Michael Hanscom

Enthusiastic ambivert. Geeky, liberal, friendly, curious, hopepunk; trying to be a good person. (he/him)

Comcast Clarification

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Looks like I’ve got my answer: our Limited Basic service shouldn’t change. Here are the relevant tweets:

@djwudi Limited basic will be channels below 30 will not need a box. What channel number are you concerned about? #

@djwudi This isn’t happening immediately; it’s where we’re eventually moving. As you said, it’s seperate from the FCC broadcast transition. #

@ShaunaCausey @comcastcares You two are fast! :) I know we’ll miss 99 (CBUT), they were great during the Olympics, and we’ve kept watching. #

@ShaunaCausey @comcastcares My concern: there aren’t many channels above 29 on Limited Basic, but having them go poof isn’t “unaffected”. #

@djwudi Good point. you will still get CBUT. If you are a “limited” customer, you will not lose any channels. 75-99 WILL still be there. #

Sounds like a good end to this particular adventure to me!

Update: There have been some additions to the Seattle Times article that cover this same information. Here’s the relevant sections of their article:

Q: What about public access channels above 29? (NEW)

A: Comcast must still offer a handful of public access channels in analog format, per its franchise agreements. Tony Perez of Seattle’s cable office said that in Seattle, those channels include 75 (KCTS Plus) 76 (UW 2 TV); 77 (SCAN, the public access channel) and perhaps a few more.

Q: What about Canadian public television channel 99 (CBUT)? (NEW)

A: It will remain available to “limited basic” customers, spokesman Steve Kipp said in an email: “In addition to C-SPAN, C-SPAN2, the local broadcast channels and the local government and education channels, the Limited Basic lineup includes: Northwest Cable News, ION, Discovery Channel, KMYQ, KBCB, KHCV, QVC, HSN, KWDK, Hallmark Channel, KTBW, TVW, Univision, The Weather Channel and CBUT.”

Kipp said the limited basic channel numbers won’t change: “As for channel locations here, they will remain the same so the Limited Basic channels that are in the 75 to 99 range would remain the same.”

Comcast Confusion

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Well, maybe this transition thing isn’t as cleared up as I thought.

An update to the earlier article about Comcast’s transition to (nearly) all-digital broadcasting went online, and it seems to be contradicting what I was told earlier. Here’s the relevant part of the new article (added emphasis is mine):

Comcast is switching channels higher than 29 to digital format and requiring all televisions to have some sort of cable box to receive those channels. For “expanded basic” customers who don’t have cable boxes, the company will provide a free box. It also will provide two free adapters that expanded and digital customers can use on additional TVs that don’t have a box. Limited basic customers — who only receive channels 2 to 29 — won’t be affected.

This seems to agree with my initial interpretation from the first article: that there will be no change in service for Limited Basic subscribers, and it’s only Expanded Basic customers that will be receiving cable boxes and/or DTAs. Looking again at the tweets I received yesterday from Shauna, I wonder about the wording of this one (again with added emphasis):

@djwudi Hi,Re:Comcast—You will not lose channels, you will actually get more. If you have basic cable, we’ll give you very small conver … #

The problem I’m seeing, and the potential breakdown in communication, is that “basic cable” could be interpreted two ways: Limited Basic (the package I have), and Expanded Basic (the package planned to get the new boxes).

Under Comcast’s current channel line up (which I can’t link to, given the joys of Comcast’s website), Limited Basic customers get channels 2-29 as stated in the article, but they also get 75-79, 99, a run of HD channels (which you would need a $6.50/mo HD box to receive: 104-107, 109-111 and 113), and four high-digit channels (115-117 and 119) that I’ve never seen, so I don’t know if they’re HD or if my TV just doesn’t pick them up. Based on the information provided so far, I can’t find a situation where Limited Basic subscribers “won’t be affected,” as stated in both articles from the Seattle Times. There appear to be two possible situations:

  1. As implied in my conversations on Twitter, Limited Basic customers will receive DTA boxes that will allow them to receive the current channel lineup, or

  2. After the transition, Limited Basic service will actually be reduced to only channels 2-29.

I’m going to continue poking at Comcast to see if I can get a solid answer to this, but at the moment it’s a little confusing.

