Why are cable companies the fucking worst, /g/?
>parents paying $10/mo to rent an ancient DOCSIS 3 modem, $84/mo to rent four ancient Scientific Atlanta HD DVRs that came out in 2004 and are end-of-life, with Cisco not even offering warranty support, and they're total shit (hardware/software)
>buy them a brand new DOCSIS 3.0 modem for less than $50, more reliable and pays for itself in less than six months
>buy them four tivo boxes and the payoff is in under a year, with much better hardware and software
Seriously, it isn't even fucking funny. How the fuck are cable companies allowed to do this shit and regulators say nothing?
OP here
>$1/0mo to rent an ancient DOCSIS 3 modem
meant a DOCSIS 2.0 modem. Even though they have under 30mbps (another thing to bitch about), the lack of multiple upstream/downstream channels is a problem in itself.
get fiber or write to google to come to your town.
>>51983327
>upgrade internet
>they convince me to setup a "phone line" because free
lol why not
>cox guy shows up the next day with a new modem/router
no mother fucker i just spend a chunk of money on a modern good modem with a gigabit router
take that shit back from wince it came
>but then i cant setup the phone line
thats not a phone line, thats a router for VOIP, which i never accepted, now please leave and take that shit out of their
i think its a scam, they ship shitty out dated moments with limited pipes, so old people bitch the internet is slow when it's really just a bottleneck.
>>51983320
>How the fuck are cable companies allowed to do this shit and regulators say nothing?
$$$
>>51983570
Google Fiber is a promotional stunt and unless municipalities get spurred to go for municipal broadband it will make a difference in a few key markets but not everywhere. FiOS is not available because current Verizon execs are cheap and don't want to spend on infrastructure.
>>51983627
Combination cable modems/routers are the biggest piles of shit. No thank you.
>>51983570
On that same note, make sure there's no municipal fiber to take advantage of.
I did the research and it turned out a local university just put in (with the financial and legal help of a bunch of nearby municipalities) a mid-backbone fiber line with a fuckton of overprovisioning for govt and non-profits (libraries and schools). Now that the line is up and working, they are moving to turn a profit on it by selling off that overprovisioned bandwidth to local fiber ISPs, which are usually really small, local companies with a much greater incentive to make their customer base happy and provide good service worth your money.
Long story short, I'm in the middle of getting my village on the fast track to have one of these companies to build last-mile to my neighborhood; the company rep told me to get 20 signatures and he'd put us at the top of the list. I'm going to contact my village govt to see if they have any interest in assisting me with this in order to raise property values in the area at no cost to them (since the company will pay for the buildout).
Long story short - work your local governments, they are the key to breaking the shackles of comcast.
If none of that works, you might use your 4G connection. I know my phone actually gets better bandwidth up and down than my cable usually does, and the only thing keeping me from switching over completely is the latency and the data cap.
>Netflix is £6/mo
>BroadcasTheNet, PassThePopcorn and other trackers are free
no excuse
>>51983320
Per fcc regulations you can use your own modem.
You can also get tivo boxes and rent cable cards from your cable provider at like 1.5$/ month
Source : i'm a CCR
>>51984125
>you can use your own modem
>you can also get Tivo boxes
Did you even read the OP? This is exactly what I did.
Cable companies bully you on the modem over "support" and have you by the balls over firmware updates. Time Warner had (from my understanding, recently changed) for the past several years refused to push new firmware to customer owned modems, even if the same modems were rented by TWC. This meant you could buy a supported modem, it would have crippling bugs solved in newer firmware, and since DOCSIS provides no mechanism for the consumer to update the firmware, you're fucked on service quality.
In regards to boxes, unless you're willing to plunk down big for a Tivo and have a lot of boxes in the house, the breakeven is very hard to achieve. And thanks to cable company stubbornness, two way services don't work for most cable companies (XFINITY on Demand works on Tivo for Comcast subscribers, but that's pretty much it).
I' m >>51984125
Sorry OP. I didnt read your post un total. And yeah, cable companies like to use such tactics to basically money cow their customer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMcny_pixDw
>>51984199
The cable company i work for recently pushed a firmware upgrade to all arris modem to change TVE default gui password because attackers would remote access the modem, change the DNS server and mine the customer data.
You can google for arris remote acccess attackm Those modems suck. Plus their WiFi range is absolutely crap and the lan dhcp server is buggy as hell.
>>51984311
That sounds fucking illegal and scares me since ARRIS modems are so popular.
My cableco gave me a modem only so they have limited control over aspects and the range and DHCP server aren't really issues since the router is separate.
>>51983320
Jews.
The power of state/county/city granted monopolies.
