lifebsideben

I’m moving, from Burlingame to Sunnyvale, approximately 20 miles due south. Comcast is the cable provider in both cities, as with pretty much every other Bay Area city. I called them and said I was moving and they said, “oh, no problem–but you will need to return your equipment.” I had moved previously, from San Mateo, one city over, and they didn’t ask for the equipment back, so I thought this was weird. I said “Why? Can’t I just take it and plug it in at the new address?” “No,” the CSR replied, “it’s on a different frequency.” Uhhh OK. I asked “but you have all the same services there, right? I’ll get my same premium channel, my HD channels, etc…?” “Yes” she replied, “we’ll schedule someone to come bring you new hardware–cable box and cable modem, that same day if you like.” And then the big question… “so if I turn in my HD DVR box, what do I do about the programs I have recorded on it?”, knowing there’s no way in hell they’re going to transfer them somehow to the new box they bring. This one got her, she just said “sir, you have to turn in the box, you’ll get another one at the new location.” Un huh. Well, good thing the DVR box they give you doesn’t store very much HD content. So last night I was quickly catching up on ‘Deadwood’ and ‘Treasure Hunters’. A couple of movies I had recorded, I guess I’ll just have to catch later (Shaun of the Dead, The Crucible…)

So that kinda stinks, though. I’d understand if there seemed to be some real logic to it, but this seems kinda of stupid, like something that should be reprogrammable (if that’s even necessary) over the wire. But then I heard rumors that they can’t get On-Demand working in Sunnyvale, either, so I guess we’ll see if there really is something totally funky going on there. Oh and of course now I have to wait around for the cable guy to show up Monday as well…