Comcast Still Sucks

We all know that the basic service levels provided by big, government-backed monopolies (e.g., cable and telephone companies) are terrible. If you call their customer support number, you will wait on hold for an hour before you get to talk to an unhelpful miscreant, and so on. Comcast fits this bill in every respect.

Still, sometimes these companies do cool things unexpectedly. For example, Comcast has upgraded the speed of my Internet connection twice this year, first from 3 Mbps to 4 Mbps, and then from 4 Mbps to 6 Mbps. So, after reading an article about Comcast last week, I was a little bit excited about a new service being offered, and gave Comcast the benefit of the doubt. That was wrong.

Last Thursday, the Wall Street Journal ran a front page article entitled, To Ward Off New Competitors, Comcast Builds a Mini Internet . The article talks about Comcast's efforts to beef up its On Demand service in order to compete with Internet video sources and phone company backed IPTV rollouts. The article didn't say much that I didn't already know, and generally gives Comcast much more credit than they deserve. One line did interest me, though: "In sports, it has NFL Replay, which shows highlights from football games played any given week." As a dislocated Cleveland Browns fan, the ability to watch the highlights of their games each week had appeal. So, this week I decided to try it out.

My first attempt to use NFL Replay was Sunday night around midnight. There were no games available. Comcast's website indicated that the games weren't available until Monday morning. So, tonight (Monday) after dinner, I decided to try again. This time I was greeted by a message that said "NFL Replay Blackout" with a 1 minute video clip attached. The video clip spent about 50 seconds explaining how awesome NFL Replay is, and how I should thank my lucky stars that I am a Comcast subscriber. The final 10 seconds of the video rapidly explained that while any NFL content is being televised on any channel, you can't use NFL Replay.

What. the. %$^@. I can't watch the highlights from the Browns game yesterday because the Monday Night Football pre-game show is on?! That's unbelievably lame. Comcast claims that they are offering services like NFL Replay to compete with Internet video sources. Well, guess what, Comcast? People like Internet video sources because they can watch what they like, when they like, and they don't have to put up with petty, bullshit restrictions like this. I look forward to watching you have your lunch eaten by the Internet over the next decade.