Since BendCableBroadband is charging the same for their digital cable service as they are for their analog service, we decided to take the plunge and upgrade. They came by yesterday and set it all up. The problem? None of the channels numbers are the same, which I knew going in. The bigger problem? The various TV listings web sites all seem to be using the old Bend Cable channel lineup for their listings. xThe only one I could find that used the right assignments was Zap2It, which isn’t nearly as intuitive of a site to use as all the other sites (and Couchville’s shutting down, anyway, which is sad). The channels are all listed, but the numbers are all wrong, and I’m too dang lazy to cross reference stuff every time.
So is BendBroadband supposed to supply this channel lineup info to these companies or is this some sort of automatic datafeed that they just are ignoring? I don’t know how any of this works, but I’d much rather use Yahoo!’s TV listings or TVTitan to look for shows as the on-screen guide is slow and shows a ton of channels we just don’t get (and with most listing services we can hide channels that we don’t even care to ever watch).
Comments
I know it’s a hassle, but with Titan TV, you can customize channel numbers to your choosing…
Josh
Yeup, I agree it’s irritating. I am still not quite sure which channels we get, and which ones we don’t.
Supposedly there’s a way to set up a custom channel list, but then how would I know if they add a new channel that still doesn’t have any shows I want to watch?
AppleTV is looking better every day.
This is the page on how to customize your channels, so that your menu will no longer show the ones you don’t get.
http://www.bendbroadband.com/HT_favorites.cfm
I’m not sure if it works with only Moxi or all their digital boxes, because I haven’t tried it yet.
I use the basic set-top box and my on-screen guide only shows the channels I can access. Got a message after all the channel-change-craziness that this was a new feature, and mighty nice since I got sick of trying to watch a cool show only to get the blue screen of death!
BTW- anyone else notice that KOIN magically disappeared last night?? Did Bendbroadband flip some switch that put KEZI on channel 6 with KOHD on channel 9, and KOIN nowhere to be found? I had to watch KVAL on Channel 13! Aghast!
I hate bend cable. Honestly. I upgraded a few months back–with promises that the digital would work fine with my Tivo. Then it didn’t.. After 20 hours of invested time with 3 different repair men who all said the problem was my Tivo I told them to take the digital boxes out. They wouldn’t. Once you upgrade–you are stuck with the mess. They are the best cable provider–they are the only cable provider.
I am interested in learning more about the digital antenneas that are available. ANyone familiar with them?
@ Josh: Yes, I realize I can customize the channel #s on TVTitan. The problem is though that some of the channels in the upper range don’t match their equivalent in the lower-range (they’ll be off every so slightly). I don’t know which to use and which to hide.
@jen: There you go spouting off apple products as the cure all for this, which it isn’t 😉
@wendy: That supposedly works with my cable box, too, but I haven’t played with it yet, though I’ve heard it’s a bit clunky.
@redmond-ite: I don’t watch network TV much, so I didn’t see that.
@cheryl: I could’ve told you that Tivo wasn’t going to easily work. We don’t use Tivo, but the montly fees from BendCable for their DVR service is about the same as Tivo.
The digital antennas will only get you network TV channels, no cable, so that won’t help you much.
To answer your initial question, this would be all my fault. However, all of the major online vendors should have our updated Digital line-up(s). You’ll have to select this, in most cases, in a separate drop down menu. Of the ones you mentioned, I can confirm that the following online guides are correct:
tvguide.com
titantv.com (select Digital Line-Up)
zap2it.com (select Digital Line-Up)
yahoo.com (go to tv listings set-up and select digital)
BendBroadband will continue to evaluate the channel guide situation and hopefully soon will only “display” the channels to which customers subscribe.
(Any opinions stated here are that of myself and not necessarily BendBroadband.)
cableric
Thanks for fixing this, cableric, as zap2it was the only one that had the correct #s before (even when I selected digital). But I can confirm that these have all been fixed, and I do appreciate it!