---
title: "Cutting the Cord (or: Bright House, you're fired)"
date: 2011-06-10T22:16:39Z
url: https://blog.lmorchard.com/2011/06/10/cutting-the-cord/
author: Les Orchard
tags: [cuttingthecord, tivo, cable, tv, entertainment, video, internet]
---

# Cutting the Cord (or: Bright House, you're fired)

**TL;DR**: <em>Our [cable company][bright house] has offered poor
support for our TiVo; cut our channels and allowed our service to
degrade; mislead us about possible solutions; and finally wasted our
time by sending a contractor to our home instead of a clued-in
employee who could handle the issue.  And, now that we're going to
pursue other options for putting moving pictures on our television,
they plan to charge us for cutting the cord. Since I've been looking
to write here more, I've just been given a nice excuse to rant.</em>

[Bright House][] has basically a local monopoly on cable TV here. So,
we've been a customer of theirs for cable and internet over the past
few years. 

This is the thing, though: We've spent a lot of money on a cable
subscription.  In exchange, I expect great and even proactive customer
service. I guess I'm unreasonable, because instead we're expected to
pay more for less and to accept hassles and up-selling instead of
support—because they're almost literally the only game in town. But,
other options are getting *good enough* and we can learn to do
without.

You see, we have a [TiVo][]. We like our [TiVo][]. We got one when
[the girl][girl] worked at the company, and we've never gone back.
Having one is like living in the future. Yes, [Bright House][] offers
[their own DVRs][dvrs], but they're inferior products and we don't want
one.  So, as far as I'm concerned, [Bright House][] is just a video
supplier for our [TiVo][]. 

[dvrs]: http://brighthouse.com/michigan/shop/tv/dvr
[girl]: http://twitter.com/sparklebunny/

Unfortunately, over the past year, they've done a crappy job.  They're
transitioning to [Switched Digital Video][sdv], and that's something
our [TiVo][] doesn't support out of the box. As we eventually found
out, there's a [tuning adapter][] that could fix things. But, rather
than tell us about that up front—and maybe offer to
send us one as a part of their transition—they've instead sent us a
series of letters listing channels we're going to lose
because we rent [CableCARDs][].

Since I've got better things to do than call the cable company, I put
off contacting them. In the meantime, we lost channels as promised.
Other channels not listed in the letters began to degrade and became
unwatchable.

Finally, I sent an email. A week or so later, they called and left me
a voicemail, which described **the installation fee and monthly
rental rate** of a [tuning adapter][]. This, on top of what we already
pay for [CableCARDs][] and the underlying cable service itself.  At
that point, we were pretty annoyed. The cable bill was already high
and new fees seemed to appear every month—**and they wanted us to pay
even more just to get what we'd originally signed up for**.

Yes, I understand that [SDV][sdv] will let them make more efficient
use of resources and offer exciting new services and *yadda yadda
yadda*—but, to me, it just looks like they're breaking the video feed
into our [TiVo][] and expect us to pay more to fix it. It's pretty
shady and customer-hostile, this stuff. Oh wait: [Didn't some of these
guys get fined by the FCC for SDV hijinx not too long ago?][fined] 

[fined]: http://hd.engadget.com/2008/10/16/fcc-fines-twc-and-cox-for-deploying-switched-digital-video/

So, rather than jump on getting a [tuning adapter][] installed, I bought
[an antenna][antenna] and went retro. It turns out there are [over a
dozen over-the-air HD channels in range][range]. That might not sound
like a lot, but you'd be surprised how much watchable stuff is packed
into the major networks versus the other 1000 channels we got on
digital cable. The theme here is *free* and *good enough*.

True, some of those channels are a pain to tune in using a dinky
little indoor antenna, reminicent of the "[rabbit ears][]" days.  But,
for most of the past month, we got by pretty well. The [TiVo][] works
nicely [with an antenna][tivo-ota].  It's a decent [Netflix][]
streamer, too. (Though, to be honest, the Xbox 360 works better,
can get [Hulu Plus][], and plays videos from our network. [TiVo][]
really, really needs to catch up fast here.)

[rabbit ears]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipole_antenna

Having given TV a trial without cable, we decided it was time to call
[Bright House][] back to sort out this [TiVo][] thing, one way or
another.  Since I'm a proven procrastinating wuss about calling the
cable company, my wife called and scheduled an appointment for a tech
visit. 

