Farewell Voom And Hello Charter

[nnicko]

I just posted this and it wound up in Customer Comments. I really don't know how to use these forums. I would appreciate if anyone would move this post for me to whatever forum they feel is appropriate. Thanks!!!

Accepting the fact that I'm loosing VOOM made me feel like I did when my first girlfriend told me she was breaking up with me. It was like a stake through my heart. My first reaction was to say the hell with TV, but when I came to my senses I knew I would unfortunately have to choose between DirectTV, Dish or cable. Yesterday I settled on cable through Charter Communications and they're installing tomorrow.

For $54.88 per month (complete with digital cable box and Charter DVR) I get what's noted below. Absolutely nothing to buy and no commitment; i.e. I can cancel anytime I want without charges of any kind. NOTE: My monthly cost includes a $25 monthly credit for switching from satellite. This credit is applied each month for 12 months. All you have to do is show the installer one of your satellite invoices. Also, if you cancel within the first 30 days you will get your first month's payment back.

Below is the list of channels I'll be getting. I'll get all the channels listed under HDTV (did I say ALL) plus I get to choose one of the three "Tier Packages".

WARNING!!! REVIEWING THE LIST OF HDTV CHANNELS AVAILABLE WILL MAKE
YOU WANT TO UPCHUCK SO BE SURE TO HAVE A CONTAINER AVAILABLE.

Charter DVR -
*Digitally record and save all your favorite shows and sporting events
*Record multiple shows at the same time
*Pause and rewind live television
*No equipment to buy, so it's never outdated
*Available for all channels of your Charter Digital cable service
*Watch one show while recording another, or
record two shows while watching a third recorded show.
*Has PIP (Even if your TV doesn't)

Charter OnDemand (Not Available in All Areas)
*Access thousands of movies. Like PPV but keep for
24 hours and watch when and however many times
you want. Pause, rewind, fast forward and stop

Charter iTV (Not Available in All Areas)
*Interactive menu for news, instant sports scores, weather, and more
*Features complete television and movie listings — including OnDemand™,
pay-per-view, and even local theater showtimes
*Offers a number of unique games and shopping opportunities
*Play along with trivia questions from your favorite channels


HDTV

ESPN HD
Discovery HD Theater
New England Sports Network-HDTV
HBO HDTV-East

DIGITAL STATIONS
(Converted to Digital Thru Box)
A&E
ABC Family
Action Max-East
AMC
Animal Planet
Bravo - East
Cartoon Network
Charter DVR
Cinemax-East
CMT
CNBC
CNN
CNN Headline News
Comedy Central
Court TV
CSPAN
CSPAN2
E!
Educational Access
ESPN
ESPN2
EWTN
Food Network
FOX News Channel
Fox Sports Net New England
fx
G4
Golf Channel
Hallmark Channel
HBO 2-East
HBO Comedy-East
HBO Family-East
HBO Latino-East
HBO Signature-East
HBO Zone-East
HBO-East
HGTV/Home and Garden
History
Home Shopping Network
Inspirational Network
Interactive TV Channel
iTV Customer Service Channel
iTV Entertainment Channel
iTV Games Channel
iTV Money Channel
iTV News Channel
iTV Sports Channel
iTV Weather Channel
Lifetime
More Max-East
MSNBC
MTV
MTV2 (M2)
National Geographic
New England Cable News
New England Sports Network
Nickelodeon-East
Outdoor Life Network
OuterMAX - E
Oxygen
QVC
SARA/Scientific Atlanta
Sci-Fi
Speed Channel
Spike TV (TNN)
Starz Cinema-East
Starz in Black-East
Starz Kids and Family-East
Starz-East
Style
TBS
The Discovery Channel
The Disney Channel
The Learning Channel
The Weather Channel
Thriller Max-East
TNT
Toon Disney
Travel Channel
Turner Classic Movies
TV Land
Univision
USA
VH-1
WB 100 Plus
WDMR-LP - TMO
WMAX - E
WTIC-DT - FOX - HDTV
@MAX - E
10 NHL Center Ice/MLB Extra Innings
28 PPV Stations (Incl. 6 Adult)
40 Music Stations
5StarMAX - E

Tier Packages

The Movie Tier
Showtime-East
Showtime Too-East
Showtime Showcase-East
Showtime Extreme-East
Showtime Beyond-East
TMC Xtra-East
FLIX-E
Encore-East
Encore Love-East
Encore Action-East
Encore Mystery-East
Encore Drama-East
Encore Westerns-East

