

ISP (Comcast) takes over television and movie studio (NBC Universal) - Terretta
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/posttech/2011/01/the_federal_communications_com_8.html

======
mikeryan
Calling Comcast an ISP is a bit strange. They are still primarily a cable
service. They are also quite experienced with running tv studios, they own E,
Style, Golf, G4 and quite a few more.

That being said I've worked for 2 companies that Comcast bought, the first was
TechTV which got absorbed into G4 and tanked. I'm not looking for the takeover
of NBC to go much smoother. Comcast has installed a lot of their broadcast
heads over their NBC counterparts. I understand they want to drive the
direction, but putting people in charge of severely underperforming networks
over people in only marginally underperforming networks makes no sense to me.

This merger is going to be ugly and have a lot of nasty fallout.

~~~
pasbesoin
At home, Comcast is my one choice for "high speed" Internet. That -- for the
most part -- works ok, although in the past some months it's started to drop
for one or several hours at a time, which has me worried. (I've heard and read
that others are not so lucky.)

The pricing they offer means it's about the same to get Internet alone or to
purchased it bundled with basic cable, so I have basic cable from them as
well. I turn it on, once in a while, and the quality I've observed has
decreased _markedly_ in the last couple of years. It seems that very
frequently, one or another channel has a major technical glitch. These will --
when I check -- persist for hours or even days.

In addition, with the transition to digital, sometimes programs flip mid-scene
between different display modes and ratios. A lot of digital artifacting from
overly constrained bandwidth, particularly on the "less desirable", i.e.
Hispanic, channels -- also at times PBS (gee, I wonder why). Keep in mind
that, being basic cable, the final leg is still analog and so is not the
problem.

What I gather from the programming is that all the channels are more or less
under combined control, anyway. The same 5 movies are on different channels,
in slightly different timeframes/rotations. A lot else seems the same: "That
70's Show" and "Men" seem to be on every channel.

Even though I'm "paying" for it, Comcast displays no interest in even
technically maintaining, much less programming, the basic channels. This has
left me with no confidence in their being a corporate "good citizen". If you
aren't the fattest part of their revenue stream, they couldn't care less.

