Comcast Corp. is giving some viewers a little agita by pushing HBO into its more expensive digital-cable tier just weeks before The Sopranos begins its final season.
The switch adds as much as $4.95 per cable box to an affected customer's monthly bill, though Comcast says only a small number will have to pay that.
The change doesn't sit well with some customers, who see it as reducing their service or forcing them to pay more for channels they already have.
"I guess the thing that bothers me is, the service is bad and rates keep increasing," said Alan Letofsky, one of many customers who recently received a notice from Comcast saying they would need a digital-cable box to keep HBO, which telecasts The Sopranos. "We just don't want to give any more money to Comcast."
Letofsky, of Haverford, has a digital box on one of his sets, but analog service on the other two. To keep HBO on all three sets, he said, he would have to pay an extra $9.90 - $4.95 each for two boxes - per month. He already pays $83.05 for Comcast cable.
He said he would switch to another cable company if he could.
That's what Barbara Simmons of Churchville, Bucks County, did recently after Comcast pushed EWTN, or the Eternal World Television Network, into its digital tier. She and her sick mother both enjoy the Catholic channel and its prayer services.
"You feel like you're praying with a community of people," Simmons said. She believed she would have had to pay $20 more per month to upgrade to digital, though Comcast says the cost should have been the same or no more than $1.10 a month.
So she switched to Verizon's fiber-optic TV service as soon as it became available in her area. She saved money and still gets EWTN.
A decision to move EWTN and C-SPAN2 to Comcast's digital tier late last year caused an uproar at Pennswood Village, a Bucks County community of 450 people over age 65.
"Pennswood was up in arms," said Alice Garr, chairwoman of the village's ad hoc TV services committee, which was formed solely to deal with the issue.
Pennswood and Comcast reached a compromise. Comcast gave the community digital service for one year at no extra cost, but it's not clear what will happen after that.
C-SPAN2, with its book discussions, and EWTN were very popular with Pennswood residents, Garr said. People were trying to say, there has to be "some way to get less of the garbage and more of what we want."
Garr noted, however, that the new digital service comes with more channels than the analog.
