mjm wired ;)  

"Nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there." Everytime I visited a friend or relative with digital cable, I always thought "how cool". Yeah, so I have digital cable now, I didn't choose to get it, it's sort of just there, so I sort of use it. And it's somewhat of a disappointment. Yeah, not as nice as the brochure.

Biggest pain: It effectively killed my urge to channel surf. You know when there isn't anything on, but you just want to flip? Now it takes like 2 seconds for the image to display and for the "information" to show. And worse, sometimes the channel doesn't update on the screen, so it jumps like 2 or 3 channels. A co-worker recommended I start flipping through the "tv guide" menu and read the words. Unfortunately, its not quite the same.

The On Demand Movies feature is very disappointing. The free movies are either all black and white or they are those movies that no one really wanted to watch. Chances are if it's good, I have already seen it. So the new movies are all $3.99 - but in 10 minutes I can rent the DVD for $3.00 in wide screen and 5.1 surround sound. Worse yet, the fast forward and rewind are incredibly non-responsive. And to add insult to injury the sound sometimes "blips" and on occasion there is some digitization or loss of frames.

So you pay more for a premium service right? The TV channel guide actually has ads!!! It shows 3 channels and their schedules and in the forth row is a little banner for another TV show or movie. And I watched a (free) On Demand horror movie and every 30 minutes at the bottom flashed an advertisement for Fear.net. Not small - taking up a quarter of the screen.

So everyone who has had digital service probably already knows this, but to me I'm shocked how pathetic it all is. I remember reading in the early 90's how cool this technology would be, unfortunately it has quite a ways to go.