Verizon Building, New York City (Photo credit: marcoderksen)
In which LeMasney realizes he made a huge mistake in giving into Verizon’s cable hookup lure.
So, I have been a cable cutter for about a year, meaning that I am part of a growing minority of Americans who decide to opt out of traditional television services and pursue entertainment mostly over the Internet and other means. I recently ended this with a double play subscription from Verizon, which means TV and Internet for a discounted price, about $115 after adding bells and whistles. So why did I go back to cable?
The idea of cable cutting is wrought with issues. An example: If I decide that I want to watch a great new show in a new season, such as Mad Men or Breaking Bad, I have very few options outside of a cable subscription. The shows are sometimes available at a premium price per episode, but not always. The alternative, very simple, is torrenting, in which one uses the internet to download the show outside of the advertising based revenue stream for the producers and actors and studios, which I have done, but am not fond of. I want to reward the people involved in making these great shows, and so torrenting robs them of that. Also, torrenting is a public activity, and if you get caught you can get fines, lose access to that service, and generally get in trouble. If all you want is to watch Netflix, Hulu, and Internet video, many options exist, including XMBC, Roku, Boxee, and most contemporary computers in general, but that is a highly limited set of video.
As it turns out though, paying for ‘convenience’ in the form of cable service is not always convenient. Here are ten things that are making me immediately reconsider dropping my brand new cable service:
- I got an elevated package of channels, but the ones I want to watch are in other packages. There is no such thing as a-la-carte channel purchase in the cable model.
- My particular DVR loses its connectivity about once per watching session, and the only way to get back the channel signal is by rebooting the DVR, a 4 minute process. Hope you didn’t want to see that bit of your show.
- The most exciting thing for me was watching the season of a favorite show from the beginning on Verizon’s On-Demand service, which has been spotty at best, often showing a blank, quiet screen after hitting play. The explanation: VOD service is broken right now, with no real estimate of re-established service.
- The interface for navigating to what you want is a NIGHTMARE of confusing submenus. I have 10 clicks/nudges to get to anything I really want, every time.
- I have no idea what channels are a part of my subscription, and when I go to the Verizon web site to find out, I navigate through 6 screens until I get to the compare channel packages screen, at which I’m told it’s a 503 error (bad request). Fix this.
- I have clicked on the chat with a support tech several times, only to find out that the chat person is not there.
- The remote is a clumsy 100 button affair, and having come from the simplicity and beauty of Roku and TiVo remotes, it’s just unacceptable.
- I am reminded constantly, as I flip through channels, of all of the channels I am not getting for my $100+ a month.
- I have a package with HD Prime in the title. Most of the channels that are not in my package that I want to watch are HD versions of channels I have in SD. You are doing it wrong.
- I went this route because I wanted to support the shows and systems that support the shows, but I am not getting what I am paying for.
I could go on, but it’s smaller stuff from here on. I agreed to reconnect cable in the interest of doing the right thing, but it just feels wrong. I agreed in the interest of simplicity, but it is not simpler, and in fact, in order to see the shows I want, I’d still need to download them, currently, because there is a VOD outage in my area. The service is spotty, when I needed stability. It’s just not a good fit, and fit is what I’m after.
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