Here's the fun part: They told her we didn't need a [tuning
adapter][]. Instead, they had "HD boxes" which would do the trick.
They could install those for free, reclaim our rented [CableCARDs][],
and we'd get a break on our bill at the end. I was dubious, but that
sounded surprisingly good!

So, the tech arrived today, near the end of the 2-hour window. He came
armed with two [Motorola DCX3200][] set-top boxes. I thought they must
have some kind of control connection to be slaved to the [TiVo][]. My
cable-tech-fu is pretty weak, but I assumed they knew what they were
doing.

But, no: The tech—who was a contractor and not a [Bright House][]
employee—took one look at our [TiVo][] and shrugged. He had no idea
how to make these boxes work with that thing. So, he set one up
alongside the [TiVo][] and called back to headquarters to schedule
*another* appointment—this time with an elusive **real** [Bright
House][] employee who apparently knew about these things. You know,
the guy whom they should have sent in the first place. 

I've no real complaints about the contractor: His installation of the
set-top box was fine—it was just the wrong solution altogether. Yeah,
I could probably finagle something with an [IR blaster][], but it
doesn't seem worth it and probably doesn't work in HD. We could also
keep the appointment next week and hope that the **bona fide [Bright
House][] employee** knows what he's doing and leaves us with a working
[tuning adapter][]. But, trying to be happy about that starts to feel
like [Stockholm Syndrome][].

After the contractor left, we thought a bit and my wife (again,
because the phone is my kryptonite, and I'd be useless without her)
called [Bright House][] to cancel our cable.

We wanted to keep the internet access—but even here, they did their
best to make us think twice about staying their customer at all.  It
turns out that to break up our cable/internet bundle, they need to
"rebuild our whole system" and that incurs a fee as large as what we
paid to install cable in the first place.

The funny thing is that it wouldn't have been hard to keep us
happy. Do a little work up front to help keep our [TiVo][] running,
and we might have spent even more money on cable. Now, we're looking
very hard at alternatives we'd been too complacent to consider
before.

But, I guess that's the problem: [This is all very old news.][oldnews]
They don't really want our [TiVo][] on their network. So, instead,
they sent letters promising degraded service and followed through on
it. And, when contacted to address the issue, they botched it
altogether. Clearly, if third-party set-top boxes and the customers
who use them were a priority beyond just avoiding FCC fines, they'd
have the right people and processes in place to keep us happy. I think
we've gotten the message, now.

Where's that leave us? Well, our bill will be cut in half, at least
after we pay for the new setup fee. We'll need to be more mindful and
intentional toward what we watch on TV and how we get it, but somehow
I think we'll manage.  Past that, I think it'll feel good to pay less
for a service provided by a company that doesn't really want our
business and has a strange notion of customer service. 

In the meantime, I think I'll be on the lookout
for a better internet provider so we can ditch [Bright House][]
outright. The problem is, I don't think the market around here is
exactly rife with competition.

[oldnews]: http://hd.engadget.com/2010/02/19/tivo-wonders-why-cable-wants-tv-everywhere-except-on-a-tivo/
[stockholm syndrome]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome
[ir blaster]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_blaster
[hulu plus]: http://www.hulu.com/plus
[range]: http://transition.fcc.gov/mb/engineering/maps/
[tivo-ota]: http://www.tivo.com/products/source/antenna/index.html
[antenna]: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/RCA+-+Indoor+HDTV+Antenna+-+White/8939839.p;jsessionid=2D2BA012979FDCFA317D3D5E287FE00D.bbolsp-app03-25?id=1215217075905&skuId=8939839&st=hd%20antenna&cp=1&lp=2
[motorola dcx3200]: http://www.motorola.com/Video-Solutions/US-EN/Products-and-Services/Video-Consumer-Premise-Equipment/All-Digital-Set-Tops/DCX3200_US-EN?localeId=33
[cablecards]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CableCARD
[netflix]: http://netflix.com/
[tivo]: http://tivo.com/
[tuning adapter]: http://support.tivo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/307/kw/sdv/r_id/100041
[sdv]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switched_video
[bright house]: http://brighthouse.com/michigan/default

