I made the cable company tech support guy laugh, but not because of something good

"Textured Soy Protein" (texturedsoyprotein) 12/01/2015 at 12:45 • Filed to: None

1

22

My girlfriend loves Christmas so much, that every year she records piles and piles of cheesy low-budget Hallmark Channel Christmas movies that conform to one of 4 stock Hallmark Christmas movie plots, and totally fills up our DVR, because it has a teeny tiny hard drive.

If you’ve never seen a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie, well, you are truly missing out. They are true gems of low-budget cheesiness mixed with “wait, THAT GUY is doing a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie????” moments. For example, there is a Hallmark Channel Christmas Movie starring Andy Garcia and Mary-Louise Parker called !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

Also Mandy Moore is apparently in it, according to the poster. I just happened to stumble into the living room the other day and saw the Hallmark logo in the bottom of the screen along with Andy Garcia and Mary-Louise Parker talking about stuff. I was all like, WAIT, ANDY GARCIA IS IN A HALLMARK CHRISTMAS MOVIE????

My gf enjoys these Hallmark Christmas movies totally un-ironically. They are her tv comfort food, and I am totally fine with that, because I have seen literally every single episode of every single Star Trek series, thanks to Netflix, so I have absolutely no ground to stand upon if I were to judge other people’s tv preferences.

Anyway, this has nothing to do with my cable company, Charter. I have tv service with Charter for no good reason at all. I had Dish Network at my old apartment, but in my current townhouse, the only place the landlord would allow a dish to be mounted can’t get line of sight to the satellite because there are trees blocking the way. So...Charter it is.

Charter has great internet service, and absolutely terrible tv service. The “HD” picture quality is crap. The cable boxes still have the exact same menus as when they first rolled out digital cable, like the picture at the top of this post, except with a bunch of ugly pixelated low-resolution banner ads at the bottom. The DVR has a teeny tiny hard drive that fits maybe 40 hours of HD recording. I have season passes set for 2 shows, and we’re constantly running out of space.

Now that it’s Hallmark Christmas movie season, the combination of my season passes and my gf’s love of Hallmark Christmas movies has totally filled up the DVR, and we still have 24 days til Christmas! Do you know how many more Hallmark Christmas movies she’s got set to record by then? I don’t, but I’m sure it’s a lot.

Yesterday I called Charter and asked if there was a way to get a DVR with an actually not-terrible hard drive, or one that at least has a USB port for using an external hard drive. The guy said that it’s probably best for me to go to the Charter store and exchange my DVR for one they have, because otherwise he’d have to schedule a technician to come out within one of those lovely cable company “we’ll be there between 2 and 7 pm” windows. Supposedly they have DVRs at the Charter store with bigger hard drives and USB ports, if you ask nicely and say you’re filling up your current DVR.

I also asked the Charter support guy if when I get a new cable box, will it have newer menus than the ones that still look like it’s 2003. He busted out laughing. I took that as a no! Once he gathered himself, he explained that Charter is actually in the process of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and the software will get pushed out to my cable box with no need for a new one.

Except according to !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , Charter is super behind schedule on the rollout, and apparently is also will be rolling out new cable boxes, but also supporting the new guide on the old cable boxes. I’m sure that will go just swimmingly , what with my cable box likely having less processing power than the smartphone I had in 2007, which looked like this:

This is just enough to make me miss Dish Network, except when I cancelled my Dish service after moving, they sent me so much junk mail each week and kept sending it to me even after multiple calls to their customer service to have me removed from the mailing list failed, and the only solution the third customer service person could come up with was changing the address they had on file for me to some nonexistent address so at least it wouldn’t come to my house anymore.

Hopefully this new Charter DVR has an actually decent amount of space!

Daily Drives a Dragon - One Last Lap > Textured Soy Protein 12/01/2015 at 12:47

0

I wouldn’t have grounds to stand on about judging people for movies. I’ll watch crap and just not care.

Seat Safety Switch > Textured Soy Protein 12/01/2015 at 12:48

0

Hey, I have that same cable box interface on mine. I doubt I’ll ever see a new one.

iSureWilll > Textured Soy Protein 12/01/2015 at 12:54

0

I have Comcast in Jersey and I have the same. Exact. Menu. My in laws have the newer menu and it always makes me jealous when I see it. One of the in laws has also seen ever Hallmark Christmas movie there ever was and continues to watch. She loooooves them and we give her a hard time about it. You’re not me, are you?

SnapUndersteer, Italian Spiderman > Textured Soy Protein 12/01/2015 at 12:56

1

I still have a huge crush on Parker thanks to Weeds

For Sweden > Textured Soy Protein 12/01/2015 at 13:00

1

Christmas with Conway Twitty

#bettermovies

spanfucker retire bitch > Textured Soy Protein 12/01/2015 at 13:00

0

ANDY GARCIA!?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, HOLY SHIT!

