Northern Kentucky to be Insight’s second all-digital market

Last month, we announced that Lexington would be Insight’s first market to transition to an all-digital format. Once that transition is completed, customers will have access to more than 100 HD channels, multi-room DVR and the fastest Internet speeds available, including a 50 Mbps service with even faster speeds coming later.

At that time, I told you that we planned to make this digital conversion in each of our districts and to “stay tuned.”

Today, we are announcing that Northern Kentucky will be our second market that will transition to an all-digital service. As a result, these incredible TV and Internet products that we announced in Lexington will also be coming to our customers in Northern Kentucky, as well.

You may recall that we previously announced a much smaller launch of new HD channels in Northern Kentucky. Over the past couple of months, I’ve heard from some of our readers in Northern Kentucky about the fact that we haven’t launched all of the HD channels we announced earlier this year (although the Reds are now available in HD on Fox Sports Ohio!). We delayed the launch of those few additional channels to determine if we could instead accelerate the launch of a larger group of new HD channels and other advanced products.

We determined that we should focus on the much larger launch associated with the digital conversion, including multi-room DVR’s and Broadband speeds at 50 Mbps and higher, rather than focus our resources on the intermediate step of just a few more channels. Because we’ll be launching this major project in the months to come, we determined that it simply made more sense to make all of these changes at the same time. In other words, by delaying the intermediate step, we are able to accelerate the much bigger product rollout. Essentially, we’re combining two product launches into one and we believe it will be worth the wait.

Please know that this is a complicated process and won’t happen overnight. However, depending on how smoothly the transition goes in Lexington, we expect to begin the Northern Kentucky transition in the coming months. Meanwhile, we will keep you posted every now and then about our progress. When we launch the transition in Northern Kentucky, we’ll be communicating to every customer to make sure the transition is as seamless as possible.

And as I previously mentioned, for those of you in other Insight markets, stay tuned. The Lexington and Northern Kentucky digital conversions will take some time to complete as we are committed to making these transitions in the most seamless manner possible for our customers. However, if you live in other Insight markets, rest assured that we are committed to providing you with the world-class technology you’ve come to expect from Insight and, as soon as I have more details, I will be sure to let you know right here on my blog. In those markets, we are still planning to provide a smaller number of new channels temporarily while we complete the plant conditioning required for the full fledged digital transition which we expect to commence during the first half of next year.

Comments

[Jason Lenihan]

Mr. Willner,

I have 4 HD sets at home, all less than 3 years old. Two of the TVs are running with straight from the wall connections. At $17 a month for an HD box it is a bit more than I care to spend on TVs that do not get watched much. When you switch channels to digital (like golf channel), I lose them on these 2 TVs. I have called customer service on several occasions asking if I should be able to pick up the new signals. They always tell me that I should get them, but I cannot. Am I going to lose all signals on these TV when you move to all digital? do you have any plans to introduce a lower cost non-DVR HD box?

[Paul Templeton]

I really don't understand the commitment to, and the expense of, using an outdated mode of transmission.
The fiber backbone has been in place for years and the bandwidth capabilities of fiber to the home just begin at the upper limits of coax.
Why use something that is going be a struggle to meet the video demands and leave room for internet data bandwidth limited to hundreds of megabits when with fiber you can easily offer ALL channels in HD while leaving data bandwidth measuring in the Gigabytes?
I realize that there is more to offer to it (like equipment upgrades and data handling at your end) but at least the pipeline will be there.

[Disappointed]

I don't like reading, "we expect to begin the Northern Kentucky transition in the coming months".

So, now it will be a longer wait for folks in Northern Kentucky to get more HD channels?

Does this mean it could be NEXT YEAR before we get any new HD channels??? That, Mr. Willner, is unacceptable! We are already paying a premium for a sub-par product.

[Mitch]

Disappointing that you are largest market, Louisville, is neglected yet again. Maybe AT&T UVerse is a better option? More HD now for less money...sounds like a good thing to me!

