I am in the Fresno, CA area and am subscribed to Comcast's triple play services (TV, Internet & Voice). I am presently on the X1 Starter Triple Play package. My 2 year agreement just expired, so they jacked my base rate up from $130 to $143/month, so I started looking at what packages were available for me to lower my costs. Xfinity now has their "Pro+" plans, so I was looking at the X1 Starter Pro+, which is very similar to what I have now. It's $115/month for 2 years. So I go online to try and change my plan and it says I have to add another box. They don't recognize my cable card. So I wait 2 hours on hold to talk to a rep. She proceeds to inform me that, if I change to a different plan I will not be able to use my cable card any more and will have to return it. What the hell? I thought Comcast and other cable companies were REQUIRED by the FCC to support cable cards on their systems? Otherwise, there is no choice, you have to use their equipment and pay their fees. I have quite a bit invested in my HDHomeRun that uses my cablecard. I use it with Emby to record and watch TV shows and other media. They did tell me I could keep using my cable card if I stayed on this plan, but of course I'll be paying something like $13/month extra. It doesn't help that they also jacked up the "Broadcast TV fee" up $5/month this month (I wish I could opt out of the Broadcast channels, I can get them OTA).
Isn't it a requirement that cable companies support cable cards on their system? I Googled around and couldn't really find any definitive information on the subject.
If this holds up I may have to end up limiting my Emby system to just recording OTA as I'm not going to give them $156/year extra just to be able to watch and record from cable.
Thanks, Chuck
↧