Considering a return to Time Warner

[Islandguy43]

I kept my home internet for which I was paying $57.95 for and added all Digital and HD channels except HD pass (which has nothing of interest for me and only a few channels) and 3D pass. No premiums with Dish, none with TWC. My total cost for all that is supposed to be $85 per month (pre-tax) for two years guaranteed. Guess I'll see when I get my first actual bill here soon if that is accurate. I was paying about $176 for Dish plus cable for roughly same channels pre-tax. So the savings may be a little more than $80 per month but we'll see.

Their channel lineup for my area is here: Time Warner Cable | Time Warner Cable | Corporate

I am very pleased with the savings. Plus the upped my internet speed from 10/1 to 15/1 as well. Hopefully, I'll be able to live with the equipment.

Its very hard to turn down the savings, especially when you are in my category and you won't get a local RSN with Dish anymore for your local teams. When your promo expires; call them again and tell them they are crazy what they want to charge you and they will come up with another deal for you. At least that is what they did for me. Another two year deal with no commitment on my part.

 

[Coach Knight]

Yes I agree...I have been overall very happy with Dish, but these savings were just too large to turn down. I love the "no commitment" part!

In my post about what I was paying I said "I was paying about $176 for Dish plus cable" and what I meant was that was the total for Dish, plus cable internet. Just thought I'd clarify in case anyone thought I had TV with both Dish and Time Warner at the same time...I did not.

 

[Islandguy43]

Yes I agree...I have been overall very happy with Dish, but these savings were just too large to turn down. I love the "no commitment" part!

In my post about what I was paying I said "I was paying about $176 for Dish plus cable" and what I meant was that was the total for Dish, plus cable internet. Just thought I'd clarify in case anyone thought I had TV with both Dish and Time Warner at the same time...I did not.

Right now I am paying $113 a month for Turbo Internet 20 mbps, whole house DVR (which includes hd dvr in living room and hd box in bedroom that can access the recordings on the dvr), All Time Warner Tiers, Sports Pass, Variety Pass, Movie Pass and HD Pass; basically everything except the HBO, Starz, etc and of the foreign country channels. The only thing I am missing is the NFL Network and hopefully by football season, they will finally work that out. You are gonna love the Prime Time On Demand - all prime time shows are available 24 hours after they are shown on the networks, plus all the other free on demand channels. When I left Dish, I was paying $50 a month for TWC and basic service; $85 a month for Dish. So even going on three years since Dish; I am still saving over $35 a month. Ohh.. if you are into sports subscriptions; they have 10 HD Channel Slots reserved for use of the NHL and MLB.

 

[empiretc]

Dang it- have to hit up time warner up and see. Paying $100/mo for dish and $60/mo for RR right now.

If they can give RR + 2x HD-DVR boxes with close to the same line up we have now (at250) for ~$100/mo, we might have to jump ship.

Happy with dish, own all our equipment, and would hate to leave. But with the imminent demise of AMC, we are looking. $60/mo savings- that's an extra tank of gas

 

[Coach Knight]

Dang it- have to hit up time warner up and see. Paying $100/mo for dish and $60/mo for RR right now.

If they can give RR + 2x HD-DVR boxes with close to the same line up we have now (at250) for ~$100/mo, we might have to jump ship.

Happy with dish, own all our equipment, and would hate to leave. But with the imminent demise of AMC, we are looking. $60/mo savings- that's an extra tank of gas

I hear ya! I am a big fan of Dish overall. But the savings for us will be about $2k for two years, with hardly any difference in channels that matter to us. It simply made a lot of financial sense in our case. Now I can take that savings and buy that Alienware laptop I've been wanting. LOL

Oh, and the sales rep told me it was an "unadvertised win-back promo". They would have even paid up to like $200 or something for an ETF as well, although we are out of contract as of this month anyway. It's worth a shot. I signed up at a local kiosk sales center in the mall.

 

[TARDIS]

Dang it- have to hit up time warner up and see. Paying $100/mo for dish and $60/mo for RR right now.

If they can give RR + 2x HD-DVR boxes with close to the same line up we have now (at250) for ~$100/mo, we might have to jump ship.

