US Cable Support > OptimumOnline > All digital in Hudson County NJ

reply to rick0204

Re: All digital in Hidson County NJ

You can get as many boxes as you want free for one year. It does not matter what is in your house currently. But you can not bring back boxes you are currently paying for if you already have free ones in the house. If you bring one back after installing the free ones then the one you bring back will be one of the free ones. It does not matter what box you actually bring back, you will just lose one of the free promos.

What if you bring back the payed ones before you get the free ones??? (jk)

I requested 4 new SD boxes, but they could only send me 3 without having an installer come out to my house (already have 2). So I settled for 3 for now and will probably get the 4th at some point in the future (then he will only have to install that one and I don't have to parade him all over the house hooking up boxes, although I assume he will still want to check levels on all the boxes). I also want to install them on my own time because it takes time to set them up with the DVRs and I want to do it when they are not recording anything.

Will these new SD boxes be the same as my existing ones (SA Explorer 4200)? Or at least use the same IR codes (the same old remote will work) for when programming my IR blaster?

Thanks

reply to rick0204
The boxes may be free, but do you still get hit with the additional outlet fee? Leave it to CV to make "free" = $1.50/month.

reply to rick0204
My Dad is well over 80. He had broadcast basic with no boxes. They promised him (2) free boxes for two years. I guess they felt guilty for charging $14/month for $9/month service. My brother who has IO + family cable got a box for free for a year.

reply to rick0204
the offer when your area goes all digital is as many free boxes as you need to add on for a year, but any current boxes won't suddenly be free and you can't get around it by returning one and adding another.

reply to aannoonn

reply to rick0204
You have to pay the additional outlet fee as long as you have at least one additional box - free or not.

I had one HD box and got 2 free SD boxes sent to me on the Wappingers Falls NY system. They did credit back the additional outlet fee with the free box promo. Although I have since added a cable card so I suspect I will get charged for that and have to then pay the additional outlet fee. They were to drop Analog here on 5/22 but it's still on. They never published a window of time but obviously there is one!

reply to rick0204
You should get free boxes for a year. Seems to be a pretty standard process at this point.

My area (Monmouth, NJ) is set to go digital on June 5; after the conversion, when do the additional HD channels get added?

I haven't seen anything on my program guide or within the bill just received.

Thanks.

Hard to say. We went digital in mid April and they still have the slide up on the analog channels telling you to get a digital box. So no bandwidth has been freed up yet. Once the analog channels go dead, then I suppose things will begin to change.

reply to rick0204
Ok so here is something else to toss into the question mix. My parents picked up their boxes this afternoon because the bill said June 5 was the cut off. Turns out the real date (according to Customer Service) is September 27. I only asked because we needed to call to activate one of the boxes.

The question was, "why did we pickup the boxes now if we really don't need them until the end of September and when will the promotion end?"

The response was, "The promotion does not fall off based on when the boxes are picked up by individual customers, the promotion is going to end for everyone in your area at the same time, usually 1 year from the cut-off of analog service in each area" and then she said that the free boxes would convert to full price November 2013. So they are getting the free boxes for over a year for getting them early...

Does that make sense? The woman told me that was how they did the free boxes in the already converted areas. Can anyone confirm? If that's not the case, I kinda want my parents to bring the boxes back and wait until September so they truly to get a full YEAR out of the boxes. Right now they don't need the boxes. They only have family cable.

Of course, looking at the picture above, it seems like 9/27 is the last date that analog will be alive in NJ... so even with them rolling this conversion over a 4 month window, they must be pushing people to get the boxes but seems like analog could go away at just about anytime... they don't seem to have any definitive time table.. kinda at their whim I guess.

That's correct for past areas. Can't say for any current areas, but my node went full digital mid July last year, but the promos went through 9/30.

My area (Monmouth, NJ) was supposed to go digital on June 5. I received a letter, robo-call, and there was a message in my last bill.

However, we are not digital yet. There have been no emails, no postings on the channel guide, etc. so I don't know what to expect and when!

reply to Jmartz
Well when they went digital here 1000s of people waited till after Tv's got turned off then went to walkin center to wait on huge lines out the door. You could have boxes mailed to you though.

reply to limegrass69
Those messages appeared for about 3 months. After that, they disappear and they drop Switch Digital Video on the premiums and you will get the HD channels.

reply to TheMan2

IIRC, the only places where they don't charge the "additional outlet fee" is in areas where broadcast basic is encrypted...which are the Bronx and Brooklyn.

The fee is charged in all regions. If you only had a single box prior to the free boxes, you can call CV and ask if they can waive the fee. When they did my area they would waive the fee for people that had one box only, but 0 or 2+ would have the fee (because in the case of 2+ they either had the fee already).