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<div id="comments" class="comments archived-comments">
            <h3>Archived Comments</h3>
            
        <ul class="comments">
            
        <li class="comment" id="comment-223874330">
            <div class="meta">
                <div class="author">
                    <a class="avatar image" rel="nofollow" 
                       href=""><img src="http://disqus.com/api/users/avatars/google-ec18b68fb719cdef24375dc3a0ffb29f.jpg"/></a>
                    <a class="avatar name" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="">Craig Maloney</a>
                </div>
                <a href="#comment-223874330" class="permalink"><time datetime="2011-06-11T15:57:19">2011-06-11T15:57:19</time></a>
            </div>
            <div class="content">Not sure if you can get it, but I've been happy with Wide Open West for my phone / Internet connectivity. Not sure how they handle the TV part of it, but they've been very responsive to me whenever there's been an outage. </div>
            
        <ul class="comments">
            
        <li class="comment" id="comment-223892628">
            <div class="meta">
                <div class="author">
                    <a class="avatar image" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="http://george.hotelling.net/"><img src="http://disqus.com/api/users/avatars/openid-15231.jpg"/></a>
                    <a class="avatar name" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="http://george.hotelling.net/">George H</a>
                </div>
                <a href="#comment-223892628" class="permalink"><time datetime="2011-06-11T16:46:11">2011-06-11T16:46:11</time></a>
            </div>
            <div class="content">I'm using Wide Open West with a TiVo HD and a CableCard. Works great and no complaints. 

Although... looking through my Season Passes it looks like most of my shows are available on broadcast TV. That plus Netflix and a possible Hulu Plus subscription* would put my TV bill at around $25/mo. So now I'm thinking of cutting the cable for TV...

* Aside: why are south park episodes on Hulu links to SouthParkStudios.com? Can you still get them on the Xbox?</div>
            
        </li>
    
        <li class="comment" id="comment-223906316">
            <div class="meta">
                <div class="author">
                    <a class="avatar image" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="http://decafbad.com/"><img src="http://disqus.com/api/users/avatars/lmorchard.jpg"/></a>
                    <a class="avatar name" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="http://decafbad.com/">Les Orchard</a>
                </div>
                <a href="#comment-223906316" class="permalink"><time datetime="2011-06-11T17:27:31">2011-06-11T17:27:31</time></a>
            </div>
            <div class="content">Yeah, no WOW here. Bright House really does have this area wrapped up. I think we *might* have access to AT&T's Uverse, but I'm not sure they're a much better option.</div>
            
        </li>
    
        </ul>
    
        </li>
    
        <li class="comment" id="comment-223958011">
            <div class="meta">
                <div class="author">
                    <a class="avatar image" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="http://redmonk.net"><img src="http://disqus.com/api/users/avatars/steveivy.jpg"/></a>
                    <a class="avatar name" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="http://redmonk.net">Steve Ivy</a>
                </div>
                <a href="#comment-223958011" class="permalink"><time datetime="2011-06-11T19:09:08">2011-06-11T19:09:08</time></a>
            </div>
            <div class="content">Hi Les,

We've been sans Cable-TV/sat for about 6 mos now, and we're getting by on Netflix and a few iTunes subscriptions and pertty happy about it. My wife really like some of the reality shows (Survivor, Amazing Race, So You Think You Can Dance) so we just invested in an antenna ande an EyeTV-one usb tuner. AS long as I'm not working on the computer thats doing the recording at the same time, the quality is great and we can watch the next day (still considering a hardware h.264 encoder). We use an AppleTV as our main box, the EyeTV exports to itunes so that shows just show up under "TV Shows" on the ATV.

--Steve</div>
            
        <ul class="comments">
            
        <li class="comment" id="comment-225730462">
            <div class="meta">
                <div class="author">
                    <a class="avatar image" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="http://decafbad.com/"><img src="http://disqus.com/api/users/avatars/lmorchard.jpg"/></a>
                    <a class="avatar name" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="http://decafbad.com/">Les Orchard</a>
                </div>
                <a href="#comment-225730462" class="permalink"><time datetime="2011-06-14T15:21:40">2011-06-14T15:21:40</time></a>
            </div>
            <div class="content">We get pretty much all of that with a TiVo, though I've been thinking about picking up an AppleTV and/or a Roku box to play with.