UtiliTV

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As long as I’m babbling about the boob tube and whining about cable pricing, I might as well toss out my pie-in-the-sky, never-going-to-happen concept for what I want as an option. I actually have two possible concepts, both of which seem like they’d be very doable in the present or soon-to-exist all-digital world.

  1. A-la-carte: Get rid of these ridiculous “bundles” that give me seven channels that I’d pay attention to and sixty-three that I’d ignore. Show me your lineup and let me put my own bundle together. Give me what I want to watch (local channels, Discovery, History, Sci-Fi, etc.), and don’t force me to pay for crap that I’ll never pay attention to (the six thousand variations of QVC, foreign language channels, etc.). I don’t have any issues with paying for content that I’m interested in, but I do have issues with paying for content that I’m not interested in.

  2. TV as a Utility: Open the pipe and give me access to everything, but track what I watch and bill me for what I watch. Watching a few shows here and there is a small bill, feeling lonely and desperate for company and leaving the TV on 24/7 is a larger bill. Bill me for what I actually consume, not what you hope I might try to consume in my most desperate, anti-social, couch-potato moments of depression.

I don’t expect that either of these options are likely to appear anytime soon, if ever, but they make a lot more sense to me than any of the current pay-TV models do.

Maybe @comcastcares after all!

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Back when Prairie and I moved into this apartment, we ended up with Comcast cable. I wasn’t super excited about this, given all the horror stories about Comcast’s customer service floating about the ‘net, but we didn’t have much choice. Over the air TV reception in the Kent valley is nearly nonexistent, and we’re on the wrong side of the building to get a DirecTV connection.

So we signed up for Comcast’s most basic, entry level, all analog “Limited Basic” package. $18 a month gets us local channels plus a few extras, and our favorite surprise in the package was Channel 99 CBUT, Vancouver BC’s CBC affiliate. We watched almost nothing but CBUT during the Olympics, and still tune in from time to time, having become fans of Canadian TV, and especially their sports (during the Olympics, they actually recognized that there were other countries competing) and news coverage (their coverage of the US Elections was an interesting break from the US media). In any case, our cable package isn’t fancy — we don’t even have a cable box, but just run the coax straight from the wall to the TV — but it’s enough for us.

Yesterday I stumbled across an article about Comcast Seattle’s upcoming digital transition. While separate from the broadcast digital transition, it’s the same basic idea (replacing high-bandwidth analog with low-bandwidth digital) and, through somewhat unfortunate timing, will be occurring at about the same time as the broadcast switch. Since our package is analog, I was understandably curious about what to expect.

According to the article, “Customers with limited basic — just channels 2-29 — won’t be affected at all. Those channels will stay analog, so those customers can still just plug their cable into a new or old TV.” So far so good…but what about those channels above 29 that we’re currently receiving? Admittedly, there aren’t a lot of them, but there are a few, including those friendly Canadians. Are we going to lose them? And if so, would we really have to nearly triple our monthly cable bill in order to keep them around (since the lowest digital package that Comcast offers is a ridiculous $56/month)?

I figured I’d see if I could get a quick answer. I’d been following the comcastcares Twitter account for some time, after stumbling across some of the impressive stories about their customer service approach, and fired off a couple brief tweets.

It’s hard for me to believe that @comcastcares when their TV tiers jump from $18/mo (bare bones analog) to $56/mo (entry level digital). #

@comcastcares BTW, that isn’t a rant at you or the stellar customer service you do through Twitter. I just think TV pricing is horrendous. #

@comcastcares When you go all digital in Seattle http://xrl.us/o2kzp will I lose the channels above 30 I currently get with Limited Basic? #

A little bit later that evening, he came back to me with a preliminary answer:

@djwudi I have to get the specifics but as I understand it all channels above 30 will not be available. I will find out more tomorrow #

Not bad — within just a couple hours, I had a response. Admittedly, not an encouraging response, but a response. Then, this morning, I woke up to find that within an hour after he’d responded, he’d referred me to a local Comcast representative, who told me the following:

@djwudi Hi,Re:Comcast–You will not lose channels, you will actually get more. If you have basic cable, we’ll give you very small conver … #

@djwudi Oops, meant to add that Comcast will give you (free of charge) a small box that will allow you to get additional channels. #

I’m guessing that the “small box” that Shauna is referring to here is the “DTA” also being provided to multiple-TV basic digital subscribers.

