About a month ago I started hearing about changes Comcast planned on making in the Pittsburgh area. At the time I was all for it, because any time I hear about HD channels it tends to make me happy. But now that it is apparently happening officially I have some mixed feelings.

As stated in the article linked above, yeah we will be receiving more HD programming. But they are really screwing over some people by switching some of those other stations to digital plans only. I mean, MSNBC? Come on….

I wonder if any of those changes have anything to do with the summer Olympics? Is Comcast really crazy enough to purposely move a station such as MSNBC to purely digital just to get some people to switch so they can watch Olympic programming? Or do they just totally want to screw over MSNBC for other reasons?

Anyways, what brought up the whole idea of me posting this blog was my telephone conversation with Comcast this morning. I called them regarding getting another HD cable box because currently I only have one at my house. I saw in that Post Gazette article that they had some special deals on the different cable boxes so I figured I’d ask about the HD boxes. I couldn’t believe it when she told me that a digital box would only be $1.99 a month but the HD ones are $10.99 a month. Seriously, what the hell is up with that? $10.99 a month for all additional boxes? I asked her, how is that even possible? All she said was “there aren’t any promotions right now on the HD boxes”. It took me a second to comprehend that the Comcast bill for my house would now be about $140 a month, and somehow I said alright fine I’ll take another one.

At that point I didn’t really have anything else to say to the woman because all I could think to myself was,  how the hell do the majority of people afford this? So yeah, after all of that I will have another box installed here within the next few days. And yes, I know I could have gone and picked it up. But, that really wasn’t much of an option for me because I would go totally crazy if I went into any sort of Comcast Service Center. Paying the $17 will definitely save me a lot of aggravation. And when you’re already paying them $140 a month what’s another $17, right?

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