It’s been nearly a year since Charter officially acquired Time Warner Cable, but TWC customers — now “Time Warner Spectrum” — say they are no longer able to access an array of TV apps that require their pay-TV logins. [More]
television
Amazon To Start Selling Actual FireTV TVs, Make Alexa Do More Things
By 1.3.17
CES — the annual Consumer Electronics Show — is about to light up Las Vegas for the rest of the week. So ’tis the season for tech news to come rolling on in from far and wide. Today’s big announcements come courtesy of Amazon, which wants to put its Fire interface and AI assistant Alexa basically everywhere. [More]
People Waste A Lot Of Time Picking What Videos To Stream; Still Prefer It To Live TV
By 11.3.16
Once upon a time, we wandered the aisles of the local video, unable to make up our mind about which movie to rent. It was a waste of time, but it was usually better than whatever was airing on TV that night. Now the technology has changed, but we still spend an awful lot of time trying to find something that isn’t live TV.
[More]
Vizio Sells To Chinese Streaming Company, Spins Off Data-Mining Operation
By 7.26.16
Have you ever heard of LeEco? Most people in this country hadn’t until today, when we learned that familiar television brand Vizio announced that it’s been acquired by the brand. The deal may mean more streaming content bundled in smart TV sets, and the spin-off of a separate company dedicated to mining data about what customers watch. [More]
Google Adding Live TV Listings To Search Results
By 4.21.16
Although your binge-watching brain might not remember a time when television shows and movies were anything but on-demand, live TV is still around. Soon, if you want to find out what’s on and when, Google search results will include listings for live TV. [More]
HBO, CNN Concerned Time Warner Cable/Charter Merger Will Harm Streaming
By 3.7.16
The proposed merger of Charter, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House would create the second-largest cable company behind Comcast, at a time when it’s possible to access most of the content that was once exclusive to cable TV through streaming services. Yet the company that brings you HBO and CNN is concerned that a larger, stronger Charter might work to hold back progress in streaming video, the main competition for its cable service. Time Warner filed its concerns with the Federal Communications Commission. [More]
Sorry, An Insect Flying Into Your TV Is An Act Of God
By 9.23.15
When a few pixels go out on your 65″ TV that’s still under warranty, the warranty should cover that, right? That was the dispute between Currys, a UK electronics store sort of like Best Buy, their customer, and an alleged insect, now deceased and stuck in the TV’s screen somehow. [More]
U.S. Xbox One Users Can Now Watch Over-The-Air TV (With $80 Add-On)
By 4.8.15
Some days it seems as if the uses for the Xbox One are unlimited; you can play games, watch on-demand programing from HBO GO, Netflix and other apps and you can live stream content through a subscription to Sling TV. One thing you haven’t been able to do? Watch live over-the-air content from local broadcast networks. But that’s about to change. [More]
FCC Proposes Treating Online TV Like Cable TV; Amazon Objects If It’ll Stop You From Binge-Watching ‘The Wire’
By 4.6.15
There’s another internet-related firestorm a-brewing at the FCC. This one is not as broad or as contentious as the now infamous net neutrality ruling, but it is bringing all the big players out to have their say. And what, you might ask, has everyone worked up? It’s the big bandwidth bugaboo of the twenty-teens: online video. [More]
NFL Suspending TV Blackout Rule For 2015 Season
By 3.23.15
The country’s most-watched pro sport might be even more watched following an announcement today that the NFL will suspend its television blackout policy for the 2015 season. [More]
Quantum Dots Are The Hot New Thing At CES. So What Are They, And Why Should You Care?
By 1.6.15
TV’s are getting bigger and better every year, while also getting thinner and lighter. That’s good, but even as resolution increases by leaps and bounds, there have been some trade-offs in performance. This year, though, a new tech with a name right out of science fiction — the quantum dot — is the buzzword promising to be the solution to that problem. [More]
Some Small Cable Companies Are Dropping TV, And Customers Don’t Seem To Mind
By 10.1.14
Plenty of people have cut back on pay TV — cable and satellite — and gone to internet-only subscriptions in order to save some cash. But the individual cord-cutters aren’t the only ones realizing how expensive programming can be, and how they can live without it in the broadband era. Some small-scale cable companies are also taking the plunge, and cutting out TV service altogether. [More]
Time Warner Cable Glitch During “The Walking Dead” Finale Infuriates Upstate NY Customers
By 3.31.14
Last night, the season finale of “The Walking Dead” aired on AMC. Viewers were glued to their televisions as they always are during a major television event, but something terrible happened last night. In the Syracuse, NY area, the AMC signal cut out about 38 minutes into the broadcast. [More]
Stephen Colbert Is Ready For Viacom To Insert Ads Anywhere
By 1.15.14
Mirriad bills itself as a company that does “advertising for the skip generation.” What the heck does that mean? They’re the people who insert new ads into reruns of your favorite programs, adding not-yet-released DVDs to nonexistent bookshelves and even adding televisions that show ads to walls in a scene. You can advertise any product in a program, no matter how old it might be. [More]
Intel Wants To Disrupt Cable TV Market, Content Providers Not Playing Along
By 1.2.13
Over the New Year’s holiday, a tantalizing rumor spread across the interwebs. Intel is preparing a new set-top box to compete with the relatively unsuccessful Google TV and the relatively successful Apple TV. Yawn: what’s so interesting about that? Word was that their ultimate goal was to make à la carte cable a reality. That’s a utopian concept of sorts where consumers choose and pay for only the channels they’re interested in. Could Intel make it a reality? No, probably not, because the content providers stand in their way. You know, the companies that make big bucks selling their channels to cable providers, who in turn charge to beam them into the homes of people who didn’t want them in the first place. [More]
Charter Spreads Misinformation, Hopes You Forgot How 2009 DTV Transition Worked
By 11.12.12
When a company or an individual spreads misinformation, we like to think that it’s out of ignorance instead of greed or malice. Such as the Charter Cable customer service representative who told reader Paul that he shouldn’t cancel his cable because later this year, over-the-air broadcasts will end and he will need cable or satellite service to keep watching TV.
This might be a great argument for convincing people not to cancel their cable. The problem is that it is not, strictly speaking, true. [More]
Woman's Social Security Number Displayed To Millions During Democratic National Convention
By 9.6.12
How do you know you’re watching television with a Consumerist editor? Our commenters will probably formulate all kinds of punchlines for that setup, but last night, I was half paying attention to former President Bill Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention on CNN when I happened to see an elderly supporter waving her Medicare card at the camera. Her name and Social Security number were completely legible. “We can read her card! Stop showing that!” I shouted at the TV. The people on the television never listen to personal finance bloggers who are shouting at them. [More]
All I Want To Know Is Where HBO Is On My Stupid TV, Cox
By 9.21.11
Andy is a Cox Cable customer, and an HBO subscriber. When the channel lineup shifted recently, he couldn’t find HBO in high definition. The information wasn’t online, and the channel wasn’t in a logical place. Figuring that someone at Cox must know the answer, he hopped on customer service chat to ask a helpful customer service representative. The rep had him check to see whether the standard definition HBO channels had magically switched to high definition in the five minutes since he had last checked, then demanded Andy’s account number, name, address, account PIN, and the last four digits of his Social Security number. To obtain information that used to be on the company’s public website. [More]
