I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m not very happy with Charter.

We’ve had their Internet service for years…  And it generally works OK…  But when it doesn’t work it’s nearly impossible to get anything done about it.

Their 800 number takes you to a call center somewhere, and they’ve got absolutely no idea what’s going on at a local level.  So they’ll walk you through rebooting your modem (repeatedly) and insist that there’s something wrong with your wireless and whatever else…  And eventually you’ll find out from somebody else that there was a line down or a server blew up.

Their DNS servers are so unreliable that I’ve completely given up on them, and I’m using OpenDNS and Google DNS in our house.

And I never, ever get the speed I should be getting.  Even after accounting for the typical overhead in an Ethernet connection…  I’m still not getting the speed I should be.

But we’ve been using DirecTV for the last couple of years.  It’s been pretty good…  Good picture, reliable even in foul weather…  I absolutely love having a DVR, and the program guide…  We’ve been pretty happy with DirecTV.

Except for their billing.  We’ve had no end of problems with their billing.

We were quoted one price…  And then wound up paying a different one…  And then they started charging us for HD access we couldn’t use…  And every time you change something you get locked in to another two-year contract…  And they kept raising their rates…  Very frustrating.

Eventually it got to the point where we were paying over $100 for DirecTV, and Charter was offering a similar package for just $70…  So we thought we’d switch to Charter and save some money.

Big mistake.

Charter came and did their install last week…  The “basic” television we’ve got on two of our TVs is downright primitive.  Straight-up, simple, analog cable TV.  No guide or anything.  I figured that when we bought their “digital” package for all the TVs in the house, we’d at least get a program guide on those two TVs.  But we don’t.

The DVR we’ve got on our nice TV looks truly ancient.  It’s a big, clunky, silver Scientific Atlanta box that looks like it was manufactured sometime in the 80′s.  Big, green LCD showing the time.  Lots of chunky buttons all over the front of it.  And the remote control is absolutely studded with buttons – most of which don’t appear to do anything.

The software on the DVR looks like some nasty GeoCities-era web page.  Big, clunky tables with heavily-beveled edges…  Bright, contrasting colors…  Rough, pixelated fonts…  Very simple CP437-esque graphics…  Really, really ugly stuff.

But it isn’t just a matter of appearances.  There’s a lot of functionality that seems to be missing.  We don’t seem to be able to search for things like we could on our DirecTV box…  And we can’t seem to record/manage an entire series at a time…  You can’t do much from the program guide…  There doesn’t seem to be as much information about what is showing…  I suppose it’s possible that functionality is actually in there somewhere, but we can’t find it.

And the reception isn’t even clear.  On our two basic TVs we’ve got static showing up on a number of channels.  On our HD DVR TV we keep getting blocks of pixelation and weird sound artifacts.  Last night the volume slowly drifted from too quiet to too loud, all on its own, independent of commercial breaks.  We were constantly having to adjust the volume up and down.

So, we called up DirecTV…  Talked to somebody in their retention department…  Got a new deal.  $70/month for an HD DVR and two basic receivers – but those basic receivers will at least have the programming guide.  They’ll be installing the DirecTV stuff this afternoon…

And, when I get home tonight, I’ll be calling Charter to cancel our TV service.

I posted a nice, clean, HD clip of the trailer for a STALKER television series a few days ago…  And that guy’s YouTube account was promptly shut down.

Here’s another clip posted by “GSCSTALKEROFFICIAL“.  It’s not nearly as crisp or clear, but it’s less likely to get taken down.

We stumbled across Hogfather a while back…  A very good rendition of Terry Pratchett‘s Discworld book by the same name.  We were very impressed with it.  Did a terrific job of bringing the Discworld to life.  Thoroughly enjoyed it.  Were absolutely amazed that somebody had made such a movie.

Well, we’ve just been amazed again.  There’s a Colour of Magic movie as well.  Well…  Miniseries-type thing, at least.

We just watched the first episode last night, and were again impressed with it.  Fairly accurate portrayal of the Discworld, very high production values, very entertaining.  I’m looking forward to watching the next episode tonight.

Sunday was the last episode of The Walking Dead, at least for now.  I certainly hope they make another season of the show.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I wanted to see more, but I can really appreciate what the small number of episodes did for the show.  It kept the story on-track.  Kept things moving along.  You couldn’t just waste time on things that didn’t move the plot along.  A finite number of episodes made it more important to actually do things with the screen-time they had.  And this was a good thing.

You look at some series, like Lost or Heroes and it seems like they just sort of wander along…  There’s no real impetus to get the story told.  To wrap things up.  To move forward.

I’d like to see more of Rick and the rest of the survivors.  I’d like to know what happens to them.  I’d love to have something bad happen to Shane…  And I’d like to know what happened to Merle…  But, at the same time, I’d almost rather follow a different group around next season.  Get a snapshot of a different part of the world.  Maybe see how things are out in California, or Alaska, or New York, or overseas.