I've been pretty surprised with the quality of HD over the air, provided that I get the antenna pointed *just right* :)</div>
            
        </li>
    
        </ul>
    
        </li>
    
        <li class="comment" id="comment-224275489">
            <div class="meta">
                <div class="author">
                    <a class="avatar image" rel="nofollow" 
                       href=""><img src="http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id=374446f38b479f01f4f77deaff6f3572&amp;size=32&amp;default=http://mediacdn.disqus.com/1320279820/images/noavatar32.png"/></a>
                    <a class="avatar name" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="">Slivertoung</a>
                </div>
                <a href="#comment-224275489" class="permalink"><time datetime="2011-06-12T13:35:46">2011-06-12T13:35:46</time></a>
            </div>
            <div class="content">Birghthouse can only do so much, sometimes it takes a little to get the problem solved but trust me they are doing their best to give you the best in service possible at the most reasonable price.  I have had Brighthouse for years and have a TiVo and yes at first it took a bit to get the kinks worked out but they came back till it was fixed on their own dime and now its great, other companys charge everytime they send someone out and most don't even bother working with you if you have Tivo becuase they don't support it.  You can go with someone else but expect contracts, good deals that last a bit then trap you into higher prices till your contract is up and little to no customer service skills if you have to call in for help.  Try it and when you hate it call BrightHouse back and they will be glad to come help you out and get you all fixed up again they will even help you out of you contract if they have to.  Just some advice, if you have a problem don't let it just sit their and bother you, do something proactive let them know something is wrong and see if they don't hop to and try and fix it</div>
            
        <ul class="comments">
            
        <li class="comment" id="comment-224370885">
            <div class="meta">
                <div class="author">
                    <a class="avatar image" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="http://decafbad.com/"><img src="http://disqus.com/api/users/avatars/lmorchard.jpg"/></a>
                    <a class="avatar name" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="http://decafbad.com/">Les Orchard</a>
                </div>
                <a href="#comment-224370885" class="permalink"><time datetime="2011-06-12T17:12:01">2011-06-12T17:12:01</time></a>
            </div>
            <div class="content">Here's the thing: We went through all of the above, a few years ago, just to get the TiVo working in the first place when we started service with Bright House. They apparently only have "the guy" who knows how to work with TiVo and CableCARDs, and we're "lucky" to get him. And, that was *before* the SDV transition started here.

It's not my job to be proactive about their service. We're paying them, not the other way around. They knew something was wrong, because they knew enough to send us letters about breaking our service. They could have been proactive themselves and called us to schedule an appointment with "the guy" to get us hooked up with a tuning adapter before we started losing channels and reception quality.

And, when we *did* finally call them, they sent the wrong guy to install the wrong stuff. Sure, we could let them come back and try again, but we've played this game before.

We're not going with anyone else - we've cancelled cable altogether. </div>
            
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        </li>
    
        <li class="comment" id="comment-225731744">
            <div class="meta">
                <div class="author">
                    <a class="avatar image" rel="nofollow" 
                       href=""><img src="http://disqus.com/api/users/avatars/neilio.jpg"/></a>
                    <a class="avatar name" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="">neilio</a>
                </div>
                <a href="#comment-225731744" class="permalink"><time datetime="2011-06-14T15:24:01">2011-06-14T15:24:01</time></a>
            </div>
            <div class="content">Nice write up, and your experience basically mirrors ours, except replace "Brighthouse" with "Rogers|Bell" (our two major providers). We recently went 100% OTA, supplemented with Netflix and Hulu (via a geofence busting service). It's great, and seeing the pure, uncompressed OTA HD signal is a minor revelation.</div>
            
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        <li class="comment" id="comment-300319220">
            <div class="meta">
                <div class="author">
                    <a class="avatar image" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="http://www.metaksan.com"><img src="http://disqus.com/api/users/avatars/metaksan.jpg"/></a>
                    <a class="avatar name" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="http://www.metaksan.com">Metaksan</a>
                </div>
                <a href="#comment-300319220" class="permalink"><time datetime="2011-09-01T12:07:55">2011-09-01T12:07:55</time></a>
            </div>
            <div class="content">Absolutely right.. </div>
            
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        </li>
    
        </ul>
    
        </div>