[Mark]

Mitch, don't wish for something you really don't want. When we go to 100% digital we will lose many channels on TV's they don't have boxes! They're taking away something without giving us anything in return. Of course it's a big advantage to them, they free up bandwidth and make more money!

[Joe Barker]

"When you switch channels to digital (like golf channel), I lose them on these 2 TVs....Am I going to lose all signals on these TV when you move to all digital?"
Jason Lenihan, I have had the same problem, and the short answer is in the story. Yes, you will need an additional box, which may be a full set-top box, or a low-cost converter box (two free in Lexington, according to the story.) I tried the low-cost converter box on one of my sets, and it produces a terrible picture. I may do that for a couple of sets, and use the set-top for my two main sets.

I'd like to see a stepped approach to pricing for the set-top boxes -- standard price for the first, then graduated down for each additional. Give me an incentive to use the upgraded product at a price that doesn't hurt. I don't believe we have a sub-par product -- au contraire, I know of plenty Cin Bell/Satellite TV and Time Warner customers who would love to have an opportunity to get our service. I would just like to see Insight remain consumer-friendly, and not turn into a Comcastic or Time-Warner-esque nightmare.

[Watson]

Sigh... I jumped on the opportunity to get an HD/DVR set-top box back in January when the new HD channels were announced, in anticipation of all the new high-def programming. It's severely disappointing to find out that Insight has now essentially retracted that announcement and won't be adding those new channels for a significant amount of time to come.

When I first read back in January, "Insight will soon launch nine brand new HD channels," I guess it was too much to assume that "soon" would be any time this year. :-\

[ARGO]

So, whens the next *across the board* rate increase happening?

[Ryan]

First half of next year? Guess I'll be renewing my contract with Dish in a few months.

[Mark R]

Michael,

In January, "9 new HD channels coming soon." Now "100 HD channels coming soon." You could be a P.R. rep for BP. Can't wait for the next "update" on how much we'll be getting and no doubt "coming soon" will be included.

[Ghpr57]

This is why I switched to Dish a year ago. Their DVR is better, I'm getting more HD channels than Insight offers, and the PQ is 100 times better, all for about $10.00 more than what I was paying Insight. (I donot work for Dish or have any affiliation with Dish, other then being a subscriber)

[C Hughes]

My daughter in Bowling Green KY tells me she was visited by an Insight representative today. She was told they are going all digital and she must begin using some type of cable box which will call for an additional $15 fee (or $30 for some more exotic type of service) on her monthly bill. She agreed to have the box installed today, because the installer said there would be an additional $25 installation fee if she waited.

Frankly, this sounds a bit like a scam, the sort of thing that occurs when a company's representative is more a sales person than just an installer. It makes me wonder if this whole presentation is simply an easy way for Insight to pad customers' bills with extra charges by presenting them with a "buy it now or pay a lot more later!!!" type of situation. It sounds similar to those phone solicitations from various rip-off artists who tell people that whatever they're touting is a one-time offer and only available at that moment. Consequently, I wonder if the $15 increase is really a requirement to maintain cable service or, perhaps, simply a charge for additional services that are not really needed or desired. The point being: is the customer being told the full story or are options that don't involve a price increase, but not offered to those who don't know to ask, available as well.

(Does someone respond to the comments on this site? Or, is this simply an exercise in futility?)

[Paul Templeton]

@ C.Hughes
I have never seen a direct response.
I am inclined to believe that some executive secretary takes care of this blog not Michael Willner himself.

[C Hughes]

Thanx to Paul Templeton for the insight... If what you think is actually the case, I image that the only response involves a trash can.