…Comcast decided to also start providing a secondary type of cable box to homes with multiple TVs.

Called a “DTA,” this device is about the size of a box of frozen spinach and can be mounted behind a TV. It allows the TV to display channels 30 and above without a full cable box. They do not record shows, display program guides or enable rentals like a full box.

So, if I’m understanding this correctly, sometime around the February switchover, Comcast should be providing us with one (or hopefully two, as we have two TVs) DTAs that will allow us to keep our Limited Basic bare-bones service, while still getting the channels we’ve been receiving…and possibly a few more. Not bad.

Also of note (to me, at least) is just how effective and easy this was. I’m used to “customer service” that actually prevents me from even making an attempt (calling Quest, for instance, involves navigating through a phone tree at a call center that operates on East Coast time, even though their customer service pages simply list hours of operation with no time zone listed, so us West Coasters don’t realize that closing at 6pm really means closing at 3pm when we’re still at work until we call and get nowhere). Being able to toss off a short, quick note and get a useful and polite response within a few hours is wonderful.

Comcast the corporate behemoth may very well have its fair share of issues (and then some — I must be honest, I’m not at all convinced that I’d trust my internet connection to them), but — at least on the Twitter level — Comcast’s employees are doing some very nice work.

Somewhat coincidentally, this morning Frank (the man behind comcastcares) posted on his personal weblog about his personal customer service philosophy, and it’s clear just why he does such good work. If only more people and companies would approach their customers with this kind of mindset.

I have seen a lot of press and blog posts about the efforts of my team on the web. I have always been surprised by this because I do not see what I am doing as that special. If you review how I defined Customer Service, you will notice that I believe it is everyone’s responsibility to talk with Customers. I also believe that it is important to be where they are when possible. The internet provides that ability.

To me if I hear someone talking about the company I work for I always offer to help. I have done this at parties, on the street, and one time in a Verizon Wireless store. I never have done it in a negative way. I would just say let me assist, here is my business card. My business card has my email, office phone and my cell phone clearly listed on it. It is very simple. “Let me know if I can help.”

So now we look at engagement in social media spaces. In many cases I write simple messages, “Can I help” or “Thank you.” I do not use the time to sell which many marketers have tried to do. Yet these simple acknowledgements have led to many sales. The key is to be genuine and willing to sincerely listen and help. I never press, I simply provide the opportunity for someone to obtain assistance. For me if I saw someone who wanted or needed help anywhere, I would be happy to assist. As many of you know I have been known to do this many hours of the day, but that is because if I see someone that needs help, and if I can, I will.

I didn’t even have a major issue, but between comcastcares and ShaunaCausey, it was a good experience. Thanks, you two!

Now we’ll just wait and see what happens come February. ;)

Breadcrummy

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I’m all for giving attribution for the goodies people find on the ‘net, letting readers know where the information comes from, acknowledging that links to cool stuff don’t just spontaneously appear, but are usually passed on from person to person and website to website.

Unfortunately, sometimes the process of tracing those breadcrumbs back when you actually want to get a little more information is an exercise in frustration.

For instance:

  1. Boing Boing posts about a silly little photography gadget that they saw over at…

  2. LikeCool, who have a tiny little “via” link (that I almost missed as it was buried under a stack of Google ads) that links to…

  3. Gizmodo, who finally link back to…

  4. Photojojo, who actually sell the silly thing, and have things like tech specs, adapter info, and so on.

In LikeCool’s defense, they did link directly to Photojojo’s page in the text of their post, but I missed that link on my first readthrough (the forest green link text wasn’t enough of a contrast difference to the black body text to catch my eye on the first skim).

Would it be too much trouble to say “I read about this here, and you can buy it or get more info here,” instead of forcing your readers to jump through multiple hoops? By the time I found my way to the source page, I’d pretty much lost interest in it. Besides, it looks more creepy than amusing or useful.

…that isn’t the question.

