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Having problems with Comcast cable? Had a terrible customer service experience with the cable company? Want to air your frustrations to the world (and with Comcast, possibly)? Then check out the Comcast Must Die blog hosted at Blogspot.

There’s a great post that contains a chat log between a customer and a Comcast customer support person. Plus, the site’s author, Bob Garfield, says he will host a podcast on December 11th, which will feature callers and hopefully, a Comcast executive to answer all our questions. I haven’t seen any specific details about it so far, but it seems kind of interesting.

Garfield encourages comments and he even tells them to include their Comcast account numbers when leaving comments because he said Comcast will call them back.

I don’t know about that, but I personally wouldn’t give out my account number on the Internet for all to see. Garfield says it’s ok, since there’s nothing personal about it, but I’m still not convinced.

If you like Comcast, you might want to check out the Comcast Rocks blog, started by a Comcast employee.

According to an AP story, TV networks are streaming millions of TV shows over the Internet, with “Heroes” and “Jericho” the two top shows. ABC won’t say what their most popular streamed shows are, but bets are “Grey’s Anatomy” is number 1 for them.

Some quick facts from the story:

• NBC has streamed 5 million individual episodes of its shows.
• ABC streamed more than 2.5 million in the first two weeks of the new season.
• ABC says the average age of its online viewers is 29; for television viewers, it’s 46.
• NBC said it has hit the “5 million mark in total downloads” with “Heroes” accounting for about half of the downloads.

None of the top four networks say how many people watch their shows online, however and Nielsen is still about 18 months away from launching an online TV measurement system. So the next big thing is by checking total web site traffic.

Visitors to ABC.com jumped 224 percent between August and September, to 181 million, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. NBC went up 30 percent while CBS was up 3 percent.

[tags] Hollywood, Nielsen, ratings, ABC, CBS, NBC, streaming, downloads [/tags]

According to a survey by the Consumer Electronics Association, 22% of people with analog TV sets plan to “do nothing” when local broadcast stations switch entirely to digital signals in February 2009. The breakdown:

• 22% said they would subscribe to a cable or satellite service

• 33% said they would use a government-issued $40 coupon to purchase a digital-to-analog converter box

• 23% plan to purchase a new digital television set.

• 22% said they would do nothing

The CEA estimates that come Feb. 17, 2009, between 22 million and 28 million TV sets will need to continue receiving broadcast TV signals.

Many industry people are worried that U.S. consumers won’t be ready for the switch With over 20 million analog sets still in use today, there will be a big need to distribute digital-to-analog converter to continue to watch TV on their old sets.

However a massive public awareness campaign will start next year in a variety of media.

[tags] CEA, TV, digital, HDTV [/tags]

Comcast’s Chief Technology Officer, Tony Werner, said that the company plans to begin using multi-room DVRs in 2008 in select markets. Werner was speaking at the keynote for the first ever Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) technology conference.

However, Light Reading also suggests that Comcast is looking to launch a “Start Over” type of TV service that allows customers to watch replays of TV shows. It’s something that has been gaining in popularity in other cable systems since it doesn’t require a DVR box or service.

Multichannel News reported that Comcast is looking to launch a “Start Over” service much like Time Warner Cable’s Start Over.

Start Over, as offered by Time Warner, is a VOD service that provides replays of as many as 22,000 cable and broadcast TV shows per month, available only during the show’s broadcast window. Time Warner has agreements with more than 100 networks for the service.

Aside from these restrictions, Time Warner’s service lets viewers view shows for only a limited time after they’ve aired and does not allow fast-forwarding through commercials.

[tags] Comcast, Time Warner, cable, DVR, on-demand, TV, Start Over [/tags]

The Federal Communications Commission infuriated cable companies last week after saying that cable TV operators had a penetration rate over 70% . Meanwhile, a Wall Street analyst, Craig Moffett, said that the number was not “mathematically possible” and was closer to 60%.

Why is this a big deal? Apparently, if cable companies go over 70% a federal rule is triggered. Explains Multichannel News:

“After looking at the total number of cable subscribers and the total number of homes passed by all cable companies, and after adjusting to exclude vacant households, Moffett determined that cable penetration was no higher than 60.5%.

and

“The FCC gets a booster shot of power over cable when 70% of households are passed by a cable system with at least 36 channels — and 70% of those households, in turn, subscribe to such cable systems.”

This important difference showcases the fallibility of research methods and data. The original researcher said the data is “accurate but not reliable because some cable operators withheld their subscriber and homes-passed totals.” FCC panel members are now closely looking at these numbers as well as those from Moffett.

I love media. I’ve got hundreds of CDs, thousands of photos and lots of gigabytes worth of movies stored on my home PC. With so much content, I really wanted space where I could everything without taking up space on my PC. My solution was to get a network attached storage device.

I recently bought a Buffalo LinkStation Live network attached storage (NAS) device. It’s 750GB so it can fit all my music, movies and photos. And since it’s attached to the network I can access it from my home network, or anywhere in the world via the Internet. Pretty cool, eh? 

The one thing I’m missing, however, is the connection between the PC and TV. But since my LinkStation works as a media server, all I need is a compatible device.

Media extenders act as the bridge between PCs and TVs. They connect to your TV set and let you watch movies from your PC. PC Magazine wrote up a round up of products that can do this, including the Apple TV, Netgear’s extender, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. But the Xbox and PS3 aren’t full media extenders–they’re game systems that can do some movies and media center functions. And Apple TV has just been pretty much ignored by everyone, including Apple.

Now, SanDisk has unveiled a new flash-memory-based device that can take content from your PC to the TV. But no matter how SanDisk makes it look pretty, it’s still sneakernet–you have to physically walk the flash-memory device from the PC to the TV.

Media extenders seem like the best solution for me, especially now that I’ve parked all my media on my NAS. The Buffalo LinkStation that I bought is compatible with DLNA certified media devices, like Buffalo’s own LinkTheater Wireless A&G Network Media Player. I was also impressed by some media extenders that Linksys unveiled last month.

DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) is still a pretty new concept that not may people have heard of. It’s simply a way to share media between PCs, TVs and other consumer devices within a home network.

I’m pretty excited about having tons of storage, and am getting ready to buy a media extender to really take advantage of all my media. As much I love my media, I want to have it everywhere I go, and on any device. But alas, we haven’t gotten there yet.

According to a survey conducted by Leichtman Research Group, there are 30 million U.S. households using HDTV.  That’s about a quarter of U.S. households, and double the HD penetration from last year.

However, these figures are different that those from other research companies, like Nielsen.

Leichtman’s figures are lower than estimates from the Consumer Electronics Association, which said that HD household penetration stood at 32% in July, or some 36 million homes. But it’s much higher than estimates from measurement giant Nielsen, which said only 21% of U.S. households, or some 23.6 million, have HD displays.

Some more facts:

• Low Over-The Air HD Receivers. About 4% of HD households get HD over-the-air
• No Help on HD Programming. Only 41% of HDTV owners said someone told them how to receive HD programming when they purchased the set.
• They Don’t Know If They Own an HD DVD Player. About 40% of HDTV owners said they believe they have an HD DVD . However actual sales figures for Blu-ray and HD-DVD players are rather low.

So, the main message I got was: people are still really confused about HDTV.

First, many consumers are still having understanding their HDTV options and features; buying an HD set is intimidating and confusing. Secondly, consumers aren’t sure how to get HD programming. And lastly, they don’t know the difference between HD DVD players and regular DVD players.

What can the consumer electronics industry do to fix these issues?