I have been a Bright House Central Florida customer for a year now. I switched from Dish Network, which I loved, but was tired of having my signal go out every time it rained, plus the endless contract disputes and channels being removed.
The pros:
1) Bright House in Central Florida carries all but one channel I like, which is great.
2) Almost every channel I watch is in HD, which is also great. Picture quality is excellent.
3) I have the Cisco Explorer 8642HD DVR and it works well, but not in the same league as the Dish Network DVR I gave up, which was fast and rarely needed a restart.
4) I like the fact that we can access our DVR, search for shows and add them to our DVR all online. It is easier and faster than trying to search using the DVR itself.
The cons:
1) channel line-up: 2 of each channel (if one is available in HD). The SD and HD versions are far apart in the line-up from each other. Impossible to memorize channel numbers being they are so spread out all over the place. Dish Network combines the SD/HD version of each channel to one channel number. Example: HBO East is on channel 300. If you have a HD DVR/receiver it displays in HD. If you have an SD DVR/receiver it displays in SD. Very easy to memorize channel numbers as all of them only had 3 digits, compared to BH having all HD with 4 digits.
2) DVR slows down after some use, requiring a hard restart (unplugging for a few minutes).
3) My first 2 months as a BH customer the Programming guide was fair, but then bam, they released a so-called upgrade, which in reality was a downgrade. The new guide is terrible and I mean terrible. Poorly developed with no features which I was spoiled on with Dish Network. The guide is compressed to a partial screen, only showing 1.5 hours of programming, Black and Blue colors, which make it difficult to read without perfect eyesight. The Exec which approved the current guide should be fired, along with the developers which showed no skill in developing this mess. Look at the TIVO or Dish Network Programming Guide as an example of quality programming and then go back to the drawing board and develop something which BH customers will like.
4) Create some new programming packages with tiered service, like all other cable and satellite operators. If we want HD channels currently we have to order the full 200 channel package. If we want less channels we lose HD and get the basic 80 channels. We need some packages with HD channels like a Top 60 package, Top 100 package, etc. It would be helpful for those of us which want HD, but don't want the hundreds of crap channels we don't watch.
So in conclusion, I give BH praise for high quality picture and above average DVR, but the poor programming guide, double channel numbering and lack of smaller packages make BH Central Florida an average service. Plenty of room for improvement if they would listen to their customer's feedback.
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