Boy, if there's any company that gives me episodes of Tourette's, it's Comcast. Once upon a time, I had both cable TV and Internet access through them, and was reasonably well pleased. Over time, I became less well-pleased with them, as their cable TV bill crept ever upwards and they started playing games with the Internet connection (blocking applications, capping downloads and the like). On the TV side, the straw that broke the camel's back was when they reduced the functionality of their channel guide to insert more advertising... I've been using broadcast HDTV and my Roku box, mainly, for about a year, and haven't missed cable TV much.
But Comcast doesn't learn... they just launched a "Domain Helper" system, similar to ones tried (and failed) by other ISPs in the past (link). The basic idea is, you typo an address in your web browser and, if you typo'd the right part, you instead get sent off to a Comcast page with suggestions on where you might have been trying to get... along with who-knows-how-many-ads. The problem I have with this is that online advertisers are notoriously spotty about keeping their adverts "safe and clean"... it's often all too easy for a bad actor to slip an ad in that does something you don't want done, whether that's generating pop-up windows or infesting your computer with viruses, or something in-between.
So... given my druthers, I'd be hopping ship to an alternate broadband ISP carrier just about now. Unfortunately, I'm in an area served by Qwest, which means the really "good" stuff like fiber-to-the-home hasn't made it here yet, and I live about equi-distant from their offices, meaning DSL would be even crappier than usual. For now, I opted out of their "help", then, for good measure, switched my DNS to OpenDNS, which plays a similar trick to Comcast's, but has two distinct advantages in my book... first, you have to know what you're doing to hook up with them (which at least implies some sort of opt-in), and, since DNS is all they do, you can expect them to stay on top of their advertisers... nothing quite like the threat of your userbase deciding en masse to leave your service if you screw up security sufficiently to keep you on your toes.
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Really, the only reason we are keeping Comcast right now is that we don't want to invest in a new TV. But with the recent "OK, NOW we will broadcast only digitally in the US" switchover, Comcast dropped about half of the basic service channels we had unless we get a converter box (which will allow them to push video on demand at us).
There's worse things than a converter box, especially if you don't see yourself upgrading to a digital-ready TV anytime soon... just make sure they don't lock you in to some extended deal, of course.
Now, when is some smart egg going to set up a la carte channel selection via the Internet? I could see myself paying a couple of bucks per channel, if I got to choose the channels...
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