Cable Entertainment News

Ever since the VCR came out in the early 1980’s, people have complained about how bad the quality of the tapes were after just a few plays. They also complained about how hard it was to program a VCR just to record one show. And if the power went out, they had to reprogram it all over again!

But now, there’s an alternative! Time Warner Personal Video Recorder! PVR’s have been around for a few years, but are now being combined with the cable set top boxes to add an entirely new level of integration to the TV watching experience! PVR’s are as simple to program as seeing what is on TV. Using your TV guide, just like you always have, scroll to the show you want to record and press a button. It doesn’t matter if its tonight, tomorrow or even next week, hit the button, and you’re done!

Even setting it to record your favorite weekly show is barely harder than that. Usually, all you have to do is pick the show, and click a button, or a menu option, select it to record that time slot weekly, and with a bare minimum of effort, you’ve always got your favorite show, waiting for you when you get the opportunity to watch it.

Some people love to use PVR’s to do a special technique called “time shifting”. If they have a favorite show that comes on during the day, say a soap opera they’ve been hooked on since they were big enough to watch TV, now that they’re a part of the “real world” and have to work during the day, they don’t have the opportunity to watch it. With time shifting, they can. Simply set the PVR to record the show every day when it comes on, then at night, after supper, or whenever the opportunity arises, they can watch it and stay right up to date with all their favorite characters. Or, they can save up all the weekly episodes, and on Friday night or Saturday, they can sit down and watch the entire week’s worth of shows all at once! This means you no longer have to wait until the next day to see the resolution of all those little ‘cliff hangers’ they come up with throughout the week!

Do weekend activities mean you don’t get to watch the baseball, football, basketball or race you’ve been looking forward to all week? No problem! Set the PVR to record, then come back after your activities and watch that sporting event you’ve been looking forward to all week.

Some PVR’s have what’s known as a “pause and rewind live TV” feature. This allows you to be watching a show or sporting event and when something happens, or if you miss a play, you can rewind back to it and see what you missed. With the press of a couple of buttons, you can see that spectacular catch or that amazing wreck over and over, then with the press of another button, catch back up to ‘live’ TV in an instant.

VCR’s were good for what they were. But with the hundreds of hours of storage capacity in a PVR, plus the ease of programming and the ability to pause and rewind live TV, VCR’s have become a thing of the past. Time Warner Cable TV has never been more enjoyable!

Ever since Alexander Graham Bell called out to his assistant, Watson, almost 150 years ago, the telephone has gone from an oddity at a World’s Fair to something everyone has to have in order to make it through the day to day. From those humble beginnings, with service in only a few towns, then to a world-wide presence as they continued to build up, telephone connectivity slowly, but surely continued to permeate society. But it wasn’t until the break-up of AT&T that telephone services had the competition necessary to drive down pricing and increase availability.

But even when that competition started heating up, long distance was still expensive. State to state and even intrastate long distance could represent the larger part of almost anyone’s phone bill. Even with the advent of the internet, enabling emails and instant messaging, long distance charges were still expensive. And frustrating for those who lived within a mile of each other, but were in different calling areas, it could be less expensive to drive the mile down the road and talk to them face to face than it was to simply pick up the phone and call.

But it’s the advent of the internet that has finally forced telephone service into the “next level”. IP telephony, better known as Voice over Internet Protocol, or simply VoIP, has eliminated virtually every charge on a phone bill. Comcast Digital Voice gives customers the ability to call anywhere in the United States at any time for one low monthly rate. And not just the “lower 48” states. This covers Canada and the United States outlying territories, Guam and Puerto Rico. Also included is American Samoa, Saipan, the and the US Virgin Islands. All included in the same low monthly fee.

And Comcast doesn’t stop there. They include all of the most popular calling features including Call Forwarding, Call Waiting, Caller ID and even Call Waiting with Caller ID so you can see who is calling even when you’re already on the phone. And to add to the bonuses, Comcast even includes voice mail. As if that wasn’t enough, the additional capabilities that internet access gives you, enables you to take care of your Digital Voice account, and even listen to your voice mails at any internet enabled computer, regardless of where you’re at.

Many companies require that you use special equipment or even have to change phone numbers, but with Comcast, you don’t have to do anything special to take advantage of this spectacular offer. All you have to do is contact Comcast, subscribe to Digital Voice, and they take care of everything. You keep your phones, you keep your number, and when you pick up the phone to make a call, you dial just like you would any other call you’ve ever made. And l with the superior sound quality of digital telephony, your calls are crystal clear.

Telephones have come a long way in 150 years, and with Comcast Promotions, you can go even further for a price anyone can afford.

