OTA Preminum Channles

[coach]

Hello All. I've gone thru a lot of the post's here,and maybe I've missed it.But this is my question. With an OTA setup can you pull in channles like HBO, Showtime and the rest of the good stuff. So far all all I've seen is that I could get all of my local channles. Help me out.

[MLapointe]

Can you get HBO and Showtime with rabbit ears. If your answer is no than you've allready answered your question. Sorry it that sounded a little harsh but I couldn't think of any other way to word it at the moment. Again Sorry.

It does suck that you have to get either digital cable or satellite service to get HBO and Showtime and by the way not every cable provider even carries the HD channels of Showtime and/or HBO. As far as satellite goes I don't really even know of one satellite provider that does not offer HD HBO and HD Showtime channels.

But to put it simply HBO and Showtime are pay channels and there has to be a way for HBO and Showtime to get paid and that is by cable or Satellite were these companies can authorize their own boxes to allow you to tune in these channels you pay for. If you can get HBO and Showtime Over The Air why the heck would everyone have cable or satellite. If someone can get HBO and Showtime OTA why couldn't they get another 500 channels that way too. That would put cable and satellite companies out of business and make everything free....oh my god I've got an idea...I have to make a super OTA pair of rabbit ears that can tune in and descramble all of these channels in a legal manner...crap I'm dreamin would AOL Time Warner and DirecTV let me do that....gee I have just enough money to pay my bills and AOL Time Warner and DirecTV have god knows how much money and gee I could beat them in court over a 25 year period because they would keep me in court for that long until I quit and went broke for that matter.

How much I hate big companies and most rich people. They will eat everything you have for dinner and make you buy their products too boot.

[coach]

MLapointe..
OUCH! Well I guess you told me. Thanks for the info.

[MLapointe]

Sorry again...I was showing some of my frustration with Time Warner Cable for my monthly bills of 170.00. That does include Internet access so let's subtract 41.95 from that and that will bring us to 128.00 and that's what I pay for Digital Cable for 5 rooms without any pay per view at all. I have One HDTV bigscreen and one 50 inch HDTV Plasma and I love them both. Time Warner Cable just told me today that in my area they will be providing HD customers with the Explorer 3650HD which will fix the bad picture quality using Component and will offer an aspect ratio adjustment which will in other words do what my TV does for all of my channels using SVideo...fill the whole screen. On all non HD channels it will stretch the picture from all 4 sides and on non HD channels that are not airing HD content it will fill the screen instead of stretch. Just like the fill mode on a TV when you watch a DVD in Letterbox. The fill mode will get rid of the black bars on the top and bottom by zooming the picture. Works the same way. I just wish TV was free that's all nothing against you or your question. It was a good question and hasn't been ask at all as far as I've seen. What's nice is that they will be offering the Explorer 8000 PVR boxes in Q1 in 2003 but I will have to keep my current HD boxes for Q2 or Q3 until they give me the Explorer 8000HD which is the same box but with HDTV support. I love those boxes because they have Component Video Inputs, DVI and Firewire connections and they have PVR like Tivo too. But quess what that's going to do...raise my bill even more. That's going to cost me an extra 4.95/month per box for PVR service fee...the cost of the box will be the same as existing boxes. So for 5 boxes that's going to cost me an extra 25.00 per month. Then it will 160.00 per month after they add on taxes to that and then I add the 41.95 and I've got a bill now of just over 200 dollars a month next year. Now you know how I feel. Again don't take this personally. You had a good question and I gave it too you a little too straight. Since you were interested I gave it to you straight a whole lot more...:) :) :)

[coach]

MLapointe..
No big deal man.I feel the same way about my cable system here. When Comcast bought out Media One,the service went down while the price went up. There talking about HD coming soon to the area from Comcat,but how good will it be. These people at Comcast could f**k up a wet dream. it would be good to find a way to cut them out of the equation all together. I should have DSS in the next two weeks.

[MLapointe]

Well it's not so bad it's just the price that's the problem. The service is great...as funny as that sounds. My analog channels are above average compared to most cable providers. All the digital channels come in great and I think just as good as satellite. All the HD channels that air HD content are very very good quality. So really the only thing that I really complain about is the price. I would like more HD channels and I do complain about that to time warner cable but I do know they are working on Discovery HD and they will be offering HDNet soon. Now "soon" to cable companies could mean 12 months from now or 2 months from now you really know. Like for instance I was waiting for time warner cable to carry TechTV and they told me soon and we finally got that channel 14 months later but on the other hand I heard about HBO On Demand and called them and they said they planned on rolling it out in my area soon and I started using it about 3 months later. I've spent the last 4 months asking when they will be launching Cinemax, Showtime, and TMC On Demand channels and they said soon and just recently they are telling me this whole Newhouse takeover crap is delaying them more than they thought. Someone must of been reading my previous post who worked for Time Warner Cable when I said I had all my local HD channels because they took down everyone of my channel except FOX and ABC which is what's available now. Now they are telling me that the Newhouse is delaying all of these releases which include the rest of the Subscription and Free Video On Demand services as well as all of the remaining local HD channels and the new ones there working on too as well as the Explorer 8000 and 3650 set-tops and I'm saying to them I could give a rat's Azz about you and Newhouse I just want the programming I'm paying for. They have said in articles and told customers on the phone that this Newhouse should not effect customers in any way and I'm asking them how is it not effecting customers right now. This is effecting customers from having all the SVOD and FOD and HD channels right now where customers are having to wait until next year for these services and the Newhouse isn't affecting customers...how do they come up with this thought.