The Sports Tier

ESPNews
ESPN Classic
Fox College Sports - Atlantic
Fox College Sports - Central
Fox College Sports - Pacific
Fox Sports en Espanol
Fox Soccer Channel
NFL Network
Fuel
CSTV - College Sports
TVG
Fit TV

Digital Family Tier
BBC America
Biography
Bloomberg
Discovery Health
Discovery Home Channel
Discovery Kids
Discovery Times
Do It Yourself
FOX Movie Channel
Fuse (Much Music)
Great American Country
History Channel International
Independent Film Channel
Jewelry Television by ACN
Lifetime Movie Network
Military Channel
MTV Espanol
MTV Hits
MTV Jams
Nickelodeon Games and Sports
Nickelodeon Toons
Nickelodeon Too-West
Noggin
Soap Net
Sundance-East
The Science Channel
VH Uno
VH-1 Classic
VH-1 Country
VH-1 Mega Hits
VH-1 Soul
Women's Entertainment

 

[Lars]

I had a post around here somewhere about the same thing. However, I get 12 HD channels from Charter here in Alabama and the On Demand includes HBO, Showtime and Starz (free if you subscribe to those channels). My DVR is also multi-room ready which is supposed to be enabled this year and I can add a SATA hard drive if I want to up the hours. All in all, not a bad deal.

 

[CDH]

Charter in Greenville, SC only offers 2 HD locals (NBC and CBS), whereas with OTA antenna I can also get ABC, PBS, Fox WB, and UPN (the last not in HD).

The Charter offer in my area is okay: $64/month including HD-DVR I think, but includes TNT-HD and UHD as well as Showtime HD (plus HBO-HD, ESPN, Discovery, and the "Braves" network). However, they wanted a 12-month contract which I'm not comfortable with in case they don't add more locals.

CDH.

 

[CDH]

Hmmm... called back today and they were not requiring a contract. $62.89/month (plus tax) for all standard and premium channels, their HD-tier, and an HD-DVR digital cable box. I made an appointment and will use cable until the satellite companies get more HD on board.

Though I'm not happy with the loss of content (particularly most of my HD locals!) this will end up costing me about $46/month less than what I pay for Va Va Voom plus Tivo. I guess I'll start saving the money for later or perhaps supplement my cable service with either NetFlix or a Blockbuster movie-pass.

CDH.

 

[jbcheshire]

Does anyone know if you can integrate your locals from OTA into the charter receivers? Like you can with say Dish's receivers..

 

[CDH]

Does anyone know if you can integrate your locals from OTA into the charter receivers? Like you can with say Dish's receivers..

I asked about that before and they said no.

That would have assuaged a lot of my issues with going back to cable. But with no contract no harm, no foul I guess.

I would *really* like something like this:
http://us.lge.com/download/product/file/1000000112/LST3410A.pdf

Which has OTA and digital cable with an HD-DVR, but only for unscrambled digital cable. I don't know if Charter would support it and at $699 it is too expensive!

CDH.

 

[jbcheshire]

Shucks...
thanks CDH.

 

[Amphicar770]

I
I would *really* like something like this:
http://us.lge.com/download/product/file/1000000112/LST3410A.pdf

Which has OTA and digital cable with an HD-DVR, but only for unscrambled digital cable. I don't know if Charter would support it and at $699 it is too expensive.

Sony has a cable card equiped HD DVR hitting the market next month. It does integrate OTA with cable.
http://reviews.cnet.com/Sony_DHG_HDD500/4652-6474_7-31155752.html

It is not cheap but I suspect that other manufacturers will soon follow and prices will come down quickly.

I myself am going back to Comcast. Outside of Voom, I do not see ANY advantages which DBS has to offer at this time.

 

[pmalve]

Charter in CT

Signed up for charter service today. With HD DVR, all movie channels and 3mb internet service total bill with tax 103.56. Only 10 dollars more than my voom bill.End up saving money as i was paying for basic cable and internet on top of voom. They added TNT Starz and Cinemax in HD this week. Hope voom box keeps working for ota as Charter only has NBC and Fox in CT. If I have to I will buy otatuner as I like haveing option of getting CT or NYC digital channels. This will keep me going until the dbs situation straightens out with mpeg 4.

 

[Synge]

Back to Charter for me..

Was very happy to have finally gotten rid of Charter (except for basic cable in order to get my local channels) when I switched to VOOM back in February. Oh well, I got a couple months of HD before the shutdown at the end of April.

