Modern Television Strikes Again

On July 16, 2008, in Culture, by psu

The request was simple. Tape 2 hours of content from Versus every day from noon until 2pm so that I could watch a nice summary of the daily Tour De France stage without undue stress. The two hour summary is the best because it won’t get cut off due to the vagaries of live programming, and unlike the 8pm repeat, it does not feature two neanderthal retards doing the commentary.

Of course, even with all of the world’s 21st century technology brought to bear, this simple task proves to be impossible. This is why broadcast television is doomed.

What I found when I opened up my Tivo this afternoon after work was two hours of CNBC droning about oil prices. The machine mocked my by putting the Versus logo over this for the first minute or so, even though it was clear that what I was watching was CNBC. No Phil Ligget. No Paul Sherwen. No Stage 11 for me today since there is no fucking way I’m going to watch those two frat boys in the 8pm broadcast drool all over themselves.

I made that mistake already a few stages ago where the sum total of the commentary on the final sprint could be summarized as

“Uhhh, guuhhh, ooooh, guuuh”

That is a direct quote.

So what has caused this insult to my person? The best guess is that in their infinite wisdom Comcast has made sure that I will never be able to retrieve the content I want because they have shifted the channels around without informing anyone. The result is that until the Tivo catches up, it is completely fucking useless.

What all this reminds me of is the airline industry. Here you have another entrenched set of businesses that only survive because they own something (their routes) that which would be expensive for someone else to obtain. In the case of TV the thing the retarded incompetant bastards own is the content and the means to limit the distribution of said content to specific times and places. Thus, since Comcast moved their channels I can’t ever watch what I wanted to watch because now the bits are on the floor somewhere.

What I don’t understand is why Comcast (and to some extent Tivo) want to make this so hard for me. Presumably they make money by delivering the content I want at the time I would like it. It seems irrational to me for them to constantly treat their customers like dogmeat. Unless of course they are taking their business models from the airlines.

If I were smart I would give up. But I have an irrational attachment to live sports which makes this impractical. I guess it’s time to try Verizon FIOS. It’s pretty sad when your customer service record makes Verizon look attractive. Good job Comcast.

 

6 Responses to “Modern Television Strikes Again”

  1. psu says:

    Further investigation indicates that the Tivo did detect a lineup change yesterday. Unfortunately, the lineup change hasn’t actually happened yet.

  2. Derrick says:

    Dude, Sears’ delivery service customer service people make Comcast look like customer service experts.

    After they flailed for a week I went and got the fridge in a pickup. Now they’re calling weekly all panicky because they can’t find the fridge to deliver.

  3. Chris says:

    So… Comcast + Tivo-HD really is quite horrid, we continually get the ‘this channel is not in your lineup. Please press cancel to return…’ Overall broadcast/cable TV is doing everything they can to move me (and many others) to alternate content streams.

    As to the live sports, I’d love to be able to listen/watch/stream the Tour in my office, there is a shocking lack of decent streams of this event!! (I define decent as something that I can watch in a 1mb stream and doesn’t cut out every 3rd minute for 35 seconds at a time… so Justin.tv is out of the list).

    -Chris

  4. Joshua says:

    I gave up live TV years ago. For me it’s either DVDs (expensive) or Bit Torrent (illegal). But I haven’t watched live TV since 1998. At the time, I noticed that my job (at around 75 hours per week), college (17 hours in class, another 20+ hours of homework), computer games and TV weren’t going to fit into my life. (no friends, dating, partying, either) So I quit watching TV and cut back on video games. I didn’t really miss it, for the most part, but there were a few shows that I wondered about. I bought DVD boxed sets and… I tell you what. That’s a fine way to watch TV.

  5. erink says:

    Thanks for the beta. We have the HD Tivo but haven’t got the FiOS TV hooked up yet. I’m watching the Tour on DirecTV in standard definition (with a DirecTiVo, which was discontinued about the time we bought it but we managed to find one in a store).

    Apparently you might need a signal attenuator with the FiOS TV.

    My neighbor says Comcast sucks, that it goes out all the time, so we didn’t seriously consider it for the HD setup, but sometimes it looks good on paper.

    I’m watching the Tour live (joys of underemployment). WTF with Ricco?

  6. Hank says:

    Ha! I’ve been Tivo’ing the morning Tour De France broadcast for years to catch the excellent commentary from Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen.

    I think Bob Roll performs the role of crazed ape-man admirably in the pre-race show, but trying to listen to him and Craig Hummer for several hours at a stretch is painful. At least they got rid of Al Trautwig.