Happy with dish, own all our equipment, and would hate to leave. But with the imminent demise of AMC, we are looking. $60/mo savings- that's an extra tank of gas

I hope you have better luck than I did. I got a call asking me to switch and it would have been a lot of $$ savings. However, the installer was scheduled to come last Wednesday. I thought it was strange on Tuesday night that I hadn't received a reminder call confirming the installation so I called TW. They said I was all set for Wednesday(May 16). They didn't show. I didn't get a call telling me that they wouldn't make it. I still haven't heard from them. If this is how they treat their new customers, then they can stick it.

 

[Islandguy43]

I hope you have better luck than I did. I got a call asking me to switch and it would have been a lot of $$ savings. However, the installer was scheduled to come last Wednesday. I thought it was strange on Tuesday night that I hadn't received a reminder call confirming the installation so I called TW. They said I was all set for Wednesday(May 16). They didn't show. I didn't get a call telling me that they wouldn't make it. I still haven't heard from them. If this is how they treat their new customers, then they can stick it.

Call back and complain, they have some type of guarantee to be on time, etc. In my area, they basically use subcontractors for installs and have found them quite efficient, but I would be furious if they skipped my appointment too.

 

[Xizer]

There is a large amount of misinformation in this thread - such as Dish Network offering more channels than Time Warner - which is flat out untrue.

Time Warner Cable offers a better value than DirecTV or DISH Network due to the far larger number of high definition channels they carry. Bright House offers the highest number of HD channels of any provider - cable, telecom, fiber - in the United States. Time Warner offers the second highest number in several of their markets, only slightly trailing behind Bright House. And Time Warner is the one who makes the negotiations for Bright House's channel carriage.

Whereas Dish Network only carries 112 national HD networks, Time Warner Cable's count is now over 150.

New York City has the most HD channels of any TWC market, with Ohio, Texas, and the Carolinas also having large amounts. Wisconsin has a reasonable number.

They offer a large number of HD channels in Milwaukee, though not as many as DISH. Problem is that up to 25% of them are unavailable at any time. Lots of macroblocking, and often no signal at all. You can set your watch by the time that several of them go away at 6 PM. Quality is 'eh".

Barely. Time Warner has 117 HD channels in Milwaukee if you exclude the On Demand ones; 106 nationals when you exclude local channels. Wisconsin's lineup could still use some work.

Milwaukee also has some of the best picture quality of Time Warner's markets, using a 2 HD 4 SD per QAM scheme resulting in HD channels being allocated at least 14 Mbps of bandwidth. The Carolinas and NYC use 3 HD per QAM resulting in HD channels receiving 12 Mbps each. They don't look as good as Time Warner's Wisconsin market.

The picture quality SHOULD be better than Dish Network in all of Time Warner's markets most of the time. Dish Network re-encodes EVERYTHING to low bitrate MPEG-4 and downscales the resolution to 1440x1080i. Time Warner leaves the resolution alone and often passes through some of the channels untouched or re-encodes to MPEG-2 at double the bitrate Dish Network uses for their MPEG-4 channels and Time Warner of course leaves the resolution alone instead of downscaling.

I was considering switching to TWC from DTV as they are offering me substantial savings, no contract, no installation fee for a budled service. I would save $130 a month to switch but I have concern over the quality as well. Sometimes you do get what you pay for. I was wondering how the surround sound is on TWC too. My brother is telling me I would lose the 5.1 that DTV offers on a lot of their channels. Is that true?

This is another lie. Time Warner does not touch the audio. I don't know of any provider which doesn't just pass through the standard 384 Kbps AC-3 5.1 track most cable channels are distributed with. There are a few channels which are stereo audio but that is because they are distributed that way. There are no bandwidth savings to be had by screwing around with the audio so providers just don't do it.

Let's get back to the original poster of this thread, Coach Knight: Time Warner Cable offers 142 HD channels in your market, On Demand and PPV excluded; and 132 when you take out the locals. This is 20 more high definition national channels than Dish Network carries. And of course Time Warner still carries Disney's channels in HD, which is a pretty big deal.