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A couple weeks ago, while planning ahead for our expected Christmas purchases, I asked whether to Blu or not to Blue. Turns out, contrary to the Bard’s already-mangled quote, that wasn’t the question. After some reviewing of finances and priorities, Prairie and I decided to stay in Standard Definition for the time being, and save our purchase of a fancy-schmancy new HDTV set for some as-yet undetermined future date.

The really fun part of this decision was rejiggering our plans for presents. Such jigs have now been re’d, and after a day of shopping around our old haunts in Northgate (which not-so-coincidentally also involved visiting and lunching with Hope and Peter) and an evening of wrapping presents, we’ve got a big ol’ pile o’ presents under our tree!

I did want to thank all of you who contributed thoughts and advice while I was researching the available options. Hopefully I won’t need to call on you again down the line when prices have dropped enough for us to feel comfortable diving into the HD pool with all you cool kids!

Links for December 5th through December 8th

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Sometime between December 5th and December 8th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Paramount Filming Klingon Hamlet For DVD: Paramount is headed to the Twin Cities to film Commedia Beauregard perform two scenes from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, in Klingon for the new Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country special edition. This is obviously due to the famous dinner scene when Chancellor Gorkon proclaims "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon." According to Kidder the two scenes will be the "taH pagh, taHbe’ (to be or not to be) speech, along with ‘the gravedigger scene (which includes the ‘Alas, poor Yorick’ speech’). On the second scene Kidders adds "they wanted that, because they wanted to use a Klingon skull."
  • Merlin Mann’s Amazon Store Blog: This is my new blog, where I curate items that I have hand-selected for inclusion in The Merlin Mann Amazon Store. That way, you can make smarter buying decisions about the sort of gift that might be right for each of the very special people on your list — as well as being kind to your pocketbook, right?
  • Strobist: Four Reasons to Consider Working for Free: I would like to talk about working for free. Why? Because I think it is one of the fastest ways to make yourself a better photographer, whether you are a pro or an amateur. If you are wondering if I have completely lost my mind, make the jump to judge for yourself.
  • Eye Spy: Filmmaker Plans to Install Camera in His Eye Socket: The eye he's considering replacing is not a working one — it's a prosthetic eye he's worn for several years. Spence, a 36-year-old Canadian filmmaker, is not content with having one blind eye. He wants a wireless video camera inside his prosthetic, giving him the ability to make movies wherever he is, all the time, just by looking around. "If you lose your eye and have a hole in your head, then why not stick a camera in there?" he asks.
  • WordPress Audio Player: Flash-based audio player WP plugin.

Manufactured Controversy

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Jer does a very nice job of laying out one of the base-level issues with the ongoing and neverending “debate” over Intelligent Design: “the actual issue is extremely simple: Intelligent Design is not science, and thus doesn’t belong in science classrooms.”

As of now, the opposition to the teaching of Intelligent Design in science classrooms is as follows: scientific theories are based upon the notion that observations and evidence overwhelmingly back them up. Intelligent Design theory posits no such testable, observable theories. All their time and energy is spent finding problems with portions of the evolution model, which, while actually pretty useful, is not the same thing as positing a theory of their own. The notion that everything was created by an intelligent force is a nice notion — one which I happen to believe — but it is not the same thing as a scientific theory. If you want to do science, then you have to do considerably more than just come up with a nice notion.

ID proponents (and Ben Stein’s film) portray themselves as being “shut out” by science, that what they’re doing is being ignored on the grounds that it attacks the accepted model, and that science is akin to persecution of religion. This simply isn’t true. If the ID folks actually were to do the work involved in creating such a theory, doing the experimentation and observation necessary to back it up and get their work peer reviewed, it WOULD be accepted by science. Unfortunately, the main proponents of Intelligent Design Theory have no interest in doing that; they’d rather just fabricate controversy, pretending that the mean-old scientists just won’t let them play because scientists hate Christians.

Sadly, it’s far easier to rile up congregations and make them feel persecuted than to actually do the science they purport they’re doing. By portraying evolution as anti-religion while claiming persecution at the hands of scientists, they’ve painted an inaccurate portrait of the “debate.” People with no understanding at all of science now feel that their viewpoint ought be represented where it simply doesn’t belong. This two-faced approach is nothing short of dishonest, and I personally feel that the level of dishonesty exhibited suggests that it’s not just misguided, but also intentional.

