Stuck in Comcast Purgatory
October 6, 2007
I am stuck in a sort of Comcast Purgatory. Stuck between being too close to Philadelphia yet being too far away from Philly to be a Flyers fan. I am not the only one. Icer44 in that thread is almost an hour closer to Philly then I am. I live about a 138 miles, 2 hours and 39 minutes drive away from the Wachovia center.
There are 2 ways to pick up the majority of the Philadelphia Flyers games. One is to watch Comcast SportsNet(CSN) Philadelphia, the other is to pick up the NHL Center Ice Package. In my area neither works for me with Comcast.
I moved up to a small town in Adams County Pennsylvania back in 2001. Back then we had a choice for cable companies, GS Communications and Susquehanna Communications (Suscom). Neither provider offered CSN Philly, instead carried what is now called CSN Mid-Atlantic. At the time it carried the Orioles along with Wizards basketball and Capitals hockey. At the time it appeared that carrying that channel instead of CSN Philly made a little sense. Even though my tiny town is in PA, I am closer to Balitmore and even DC then I am Philly or Pittsburgh. We are considered the Baltimore market, closer to the Orioles then the Phillies.
I then discovered Suscom carried the NHL Center Ice(CI) package. I was quite excited to hear this. I contacted them and inquired about CI, yes they carried it. I asked if they blacked out any games and they said yes, they blackout all the Flyers games. What?! They blacked out the Flyers games?! Yes they did. Asking why, I was told Suscom(I figure their central office) physically fell into the local market area that is defined by the blackout rule. Ok, I said but you guys don’t carry CSN Philly, this is considered the Baltimore area not the Philly area. The response I got was yeah, we know but those are the rules we can’t do anything about it, sorry. Lame! 
Not to be discouraged I investigated DirecTV which carried CI. I went to the local Rex Radio & Television store(5 miles closer to Philly) which was a DirecTV Retailer. I inquired about the Flyers blackout situation. The sales guy looked at me a little funny. Blackout? CI on DirecTV doesnt blackout anything in this area he said. So I dropped cable picked up DirecTV with CI and all was good.
By this time GS Communications had been bought by Adelphia. So Adelphia and Suscom were available to me. Comcast acquired Suscom along with Adelphia in this area when Adelphia went into the crapper. Since Comcast had bought Suscom I thought that Adelphia in this area might have gone to Time Warner Cable. It actually appeared that Time Warner would be for a short time. Neighbor who had Adelphia started to see Time Warner logos on his guide, but that was short lived and it ended up being Comcast.
In this past year Comcast-Adelphia in this area made some channel changes and my neighbor picked up CSN Philly. He was actually able to watch Flyers hockey games, in HD to boot which was pretty sweet for him.
At this point I wanted to go HD, already having a capable TV I looked into DirecTV’s HD-DVR options. I wasn’t happy with them, to get an HD-DVR would cost me $400+ up front plus the monthly HD charge and oh by the way its just a lease on the DVR box, I wouldn’t own it. What!? I have to pay $400 for a HD-DVR that isn’t even mine? That’s crazy talk.
So I checked out my neighbors setup. Comcast-Adelphia had the HD-DVR and he was pretty happy with it. So I ran the numbers. DirecTv with the Directivo + CI + POTS and DSL vs. Comcast HD-DVR and cable modem. Comcast HD-DVR and cable modem service was cheaper then what I was paying for DSL and standard Directivo service with CI. I waited until the season was over to make the change.
This summer I ordered Comcast, the installer showed up 4 hours late(not his fault) and I had nice shiny new HD. A couple days after the install I was going thru looking at my nice High Definition channels and I got to CSN and discovered it was CSN Midatlantic. I when to the analog CSN channel and it was the same. Checked my neighbors cable and his CSN was different then mine. Apparently Comcast-Adelphia carried CSN Philly, Comcast-Suscom carried CSN MidAtlantic. Just so you understand, there are two cables that are run right to my house one for each Comcast. As I explained earlier we use to have a choice between cable providers, both cables are there. Now it is just Comcast on both cables.
I thought well, I call up comcast and they could change me from the comcast-suscom line to the comcast-adelphia line and all would be good. Apparently its not that easy. Called up, talked to a CSR who really didn’t understand, she scheduled to have a tech come out. Tech came out and I explained to him what I wanted, first time the guy ever heard such a request. The guy has moved customers the other way from the adelphia to suscom feed since the suscom system had more features like VOIP and ondemand. So he had to talk to his boss. It wasn’t as easy as unplugging one feed and plugging into the other. The two systems were separate, they used different cable boxes, the billing is different, the account would have to be closed and a new one opened up. I got to talk to the guy who is the local comcast-suscom manager. He explained these things to me and asked about why I wanted to change. I told him what I told the tech and the CSR, I wanted CSN Philly. He had to look into it and get back with me.
Guy got back with me a week later and he said they could move me to the other feed. I would have to cancel and resign up and swap out equipment, however… Comcast-Adelphia having CSN Philly(which was the HD feed) was a mistake, that was going to be changed to MidAtlatnic in a week and Comcast-Suscom would be picking up CSN Philly in August to be part of a new sports package. Well, if my Comcast feed was going to be picking up CSN Philly before the season started I was happy. So I left it as is.
It is now October and still no CSN Philly or any advertisement of a sports package. Was he just blowing smoke? I don’t know. I do know that the Comcast-Adelphia feed had their CSN HD feed swapped from Philly to MidAtlantic. This I found some amusement in, me being the sole reason that my neighbor couldn’t watch Flyers hockey now. For about 3 weeks or so the guide for CSN HD was showing the Philly schedule and I was hopeful a change was coming, but it didn’t happen. At http://tvplanner.comcast.net, I put in my zipcode, there is 3 different selections, Comcast-Hanover, Comcast-York and Comcast-Adams County. All 3 show 200 as being CSN HD Philly, its a shame thats not reality.
Lets look briefly at what CSN MidAtlantic offers. Since the Orioles now have their own sports channel MASN, CSN MidAtlantic only has Washington DC sports, Redskins-NFL, Wizards-NBA, Capitals-NHL, DC United-MLS, Mystics-WNBA and colleges from Maryland, Virginia and DC.
CSN Philadelphia offers, Eagles-NFL, Phillies-MLB, Sixers-NBA, Flyers-NHL, Phantoms-AHL and colleges from Pennslyvania and Delaware.
Ok this isn’t hard. The average person living in Pennsylvania, would they be more interested in Washington DC professional and MD,DC,VA college sports teams or would they rather watch PA professional and PA,DE college sports teams?
I have the CI free preview and sure enough the first Flyers game was blacked out. This whole situation doesn’t matter much to me now since I am no longer a NHL Flyers fan. The NHL has lost it and I am walking away. Reasons will be explained in a couple posts next week. Even though, the Flyer’s fans in this area have no voice and no choice except satellite. I figure I say something, maybe someone will make a change so sports fans living in PA can watch some PA sports instead of DC’s teams.
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[...] in October I wrote about being stuck in Comcast Purgatory. About a month or two ago that all changed. I was flipping thru the channels one day and noticed [...]