The last thing I will address here is equipment complaints. Time Warner Cable, like all cable providers and Verizon FiOS, offers a far superior interface to AT&T, DirecTV or Dish Network because of the simple fact that they must comply with the CableCARD™ standard. With the purchase of a CableCARD tuner, which can be as little as $99 for Hauppauge's 2-tuner WinTV DCR-2650 or $199 for Ceton's InfiniTV 4 tuner card, all monthly DVR/receiver rental fees will be eliminated and this. This is the interface you get:

Windows 7 Media Center's Cable TV Guide with a CableCARD

This interface kicks ass compared to Dish/DirecTV's boxes and you get unlimited storage. Have 10 SATA ports? Want to stick ten 4-terabyte hard drives in your PC? Enjoy your new 40-terabyte DVR.

I'm on this site because I love satellite technology but there is no doubt that DirecTV and DISH Network are doing a piss-poor job of representing it right now. They should not be this far behind the cable providers in terms of interface, HD channel count, and picture quality. Free-to-air satellite remains the only interesting use of satellite technology in America if you can subscribe to a cable provider or Verizon's FiOS TV.

 

[Islandguy43]

There is a large amount of misinformation in this thread - such as Dish Network offering more channels than Time Warner - which is flat out untrue.

Time Warner Cable offers a better value than DirecTV or DISH Network due to the far larger number of high definition channels they carry. Bright House offers the highest number of HD channels of any provider - cable, telecom, fiber - in the United States. Time Warner offers the second highest number in several of their markets, only slightly trailing behind Bright House. And Time Warner is the one who makes the negotiations for Bright House's channel carriage.

Whereas Dish Network only carries 112 national HD networks, Time Warner Cable's count is now over 150.

New York City has the most HD channels of any TWC market, with Ohio, Texas, and the Carolinas also having large amounts. Wisconsin has a reasonable number.



Barely. Time Warner has 117 HD channels in Milwaukee if you exclude the On Demand ones; 106 nationals when you exclude local channels. Wisconsin's lineup could still use some work.

Milwaukee also has some of the best picture quality of Time Warner's markets, using a 2 HD 4 SD per QAM scheme resulting in HD channels being allocated at least 14 Mbps of bandwidth. The Carolinas and NYC use 3 HD per QAM resulting in HD channels receiving 12 Mbps each. They don't look as good as Time Warner's Wisconsin market.

The picture quality SHOULD be better than Dish Network in all of Time Warner's markets most of the time. Dish Network re-encodes EVERYTHING to low bitrate MPEG-4 and downscales the resolution to 1440x1080i. Time Warner leaves the resolution alone and often passes through some of the channels untouched or re-encodes to MPEG-2 at double the bitrate Dish Network uses for their MPEG-4 channels and Time Warner of course leaves the resolution alone instead of downscaling.



This is another lie. Time Warner does not touch the audio. I don't know of any provider which doesn't just pass through the standard 384 Kbps AC-3 5.1 track most cable channels are distributed with. There are a few channels which are stereo audio but that is because they are distributed that way. There are no bandwidth savings to be had by screwing around with the audio so providers just don't do it.

Let's get back to the original poster of this thread, Coach Knight: Time Warner Cable offers 142 HD channels in your market, On Demand and PPV excluded; and 132 when you take out the locals. This is 20 more high definition national channels than Dish Network carries. And of course Time Warner still carries Disney's channels in HD, which is a pretty big deal.

The last thing I will address here is equipment complaints. Time Warner Cable, like all cable providers and Verizon FiOS, offers a far superior interface to AT&T, DirecTV or Dish Network because of the simple fact that they must comply with the CableCARD™ standard. With the purchase of a CableCARD tuner, which can be as little as $99 for Hauppauge's 2-tuner WinTV DCR-2650 or $199 for Ceton's InfiniTV 4 tuner card, all monthly DVR/receiver rental fees will be eliminated and this. This is the interface you get:

Windows 7 Media Center's Cable TV Guide with a CableCARD

This interface kicks ass compared to Dish/DirecTV's boxes and you get unlimited storage. Have 10 SATA ports? Want to stick ten 4-terabyte hard drives in your PC? Enjoy your new 40-terabyte DVR.

I'm on this site because I love satellite technology but there is no doubt that DirecTV and DISH Network are doing a piss-poor job of representing it right now. They should not be this far behind the cable providers in terms of interface, HD channel count, and picture quality. Free-to-air satellite remains the only interesting use of satellite technology in America if you can subscribe to a cable provider or Verizon's FiOS TV.

