Comcast Triple Play Review | Phone, TV, and High Speed Internet

Coming from the dial-up days, I remember what it was like to crawl and I thought we arrived when I was living in Maryland using another cable provider at 1.5mb/s. When I moved to Pennsylvania and switched over to Comcast's Internet I couldn't believe the speed at the intro package of 6 mb/s at the same price as I was paying for the 1.5 mb/s on another network. Truthfully, I felted cheated, but was very happy to have more. I tell people all the time about Comcast's speed versus DSL & other cable providers.

Apart from the "normal" download speed Comcast has a "burst" download. This feature recognizes when you are downloading a larger file and increases your download speed up to 16 mb/s (currently, may increase.) Wow! To put that in a way you may know. When you download, you may see a screen that says 1234K of 12345K downloading at 60kb/s. Well when Comcast is downloading (given the server you are downloading from allows for it) I have seen as high as 1,500 kb/s download burst on my connection.

For example, when I download Adobe Acrobat Reader on a typical 1.5mb/s rate, it would take about 3 minutes to download, where as with Comcast it takes 10 seconds or less. Dial-up would be hours.

Added benefits in my case:

* E-mail has never been down
* Always a high speed connection
* Makes my house's wireless router even more awesome!
* Never seen a slow down, I know there are other on with Comcast. Other cable providers slow down with more users on at once.

All the above is speaking from many parts of the day from morning to late evening. I am an online gamer, I need bandwidth. This has never been a problem concerning lag or latency.

I haven't used a conventional phone line service for a couple of years. I started out with Vonage, but choose to switch over to Comcast when it came available. At first I was a little skeptical because I didn't want to loose any of the features I was used to with all the previous carriers. I was impressed the day it was rolled over.

First off, it was extremely important that I kept my same phone number. They did just that, and I was able to get a secondary fax line for only $10.00 (approx.) more a month. My primary line has all the bells and whistles such as call waiting, forwarding, voice mail, ID, 3-way, etc. The best part about being digital however in my opinion is the ability to check your voice mails online from anywhere. NICE!

Comcast's equipment comes with a battery backup installed, so you don't have to worry about not having phone services during a power outage. Keep in mind however, that if your phone requires power (cordless) then you will need a conventional wired phone. The battery allows for up-to 4 hours of talk time. I wouldn't know for sure, because I haven't had that long of a power outage (thankfully!) The downside is, if your power is out, so is your Internet to conserve on battery life.

Some wonder what the difference is between the sound of digital VOIP and conventional phone line. Short answer, a lot! The first thing I notices was clarity and no static, interference, bleed through, etc.

Comcast Television is sweet. I am not going to spend too much time on this part, because TV is TV, however the On-Demand part is worth discussing.

I am not much of a TV viewer, but when I want to watch a movie is very nice to sit down and select what movie I want to what on my schedule. Now, you will need a premium channel package such as HBO, Starz, Cinemax, etc to utilize this, but it isn't the only options to choose from. They do have plenty of not out of the box office movies to pick from the free listing and as well you can buy a pay-per-view movie for 24 hours.

To be honest, the only problem I had in the very beginning was the original digital box that I had went bad (overheated.) It didn't smoke or anything, it just wouldn't keep a signal. Comcast took care of this quickly and professionally within a couple of days of me calling in. They had to send out a technician to install the new box, which required scheduling.

So, all in all I am very happy as well with the television part as I am with the other two services. I live in the Greencastle, PA area (about 90 miles west of Washington, DC.) Also, I may add that I live in the country side (You know....what some would call it "God's Country" LOL) I have had plenty of people in the city tell me they are very satisfied just as I am, so Comcast does a fine job at treating all equally.