Links for December 3rd through December 4th

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Sometime between December 3rd and December 4th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Readers React to David Pogue’s Review of the BlackBerry Storm: For years, tech critics like me have occasionally endured abuse from the Cult of Mac. If you write anything that even hints at a less-than-perfect Apple effort (like my reviews of, for example, the original Apple TV, iMovie '08 or MobileMe), the backlash is swift, vitriolic and heated. We're talking insults, vulgarities and even threats. I've always thought that that vocal sub-population of Mac fans make up the world's most watchful, most hostile grass-roots lobbying arm. But now I see that I was wrong. There's an even nastier one: the BlackBerry nuts.
  • Leonard Nimoy on the new Star Trek fim:: "About two months ago my wife Susan and I saw a near finished version of the new Star Trek movie. Some special effects and new score were not yet in place. Susan can be a very honest and tough critic. When it was clear that the story was wrapping up she turned to me and whispered, 'I don't want this movie to end!'"
  • The Stories Behind Hollywood Studio Logos: You see these opening logos every time you go to the movies, but have you ever wondered who is the boy on the moon in the DreamWorks logo? Or which mountain inspired the Paramount logo? Or who was the Columbia Torch Lady? Let's find out…
  • Mobiles distract drivers more than chatty passengers: Mobile phone calls distract drivers far more than even the chattiest passenger, causing drivers to follow too closely and miss exits, US researchers reported on Monday. Using a handsfree device does not make things better and the researchers believe they know why – passengers act as a second set of eyes, shutting up or sometimes even helping when they see the driver needs to make a manoeuvre. The research, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, adds to a growing body of evidence that mobile phones can make driving dangerous.
  • Holidailies: Holidailies participants solemnly vow to update their Web sites daily from Dec. 5 to Jan. 6. (Considering doing this, as I've been a bit neglectful of my blog lately. I do wonder, however, why this site and so many similar ideas appear to skew so heavily towards the feminine side of the blogosphere, in everything from the site design to the participant list. Generally speaking, do guys just not do this kind of thing? Or am I off-base here?)

Links for December 2nd from 12:37 to 18:08

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Sometime between 12:37 and 18:08, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • App Store Lessons: Creating simple application links: Linktoapp offers a handy way to simplify [iTunes App Store] URLs by filtering them through iTunes' search engine. Developed by Arn of MacRumors, Linktoapp is basically TinyURL for the App Store.
  • Neil Gaiman’s Journal: Why defend freedom of icky speech?: Freedom to write, freedom to read, freedom to own material that you believe is worth defending means you're going to have to stand up for stuff you don't believe is worth defending, even stuff you find actively distasteful, because laws are big blunt instruments that do not differentiate between what you like and what you don't, because prosecutors are humans and bear grudges and fight for re-election, because one person's obscenity is another person's art. Because if you don't stand up for the stuff you don't like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you've already lost.
  • The Witches: Guillermo Del Toro Dances With Roald Dahl’s Witches: Yay! This could be very, very cool. My one hope is that he sticks with the original ending — my one complaint about the otherwise excellent earlier film adaptation of this story is that the ending is sweeter and less dark than the book.
  • Vampire Comedy Has Musicians Lining Up to Suck: Alice Cooper is about to make vampires more metal. The rocker joins Iggy Pop, Moby, and Malcolm McDowell in the upcoming horror comedy Suck. A cross-genre cast of musicians and a monster hunting, nyctophobic Malcolm McDowell star in this tale of a wannabe rock band who, after an encounter with a vampire, find that fame and immortality aren’t quite what they expected.
  • Does the broken windows theory hold online?: Much of the tone of discourse online is governed by the level of moderation and to what extent people are encouraged to "own" their words. When forums, message boards, and blog comment threads with more than a handful of participants are unmoderated, bad behavior follows. The appearance of one troll encourages others. Undeleted hateful or ad hominem comments are an indication that that sort of thing is allowable behavior and encourages more of the same.