My Great “Adventure” with TVMax and Installing Digital TV

So where I live, the cable company (TVMax) just upgraded everything to digital. My story of the installation, and now the actual use, hasn’t been pretty. First, I had to make arrangements to take off from work so that they could come to put in “the box”, even though everything I had read and the public service announcements on TV had said that if you used a cable company, you didn’t need a box. TVMax said, everyone needed their box; of course, that comes with an extra fee every month.

Actually, though I took off work, no installer came, so after waiting more than two hours from the time they had told me, I went back to work. When I got home that evening, “the box” was there, and connected to the TV, but when I tried it, it didn’t work. They had left a remote to go with the new box and a sheet with the new channel line-up, but no instructions for how to use the box or the remote.  When I looked at the box itself, I discovered that whoever had hooked it up hadn’t even checked to see if it was working because the protective plastic cover was still on the front of it. Exasperated, I called the company; they said they’d send somebody back because they were still installing in the area.

After a couple more hours, a guy came; he didn’t really seem like his elevator went up very many floors, but he admitted that the other guy hadn’t really hooked up everything correctly, and finally after changing several wires, messing with my remote and their remote, he got it going.

I said, “OK, how do you work the remote?”

He had it in his hand, and turning away from me, said, “Like this,” and started changing the channels.

I looked over his shoulder, and said, “Show me again.” Finally, at least I could see the one he was pushing. There are no labels or symbols for any of the buttons on this remote, so I said, “What about the rest of the buttons? What do they do?”

He said, “Oh, you don’t need those buttons.” Anyway, by that time, I was just happy that I had TV again, so I just didn’t say any more because he was one of those people that you really don’t want to stay in your house longer than they have to be there (the whole time he was there he was on his cell phone talking to his wife about making sure she got their son to baseball practice), and Annie was putting up a ruckus because she didn’t like him either.

That evening I worked with the remote to see if I could figure it out and check out the channels. When they had sent the notice about the digital, of course, they were promoting some channel upgrades, so I decided to upgrade to get some channels I like, but hadn’t been getting, especially Logo, National Geographic, and the MTV channel that actually has music videos. I only watched for a couple of hours, but I thought I was going to be happy getting the upgrades.

The next morning when I got up, I went to turn on the TV. Sometimes I watch “Degrassi” on the CW after I take Annie outside and before I take my shower and get ready for work. But whoops! No TV! No cable!

I thought maybe I had done something wrong, but I had just turned off the TV the night before, nothing else, so I called the company. I was pretty livid because the whole installation process had been so awful. (Actually, for the sake of brevity, I’ve left out several other incidents that had happened with TV Max.) The customer service representative (I use the term loosely) who answered said there wasn’t any outage where I live and that they couldn’t send anyone out until the next day!

All day long at work, I mulled over just not having cable and getting rabbit ears (or whatever) for local reception. However, I do enjoy some of the cable channels. I like the college football and basketball and some other sports that I can watch on ESPN. I like HGTV and Bravo, and I was pretty sure I would like the new channels I would get with the upgrade. But by the end of the day, I had decided that if I didn’t have cable when I got home, I was going to cancel–and give them back the blankety-blank box!

When I got home, I had cable.

I don’t know if someone came out, or the cable had actually been out, but it was working.

Two days ago, the cable wasn’t working again. I called again. The representative on the line told me, “Just unplug the cable box from the wall.”

I said, “You mean from the electrical outlet?”

“Yes.”

So I did it. And lo and behold, my cable started working. She said, “That’s the way it resets itself.”

I said, “That’s what I should do if it goes out again?”

“Yes.”

OK, I guess it works, but something about unplugging the box and plugging it back in again, just doesn’t go with all this high-tech, HD, digital stuff and 21st Century technology.