Actually, that's incorrect - AT&T Broadband was via cable, and Comcast bought them out. Qwest (formerly US West) offers DSL in the area (Twin Cities, MN). That's what I have now... I ended up bitching about the "sat tax" to the consumer affairs reporter for KSTP-TV back then, and they interviewed me at my old workplace; the boss was cool with it, as long as I wore my work shirt with the logo prominently displayed... ;-) However, all it got me was another 6 months at the $42.95/mo. rate - after which I switched to DSL, never to look back.

When the deal is complete, Comcast will raise the rates to carry their newly acquired channels to DirecTV, to ridiculously insane levels, just like they did with the Versus channel... all in an effort to try putting DirecTV out of business. After the royal shafting they tried sticking those of us with their Internet service, but not their cable TV service* (which they referred to as "bundling", but which was, in reality, a "satellite tax"), I will never spend another cent with those greedy bastards. Fuck Comcast.**

*I had AT&T Broadband, and when Comcast bought them out, they decided to modify their price structure to bring it in line with the rest of the country (their words). In doing so, my bill went from $32.95/mo., to $37.95, to $42.95, and then to $57.95/mo., in the span of less than 10 months. (No promotional rates were involved, either.) The last increase of FIFTEEN dollars a month was because I didn't have cable TV. Funny that I didn't have it at the beginning, and only paid $32.95 a month to AT&T, for the exact same level of speed and service. As far as I'm concerned, Comcast is even more evil and untrustworthy as Microsoft, which is really saying something. Stay classy, Comcast!

**Come on already, Qwest - where's the FTTH that your commercials keep trying to pitch to me, but I STILL can't get, less than 5 miles from Downtown St. Paul?!?

You can hear Kent Hovind's head exploding as I type, all the way from his prison cell... heh heh...

It's 3.9 billion dollars being sucked out of Dell's coffers.

Well, either that, or there's a Packers game on TV.

http://www.twincities.com/ci_12112297

(Tried submitting this, but I don't know if it will be seen, so why not put it in a D & D thread?)

Hell, MPC can do it, and has been able to for quite some time. VLC seems reluctant to do so; why?

If not, I'm out. I'll never install that POS on any of my systems. Period.

No worries... actually, I'm near the intersection of I-35E and Roselawn , in Maplewood; I can SEE the darn Shoreview towers from my street. I'm using a Samsung DTB-H260F receiver, with an Antennas Direct DB2 antenna, and plugging the HDMI output to my Samsung 204BW 20" monitor (this suddenly sounds like a commercial for Samsung!). This gives me a great picture - perhaps not 1080i, but still beautiful, and it's the perfect size screen for the bedroom. As for dropouts, during the Beijing Olympics, there were some dropouts on KARE-11, but it wasn't too bad; KTCA-2, on the other hand, had a great signal (full bars on the display), only to drop out every time a car went by the house; they seem to have fixed that as well, but I know I should be getting better overall signal here... I'll see what transpires when they start boosting the UHF transmitters to their permanent power settings in a short time now.

Here in the Twin Cities, even less than 10 miles away from the big antenna farm in Shoreview, MN, many channels don't come in reliably, even with an excellent antenna/RG-8 (BEL 9913) setup. I can't wait to see what improvements in signal stability will occur when they shut off the analog, and boost the digital transmitters.

"...decission...elequent...infristructure...undoubtably...decissions...Undoubtably...dissapointed..."

Let us hope one of those difficult "decissions" is to improve education... ;-)