Argh.

[conuly]

A few years ago, the cable company made us upgrade to a new box. Now they did it again, and believe me, it does not escape my notice that every "upgrade" results in a loss of functionality.

Look, I lose the remote. A LOT. So what I want from my TV is some way to change the channel without one. Our original box had numbered buttons on it. I wanted to change the channel? I could get up and do so. The next one only had up and down and volume. Still, totally doable.

This one? Nothing, and also no way, with or without the remote, to access a program guide. How is this an improvement? The damn thing doesn't even have a *clock*!

And as lagniappe, it seems that in exchange for this dubious upgrade, they may have canceled several of our channels.

It might actually be time to switch service to somebody else, because this is ridiculous. Absolutely absurd. At the very least, I will be addressing a very strongly worded letter to the people in charge.

In the meantime, is there a way to use the box of YOUR choice for cable, instead of the provided one?

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

It's probably no help at all for me to remark that the box of my choice for all cable, and indeed all television, is the electronics-recycle bin. In my adult life, there's only ever been TV in my house when the resident male insisted on it. The current resident male buys his shows on DVD and watches news on the computer, so we don't receive any sort of broadcasts, free or paid-for.

Bad TV service is the perfect reason to just stop having the goddam-noisy-box at all. After I'd left my husband, when my daughter was 8, we lived for seven months with friends who have the TV on every waking minute. I had a TV in our little storage-unit single-wide too, and my daughter was getting way too habituated to the damn thing. When we moved out and got our own house, I plugged the TV set in and got only static. In a flash of inspiration, I realized that it would probably work fine if I plugged it in in a different corner (as did prove to be the case) but that my kid didn't know that. "Oh darn, it looks like we don't gots any reception; we'd need a TV antenna on the roof, and there isn't one. Too bad; so it goes!" And we never had television again!!!

Tell you what; once you pull the plug you'll never want to go back. Movies, fine; you can always get Netflix if you like, and you can watch almost anything on the computer if you just have to see it, but ditching all that commercial-infested pap will change your life. TV is bad drugs, especially for children; I highly recommend Just Saying No.

If there's no way to change channels without the remote, and the remote gets lost a lot, you could always just accidentally lose the remote in the bottom of a trash can and let Nature take its course.

[conuly]

It would be no help if this were my TV, but given that this is my mother's it is REALLY no help.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Well... if it's her TV, isn't it her problem?

[conuly]

Sorta? But no.

Anyway, after all that it turns out that they didn't mean THAT TV needed a new box. And now it works fine. Lingering doubts are not the fault of our cable company. Probably.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Well, true - one can pull the plug on one's kids, but not on one's parents (or spouses, as I learned,) and you'd never hear the end of it if you didn't deal with the matter... I know. You're the one your family relies on to deal with all kinds of stuff, and you do it because if you don't, it won't get dealt-with. So, good to know that in this instance you don't have to deal with anything after all, and so may it continue.

If I was going to get anything, I'd get Netflix, but I can always go over to my friend's house and watch it - she's another who has the TV on most of the time, but it's generally history or nature documentaries or period-costume movies, which is bearable. I'm not that interested in just sitting-and-watching most of the time anyway, and tend to fall asleep when I do, and no one I know locally shares my admittedly-bizarre taste in movies, so the game ain't worth the candle.

[conuly]

Well, that's not an entirely accurate assessment of how my family works, but it sure is flattering.

On that note, in the course of all this I realized we are paying for more boxes than we actually use, so tomorrow I have to call and get that fixed.