WOW vs Time Warner

[reelfreakParticipant]

I’ve never had Time Warner, well, unless Qube counts. I’ve been a WOW customer since they came to the Columbus area and love their service. They’ve recently beefed up their HD offerings and it is rumored that their DVR is getting a long overdue upgrade this Fall. They were trying to push Digital Terminal Adapters on customers for use on any TV that didn’t have a converter box. They backed down when customers complained and pointed out there was no reason for these devices if you had a TV with digital tuner. If you have old analog sets, WOW will provide two adapters for free until 2013; they’re $1.99 a month after that. Service is very reliable in my area and the price is very affordable. Insight has been offering some ridiculously low pricing, but I’ve heard some bad things about their Internet service. AT&T is way more than I am willing to pay for cable and Internet.

[bastardsuperstarParticipant]

does wow have g4tv?

[CookieMember]

bastardsuperstar wrote >>
does wow have g4tv?

Yes.

[bob.osParticipant]

Rockmastermike wrote >>

bob.os wrote >>
WOW! is unique among cable providers in the US in that the digital signals that replaced the analog are unencrypted,

this is very interesting. thanks for the info. They did not used to do that.

Yep, and as reelfreak pointed out, they made the change in reaction to customer feedback. Here’s the entry on their customer service blog. They also have technical employees publicly participating in forums like those at DSLreports.com

I’d be more enthused about ATT UVerse if their technology was open in any way, but it isn’t.

[RockmastermikeParticipant]

bob.os wrote >>

Rockmastermike wrote >>

bob.os wrote >>
WOW! is unique among cable providers in the US in that the digital signals that replaced the analog are unencrypted,

this is very interesting. thanks for the info. They did not used to do that.

Yep, and as reelfreak pointed out, they made the change in reaction to customer feedback. Here’s the entry on their customer service blog. They also have technical employees publicly participating in forums like those at DSLreports.com
I’d be more enthused about ATT UVerse if their technology was open in any way, but it isn’t.

their tech seems to mostly just be video streams over IP. Nothing that special there. I do that at home from my home-brew video-on-demand system. I think your MYTH package can do that too. I’m told that the compression is lower than a lot of cable providers (*cough* comcast *cough*), but I guess you can do that when you’re using your customer’s bandwidth to send the video stream and not RF like cable systems do. Of course the advantage to them is that they have total control over what can decode those streams. As you say they’ve created a totally closed system.

and because I hate them so much I’m going to punctuate my statements with the following:

[Jimmy MakParticipant]

After 4 months of truly hellish service from Time Warner, we finally made the switch to WOW today. Here’s hoping …

[RockmastermikeParticipant]

jmak wrote >>
After 4 months of truly hellish service from Time Warner, we finally made the switch to WOW today. Here’s hoping …

I recently switched back to wow, in part because of the access to the unencrypted QAM broadcasts mentioned here previously. They did not offer that when I was their customer before. They do now and it’s useful to me.

Was never that thrilled with time warner service in the two years we tried them. But I’m quite pleased with the wow service in comparison. The internet service, in particular, is measurably better, which I suspect is the result of better peering.

[sean2outerspaceMember]

my problem with wow ia the truly awful digital menu and DVR. I’ve never worked with a less responsive system as far as using the channel guide and the dvr makes it so unbearably time consuming to find a program you’d like to record. I’m pretty sure that all cable company’s are the worst.

[NewsParticipant]

Time Warner Cable CEO calls for fewer channels in pay-TV bundles
By Alex Sherman
Bloomberg News
Published: May 24, 2012

Time Warner Cable Inc. Chief Executive Officer Glenn Britt says not everything on cable is worth watching. “There are too many networks,” Britt said Wednesday in an interview at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association annual cable show in Boston.

For years, U.S. cable carriers have provided TV in large chunks, pushing up the average monthly price to about $80 as even the cheapest packages have ballooned to include hundreds of channels. The increase in the number of little-watched channels, which content providers often sell to cable companies only in bundles with more popular networks, is causing cable bills to rise without any customer benefit, Britt said.

READ MORE: http://www.ohio.com/business/time-warner-cable-ceo-calls-for-fewer-channels-in-pay-tv-bundles-1.309231

[Analogue KidParticipant]

More interesting topic from that article was the statement that TW wants to eliminate unlimited data as standard. No more Netflix streaming for you unless you pay $150/month!

[lifelibertyParticipant]

I upgraded to WOW Ultra TV. it is definitely better than the standard wow service.

[hugh59Participant]

Rockmastermike said:
I recently switched back to wow, in part because of the access to the unencrypted QAM broadcasts mentioned here previously. They did not offer that when I was their customer before. They do now and it’s useful to me.

Was never that thrilled with time warner service in the two years we tried them. But I’m quite pleased with the wow service in comparison. The internet service, in particular, is measurably better, which I suspect is the result of better peering.

I think the unencrypted QAM broadcasts are mostly gone now. On Monday Mae and I watched part I of THE DUST BOWL on channel 205 WOSU HD. On Tuesday, we tried to watch part II and found that channel 205 was gone. We only get 10 channels on our cable ready tv now without using the cable box. And since we are not paying for HD service, none of those channels are HD. I suppose I should rig an antenna and get the broadcast HD.

[G. A. ColinMember]

Wow does not have the same service level as TWC. If you are looking at price alone, then WOW is the way to go. But if you like the fastest internet, start over, and look-back features and the highest quality HD; then you will be a TWC customer.

[RockmastermikeParticipant]

hugh59 said:
I think the unencrypted QAM broadcasts are mostly gone now. On Monday Mae and I watched part I of THE DUST BOWL on channel 205 WOSU HD. On Tuesday, we tried to watch part II and found that channel 205 was gone.

nope. works fine for me here. Might need to rescan your receiver, they moved things around a few months ago and a rescan was needed. I can get you an up to date QAM map if that would help you. Although, your thing on tuesday sounds more like an outage of some kind.

[RockmastermikeParticipant]

G. A. Colin said:
Wow does not have the same service level as TWC. If you are looking at price alone, then WOW is the way to go. But if you like the fastest internet, start over, and look-back features and the highest quality HD; then you will be a TWC customer.

lol. It might be at least partly dependent on location within the city, but, time warner *never* delivered the speed I was paying for the entire year I was a TW customer. Switched back to WOW and everything works much better again. Both nets tested with multiple ‘speed test’ sites, all agree within a reasonable margin of error.

Of particular issue was a large and fairly well known software company I will not name that I (and *many* other people) frequently get updates from. Tw’s peering was horrible with respect to whatever path the packets were taking to get to that company’s update servers. After switching back it immediately worked at almost double the throughput I was getting from TW and no more failed connection attempts, which is even more important.

[Author]

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