Chariotoflove > Textured Soy Protein 12/01/2015 at 13:01

0

I have seen literally every single episode of every single Star Trek series, thanks to Netflix, so I have absolutely no ground to stand upon if I were to judge other people’s tv preferences.

Say that with pride (says the guy who sleeps in Star Trek pajamas)!

Boxer_4 > Textured Soy Protein 12/01/2015 at 13:04

0

This is the interface I have, but with RCN (not COX). RCN is using Rovi’s Passport Guide.

Klaus Schmoll > Textured Soy Protein 12/01/2015 at 13:14

1

The junkmail thing is interesting! I canceled the internet in my old appartment a couple of weeks ago. I get called twice a day since then. Nobody on the phone, just random call-center noises. I finally blocked their number. It’s a crazy ex-GF that you dumped and is now stalking you.

450X_FTW > SnapUndersteer, Italian Spiderman 12/01/2015 at 13:14

1

hell yes

lone_liberal > Textured Soy Protein 12/01/2015 at 13:27

1

Our Comcast boxes used that same menu system, but we just switched to their X1 system which not only gives a slightly more modern UI but also vastly increased the available space for recording. Switching also saved us $100 a month so it was a no-brainer.

jariten1781 > Textured Soy Protein 12/01/2015 at 13:48

0

Get a third party DVR or something? They still make Tivos no?

I run my live guide through the Xbox one. Pulls the whole thing up on the phone and you just tap what you want to watch and it goes to that channel. Supposedly they'll add DVR functionality at some point in the future but that's all tied up in licensing nonsense so I'm not holding my breath.

Needmoargarage > Textured Soy Protein 12/01/2015 at 14:04

2

I can totally relate...my wife has been watching Hallmark Christmas since before Thanksgiving! Here is a brief synopsis I wrote to try to explain the basic plot of all Hallmark Christmas specials to my brother:

Girl from big city (usually New York) flies back home (usually to a ridiculously small town) for Christmas. In the course of the week being home, she changes from hardened city girl with no Christmas spirit to the world’s greatest Holiday enthusiast while subsequently ditching her large, successful business and breaking up with her rich idiot boyfriend. Also, she marries her high school sweetheart. End of story.

Every. Single. One.

BrtStlnd > Textured Soy Protein 12/01/2015 at 15:05

0

#StLouisMafia

Textured Soy Protein > Boxer_4 12/01/2015 at 15:34

0

So that looks sorta kinda better but still seems pretty crap. Whereas with Dish and DirecTV you have something that was actually designed for an HD screen and makes good use of the available space.

Hell, my parents have Comcast and for all of the terrible stuff Comcast gets deservedly gets criticized for, they at least have a modern UI on their cable box now.

Textured Soy Protein > Needmoargarage 12/01/2015 at 15:37

0

Pretty much! Actually my gf summed them up to me recently in much the same way.

Textured Soy Protein > jariten1781 12/01/2015 at 15:38

0

I’m reluctant to spend actual money on Tivo boxes when the ones with lifetime service are like $400 and the cheap ones cost $15/month for Tivo service.

Textured Soy Protein > lone_liberal 12/01/2015 at 15:41

1

My parents have Comcast and got switched over to X1 a few months ago, right when I was visiting them. It’s actually kinda decent, but my parents who are both in their 60s were having mad problems trying to operate the damn thing. My mom had the volume cranked super high and they kept yelling at each other over the extra-loud TV about which button to press when neither of them knew which one to actually press. My mom has hearing aids now so at least the TV is back down to a normal volume but I don’t know if they ever figured out how to properly work the box.

deprecated account > Textured Soy Protein 12/02/2015 at 12:50

0

Everyone always hates on Comcast, but their TV service is great, and we get 105 Mbps internet, so even if it’s relatively slow, there’s still plenty of bandwidth. Yeah, yeah customer service or whatever, but we don’t have problems with them, ergo, we don’t have to deal with customer service.

Textured Soy Protein > deprecated account 12/02/2015 at 12:59

0

I was very happy with Charter when they were only my ISP and not also my tv provider. I even think their customer service is pretty good. But their tv service is crap.

deprecated account > Textured Soy Protein 12/02/2015 at 13:01

0

Comcast and AT&T are the only ISP/Cable/Landline providers you can get in my neighborhood, so the choice was pretty obvious.

Boxer_4 > Textured Soy Protein 12/03/2015 at 11:52

0

Our old Motorola DCT6000 is finally on its way out (fails to decode the HDMI connection several times a day, causing the box to crash), and will probably be replaced with one of RCN’s new TiVo units. The rest of the TVs will continue on with the old Motorola DCT700 on the old interface.