Lboogie

iTrader: (5)

Thats cuz you're in a different city/county and the taxes make mine $40/month. It also depends on when you sign up & what deals they have, blah blah. Like I said, the speed is good enough.

joltdudeuc

iTrader: (6)

I don't think so. I'd call them at least, and ask for a price adjustment. $40/mo for the middle package is still $10/mo more than you should be.

When I first got DSL it was $30 or something for the 1.5 one. Then I upgraded to the 3m speed for about $20/mo... and then again for the 6m service for $27/mo... and after a year they bumped me to the regular price of $35/mo.

Still $35/mo for the 6m service is roughly $5.83 per Mb down.

Cable is about $55/mo for the 8m service that has some speed boost to 12m sometimes. we'll guess you're getting speed boost 25% of the time, so 8*.75 is 6m and 12*.25 is 3m, so you can figure you'll average about 9megs down. That's $6.11 per Mb down on comcast.

While you are getting a 50% increase in speed for your $20 extra... Are you really using all that extra speed and therefore getting your monies worth? Not really if you aren't downloading torrents and stuff day in and day out.

anonypuff

iTrader: (4)

I've been with 4 different DSL Co's, then went with Comcast, now back to DSL.

Comcast is by far the fastest but I refuse to support them for several reasons:
1) Imposed 250GB bandwidth limit on Oct 1.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/...stomers_1.html
2) Throttled bit torrent and other packets:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9802410-7.html
(they've since backed off, but still)
3) Leading the way to tiered internet services, and PAYING people to take seats at the FCC net neutrality hearing to cheer for them:
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/26...cast-paid.html
4) my personal experiences with them. Service was fine most of the time but when you had an issue, don't even bother calling. 2 hr waits were the norm for me. When I called to cancel, the option menu gives you a specific key to hit when canceling service - I called three times and after waiting for approx. 20 minutes each time the line ALWAYS got cut (hung up on), despite me using different phones. I went online to try to cancel but they told me they "can't" do cancellations from their online chat, once I told the rep that I was hung up on 3 times when trying to dial in he took care of the cancellation for me right then and there.

So yes, they're faster but it's not worth it. (IMO)

R-Dub

iTrader: (2)

Any company that leads the way for tiered internet and taking away net neutrality gets a black mark in my book.

I am now heavily considering moving my services to AT&T after reading that article.

Verizon needs to speed up their fiber optic network to my house....like yesterday.

joltdudeuc

iTrader: (6)

The only ones who can get Fios are those who have Verizon as a local telcom...

So for those of us with ATT, we have to get Uverse. I'm not getting Uverse until I can get it internet only and also comparable price vs service to DSL.

vietpunk916

iTrader: (7)

Comcast $54.99 = 4.5mb download.
Comcast w/ boost $56.99 =


Just did the test today.

Chrisnonstop

I'd like to see a chart or something with the Bit rates listed. Not all HD was created equal. Oh, just to clarify, bit rate for the data for HD programming...

ElectroBoy

Comcastic!!!

mcowger

iTrader: (8)

Most HD programming is variably compressed depending on total system bandwidth. Very little programming is constant bit rate.

joltdudeuc

iTrader: (6)

They would never release it.

OTA has the least compression, uses h.264 I believe for video and ac3 (i think) for audio.

Next up would be Dish. Satellite has a very large amount of bandwidth, but the LNBs on the ends of the dishes in your homes are only so small, so what they do is they tune certain transponders at a time. Each satellite might have 10 to 30 TPs, depends on how big that sucker is up there. Each TP will have 6-15 channels, so the compression is isn't so bad. It's definitely there, just it's so much really. Most SD channels are still Mpeg2, all HD Channels are Mpeg4 by now. Eventually it will all be Mpeg 4 to save space and add more channels in HD.

DirecTV is next. They've got a lot of channels in Mpeg 4 now, but due to massive amount of sports channels and sports packages they compress more than Dish. I watched a live PPV MMA fight on directTV and I was kinda shocked it had so much macroblocking and banding, and it wasn't the TV, it was the signal. Didn't think it would look like that from DirecTV on HD PPV event like that.

Next up would be Cable. You get 1 pipe.. I piece of copper pipe that carries all the channels to your set top box or TV. TO fit 700 or so channels over a single piece of copper means you have to compress heavily, there isn't any way around it.

joltdudeuc

iTrader: (6)

That's not sustained though...

Download something huge like 100mb or a 1gb, and let us know how long that time.

vietpunk916

iTrader: (7)

^ your right.

mcowger

iTrader: (8)

I can sustain 10....

Irish_car_B0mb

iTrader: (3)

I love comcast internet, but dishnetwork tv owns cable. i like the way they do the DVR and the channel packages are cheaper, granted i havent had them in a while.

And i have had my cable so no signal recieved way more thna the dish. When i had the dish for like 3 years i lost signal once for like 3 sceonds and that was it.

Cable in my area goes out if it is storming hella hella bad, comcast has been out 100 times and doesnt know why that happens.

anyway. comcast internet FTW dish network FTW

sti4j0n

i'd say comcast > att

speed

what are you about though?

Setting up a home LAN with comcast was a bit of a pain; the solution was the clone my PC's MAC address to the router after establishing the initial connection to the comcast node.
I'm a fan of their downsteam in most aspects. Downloading the newest greatest backups from Bit-tor is great, but if you're trying to stream a movie or even surf while moderately seeding and leaching.... forget it.
I'm not sure if it's on my LAN or if it's the ip/port connection noise that trackers bog my system down with on tor or what.

ATT seems to just utilize what SBC left off with, which to me was **** in most of Santa Rosa.