I received a phone call from one of Metrocast's top technicians. Without disclosing too much I'll refer to him as Mike. I've spoken with Mike before, as well as had email conversations, regarding many issues that I have had with reception on digital cable and high definition. He is well-informed, professional, and quite good at his job.
Mike apologized on behalf of Metrocast for how I was treated. To have a "supervisor" call me and leave me a message that said I wasn't receiving a particular channel because that channel was not in my channel line-up, was ridiculous. And Mike knew it. The customer service representatives have some serious training issues if they don't know what channels their customers receive in each of their companies delivery regions. And if a supervisor doesn't know, it indicates how widespread the problem is. But, I accepted Mike's apology and we agreed to move beyond all of that and look toward solutions. I also asked Mike if he could see about removing the "black mark" from my customer record at Metrocast. (I was flagged as an ornery customer and under no circumstances should I be transferred to a manger if I asked for one). Mike said that he would check on that. In my opinion, my customer record should say "This guy knows what he's talking about, so listen to him when he calls" but I highly doubt they will mark my account as such.
In the end, Mike gave me his cell phone number and email address so that if ever there are problems like the ones I had been experiencing, I could contact him directly.
As luck would have it (or is it un-luck) Channel 51, WPXT out of Portland, was experiencing some of the same pixelation issues and lack of audio through my cable connection. In checking that against my HDTV connected to an antenna, the HDTV/Antenna setup was working just fine with no degradation of signal at all. So the problem had to be at Metrocast. I contacted Mike.
The explanation, and problem, has to do with a piece of equipment at Metrocast that takes the signal from a broadcaster and "processes" it before sending it down the wire to customers. In this "processing", if the signal is lost, the equipment must be manually reset or the signal that gets sent down the line to customers is degraded (pixelation and lacking audio).
So it would seem that every time Metrocast loses a signal temporarily from a broadcaster and nobody is there at Metrocast to see it and be able to react to it, then the signal to the customer is dead in the water until a manual reset is finally done.
To me, there must be some better quality equipment out there than can "automatically" reset itself upon the loss/regaining of a broadcasters signal. I've talked to some people in the industry who have indicated that such things exist. Which leads me to the real issue which is money. Metrocast is either cheap, or broke. Neither of these options are good. I don't like subscribing to a company who is cheap, nor do I enjoy subscribing to a company who can't afford state of the art equipment.
In the end, I don't know what to do with all of this information. On one hand I don't have much choice but to give Metrocast a chance to fix the problems from a long term perspective. Satellite cable is a possibility but due to signal obstructions, and a $600 deposit for the equipment, this scenario seems prohibitive. So while I don't know where this will all end up, at least I have a Metrocast representative who is willing to work with me on these issues and not dismiss me when I call. At least one Metrocast representative respect my intelligence, experience, and understanding of the big "cable" picture.
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