This is the fact that Comcast Cablehas over 300 channels of digital quality programming available all day, every day.
That is the fact that Comcast has internet connectivity with PowerBoost. The Other Thing is the fact that Comcast offers Digital Voice telephony. What does that mean to you? More, Faster and Cheaper.

This 300 channels offers everything you want to watch. Locals, movies, kids and family friendly programming. Enough sports to satisfy the most ardent baseball, football, hockey, racing, baseball and any other sport you can think of fan. Romance and drama to enthuse the most romantic souls out there. Mysteries and Westerns and classic movies to give each and every movie buff out there something to watch. And for those of us who want to build and learn and grow things, Comcast offers channels for us too.

That internet connectivity gives customers 6 megabits of speed standard which means that streaming video and audio is clear and jitter-free, and that the most complex websites out there load in mere seconds, regardless of the content. Since this is hundreds of times faster than dial-up ever could be, the time spent from the time you search for a topic until the time you get all the information you need, can literally be as fast as you can click the mouse. High speed internet has never been so fast and easy to use. And since its always-on, you never have to worry about waiting to connect. And since it doesn’t interfere with telephone usage, being on the phone and surfing the net isn’t a problem.

That also means Comcast gives you PowerBoost technology which means blazing fast becomes mind-numbingly fast! Not too long ago, when Microsoft introduced Internet Explorer, downloading the 25 megabyte file to install it took anywhere from 5 to 6 hours to complete. Now, when it comes time to download the Windows updates, or anti-virus updates, or even downloading large movie files, music files and software, 25 megabytes takes less than ten seconds! With PowerBoost, a CD full of information, over 600 megabytes can take less than two minutes to download.

The other thing means that you no longer have to have a telephone company. With Comcast Digital Voice Deals you get unlimited calling anywhere in the United States and outlying territories, plus every call feature available for one low price. Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, Caller ID. Call Waiting with Caller ID, and even Call Blocking are all a part of the package, and more as well. More calling features and even voice mail are “standard equipment”, all included in the one low price.

Speaking of equipment, installation is totally hassle-free. Technicians come out and take care of everything, and even if they don’t need to, installation is as simple as connecting a couple of wires, and you’re done.

With the great services Comcast has to offer, why go anywhere else? One bill covers everything from all the TV you could ever want to watch, high speed internet second to none, and no more phone company or long distance company means one check covers This, That AND The Other Thing.

In the mid and late 1960’s, the CIA wanted a way to network and communicate around the world with computer data and other information that wasn’t a part of the “regular” phone system so it couldn’t be accessed without permission. As time moved on, the infrastructure for this network was shared with universities and other government installations to speed the sharing of research and other critical data. Thus, was born the Internet.

While not specifically for the public, students and professors became exposed to the resources available on the net, and as students graduated, they wanted to maintain access. As more and more business connected to the net, even more people became aware of its existence for “instant” communication via email and the Usenet newsgroups. With the development of the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and the development of the web browser, and further openness to the general public, the brainchild of the CIA had become easy enough to use so that anyone who had access could use it. All of these advances have led us to the point where if you don’t have internet connectivity in your home, you’re almost lost.

Except for the points where satellite transfers are necessary, all the communication between computers had been through wires. From networking cables within the institutions where the computers were located, through telephone exchanges, and through regular phone lines to connect to modems. Until the internet was opened to the general public, all home users had available were local bulletin board systems, or BBS’s. But once the net opened, the same modems users had could also be used to connect to the internet. But these modems were slow!

Unless someone was directly connected to a network, the best speed a home user could expect was using a 56k modem, which meant that a 25 megabyte file could take five or six hours to download. And that was if the phone connection stayed good. But, there was already another infrastructure in place that had high speed worthy wiring already in place. Cable TV wire.
Technology grew to the point where cable companies around the country could provide internet access to their customers, which meant that anyone who had a computer, and a subscription to cable TV could also have internet connectivity that was incredibly fast, compared to a 56k modem.

Today, virtually every cable company out there can provide you with high speed access. But none of them can compare to Comcast Cable Deals. Blazing fast internet connectivity at a standard rate of 6 megabits per second is hundreds of times faster than the 56k modem, and in many cases, two or even three times faster than other cable companies. Even when the top speed from other cable companies matches Comcast, they still have a major advantage. PowerBoost.

With PowerBoost, Comcast “sees” when a customer is downloading a large file, like a movie or other large updates, and when that happens, the speed of the connection doubles to 12 megabits per second. This means that an entire CD full of data, over 600 megabytes, can take as little as two minutes to download.
Comcast PowerBoost gives users that extra level of speed that no other company can offer.