Tell Cable to Shove it!

I have finally officially said "screw you" to Charter cable in Kalamazoo. I have wanted to do this for a while, I just couldn't bring myself to give up my college football games, and DVR. After a year of debating, I finally canceled my service, and ordered a 768K DSL line from AT&T for $20/month without a home phone. I am very happy with the cost - VERY happy. I was paying nearly $100 for Charter's internet (5MB) and basic digital service (under 100 crappy reception channels) with one DVR - and that was a promo price! The DSL line is definitely slower than the cable, but I barely notice it when I am trying to stream off sites like hulu.com. Every once in a while, I have to pause for a few seconds and resume the program. But for savings of $80/month - I'll deal with that! I can watch most of what I watched before on cable via the internet or over the air on the TV. With AT&T, you can even stream many of the ESPN sports events to your computer. iTunes also has a lot of free programming.

I can even watch it all on the TV! Both of our laptops have S-Video outs and I run stereo sound to the TV via the headphone or SPDIF jack and an RCA Y-connector.

More people need to start doing this and tell big cable to shove it. We all could use a little more money in our pockets (and a little more time for reading).

So here it is: Screw you Charter! Get with the times, lower your prices, and start offering better quality digital and high-def feeds or you will lose many more customers. AT&T's U-verse is going to be your demise. Good-bye!