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Time Warner’s ‘free’ HD commercial is misleading, says agency

March 5th, 2010, 7:25 am by

Noted: Time Warner Cable likes to tout its “free” HD to make itself look more affordable than the competition. But free isn’t true, as some readers like to note.

The Better Business Bureau doesn’t think so either. After a competitor’s complaint to the Council of Better Business Bureau, Time Warner Cable said it would “revise its advertising to curtail use of the word ‘free,’” reports Multichannel News.

AT&T complained about the misleading ads that are used to promote cable service. The National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus looked at the issue and said that the issue is Time Warner’s “free HD” was part of a temporarily discounted price that eventually went up so free HD should no longer be considered free. The agency recommended that Time Warner discontinue such advertising.

The misleading Time Warner ad showed a U-verse TV customer named Ed who rejected Time Warner’s “free HDTV” and instead says “Sure, U-verse hits me up with an HD surcharge every month but, no big deal, I’ve found ways to make extra cash…” The ad ends with “Don’t Be Ed …Don’t Accept HD Surcharges” or “Don’t Accept Less. Get Digital Cable with Free HD.”

Time Warner offers dozens of HD channels at no extra cost as part of different levels of standard cable service. It has one special tier of HD-only channels for about $5 a month, which customers can order separately. AT&T charges $10 per month for HD channels.

Readers have complained about the “free HD” campaign as well since technically, customers still need to order a minimal cable service and equipment to get the “free” HD channels. Time Warner’s not the only one using the marketing gimmick. Cox and other cable providers also tout free HD.

Readers: What do you think? Did the “free HD” campaign win you over? LEAVE A COMMENT

Read the full story at Multichannel News: Time Warner Cable To Change ‘Free HD’ Claim After AT&T Complaint

Recent Time Warner news:

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • • • | 30 Comments »

Time Warner teams up with Orange County Supes

March 3rd, 2010, 5:29 pm by

Missed the last Orange County Board of Supervisors meeting? Time Warner Cable’s now offers scintillating coverage on demand for Southern California customers.

Okay, so Time Warner’s new on-demand feature may sound like a snooze fest, but there’s a bunch of other videos of area city meetings and interviews with California politicians. It’s mostly Los Angeles-based content, but there’s also U.S. public service announcements from celebs such as Rosario Dawson and rappers Cypress Hill, plus tax tips from the IRS.

As part of the My Government launch, Time Warner said it set up an office in Sacramento to produce more interviews with state lawmakers.

Called My Government On Demand, the new feature is available on channel 1018 or find it by going to “Local” from Channel 1. The service is available to Time Warner’s 2 million digital cable customers in Southern California.

More on Time Warner:

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • | 2 Comments »

Time Warner toys with raising Internet prices

March 2nd, 2010, 1:40 pm by

Spotted: Dow Jones news services picked up on an interesting sentence muttered by Time Warner Cable’s chief operating officer Landel Hobbes during an investor conference on Monday: Broadband Internet has replaced cable TV as the company’s “anchor product” so if TV service continues to slow, Time Warner can just raise Internet prices.

Reporter Nat Worden writes just a few paragraphs, enough to give us a glimpse into the future of cable bills.

“Consumers like it so much that we have the ability to increase pricing around high-speed data,” Hobbes said.

** Webcast: Listen to what Hobbes said **

While that’s discouraging news for anyone on a budget, it makes financial sense for Time Warner especially as more consumers cut cable and instead watch TV shows online for free. But this still means you need a fast Internet connection.

I listened to what Hobbes said and he went on to talk about what customers can expect from Time Warner this year: Access to TV shows online via “TV Everywhere,” and the long-rumored multi-room DVRs and features like “Start Over” and “Look Back” to allow viewers to watch TV shows they missed or forgot to record.

Hobbes also said DOCSIS 3.0, which offers faster Internet speeds of 50 down and 5 up, will be coming to more cities this year, possibly targeting markets where Verizon FiOS also offers fast service. Time Warner launched its faster Internet for around $99 in New York City, where it goes head to head with FiOS and is rumored to be targeting Texas, Ohio and upstate New York next.

That gives us hope here in Orange County for those wanting faster service and are willing to pay for it but can’t order FiOS. Faster Internet is apparently what the bulk of new Time Warner customers want. During the investor conference, Hobbes said that 70 percent of new customers opt for Turbo Internet speeds, currently at 15 mbps downstream and 2 mbps up. Comparably, FiOS offers up to 50 mbps down and 35 mbps up. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • • • • • • | 16 Comments »

National Geographic Wild starts in March, replaces Fox Reality

February 15th, 2010, 10:59 am by

Corrected 2/16: Fox Reality is being replaced by National Geographic Wild, not West. My bad. Thanks reader ‘m’ for pointing this out. Text below is corrected.

If you haven’t spent much time on the Fox Reality channel, you’ll be glad to know it’s being booted next month in favor of the National Geographic Wild Channel.

The Fox channel shuts down on March 31, as noted last October, in favor of another version of reality. Why National Geographic? The channel is 50 percent owned by Fox Cable Network.

Time Warner Cable, which notified customers today on its alerts page, switches to “Nat Geo Wild” on March 29. It’s the same channel — 129 — and same plan level as Fox Reality.