[C Hughes]

Here's an addendum to my post of June 11... My daughter received her Insight bill yesterday. The increase turned out to be considerably higher than the $15 she was quoted and wasn't happy with in the first place. She called Insight's customer service line today and spoke to a lady who was less than helpful and less than interested in her concerns. This woman tells my daughter that the large increase is partly for the new cable box, but the bulk of it is for two premium services that my daughter had declined to accept when the "installer" visited her. She asked what the cost would be for only the new cable box and was then quoted a different figure. She then asked why the new box costs anything at all, as there was a story on the local TV station recently which reported that Insight would not charge anything for a new box for the first two years. The answer she got was that their representatives do not carry this type of box with them. (Note the absence of using calling the person an installer.)

Overall, this again smacks of a cheap way to cheat the consumer. I suspect these persons may not even by directly employed by Insight and may perhaps be on contract, with a primary mission to sell additional service and simply see how much they can gouge the public while supposedly only making a visit to install a digital box.

Eventually, my daughter succeeded in having the charges for the premium services deleted. But, full disclosure was never made and questions remained unanswered.

When my daughter asked why the free box was not mentioned at the time of installation, she again got only vague answer that the representative did not carry that type of box. Thus, the information was circumspect to the point of being meaningless.

My daughter was eventually told she must speak to a different department to obtain a free box, but was not told how to contact that area. Consequently, she called the same number back, primarily to find out what, if anything, she would receive for the extra charge she was now to be paying for the box alone. She spoke to a different person who at first seemed interested in helping her. However, when she mentioned she had questions about her bill, she heard an audible sigh from that person, immediately giving her the impression that the customer service rep had little or no interest in her problem. In fairness to the second person, she did get an answer to her question. But, she had to listen to more sales pitches and blarney about buying extra services. This whole adventure seems to show that Insight has little interest in being fair, wants primarily to trick consumers into spending more money, and shows an indifference to its customers.

I think and hope that this is the end of the story as far as my daughter is concerned. However, I also hope that other customers will react to Insight's trickery by complaining long and loud. One may even be astute enough to start a class action law suit.

(I expect that no one in the Insight family will read this, or at least no one who might be expected to care. Nor, of course, do I expect do receive any reply from Insight. However, I do have a feeling that someone with Insight will take some action with this message: laughingly flushing it down their corporate toilet.)

[John]

Your cable company will never tell you this, but there are ways to get the digital programming without taking the expensive cable company box. There are third party devices from Tivo, Moxi and Windows 7 Media Center that can be used to tune cable channels with the addition of a cable card from your cable company.

By FCC regulation, the cable company has to supply a cable card and usually at a fraction of the rate charged for a box.

Windows 7 will require a cableCARD tuner device, a new unit soon to ship from Ceton Corporation will have four tuners on board. When combined with extenders such as the Xbox 360, those four tuners can feed all the sets in your house and the Media Center will act to record your programs for later viewing as well as display pictures and play music from your personal collection on your television sets.

Tivo and Moxi offer similar services and work without a computer and are a bit more limited in multi-room viewing.

But investigate all your options before signing up for anything from your cable company. Remember their best interest is to get your money and not necessarily to provide you with the best choice for your viewing desires.

[Joe]

I am sick of Insight's devious practices, high prices, assuming the customer is an idiot, and above all, false advertising. I currently have 3 TVs, all of which are HDTVs, and the only way I can get any of the the VERY SLIM selection of HD channels is with a DVR, which will cost $15 per TV. When is insight going to offer HD service without ripping you off?
Plus, I finally got those pathetic mini boxes for the bedroom TVs, and was excited, because all of the TV spot advertised them as working like a standard digital box, but once I hooked them up, all you get is a piece of crap remote, and no guide of any kind. Blatant false advertising. At least I'm not paying for those pieces of garbage for three years.
Also, in an age where your competition is advertising features like whole home DVR, over 200 HD channels in 1080i, integration with Windows Media Center, and Xbox 360, Insight has two minute long spots on how great it is that their remote has a pause button.
I am dead sick of the monopoly Insight has on cable service in Northern Kentucky that allows them to provide horrible, sub par service a a ridiculously high price, and constantly lie to, and insult their customers.