Wednesday, February 03, 2010

The World is Xfinite
Comcast, the world's most expensive and useless cable/internet/media/phone sex/animal cracker company in the galaxy has decided to address its many problems by the cheapest and most ineffective way possible. They are changing their name.

Introducing Xfinity a word that means absolutely nothing, but seems cool, hip, and sexy. Hey, if it's cool, hip, and sexy it's gotta be good, huh? Forget that our cable bill costs about a much as Ghana's national debt. We're gonna have TV that goes to Xfinity. It'll be Xfinite!

Why do companies do that? Decide that the public is so stupid we won't notice that Xfinity is the same company as Comcast, only with a different name? Are our collective memories supposed to be that short? We won't care how much our bill is because, damn it, it's a whole new ball game. It's not just TV, it's Xfinite TV! Not only that, but Comcast's Executive VP of Operations has said "the new brand name communicates Comcast's constant product upgrades and innovation." Really? It does all that, does it?

First off, when has Comcast ever innovated? Secondly, this ridiculous nonsense word conveys all that? Sure it does! After all, putting "X" in front of something is edgy. It's eXtreme. It's like snowboarding, only you have to control the snowboard through the cable box that doesn't really work all that well and sometimes goes to the wrong channel. But other than that, it's just like snowboarding. The kind of snowboarding where you have 125 different channel of slopes to chose from and no snow on any of them. Endless choices. Nothing on. But fuck that, it's Xfinite nothing! And we're all going to forget about Comcast in the rush to be as hip and cool as Xfinite. And the bad service, outrageous bill, and useless technology...it'll all be a bad dream once we're living in a world where TV is Xfinite.

4 comments:

Duke said...

I saw a cable TV pundit recently who told CNN the cable industry has plans to increase cable fees to an average $135 per month. Why? Because "advertising revenues are down due to the poor economy" and "companies like Comcast need additional revenue to expand the channel lineup".

In other words, "we have a monopoly so we'll loot you all we please".

Although it seems outrageous to me, maybe comcast knows the market. People seem to have plenty of money for things like that. They pay over $75 now for cable plus $40 for a cell phone (or $100 if you have an internet enabled smart phone), plus $40 for internet service and another $30 for a land line telephone. That's anywhere from $185 to $245 per month. Almost #3,000 per year people spend on what are basiclaly luxury items.

Comcast is betting we have another spare $50 or so to hand over. I suspect it will work.

Kittie Howard said...

Comcast, Verizon, Cox...they're all whores! And I also fault Congress/Supreme Court for not breaking this mess up. And I fault the American people for making too many luxury items a staple. Duke is right! Hub and I were in Europe last summer. Europeans pay much less than half what we pay and get more services. And they aren't subsidized. Just a shrewder market. You hit one of my hot buttons, Decca.

Decca said...

I agree with you both. It's completely outrageous how much they charge for cable. Made worse by the fact that it's the only game in town. Our cable bill makes me cringe. But we I do watch a lot of TV when my insomnia kicks in. At 3 am I find that TiVo and a nice selection of recorded documentaries, nature shows, mysteries, and history programs are my best friends. We try to keep things basic, but even there it's crazy expensive.

FinnyKnits said...

Um, Amen to all this.

We switched to DirecTV so that we could have the "opportunity" to pay a billion dollars to get NFL Sunday Ticket (which I will admit is awesome but so MUTHER EFFIN expensive because they are the only ones who offer it due to licensing, etc) but have found that for the same $100/mth we were paying for Comcast...I mean, Xfinite, we now get way more channels in HD, two HD DVRs, all the movie channels and on and on.

Because, apparently, putting a satellite on your house is not something people are readily willing to do?

I dunno.

But it's a better value. Even though we're still paying $100/mth to watch Red Dawn on a loop.

Why is that movie always on? It's horrendous.

Sometimes I just want to light the TV on fire and this comment has no common thread, so I'm sorry.