Other TV providers have not announced the switch yet but here are the existing channel numbers for their Fox Reality channel:

  • Time Warner, 129
  • Cox Communications, 363
  • Dish Network, 190
  • Verizon FiOS, 197
  • AT&T U-verse, 130
  • DirecTV, 250

For more on TV services, see the following links:

* Time Warner Cable
* Cox Cable
* Verizon FiOS
* AT&T U-verse		 * DirecTV
* Dish Network
* Web TV
* All TV

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • • • • • | 22 Comments »

Full Olympic coverage online but only for paid TV customers

February 12th, 2010, 1:42 pm by

In anticipation of the 2010 Winter Olympics, which begins tonight, every TV provider is promoting its programming.

Time Warner Cable’s press release says, “Unprecedented Coverage.” Cox Communications is offering “unprecedented coverage.” Verizon FiOS issued a press release, so did AT&T U-verse and Dish Networks.

So who has the most and best coverage of the games?

“Every distributor was offered the same Olympics package,” an NBC Universal spokesperson told me.

So everyone is getting access to 835 hours of Olympic coverage, which includes for the first time ever the entire event in high definition.

But if you don’t pay for TV service, you won’t get as much coverage as paying customers. And good luck trying to find coverage on Hulu.com, which sends viewers to NBC’s site. Instead, NBC created a special website for paying TV customers to watch live coverage and full-event replays.

All of Orange County’s TV providers are included — Time Warner, Cox, U-verse, FiOS, Dish and DirecTV — but you must go to the page and log in to your TV service account to view coverage. Says the page, “If your cable, satellite or IPTV provider is NOT listed above, then it’s not in partnership with NBC Olympics.” Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • • | 11 Comments »

Cox offers cheaper TV prices but not all users qualify

February 4th, 2010, 12:30 pm by

Cox Cable logoOne way to save some money on TV service? Commit for a year or two.

It’s a business model that both satellite TV companies have offered for years. Over at Verizon FiOS, new customers will save about $240 over a 2-year period for the company’s most popular TV, Internet and phone bundle. Time Warner Cable began offering its price-lock guarantee program last year, saving customers ordering 3 services a $432 over two years.

Cox Communications, too, is doing the same thing but as one reader discovered, not every  customer qualifies.

John, a Laguna Beach resident, asked for the discount after learning that Cox is raising cable TV and Internet rates in March. But he was told he wasn’t eligible. No one, not even the service manager, could figure out why.

Lana Ong, a Cox spokesperson, cleared it all up: Price lock is just a trial for the company in certain parts of the country, including Orange County. But if your account is delinquent or already getting a good discount, you don’t qualify. Ong responded: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • • • • | 12 Comments »

Cable TV users just want a 20% discount, says report

February 2nd, 2010, 8:47 am by

TV service dealsA new report believes that 68 percent of cable TV customers would switch to a competing service for a  20 percent discount, according to Strategy Analytics, a market research firm.

The report “Digital TV Customer Satisfaction: US Survey Results” only surveyed 856 cable users, but there is other proof that consumers want a better value. Recent cable TV financial reports that continue to show a declining number of TV subscribers and customers dropping services like premium channels and video on demand. Meanwhile, Internet-TV services like AT&T U-verse and Verizon FiOS have been adding new customers.

“It underscores a trend we have been seeing for the past 18 months: a growing number of customers are beginning to question the value of a ‘traditional’ pay TV subscription in light of expanded “over-the-top” offerings, such as Hulu and Netflix,” said the study’s author Ben Piper, Director of the Strategy Analytics Multiplay Market Dynamics service.

Comparably, says the report, only 33 percent of people who subscribe to the newer Internet TV services also would drop their provider for a cheaper service.

Internet TV also had the highest number of satisfied customers, with 95 percent of respondents claiming to be “somewhat” or “very” satisfied. Comparably, 78 percent of satellite users were that satisfied while 67 percent cable users were.

In my own research, Verizon FiOS TV tends to be more expensive then cable but you do get a lot more features like HD channels and on-screen widgets. Satellite TV tends to be the cheapest. But everyone wants to save money.

Any thoughts from readers? I’ll be evaluating the costs of TV service in upcoming weeks. All input would be appreciated.

Related TV news:

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • • • | 37 Comments »

How much money did Time Warner make last year? $1.1 billion

January 28th, 2010, 1:59 pm by

Time Warner Cable photo, courtesy of AP.$1.1 billion — that’s how much Time Warner Cable (TWC) made in 2009.

That’s net income, not revenues. It compares to 2008′s abysmal loss of $7.3 billion, due to unusual losses like a $14.8 billion non-cash charge it took for the declining value of its cable franchise rights. Revenues for 2009  grew 3.9 percent from 2008 to $17.9 billion, thanks to an increase in DVR service customers, higher video prices and more digital cable subscribers.

Business in 2009 was much better for the cable TV provider. Even though it continued to lose basic cable customers — it lost another 105,000 of them during fourth quarter — Time Warner added more lucrative customers who ordered multiple services such as phone and high-speed Internet. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • • | 10 Comments »

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