The Worst Piece Of Electronics I Have

I don't usually rant on this blog but "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore," to quote the movie Network. I admit it, I'm somewhat of a geek. I have just about every type of electronic gadget there is, from smartphone to e-reader to iPad, iPod, iPhone, iMac (and 4 other Mac's large and small as well), to a wide range of professional and consumer audio and video gear. Not all of it is the latest and greatest, but most of it is within a generation of the latest. I'm frequently on the bleeding edge of software updates and I'm not afraid to get inside any electronic piece and tangle with electrons. OK, you can see how that qualifies me as a geek.

There is one piece of gear that I "rent" that completely baffles me in its utter inadequacy - and that's my two Scientific Atlanta HD cable set-top boxes. Talk about a dumb device, I think my very first cell phone ten years ago had more processing power than these supposedly new devices have now. I realize that the cable company has a lot to do with it (in my case Charter Cable), but come on.

You mean to tell me in 2011 that you can't even display the entire TV listing and have to cut it off because of lack of characters?

You mean to tell me that in 2011 you have zero interactivity? Why should I have to buy a connected TV? Am I not connected to a network already?

You mean to tell me that in 2011 the boot time for On Demand is so slow that it's unusable. I mean, who wants to wait for literally 5 minutes for it to boot up?

And worst of all, you mean to tell me that in 2011 you still build a box that is so unreliable that I've been through 5 of them already? The two that I have now have the same problems as the previous ones. They decide to reboot at the most inopportune times (which is good for 10 minutes of downtime or so). They freeze the picture and audio randomly. I have to change the channel to unfreeze or God forbid, manually reboot. They will play a channel perfectly then suddenly give me prompt that says "Looking for the channel" then "This channel is not available." Guess what, time to reboot.

And they sometimes have an audio clicking that sounds just like the clock problems that we all used to have with our early DAWs 10 years ago.

How do these people stay in business? Why does every other piece of electronic gear hardly ever have a problem, yet these things are a daily pain, even after they're replaced?

The thing is, I'm fairly happy with Charter's cable service itself, but these things are so frustrating that I'm beginning to think it's time to "cut the cord" as they say in the cable industry.

Sorry for the rant, but I'd love to hear any suggestions, alternatives, experiences or remedies from anyone.

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