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My grandmother has analog Comcast Cable. Although she's been getting raped by their excessive rates and channel plucking, like a battered wife she can't seem to leave the horrible monster and thus we are stuck with dealing with Comcast until AT&T finally decides to roll out U-Verse in her area.

Anyways I recently called Comcast to get confirmation on a service upgrade price quote, only to be told that the rate that I saw only applied to NEW customers (apparently customers who have stuck by the company for years are only eligable for the equivalent of kicks to the face) and that after the "Digital Transition" (which was still in February at time of call) she would HAVE to upgrade to digital cable at their regular rate, which is nothing short of insanely unfair and more inflated than a ballon at the Macy's parade.

Needless to say I'm stuck in a bit of a conundrum. The idea of paying a bunch of rental fees and equipment costs to continue to get television service is not very appealing. My grandmother now has two new HDTVs with digital tuners. I've read online about Digital TVs/ATSC/QAM capabilities, but the consensus I've gotten is that odds are you won't get much with just those and that you'll need a STB anyways for when the channels go digital. Do you NEED a STB to get Digital Cable channels (CableCARD isn't an option) or could she just subscribe to the digital cable package and hook it up to a Digital tuner tv and get the channels that way (or at least a majority of them?)

On a related note, my dad has Comcast as well and has digital cable already. He has 4 televisions and two of them use boxes, while the other two just hook right into the wall. One of them has digital capabilities. Assuming this Comcast branch does the same thing as my grandmother's, will he need an extra box for each extra television, or will he be able to still use the old "wall" method with all the channels over 75 stripped out?

Lastly, with the huge backlash that is sure to come from numerous people over this "required" rate and equipment hike, do you think it's possible that I can probably haggle with Comcast to get a more reasonable rate? My grandmother is an 82+ year old woman who has been using Comcast before they even took over that company (I think it was TCI then AT&T and then Comcast.) To the best of my knowledge they have not sent out any tangible notice of the required upgrade, and I think it's complete BS that you need to be a NEW customer to get anything resembling a decent rate. Has anyone had any luck pushing on Comcast for more reasonable rates in leiu of better satellite offers, customer loyalty, and basic "calling out" of crappy deals that they've had thrown upon them? I don't have much experience with this, as I have been a happy D* customer for a number of years, but sadly Satellite is not an option for her and FiOS and U-Verse haven't shown any interest in expanding to her area.