doing with the TV. She claimed that a customer service rep had told her to press 00 and then the number. However when I pressed 0065 it failed. I tried 004 and the channel changed to Fox, so I tried 065 and sure enough the channel changed to Fox News.
She wanted me to show her what to do. I looked at her. Here was an elderly woman, a technophobe who had trouble answering a flipphone (she opens it to answer and inevitably presses the green button – often resulting in one hearing “BEEP! Hello?”). And there I was, a technophile who seriously wanted to take that remote and digital cable box and personally fire it from a cannon at the beautiful, mirrored skyscraper Comcast is building in Center City Philadelphia.
I shook my head. “One of the people on the phone said he had a woman break down and cry trying to get it to work,” she said.
I didn’t doubt it in the least. Comcast Digital Cable is an ergonomic disaster. From a box without a switch but with two glowing lights, to an incomprehensible remote with a time delay between button pressings, to pressing 0 or 00 plus the number of the channel you want to watch fast enough to accurately get channel 60 instead of channel 6. In between you have the usual tangle of TV and VCR idiosyncrasies that seem to be particular every household – and usually understood by a single member of that household.
I build my own PCs for fun. I can program in several different computer languages and can troubleshoot complex technical problems and business challenges. However Comcast Digital Cable nearly kicked my butt.
My mother-in-law drives me crazy at times. She is high maintenance and neurotic to an unbelievable degree. However she was completely justified in her frustration over Comcast Digital Cable. This is a technology that needs to be euthanized, destroyed, smashed by a million steam rollers, or boxed and sent to the same warehouse holding the Ark of the Covenant and Moon Landing set.
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[...] YouTube Link to Article comcast Comcast Digital Cable – A Digital Nightmare » Posted at Cutting Edge Political Commentary The Razor on Thursday, July 12, 2007 I am not a big fan of cable companies. I don’t trust any monopoly – especially one that is as loosely regulated as the cable TV one. However Comcast has provided me a decent analog TV service and high-speed internet, albeit … Comcast over the past year while I wait. Every two or three weeks, Comcast calls me up and dangles View Entire Article » [...]
12 July 2007, 10:00 pmJack Snyder:
Scott,
The warehouse with the Ark of The Covenant and the Moon Landing Set are too easy to find. Its in a major metropolitan area that anyone can get into.
The comcast crap needs to be boxed up and sent to the warehouse holding the dead alien bodies and crashed spacecraft from Roswell. Its in the middle of a military base under high security. Those guys are really good. I snuck in to take a look at the bodies and they proceeded to riddle me with bullets. If it wasn’t for the fact I was wearing my Stark Industries Iron Man armor, I’d a been a dead man.
Jack
12 July 2007, 11:26 pmThe Razor » Blog Archive » FIOS Adventures:
[...] these posts show I’ve been looking forward to ditching cable and going with FIOS. However like most modern [...]
11 February 2008, 1:01 pmMike:
Okay, I know this is old and I don’t think the comcast box is great (which is why I stumbled upon this site) but a self-proclaimed ‘technophile’ who couldn’t take 2 minutes to figure out the 3 digit channel requirement (and thought an old lady couldn’t learn that…) and who ‘builds PCs for fun’ but couldn’t figure out how to power up a few devices and make them all work on the same remote…either an over-achieving dolt or an under-achieving genius. Leave your world of techno-babble and learn how things really work.
28 April 2008, 6:45 pmScott Kirwin:
Mike
The old lady had the box for a week and still couldn’t manage the three buttons. If you took a moment to consider the remote from her perspective, perhaps you’d realize that it seems pretty silly to punch in 003 to watch CBS. On the old TV remote all she had to do was hit 3 then wait a half second and the channel changed.
So she went from having to press one button to three. That’s progress?
I have the same remote now and view On Demand as a true revolution in TV. However the remote is not intuitive for anyone – not me, the doctor wife or the otaku 11 year old. It’s bad design, and if you want to make excuses for it, then go ahead, but I get paid decent money to improve the usability of technology as a systems analyst and I don’t put up with crappy ergonomics unless there is a payoff – in my case I’ll put up with it for On Demand.
But keep your insults to yourself. They make you sound petty and stupid – which you most likely are not.
29 April 2008, 9:15 pmA cable guy:
Well if you have not figured it our by now on your own, pushing the “menu” button twice will open up the configuration menu and you can move the cursor down to the “guide set up” option select by hitting the okay button when that menu opens you can move the “no auto tune” to the left where it will read “auto tune” and your button pushing will be just like it was before you had the box. As a cable guy I take liberty of setting this box option for the customer unless they request otherwise. Consequently there is an “elderly” or near sighted version of the remote which has buttons nearly 1.5 cm square I am sure that Comcast would provide it at no extra charge if you requested it. As for automatically defaulting to CN8 that is not happening in my area… strange.
Good luck with Fios if you think it will solve all these problems,
A cable guy.
26 September 2008, 3:16 pmScott Kirwin:
Cable Guy
The remote can be figured out – just not easily. After six months or so I know my way around it but the remote is still an ergonomic nightmare.
As for FIOS, I haven’t seen their remote so I can’t judge them. But I would be surprised if they were any different.
26 September 2008, 3:21 pmDave:
Thanks Scott. I know your pain. I was a cable TV Chief Tech (can build head-ends and design analog CATV systems with a pencil and paper), worked as a facility tech for a major telephone company, now I work on large WANs and do programming on the side but I still find it incredible that any company would offer such a techno mess to the public. I play golf with a lead tech from Comcast and he doesn’t know of any offering in this area that provides for the elderly or handicapped. My mother is 82 and has macular degeneration (very poor eyesight). Not only do we have the same problems you are running into, but her cable box also has it’s own volume and mute on it just to complicate things further. We did abandon the Comcast remote and change to a Brookstone big button universal remote which reduced some of the obvious problems, but it’s still confusing when the cable box requires 003 and the TV won’t except 003 (only 3 or 03). Yes, I can figure it out, but does everyone need to have my qualifications to watch TV these days? Keep in mind that these elderly people that are being left behind fought in WWII, battled the great depression, etc. so these techno-geniuses could have everything they take for granted these days (Mike).
12 October 2008, 9:31 pmdorothy:
Does comcast send someone to help “old” ladies figure this mess of wires and buttons?
5 January 2009, 9:04 pmScott Kirwin:
Nope.
5 January 2009, 9:14 pmtina:
I will never get use to the delay i am glad i am not the only one having problems.
28 September 2009, 1:14 pm