Time Warner Cable customers in Maine are learning the cable operator’s move to digital cable is making VCR programming downright murder.
Although many of us have retired the videocassette recorder to closets, attics, or basements, millions of them are still being used on a daily basis to time-shift shows and to record one channel while watching another. But in Maine, the first area to experience Time Warner’s shift to an all-digital cable experience, viewers like Nancy Blethen from Hallowell are learning those days are coming to an end.
Blethen shared her plight with the Kennebec Journal:
I read with interest the story about the converter box for Time Warner subscribers. Although, the idea of more channels is appealing, they really aren’t any that I care to watch.
Another point the story omitted is that if you have a VCR and connect the converter from your cable through the VCR to the TV set, you will only be able to record the channel you are watching. No more recording when you are not home or if you want to watch another channel while recording another program.
I spent at least 20 minutes on the phone with a tech person, and they checked with their supervisor and concluded that this is something subscribers will have to live with, at least for the present. You can avoid this by using one of their DVR recorders, but at an additional monthly fee. Time Warner is the only choice I have where I live so I have to forget recording on the VCR.
Although Time Warner Cable will happily supply a digital solution to this analog quagmire, it doesn’t come for free. DVR service costs $13 a month or more each month. While it solves the problem of the flashing 12:00-clock for confounded consumers, it also increases their cable bill by well over $100 a year, more than the cost of the VCR (and tapes) that used to let them record shows for free.
This is a problem that Comcrap customers have been having for a couple of years now. About the only “solution” is to get a separate converter from TW for the recorder. Unfortunately, it will not allow for automatic channel change, but it will allow one to record any number of programs FROM A SINGLE CHANNEL.
From experience – DirecTV’s non-DVR boxes have an auto-tune option.
It would just be software, surely. I’m amazed this hasn’t been rolled out by the cable providers.
So how does that solve anything?
I suspect that the issue here involves low income people who have basic cable. Going to satellite involves significantly increased costs for those folks.
It doesn’t.
My point was, it’s amazing that the cable companies haven’t rolled out such functionality, which really should be considered to be basic.