Contrary to their FCC testimony, Comcast is blocking BitTorrent traffic pretty much all the time according to new data being reported by TorrentFreak. Now “that’s Comcastic!”

“Comcast’s ambition is to make more and more content available to consumers across all platforms,” said Samuel Schwartz, executive vice president for strategy and development at Comcast Interactive Media, in an interview. “When you add the social dimension to these products, you can navigate through those platforms based on what your friends are doing.” See more at the NY Times Bits Blog.

Greed, that’s right greed of the NFL, greed of the TV networks, and greed of our representatives in government is who I blame for the crazy stuff happening these days when it comes to TV viewing. There is not a show today that is aired on any major network that does not have so many commercials running during the show that it is almost impossible to enjoy them.

Continue reading The Super Bowl Brings Out The Greed…

Comcast customers wish that they could view the Super Bowl in high-resolution HDTV format that FOX has been advertising. But due to a dispute between the owners FOX and Comcast the signal remains blocked. The result of FOX seeking higher fees from Comcast to let their customers view the HDTV channel. So customers get screwed over what they view with an antenna! Both the cable industry and the networks greed never surprises me. Let’s be honest, neither really cares about the viewers, they both think they are irreplaceable.

The day that all broadcast TV in the U.S. goes all digital and analog TV goes blank is February 17, 2009. Although, this is an important moment in TV history it is not panic time as most TV viewers will not even notice the switch. For me as a video engineer, I have been waiting for this moment for a very long time. There has been many false starts along the way, as far back as when my career began and I attended my first National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show over 20 years ago.

I remember having discussions with other engineers working in broadcast and giving them my point of view that if TV went all digital, we could free up some of the spectrum used to broadcast “off-air” TV for wireless technologies that would change our world. Now since this was before the World Wide Web, many older engineers thought I was a bit radical and maybe even crazy. But now, the time is close for exactly what we spoke about.

Continue reading The Day Analog TV Dies - What You Need To Know…

Charter Communications, a national cable and high-speed internet provider, has about 5.7 million customers in 29 states and they now have 14,000 customers that are pretty upset with them.

Seems Charter performs routine maintenance on email accounts that have gone unused for more than three months and during this process a technical error occurred that deleted some 14,000 active e-mail accounts. All e-mails and attachments for those accounts had been cleared and lost, FOREVER! Affected customers have received a $50 credit by way of apology costing the company some $700,000 - and a few customers, I bet.

Continue reading When an ISP Really Screws Up…

SlingPlayer 2.0 is expected sometime early this year (Q1 2008) bringing significant new features, including an integrated EPG, Clip+Sling, 60 minute buffer to pause and rewind streams, and more. No actual date for release yet and expect the Mac version to take a little longer. Looks great.

Continue reading SlingPlayer 2.0 & Sling PRO HD Demos…

The cable giant Comcast has launched its one-stop movie-television destination for viewers to watch more than 3,000 hours of TV shows, movie trailers, and short videos.

Fancast.com gathers film and TV offerings scattered all over the Internet on such a large scale, thanks to agreements with content owners such as CBS, Viacom and Hulu.com, which is owned by NBC Universal and News Corp’s Fox Network.

In response to coalition of consumer groups and scholars that include the Free Press, Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union (publishers of Consumer Reports), Media Access Project, Public Knowledge and professors at Yale, Harvard and Stanford law schools that urged the FCC to crack down on Comcast’s traffic shaping, the company issued the following statement:

Comcast does not, has not, and will not block any Web sites or online applications, including peer-to-peer services, and no one has demonstrated otherwise. We engage in reasonable network management to provide all of our customers with a good Internet experience, and we do so consistently with FCC policy.

As the FCC noted in its policy statement in 2005, all of the principles to encourage broadband deployment and preserve the nature of the Internet are ’subject to reasonable network management.’ The Commission clearly recognized that network management is necessary by ISPs for the good of all customers.