I don't necessarily agree with you on TWC HD PQ being better than Dish. TWC PQ on SD is defnitely better, but on HD they are very comparable, and who should be watching SD theses days anyways and rarely do. Furthermore, TWC SDV is not an exact science and I have had issues at times with it. Equipment wise, Dish beats TWC hands down. The HD Channel offerings; TWC is milles ahead of Dish and Directv in their offerrings, with the major exception of NO NFL Network, and their VOD offerings, especially prime time on demand, is second to no one.

Pricewise, TWC can be very affordable; but you will have threatened to switch providers every couple of years inorder discount pricing.


In realty, TWC is huge improvement over the Adelphia System we had years ago; however if Dish had never dropped the New York RSN's and gave me the programing I want in HD, I will still be with them today.

 

[jayn_j]

In addition, I would question the glowing recommendation for the cablecard. TWC has been dragged kicking and screaming into the whole cablecard/tuning adapter thing. It was unreliable for me, required frequent reboots and periodic calls for central office resets. The techs don't know how to handle it and it took many service calls to get it working.

If you go with TWC, I strongly recommend going with their DVRs. Try to get the Cisco box. Avoid the Scientific Atlanta ones. I love my TIVO, but I simply cannot recommend it with TWC.

 

[Islandguy43]

In addition, I would question the glowing recommendation for the cablecard. TWC has been dragged kicking and screaming into the whole cablecard/tuning adapter thing. It was unreliable for me, required frequent reboots and periodic calls for central office resets. The techs don't know how to handle it and it took many service calls to get it working.

If you go with TWC, I strongly recommend going with their DVRs. Try to get the Cisco box. Avoid the Scientific Atlanta ones. I love my TIVO, but I simply cannot recommend it with TWC.

I have the Cisco whole house dvr now; and had the SA and Samsung Boxes. Of the three, I actually liked the Saumsung the best; however the PIP feature does not work on the Sammys and if you watch alot of sports like I do, PIP is a must.

 

[jayn_j]

I have the Cisco whole house dvr now; and had the SA and Samsung Boxes. Of the three, I actually liked the Saumsung the best; however the PIP feature does not work on the Sammys and if you watch alot of sports like I do, PIP is a must.

One of my frustrations with TWC was that they intentionally brain damaged the Samsung DVR. When I first got them, they had PIP, true favorite lists, 30 second skip and supported an eSATA external drive. About three months later they provided a downloaded "upgrade" that disabled all of these features.

 

[Islandguy43]

One of my frustrations with TWC was that they intentionally brain damaged the Samsung DVR. When I first got them, they had PIP, true favorite lists, 30 second skip and supported an eSATA external drive. About three months later they provided a downloaded "upgrade" that disabled all of these features.

They seemed like a great box; but the PIP feature was the killer for me.

 

[Xizer]

In addition, I would question the glowing recommendation for the cablecard. TWC has been dragged kicking and screaming into the whole cablecard/tuning adapter thing. It was unreliable for me, required frequent reboots and periodic calls for central office resets. The techs don't know how to handle it and it took many service calls to get it working.

If you go with TWC, I strongly recommend going with their DVRs. Try to get the Cisco box. Avoid the Scientific Atlanta ones. I love my TIVO, but I simply cannot recommend it with TWC.

The annoyance of dealing with a cable company which clearly has no desire to support an alternative to their expensive DVR box rentals is worth it for the $150+ savings every year for each Time Warner DVR unit eliminated and the vast interface improvement.

I never was able to get the Ceton InfiniTV 4 working properly with Time Warner Cable, but Hauppauge's WinTV DCR-2650 was a breeze.

 

[jayn_j]

Well, obviously YMMV. I'm honestly glad you found solutions that work for you.

My final solution is saving me over $1000/year, and I still have the superior TIVO interface. I am figuring the $1k based on loss of $110/mo for cable service less the $8 NETFLIX and $8/mo for HULU+ which gets me pretty much all the material I was missing.

 

[Coach Knight]

Xizer, thank you for your very informative post. As anyone does when determining which provider to go with, I considered numerous factors. Not the least of which is price and TWC gave a very good deal to me and won me back. My experience with Dish Network was very good and I cannot say anything negative about them at all. They even sent me the boxes to return my equipment back for free.

