The World of HD

Dave and I have long been hold-outs - for no particular reason - in upgrading our cable package.  I have long wanted a DVR, but couldn't justify the cost, and we don't watch a ton of TV - usually just an hour or two a night, plus the Today Show in the morning.  So exorbitant channel line-ups and high-definition options just didn't seem necessary.

We were Verizon Fios customers, and we were happy enough with what we were getting, but our contract just expired and the rates were going to go up.  Around the same time we started getting advertisements from Comcast showing similar rates to what we were paying now but with significantly more features - namely, free HD and a DVR for a full year.  The DVR was enticing, but I hate the hassle of having to sit at home waiting for the cable guy, having to deal with all of the equipment returns, etc. and for me, it wasn't really worth the hassle, so I told Dave that it was up to him.  He called Verizon to see what they were willing to give us to keep as customers.  Their answer?  A big, fat "NOTHING."  They weren't willing to work with us at all, and top of that - as I mentioned above - they were raising our rates.  We are people of principle who value good customer service, so after that encounter we immediatley cancelled with Verizon and signed on with Comcast.

He decided to go with it, and yesterday Comcast came to set everything up!

A quick side note - when Verizon Fios first installed here over a year ago, our house was not equipped for Fios.  It took 7 trucks, including a cherry-picker basket truck to run all of the appropriate lines from the street.  For those of you that are familiar with our house, you'll know that it's set in the middle of a pretty steep hill.  The pole that is the connect between the street lines and our house is set into the steepest hill of all right next to our driveway.  It's literrally a dirt cliff.  Apparently, when Verizon was setting up their lines on this particular pole with the easy-breezy cherry picker, they decided to rip out and totally disconnect the cable lines that Comcast woud need if we ever used their service again.  This created quite the dilemna for the poor guy sent to do our installation and resulted in Dave setting up multiple ladders to help the Comcast guy anchor his ladder on their loose dirt cliff. 

We watched some of the Steeler's game on Friday night, and kept switching back and forth between the HD and standard cable channels.  The difference was remarkable.  We never really felt that we noticed it on other people's TV's but now that we're really analyzing the quality it's truly remarkable.  Dave kept exclaiming about how amazing it was, and said something ridiculous, like "My world is now filled with vivid color."

See how bright the upper-left corner is? I'm pretty sure that it was that bright for us TIMES TEN. 

Source

This free HD/DVR deal is good for a year.  Why can't cable companies just extend their best offer to all of their customers?  I'm pretty sure that we're going to resign ourselves to swtiching cable providers every single year, whenever our current provider decides to raise our rates and won't extend any promotions to us.  We already spend well over $100 for cable and internet, and for me it's impossible to justify spending any more.  Which means that in a year from now, we'll probably be handing out with the Verizon Fios man once again.