[BC] Cable rips off HDTV

[RichardBJohnson at comcast.net]

Cable TV broadcast ain't no more…

Comcast just sent me a letter that states that I will need to use a new "set top box," which they will install "free." Of course, the set-top-box ends up using my TV only as a computer monitor (through HDMI) so, if installed as they require, I will no longer be able to receive any off-air HDTV at the push of a button. Furthermore, they will remove the QAM channels as they now exist on the cable so that if I don’t install the box, I get no cable television at all.

Not to worry. I just use Comcast cable for my Internet connection. I don't need the box. Comcast says that I do. Any service that doesn't have the box will be terminated. I wondered why so I started to check into what the box does. You can check this out for yourself, but the box is really a computer with several TCP/IP connections to the "mother ship." It does two-way communication and tells "somebody" what channel you are watching, what commercials you have muted, how much time you spent watching news, etc. It monitors everything and creates some great database in the sky (cloud computing, I suppose) from which they sell statistics. I don't know about you, but I don't want a spy machine in my home --unless they pay me for my data.

The so-called HDTV output from the box isn't anything like the HDTV that came from a TV studio. It is re-clocked MP3, fed as TCP/IP. Every time you change the "channel," you are making a new connection sort of like a web-page. This is how the cable company keeps track of your usage. The whole thing sucks rocks and pretends to be cable TV, while in fact it is simply a dedicated spy computer.

Happy 4th of July.

Question: How many other countries recognize the 4th of July?
Answer: All of them!

Cheers,
Richard B. Johnson
Book: http://www.AbominableFirebug.com/