Cord is cut, living large

[lordkenmore]

No Internet connection clarification

I meant "no Internet connection for the TV." I do have Internet (ironically, via a cable TV company, but I only get the ISP service).

I was half asleep when I posted above...

 

[henene4]

Cable in germany

It does exist, but is way more complicated then in some other places.

PayTV of any form was actually verry much not the norm until this decade. I mean, there were services, yes, and there were people who had them, but it was far from the norm. Most people just had satelite, usually Astra, and that was basicly free (except for the "Rundfunkgebühr", but that actually only funds the so called "state TV" and that is a completly different topic).
One big PayTV service was Premiere (I think that was what it was called), but that company somehow basicly crashed. I don't even know if they actually were cable bound or not.

Today, there a several systems takeing over. We do have actual cable TV providers that provide internet&#92telephone as well, but there are verry few of them, a lot of renaming is done and for the most part, service and hardware are shit.
Sky came up big after they got the rights to a big part of the german soccer league. While they started out as a cable company, they transformed into the market of this kind of weired multi-system TV provider (cable, satelite, TV on demand), but they do not supply internet or phone lines.
The german Telekom as well as Vodafone hopped onto the train as well.

But they basicly do not supply you with cable, but either IP-TV or satelite TV with IP-based encryption. Both use your highspeed internet connection to either fully stream the content or they stream the encryption data while the main chunk of data is supplied via satelite. These systems have the huge advantage of near perfect video-on-demand integration.

The last story is HD TV. Via the (verry commonly used) Astra satelite, only a small number of channels are actually in HD quality. Most of them are SD. A few years ago, the most popular TV channels (which are basicly 3 big TV companys: RTL&Sat1 Group, ProSieben Media Group and the "state TV") bounded and created the HD+ "thing". If you want to get HD versions of their content, you have to get a CI+ module for your CI+ capable TV or reciever, then get an HD+ card (which is something like 60-80€ a year). This allows your system to decrypt the encrypted HD channel data that you get via satelite.

Via all these systems, PayTV has spread a lot, but still it's not a big thing not to have it. We don't have it and we don't miss it.

 

[kb0nes]

I do believe that DirecTV had a drastic decrease in customer service in recent years. I sold a co-worker on Direct and they told me a lot that about how that company works that sure isn't how it used to be, pity they were great originally.

Be that as it may, it won't change rain out occurrences. The receivers are still the same and the spacecraft are still the same the path is still the same. Even up here in MN at 45 Deg N latitude where we have a poorer squint angle then more southerly latitudes rain outs are few and far between. I'd bank on either the dish being slightly off aim, or branches/foliage in the path (which is REALLY lossy when wet!).

I'm not saying he doesn't have rain fade, everyone of us with a DBS dish will have it from time to time. I'm only saying that if it is excessive it is either due to a poorly setup installation or perhaps the human ability to remember the bad more then the good...

 

[circlew]

About 20 years ago I worked as a rep for a company that provided customer service for DirecTV. We had three office locations - one in Cincinnati and two in Utah. The local office ended up losing the contract with DirecTV because of so many of the CSR's providing such poor service - things such as intentionally hanging up on customers, transferring them back to the number they called on, or to other businesses such as the Psychic Hotline, car dealers, pizza restaurants, etc.

I tried to provide good service, which meant I took longer than the many of the others to complete a call, so my "numbers" weren't as good. Of course they monitored the calls, but the supervisors (mainly females of color) played favorites, so most of the ones that didn't try to help the customer with their issues got away with it. That all came to an end when the DirecTV started getting complaints from frustrated customers to their corporate offices. They started monitoring calls and found very little problems with the Utah locations, so they expanded there to take all the calls. I had left by then, but heard about it from former co-workers.