Q:Be.Do.

8/29/06: Post 1.010

How I interact with my entertainment is an extremely personal, deep-rooted relationship. My television viewing habits are ingrained, dating back to the formative “on the couch in Tahoe” years of my early twenties. When one lives in a house of nine other testoserone-driven males one quickly learns how to “drive” the viewing habits of the room appropriately.

There were numerous tactics for keeping control of the remote, but ulitmately it came down to whether or not you could pick a program that everyone agreed upon. Or at least a muscular majority. Bouncing directly to the intended channel, skipping over all of the crap, with a high frequency of sports, music and soft-core channels all scored points.

Unfortunately, such viewing habits have never translated well to cohabitating with the love of my life. Where previous emphasis was on speed of bouncing and minimization of commercial viewings, the preference my lovely wife brings to the table is for picking a program and sticking to it. A downright challenging proposition, especially if there are two programs on at the same time that are worthy of viewing.

Now, I used to lead the new-technology charge. My first Palm device was the PalmPilot Professional, released in 1996 - the first PalmPilot with a backlit screen. As I’ve gotten older I’ve become more willing to live with outdated technology until I can find the time to bear the burden of adapting to the latest and greatest. As my old employer Bill Ryan would always say, “It’s not the cost of acquisition, it’s the cost of ownership that will get you.”

In that vein, Michele and I have been readying ourselves for the move to a DVR for a couple of years now. I got her buy-in on switching over to DirecTV when we were still in our old place, but knew that our psychotic ex-landlord would never go for installing a dish on the roof. I know, I know: you can use a DVR on regular old Comcast cable. But why bother when you can get 100 more channels and XM Radio for the same cost per month? Seriously.

Moving, as I now do, at a glacial pace, I called DirecTV in the middle of our six month in our new house and arranged for installation. Free DVR, 100 more channels, XM Radio, yee-haw. In some other Techno-Love post I’ll go into how much we absolutely love it, and how it has changed our viewing habits completely for the better. All of the things that everyone has already said apply: less channel surfing, more watching just what we want. Pausing live TV is a must if you have an infant or toddler in your house: they seem to know when best to wake up and need attention.

All of this is leading up to my break-up with Comcast Cable. I’ve had Comcast Cable since 1993, back when I lived up in Tahoe. I have given them a significant amount of money, and in return they have helped kill off a significant portion of my once-brilliant brain. When they added cable internet access I was first on my block. I loved the fact that they offered bundled packages, and knew that switching to DirecTV was going to wind up costing me in ways I was blind to. Little did I know just how badly Comcast wants to be your only provider of all of the info-pipes running into your home.

I called Comcast to cancel cable TV, but keep cable internet. The woman who first took my call was not up to dealing with my queries, and transferred me to the Best Comcast Service Rep Ever. His deflated tone when I announced that we were going with “more channels for the same price” showed that he’d been down this path before. “Is the dish already installed on your house? Why didn’t you call us, we could have done something for you…”

I didn’t bother to ask if they would have been willing to give me digital cable for the same price as regular cable, it is a question I didn’t want answered. But here’s the kicker: because we were “un-bundling” our services with Comcast, our cable internet bill was about to double, and our bandwidth was about to go down by more than a third. If we canceled TV service completely, our internet bill would go from $35/month to $60/month, and our bandwidth would go down from 6MB/s to 4.

However, if we would see fit to keep basic cable coming into the house, BCSRE would give us a one-year deal on TV and internet for $40/month. Amazing. I don’t even have the cable plugged into the television anymore, but it’s working for me. Every month it’s bringing in an extra 2MB/s of data, and shaving $20 off of our bill.

Now I need to call AT&T to see what I can do about our landline bill. Given that I’ve already been around this block with them, my hopes are not high…