I’ve had pretty good service with Comcast for years, but over the past 12 months or so I’ve become increasingly unhappy with them. This week they’ve really pissed off a lot of users.

It seems that Comcast disabled the serial (aka “data”) port on their cable modems for users in the New England area (and possibly some other areas). For many customers, this means nothing. However, TiVo users who had their TiVo connected to their cable box serial port (for changing channels) were suddenly left with no way to change the channel. Is this Comcast’s way of trying to force TiVo users to switch to Comcast’s DVR? Was this an intentional change or was it an accident? Their tech support has not been helpful, acting somewhat clueless about the issue. Though, finally, they seem to be acknowledging that they’re receiving a lot of complaints and are “looking into it.”

In the mean time, TiVo users can switch to a different cable (the less reliable IR cable) if they can find them (I was fortunate and knew exactly where mine were). Those who don’t have them can buy them online (and I would guess at a local electronics store).

I hope Comcast fixes this problem. If they don’t, rather than buy Comcast’s DVR, I’d be more likely to move away from Comcast entirely (I’d love to get FiOS when it’s available in my area).