(no subject)

This weekend we signed up for digital cable and internet through Comcast (the local cable company). We have always had Comcast for our television. I never wanted to go to digital cable because it seems like a scam. When I first got cable, way back in the day. They used to charge for every cable outlet. So if you had a television in the front room and a television in the bedroom you paid a fee for each outlet and you paid that fee every month. I always thought that was ridiculous. It's not like it was more work for the cable company to have programming come to two rooms in the house. Eventually the courts decided a lawsuit that made cable companies stop the practice. Now, with the advent of digital cable seems to be wanting to go back to the good old days. Now, in order to receive digital television we need a converter box (?) Type thing on each cable outlet which needs to be rented. So we are back to paying a fee per cable outlet. It bothered me enough that I never really tried to get digital cable.

Everything was fine for us, paying basic cable (which didn't require the converter boxes) still allowed us to get cable and Showtime. Which I liked for the Sopranos and Six Feet Under at the time. Then Comcast decided that all the premium channels would only be broadcast on digital. So I stopped watching Showtime and started renting their television shows on Netflix.

We also got our internet through Speakeasy's DSL. Speakeasy had been getting progressively more flaky. Either I couldn't get on at all or the speed was so very very slow that I was constantly reloading webpages, taking three or four tries at getting my e-mail etc. We thought we could solve both problems by getting Internet and digital through Comcast.

So, now I'm slowly working my way through Dexter's second season. Whoo hoo!