Well, this was my first experience with satellite TV and while I did enjoy the product, I wasn't happy with the installation. I live in Northern Michigan and the closest installer was 2 1/2 hours from me. The scheduled day of installation came along, I was told he'd be there between 8am to 11am, so I took the day off from work. Lo and behold we had an ice-storm the night before and I got the call at 10:30am that he couldn't make it because of the road conditions. One vacation day wasted. Fair enough, so I rescheduled for Friday of the same week. Was told he'd be there between 12:00 and 4:00, so took the afternoon off in order to cover this time period. He didn't end up showing until after 5:30. Another 1/2 day of vacation wasted. Fortunately I got the $1.00 installation deal and didn't buy the equipment.

The installation wasn't too bad once he got it up. But by this time it was 7:30 by the time he finished and one of the 2 boxes didn't seem to be downloading correctly. It was an older box he said, that needed a software upgrade. He said it'd automatically download the software and was in a hurry to get heading home, so he left before it finished downloading. Well, the one box that didn't have any problems worked great, but the older one kept having problems. It kept freezing up. Called VOOM customer support 3-4 times about it. They finally said they'd schedule the installer to come back and replace the bad box. That of course never got done because of the shutdown. Just as well, as I didn't feel like wasting more vacation time waiting on the installer.

So after the final notice about shutdown I was kinda torn and between trying Direct-TV, Dish-network or going back to Charter. Keep in mind that Charter HD isn't yet available in my area. (Supposedly available by the end of May)
Well, I got a call from Charter offering me their Digital cable with all the pay channels for $54.99 a month guaranteed until the end of the year. No obligation, I can cancel at any time and no installation fees. With the hassles of the installation of VOOM fresh in my mind I decided to go back to Charter until they can finally offer Charter HD. As far as I know they are only offering 4-5 channels of HD programming, but it's better than nothing. Also can only get local CBS station OTA and they haven't yet upgraded to HD signal. Another advantage of Charter HD is not having to buy expensive HD equipment to get the programming, as both Direct-TV and Dish requires.

Will I be happy with Charter HD when they finally make it available? I guess time will tell.

 

[kirkdj]

Digital Channels?

I thought the first 100 channels of Charter were analog? Is this wrong? Are they the same quality as sat. digital channels?

 

[BustAGroove]

My Charter Digital Cable w/HD DVRs is set for this Sunday, weather permitting. I signed up for their 30-day risk free or your $$ back deal.

 

[Synge]

I thought the first 100 channels of Charter were analog? Is this wrong? Are they the same quality as sat. digital channels?

The first 100 channels are supposed to be "100% digital quality" just like the rest of the package. I honestly can't say for sure either way, not that tech savy. I can say they don't look to be anywhere close to as the quality that the analog channels were on VOOM. Perhaps when they finish the upgrade to HD signals the other channels will improve, as they will need to upgrade their boxes to accomodate the HD package.

 

[sfollenius]

Check charter website. They are offering all channels at 39.99 first three months. Think you have to order online. This does not include and DVR fees, they are like 9.99 addtl per month.

 

[CDH]

I had my Charter install this morning. No problems. The HD-DVR seems to work well. As expected the picture quality on the (few) HD channels was fine and horrible on the (analog?) channels below 100.

One of the big selling points for cable over Satellite is the possibility of On-Demand services. However, once hooked up the installer told me that On-Demand service doesn't work on the DVR box, just the regular HD box. Gah! In any case, the On-Demand service here is not HD.

One thing that I can't figure out is how to display 4:3 pictures on my 16:9 display without the system automatically zooming in to fill full screen. The zooming makes a bad picture look even worse. I did find the 4:3/16:9 option in the settings, but it seems to be all-or-nothing: either full screen (always) or pillar-box/letter-box (always). On Voom I had it set such that 4:3 content (which I rarely watch) was pillar-boxed and 16:9 content was full-screen.

But what a difference a day makes... with the Voom channels moving to Dish I may be with Charter for less than a week. I'm going to call Dish on Sunday for the rumored ex-Voom offer.

I'd be willing to pay more to Charter for comparable service, but without even digital-HD versions of most of the locals it is hard for me to stay with Cable when the grass is looking so much greener on the Dish side.

CDH.