Nobody has said Comcast blocks content, but that they “degrade” and slow traffic. The Comcast lawyers, who are very well aware the FCC’s network neutrality policy statement [PDF] (which IS NOT LAW) is, as you might expect, intentionally vague enough to allow anything but an outright content or service blockade. So Comcast can continue to insist that they were not violating network neutrality.

Continue reading Comcast Swears They Never Violated Net Neutrality…

Finally, some choice for apartment and townhouse dwellers. The Federal Communications Commission voted today to ban cable operators from cutting exclusive deals with owners of apartment buildings, condominiums and other multiple dwelling units (MDUs).

This certainly has dealt a major blow to Comcast, Cablevision, Time Warner Cable and other cable TV operators. Leaving the door open for Verizon’s FiOS and AT&T’s U-verse a chance to offer their TV wares to the 30% of Americans who live in MDUs.

“Exclusive contracts between incumbent cable operators and owners of [MDUs] have been a significant barrier to competition,” FCC chairman Kevin Martin said Wednesday. “Today’s order removes this barrier.”

In a post over at CNET on Comcast blocking, excuse me, delaying and spoofing P2P file sharing they point out how fans for the FREE and unblocked Internet already knew, the large ISPs would push their agenda with “boneheaded” moves and bring the discussion of a “neutral Internet” back to the forefront.

Congressman Rick Boucher D-Va, “Comcast has made a major mistake in attempting to hinder peer-to-peer file sharing as an aspect of its network management,” Boucher said. “The inability of customers to (share files) significantly diminishes their ability to utilize the Internet for one of its most important applications, which is user-to-user content.” He also noted that “file sharing is already being used for a wide variety of perfectly lawful and appropriate applications.”

ArsTechnica has posted a story on how Comcast is NOT running a a neutral network with the traffic shaping and spoofing they are purposely degrading the broadband service of many Comcast customers. Since the US market does not always provide much in the way of choice Comcast customers are faced with dealing with Comcast’s traffic shaping police or moving to dial-up and not having broadband at all. I am sure if there were choices, Comcast would not do these things. Comcast is providing Net Neutrality advocates with plenty of ammunition and showing all broadband users that we need change.

Comcast still claims that it is isn’t blocking BitTorrent and other P2P traffic, just “delaying it.” A Comcast engineer said that the Lotus Notes problems were a known side effect of Comcast’s traffic shaping practices, one the company was trying to fix. The engineer also “seemed to implicitly” concede that the accounts about the forged packet resets were accurate. That’s COMCASTIC!

Now this is one many of you might like to succeed. Do you gripe each month about writing checks for the privilege of receiving dozens and dozens of channels from your TV provider you never watch? Don’t we all?

The Associated Press is reporting, a new lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles federal court charges that every major cable and satellite provider–and the entertainment conglomerates that feed them content–form a cartel that deprives consumers of choice and forces them to pay “inflated” prices for services that include programming they don’t want.

The federal lawsuit names every major cable and satellite television system operator as well as every major cable and broadcast television network including NBC Universal, Viacom, Walt Disney, Fox Entertainment Group, Time Warner, Comcast, Cox Communications, DirecTV, Echostar Satellite, Charter Communications and Cablevision Systems. Watch them fight like hell to beat this down!

According to ConsumerAffairs.com, Comcast has warned broadband Internet customers across the country to curb their downloading or risk being blacklisted with 12-month suspension of service. But what is the limit you may ask? Well that is what everyone is asking. Comcast seems vague, and refuses to reveal how much downloading is too much.

Comcast advertised the service as “unlimited” a few years ago now seems to have an “acceptable use policy” which enforces the invisible download limit. Where is the fairness for the consumer here? If there is a limit Comcast, STATE IT CLEARLY!

According to CNNMoney, a Texas judge denied Forgent Networks’ motion for a new trial and awarded EchoStar (Dish Network’s parent company) $90,000 in court costs. This decision reaffirms the unanimous jury verdict handed down in May which found invalid a patent Forgent accused EchoStar of violating pertaining to digital video recorders.

This makes chumps out of DirecTV and the cable companies that caved to Forgent’s patent demands and settled out of court to the tune of $28 million.