As you mentioned, I have noticed a few channels on TWC in HD that I did not have on Dish in HD, and normally I don't watch anything if not in HD so I was very happy about that. However, my original assessment stands that for my viewing habits my main gain was Fearnet and ESPNU in HD, and I lost NFL Network and NFL Redzone. Disney channels (other than ESPNU) are totally irrelevant in my home.

I'm not the kind to sit down and count actual numbers of channels, rather I look for the channels watched in my home and make a decision based on that. If one provider had 1000 HD channels but they were not channels I watch or would ever watch, they would be worthless to me. One of the reasons I dropped my inquiry into DirecTV is the fact they are missing so many national HD channels that are watched regularly in my home. Nevertheless, I am glad you pointed out the actual number of channels different so that anyone who is following this thread or runs across it has that info.

Up to now, I am very satisfied with the Cisco DVR I have. I will say it is not on par with the Dish equipment, but it's not that far off and is leaps and bounds better than the old Scientific Atlanta DVRs. I appreciate the info on the other equipment options. Granted they are only available because Time Warner must comply with certain rules regarding CableCARD, but they are available nonetheless. I have read on several other forums many complaints about TWC not working well with CableCARD, so while those options intrigue me I'd be hesitant at the moment to invest in that when the Cisco is meeting my needs (even if it isn't blowing me away). Perhaps I'll dig more into that option now that you mention it.

After a few weeks, I am not seeing any appreciable difference in picture quality in either HD or SD, for better or for worse. I was totally satisfied with Dish and I feel the same about my current picture quality. I will reiterate that the picture quality coming from that originally installed Scientific Atlanta box was horrible, as not only I noticed it, but the installation tech and my wife also commented on the poor picture. Don't know if there was an issue with the box itself, but the Cisco has very good picture quality.

Overall I am happy with my decision...and when my promo runs out if I can keep this price I'll probably stay...and if not, I'd have no hesitation going back to Dish. My two years there were outstanding.

But again, thank you for the post, you have added a lot of good info to this discussion!

 

[mike123abc]

There is a large amount of misinformation in this thread - such as Dish Network offering more channels than Time Warner - which is flat out untrue.

Time Warner Cable offers a better value than DirecTV or DISH Network due to the far larger number of high definition channels they carry. Bright House offers the highest number of HD channels of any provider - cable, telecom, fiber - in the United States. Time Warner offers the second highest number in several of their markets, only slightly trailing behind Bright House. And Time Warner is the one who makes the negotiations for Bright House's channel carriage.

Whereas Dish Network only carries 112 national HD networks, Time Warner Cable's count is now over 150.

You cannot make a blanket assumption about TWC. They have different offerings in different areas of the country. Until last year they had 5, that is right 5 HD cable channels in my area (not counting the 4 locals). Then, last year they finally got around to doing an upgrade of the cable plant and now have a good offering of HD. Now they are up to about 100, if you live in certain areas.

Cable companies are really collections of local cable companies, with different offerings depending where you live.

 

[JUCJ85]

There is a large amount of misinformation in this thread - such as Dish Network offering more channels than Time Warner - which is flat out untrue.

Time Warner Cable offers a better value than DirecTV or DISH Network due to the far larger number of high definition channels they carry. Bright House offers the highest number of HD channels of any provider - cable, telecom, fiber - in the United States. Time Warner offers the second highest number in several of their markets, only slightly trailing behind Bright House. And Time Warner is the one who makes the negotiations for Bright House's channel carriage.

Whereas Dish Network only carries 112 national HD networks, Time Warner Cable's count is now over 150.

New York City has the most HD channels of any TWC market, with Ohio, Texas, and the Carolinas also having large amounts. Wisconsin has a reasonable number.



Barely. Time Warner has 117 HD channels in Milwaukee if you exclude the On Demand ones; 106 nationals when you exclude local channels. Wisconsin's lineup could still use some work.

Milwaukee also has some of the best picture quality of Time Warner's markets, using a 2 HD 4 SD per QAM scheme resulting in HD channels being allocated at least 14 Mbps of bandwidth. The Carolinas and NYC use 3 HD per QAM resulting in HD channels receiving 12 Mbps each. They don't look as good as Time Warner's Wisconsin market.

