I'm not that smart.
Sep. 19th, 2009 12:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serynSo, I allowed myself to cave when the cable company, which has decided to quit selling the service I am buying, offered me a promotional price to keep my business. It's a year-long no-contract 50% of the current rate deal for [supposedly] better service.
They sent the cable box (dreck!!) via UPS. Inside the cardboard is a plastic bag- wrapped electronics box bigger than my old VCR and the size of 6 DVD players (weirdly the really cheap DVD player was $19 and it's smaller than a Mac Mini, the expensive DVD player was $129 and is the size of a rack stereo component.) There is a sticker on the plastic bag saying if you open it, you have agreed to their Service Agreement.
The packet with the documentation is, happily, NOT inside this wrapper. But the packet spends 15 pages explaining how they're not really fussed about selling you cable TV, mostly their business is selling your personal information like when you're watching TV and if you're home.
I think there are people who get this and don't worry about it. I don't really understand what the Service Agreement says, but I know if it takes 15 pages of itty bitty print to define it, I probably won't like it. It almost doesn't matter what it actually says, just by the sheer volume of text, it must mean "This is how we're going to screw you over." If they were upstanding folks doing what they said they're doing, bringing a clear video signal into one's home in exchange for money, there wouldn't be any need for all that legalese.
I am undecided.
We like television. I like watching current shows. The Netflix download service is cool, but its selection is under-represented. Hulu has most stuff and their ads are less irritating than network broadcasts'. It's not impossible to get most of the same content piecemeal between Amazon video downloads, Netflix with Roku, podcasts and Hulu. I can tell you that the inability to fastforward and rewind is a real sticking point with the Roku. It's messy with Hulu too (dragging the slider bar is wholly inaccurate). But non-TiVo TV doesn't allow fastforward and rewind either.
We're thinking about hooking the new cable box up and seeing if it works through the TiVo. If it doesn't, then the resolution is clear. If it does, I am still asking myself who they have checking when you're home. Originally I heard they used prisoners to monitor things, which isn't exactly safe.
It really seems like it would be a better choice not to do business with someone whose intention is to screw me over. This isn't something I need and since I don't understand the Agreement well enough to tell what caveats I should concern myself over, it's really hard to know if this is as bad as it seems.
They sent the cable box (dreck!!) via UPS. Inside the cardboard is a plastic bag- wrapped electronics box bigger than my old VCR and the size of 6 DVD players (weirdly the really cheap DVD player was $19 and it's smaller than a Mac Mini, the expensive DVD player was $129 and is the size of a rack stereo component.) There is a sticker on the plastic bag saying if you open it, you have agreed to their Service Agreement.
The packet with the documentation is, happily, NOT inside this wrapper. But the packet spends 15 pages explaining how they're not really fussed about selling you cable TV, mostly their business is selling your personal information like when you're watching TV and if you're home.
I think there are people who get this and don't worry about it. I don't really understand what the Service Agreement says, but I know if it takes 15 pages of itty bitty print to define it, I probably won't like it. It almost doesn't matter what it actually says, just by the sheer volume of text, it must mean "This is how we're going to screw you over." If they were upstanding folks doing what they said they're doing, bringing a clear video signal into one's home in exchange for money, there wouldn't be any need for all that legalese.
I am undecided.
We like television. I like watching current shows. The Netflix download service is cool, but its selection is under-represented. Hulu has most stuff and their ads are less irritating than network broadcasts'. It's not impossible to get most of the same content piecemeal between Amazon video downloads, Netflix with Roku, podcasts and Hulu. I can tell you that the inability to fastforward and rewind is a real sticking point with the Roku. It's messy with Hulu too (dragging the slider bar is wholly inaccurate). But non-TiVo TV doesn't allow fastforward and rewind either.
We're thinking about hooking the new cable box up and seeing if it works through the TiVo. If it doesn't, then the resolution is clear. If it does, I am still asking myself who they have checking when you're home. Originally I heard they used prisoners to monitor things, which isn't exactly safe.
It really seems like it would be a better choice not to do business with someone whose intention is to screw me over. This isn't something I need and since I don't understand the Agreement well enough to tell what caveats I should concern myself over, it's really hard to know if this is as bad as it seems.
