Here's how I see it:

Comcast just moved my Massachusetts service to "digital starter package". I only agreed to try this out because my original service, which was basic local service only, kept losing channels.

It kept losing channels, because Comcast kept shifting them to the new-style digital side (digital & encrypted).

Additionally, Comcast was for weeks advertising that the national shift to digital brodcast wouldn't be a problem for Comcast ("CC") customers because CC customers wouldn't be affected. However, CC also used the publicity and confusion about the Federally mandated digital transition to blind people to the fact that CC was concurrently rolling out it's own digital transition.

I was sent a letter addressed to me which promised that my current service (local basic only) was qualified to receive free from CC (1) digital tuner box and (2) DTA (digital transport adapters), but when I called, CC refused to honor the offer, stating that my service (local basic) was not able to utilize the box/dta's as they could not program them because of my current service level.

In the alternative, a CC mgr offered me a discount on the new digital starter package for 1 year. This was a few months ago and I waited until this past week to follow up as my local service did not start konking out really bad until this week.

A little known fact about CC service around here was that local basic (what I had) also used to get FREE digital channels if you had a digital TV (which I do).

So, when CC says I need new adapters/boxes to get digital, it's a complete lie as I was already getting many "mid channel" and some "upper channel" digital channels FREE with my local basic (non-digital) subscription.

Any digital TV plugged into local basic service would auto-scan and find the extra channels when setting up the TV via the channel seek.

Anyway, the new CC tuner box went in Friday and seems to work. Now I am once again receiving on that single TV all the same channels I was getting via my local basic (including the additional channels I got for free before, but now which are inlcuded with the digital starter package).

Local basic was supposed to get only 25 or local channels, but also got many additional ones due to the TV automatically finding them. However, as of last week, CC killed this by converting everything above channel 23 to a scrambled digital signal - hence the need for the new DTA's and the tuner box.

CC has since admitted to me that they knew this the whole time and it was not anything I did - it was a a known sytsem-wide channel leak in their system. In fact for a while (several months) we even got piggyback channels when our neighbors did an on-demand view - it would be viewable on 4 different channels.

Suffice it to say, our old super-low-price local service was less than $10 a month and we got tons of channels - far beyond the local ones.

Now we have essentially those same channels again, but ONLY on the TV with the converter box.

Of the several DTA's we ordered NOT NONE of them - including any installed by CC - will receive anything more than 1-23, even though we are supposed to get 1-99 on the DTA's, we get only 1-23.

Not only that, but the DTA's must stay plugged in and on 24/7 or they lose the config. That's more electricity use and a fire hazard.

It's hard to even explain how bad a fiasco this new CC system of digital boxes and DTA's is, but I assure you, I have many, many years of electronics experience and this system is a ClusterFug.

I spent hours and hours on the phone with tech trying to get the DTA's to work right - I was on hold to Manila, then Canada. It's a complete farce and it's not a viable system.

There is no way CC can survive rolling out this platform - the support expenses are going to scale through the roof and kill the company.