The picture quality SHOULD be better than Dish Network in all of Time Warner's markets most of the time. Dish Network re-encodes EVERYTHING to low bitrate MPEG-4 and downscales the resolution to 1440x1080i. Time Warner leaves the resolution alone and often passes through some of the channels untouched or re-encodes to MPEG-2 at double the bitrate Dish Network uses for their MPEG-4 channels and Time Warner of course leaves the resolution alone instead of downscaling.



This is another lie. Time Warner does not touch the audio. I don't know of any provider which doesn't just pass through the standard 384 Kbps AC-3 5.1 track most cable channels are distributed with. There are a few channels which are stereo audio but that is because they are distributed that way. There are no bandwidth savings to be had by screwing around with the audio so providers just don't do it.

Let's get back to the original poster of this thread, Coach Knight: Time Warner Cable offers 142 HD channels in your market, On Demand and PPV excluded; and 132 when you take out the locals. This is 20 more high definition national channels than Dish Network carries. And of course Time Warner still carries Disney's channels in HD, which is a pretty big deal.

The last thing I will address here is equipment complaints. Time Warner Cable, like all cable providers and Verizon FiOS, offers a far superior interface to AT&T, DirecTV or Dish Network because of the simple fact that they must comply with the CableCARD™ standard. With the purchase of a CableCARD tuner, which can be as little as $99 for Hauppauge's 2-tuner WinTV DCR-2650 or $199 for Ceton's InfiniTV 4 tuner card, all monthly DVR/receiver rental fees will be eliminated and this. This is the interface you get:

Windows 7 Media Center's Cable TV Guide with a CableCARD

This interface kicks ass compared to Dish/DirecTV's boxes and you get unlimited storage. Have 10 SATA ports? Want to stick ten 4-terabyte hard drives in your PC? Enjoy your new 40-terabyte DVR.

I'm on this site because I love satellite technology but there is no doubt that DirecTV and DISH Network are doing a piss-poor job of representing it right now. They should not be this far behind the cable providers in terms of interface, HD channel count, and picture quality. Free-to-air satellite remains the only interesting use of satellite technology in America if you can subscribe to a cable provider or Verizon's FiOS TV.

I disagree with so much of this. TWC's equipment in my area are horrendous. They are slow and clunky. Customer Service is terrible, they are rude when you go into their offices.

I've seen so much better quality with my current DirecTV setup then my friends with TWC. And prices are ridiculous, 1 fee per DVR, so If I wanted the 2 DVRs I have now I would pay over 20 dollars, where I pay 8 a month for all. I pay far less for much better quality. Plus having the NFLN and NFL ST is a big plus.

 

[Xizer]

240 posts on this forum and someone still hasn't learned how to read.

I don't give a sh*t what area you live in and how terrible the stock equipment is. The CableCARD tuner solution will work everywhere on any traditional cable provider and it is better than every cable and satellite provider's equipment.

Also, I don't think Time Warner's DVR rental fee when it comes to CableCARDs is ridiculous. $2 a month to rent a CableCARD which can decode up to six HD channels at once.

 

[JUCJ85]

240 posts on this forum and someone still hasn't learned how to read.

I don't give a sh*t what area you live in and how terrible the stock equipment is. The CableCARD tuner solution will work everywhere on any traditional cable provider and it is better than every cable and satellite provider's equipment.

Also, I don't think Time Warner's DVR rental fee when it comes to CableCARDs is ridiculous. $2 a month to rent a CableCARD which can decode up to six HD channels at once.

In my area it is 12.95 a DVR receiver fee per DVR receiver. Rates & Pricing | Time Warner Cable | Northeast

I pay at least 15-20 dollars a month less with more features/channels then I paid with TWC, that includes home phone and internet from Verizon.

Your feeling on better equipment isn't a fact it is your opinion, which I respect, but disagree with.

Edit: I did a estimate on what I would pay with TWC compared to what I pay now with Directv/Verizon. I pay $225.12, and would pay $277.79 with TWC. I only pay 2.60 in tax where it would be around $21.14 with TWC. TWC charges tax on about everything.

I also could careless about whole home DVR, don't have it, so wouldn't work for us with TWC.