www.dvhart.com

Hey, I said "occasional rant", so I'm covered! After numerous calls to "support" I finally got Verizon to change us over to their Local TV plan (for only $12.99/mo). Since those channels are in clear QAM, my TV can tune them without the need of their really-poor-quality HD DVR (the list for that piece of crap is rant in and of itself). My HDHomeRun can also tune them, which means I welcomed back MythTV to our home for the best in homebrew HD PVR goodness (1.5 Terabytes of video storage anyone? Yeah!). After several days with the Verizon set-top box disconnected (to confirm everything worked) I took it to our local Verizon Plus store and dropped it off. The rep promised me that TV service would continue and I would just be saving the $15/mo they were charging me for their crappy box (on top of the standard service fees). I made sure I double checked with him that service would continue and got a confirmation number for when they screwed it up and I needed to call in. Well... by the time I got home they had disconnected my TV service. IDIOTS! MORONS! I'm surrounded by mindless MORONS!

After two hours on the phone this morning, their billing "specialist" informed me that they can't add TV service without a set-top box because their system won't let them. They eventually got it re-enabled and set me up with a standard def set-top box free for a year, normally 5.99/mo. My TV started working again while I was on the phone with them, and I'm now watching HD local channels, but funny - there is no set-top box in the house... and she couldn't tell me if they would be delivering it or not. So now I'm watching HD while having an SD set-top box on my account, but not in my house, that I will have to start suddenly paying for in 12 months time. IDIOTS. I figured I'm best off to let the year pass and hope they either come up with a process to handle the crazy people like me with consumer level HDTVs with QAM tuners... oh wait... that's pretty much everyone with an HDTV... MORONS. Ah well, in a year's time they will likely have pissed me off in enough other ways that I'll switch to another nameless-support-free-media-conglomerate for TV "service". IDIOTS. If only OTA DTV wasn't such an amazing PITA!