I was all set to blast Verizon for manipulating my parents into buying their DSL service when my dad gave me the surprising update: Verizon had admitted to making a mistake and fully refunded my parents’ money. Yup, you read that right. Full refund.

Here’s the story in brief. My parents have had trouble with Comcast in their neighborhood (it works great in mine) and decided to make the switch to DSL when Verizon told them it was available. Unfortunately, when they made the switch, Verizon’s broadband proved flakier than Comcast’s. They lost their Internet connection constantly and nobody could explain to them why the service was so unreliable.

Fast forward to a few weeks later and some savvy support technician finally figured out that my parents’ house was outside the recommended distance from a Verizon hub. In other words, they’d been sold a service that was virtually guaranteed to fail. (more…)

Forrester Research just released the results of a survey showing that consumers don’t care that much about a la carte channels and wouldn’t be willing to pay very much for the privilege. I might not have agreed a few years ago, but here’s why my opinion has changed:

1. Better shows on more cable channels
   ESPN and Comedy Central used to be the only networks I watched on cable, but now I regularly tune in to FX, TNT and the SciFi network at the very least.
   
   
2. On-demand viewing
   By ordering Netflix DVDs or downloading shows from the Web, I can get access to almost any content I want. If I wanted to drop my cable subscription, I’d virtually be able to get a la carte viewing through other distribution sources. (ESPN being the big exception)

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Because there’s nothing like an official study to make us think we know which direction the market will go…

A study conducted by Canalys (reported on ZDNet) found that 51% of the European adults surveyed were interested in mobile TV. However, the content they reported being interested in varied widely, from live sports events to YouTube clips. Content is king, but apparently no single type of content rules the realm.

In an entirely different study, Ipsos Insight found that Americans are still watching the vast majority of their television on their TV sets. Even adults who regularly stream and download video from the Web watch just 11% of their TV at the computer, while still watching 75% on a traditional TV screen. In the 12-24 cohort, that number drops to “more than 60%.”

Interestingly, a fair number of folks said they’d be interested in burning video from a computer to a DVD to watch on the big screen. Note, they didn’t say they’d be interested in buying a new gadget to stream content from a computer to a TV. Of course, maybe the survey didn’t ask about that.

There was a fair bit of conversation at the recent Cable IPTV conference around how Comcast is approaching competition from online video services. Part of the approach involves having its own online video destination, (see news about the upcoming launch of Fancast), and the other part involves using the Internet to push subscribers to cable TV services. The launch of Comcast’s TVplanner definitely falls under that second category.

The functionality is simple (and non-revolutionary) and therefore extremely easy to use. Plug in your zip code, select your television service and voila! Up comes your TV guide. Next Comcast will undoubtedly add a feature for programming your DVR to record the shows you find. Off the Internet you go and back on to the cable TV network.

In the category of you can’t make this stuff up, the Jackson Mississippi ABC.com affiliate site had the headline yesterday: Meth Addicts Posed As Comcast Workers.

My first reaction - couldn’t they have found something more exciting to pose as?

Of course, it turns out they were pretending to be Comcast workers to rob someone’s house. Poor Comcast. Now they’re getting blamed for home invasions!

Here I thought my hefty monthly cable bill paid for a broadband connection, but it turns out we haven’t yet decided what broadband is. Congress is in the process of defining “true broadband” and Om Malik is surveying actual broadband users about what constitutes high speed. (So far 6 Mbps is winning out – See Above)

The issue really driving this debate is the disparity of connection speeds across the US. We can complain all we want in metropolitan areas that there’s not enough bandwidth to watch P2P HDTV online 24 hours a day, but the real problem is in rural areas where there is no broadband, even by today’s definition of 200 kpbs. Already the US isn’t doing so hot in global broadband penetration rank (though the Verizon policy blog has a very thorough discussion of why things aren’t as bad as they seem). Raise the standard and our rank may plummet further.

Aside from rank, however, redefining broadband should give legislators the ammunition they need to keep the pressure for greater bandwidth on. What operator wants to have its service demoted from the category of broadband? What would they call it? Not-too-slow speed?

I do not bash products lightly, and I feel I have been extraordinarily patient with the eStarling digital photo frame. However, there is a limit. It is now mid-May, five months after the eStarling debacle started, and my parents’ main Christmas present is still not working as promised. Actually, it’s not working at all.

After running the netconfig utility at least half a dozen times, the newly shipped version of the eStarling frame still will not connect to the Internet and therefore will not operate. The folks over at Gizmodo apparently got their unit to work (though they still didn’t like it), but we tried connecting ours to two different wireless networks (in two different states!) with no luck at all. That’s it. I’m done.

While I’m still yearning for the advertised eStarling feature set, I have in the meantime taken a Westinghouse digital photo frame for a spin and found it very satisfying. My mom was on hand when I took the Westinghouse frame out of the box and her first reaction was that she couldn’t imagine hanging such a thing in her house. Then she saw the photo resolution.

I have the 14.1″ Westinghouse model for review and the picture quality is beautiful. (My lame photography doesn’t do it justice.) If you have a half-way decent digital camera, the photos fill the frame in slideshow mode. You can also choose mosaic mode for four photos at once, set photo transitions, save favorite photos and watch MPEG videos.

Best of all, the product is dead simple to use. There are three steps on the box: Plug in frame. Insert memory card. Turn on frame. And it’s literally that easy. The frame comes with 128MB of internal Flash memory and has ports for several card types (specs after the jump) as well as USB connections. I successfully tested file transfers from a PC and connection with a Flash drive. For general use, I’d suggest stocking a large Flash drive with gazillions of photos and keeping it plugged in. It’s easy enough to update a Flash drive with new photos when needed.

I’m definitely planning on writing in for a refund on the eStarling frame, and I just may put the proceeds towards a purchase of the Westinghouse 14.1″ digital frame model. The only thing possibly holding me back is the Westinghouse price: $349. Ouch. If you’re interested, Westinghouse does offer frames in different sizes. And the Live Digitally blog likes the 8″ version. But I have to admit, the large screen is delicious.

Want specs and more photos? Keep reading.

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