The cable industry is one of the most baffling industries in this country. It is still one of the only industries that allows companies to monopolize a territory. There are alternatives such as satellite TV which is getting big, but I live in Florida and I see my mother-in-law’s satellite go out every time there is a thunder storm. If you’ve ever lived or visited Florida, you know that there is a thunder storm almost every day. When we lived in Jacksonville, Florida, Comcast was our only cable option. It was the first time that I was hooking up an HDTV to cable, so I didn’t have any other experience to compare it with. We just moved to Orlando, and Bright house is the cable dominator here. I now have something to compare it with, and I must say that I am much more impressed with Bright House’s services.

Comcast Problems

  1. The box they gave me was a regular HD box, not the DVR version. It had no HDMI port in the back, and I really wanted to use HDMI, because it’s one cord for video and audio and it’s a better picture. So, what I ended up doing was getting a DVI to HDMI cord, but then I found out that only plays video. So, I had to hook up the big red and white audio cables to get audio. It was a mess.
  2. The cost with Internet came out to be $127.92 after the promotional rate period. This seemed insane to me at first, but I figured it must be more because of the HD and On-Demand channels that we had.
  3. Their analog signal looked absolutely horrible on an LCD TV, and there was no feature to automatically stretch the picture to fit the entire screen. The HD channels looked good, but there were times when it would freeze up or look really choppy.

Why Bright House is Better

  1. The customer service has been excellent. They have had to come out twice since we got the service, and they came out well within the time window.
  2. Their standard HD box has an HDMI port which I was very happy about. I got their HD DVR box as well, and the first box they gave me didn’t work well. It wouldn’t work with HDMI and the component cables made it looked like everything was red and green. However, they came out within a couple of days and switched out the box with no questions asked.
  3. I pay $92 bucks, rather than $127. That is always a beautiful thing. They have more HD channels, but I don’t get on-demand channels. I didn’t even get premium on-demand channels with Comcast, so this wasn’t much of a loss to me. But, this price DOES include use of their DVR, which I didn’t have with Comcast. The $30 savings is well worth it.
  4. The HD picture seems more crisp, and the analog channels look much less blurry than the Comcast channels.

    5. I know there are many of you out there who have had a bad experience with Bright House, and I would not be surprised. Cable companies can really be a pain. But, in comparison with Comcast, my personal experience is that they are worlds apart. The problem is that you are stuck with the cable company that offers services in your area. What can we do to get more options for cable?

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