 

[Steve@Midland]

I have Charter here in Midland, Michigan. HD offering is HDNet, HDNet movies, ESPN-HD, HBO & Showtime HD if you subscribe, and local NBC-HD (WEYI). What they don't carry is ABC-HD (WJRT). Our local CBS (WNEM) does digital, but not HD, and FOX (WSMH) who claims they can't even go digital because they are too close to Canada. The WJRT antenna is less than a quarter mile away, but evidently it is ok for ABC-HD to drift into Canada.

The signal quality is pretty good on the HD channels, at least as good as and sometimes better than E*, but most of the channels below 100 are grainy.

We also have the 3mb internet service, but don't trust it to deliver at 3mb. When it works, it works fine, but it slows way down in the evening and during the weekends.

I had a special price of $98/mo for digital tier, HD tier, movie channels and 3mb internet for almost a year. To their credit, they extended it by about 4 months, then raised the price to $129.00 with three days notice. (Way too high)! Their service people have been very helpful, and have been out once to run new cable to the house, and again to increase the signal strength.

I am looking for ways to reduce the cost, including dropping some of the movie channels. I just want to maximize my HD.

 

[Lars]

On-Demand service doesn't work on the DVR box, just the regular HD box. Gah! In any case, the On-Demand service here is not HD.

One thing that I can't figure out is how to display 4:3 pictures on my 16:9 display without the system automatically zooming in to fill full screen. The zooming makes a bad picture look even worse. I did find the 4:3/16:9 option in the settings, but it seems to be all-or-nothing: either full screen (always) or pillar-box/letter-box (always). On Voom I had it set such that 4:3 content (which I rarely watch) was pillar-boxed and 16:9 content was full-screen.

CDH.

If you have the DVR, press the # button and you cycle through pillar box, stretch and zoom modes. On demand works on all boxes, even the DVR, but is SD only. Hope this helps.....

 

[pauljk]

Charter is switching to a digital simulcast system where they send the lower 100 channels in both digital and analog. This will improve the grainy appearance with the DVR on those channels. The rollout has already started, but I don't have it here in Whitewater, WI, though some people in nearby communities do.

The problem with those channels if you receive only analog is that the DVR has to digitize them, and it doesn't do as well a job as if it was done at the head end.

Also, if you have the Moxi DVR, there is a software upgrade on the way that will improve switching from 1080i to 480i programming. Currently, you have to switch it MANUALLY, which is a royal pain. With my set, if I just leave it at 1080, all my SD programs are stretched. The software upgrade (v3.2) will allow you to set all resolutions that your TV supports, and the box will pass each program through natively. This is what the older non-DVR Charter boxes did, and what the Voom box did if you were in Native mode.

Moxi released this software update some time ago, but Charter in my area is "still testing". They've given no release date.

Paul

 

[CDH]

If you have the DVR, press the # button and you cycle through pillar box, stretch and zoom modes. On demand works on all boxes, even the DVR, but is SD only. Hope this helps.....

Thanks for this. I'll try the # button.

Perhaps the installer was wrong, but he was adamant that (at lest in my area) On Demand services were not working on the DVR boxes. Mine is a Moxi (haven't looked up the actual model number).

Charter is switching to a digital simulcast system where they send the lower 100 channels in both digital and analog. This will improve the grainy appearance with the DVR on those channels. The rollout has already started, but I don't have it here in Whitewater, WI, though some people in nearby communities do.

This is promising. Hopefully it will be related to getting HD feeds for the other available locals.

Also, if you have the Moxi DVR, there is a software upgrade on the way that will improve switching from 1080i to 480i programming. Currently, you have to switch it MANUALLY, which is a royal pain. With my set, if I just leave it at 1080, all my SD programs are stretched. The software upgrade (v3.2) will allow you to set all resolutions that your TV supports, and the box will pass each program through natively. This is what the older non-DVR Charter boxes did, and what the Voom box did if you were in Native mode.

This sounds good too!

CDH.

 

[pauljk]

One thing that I can't figure out is how to display 4:3 pictures on my 16:9 display without the system automatically zooming in to fill full screen. The zooming makes a bad picture look even worse. I did find the 4:3/16:9 option in the settings, but it seems to be all-or-nothing: either full screen (always) or pillar-box/letter-box (always). On Voom I had it set such that 4:3 content (which I rarely watch) was pillar-boxed and 16:9 content was full-screen.


CDH.

CDH, If you've got a Moxi, you want to go into Settings, and set it to Widescreen and leave it. Then, also under Settings, change your Video Output to either 1080 or 480, depending on what you're watching. That should keep your TV from displaying SD in 16:9.

It's a real nuisance, but will be fixed with the 3.2 software.

Paul