[PoolBrews]

With regards to the recordings, if they were extremely old they could have been removed for a number of reasons. If a movie is recorded during a weekend or week long promo event, they will be removed once the promo is done. If the channel that carried the movie loses it's rights (they typically have movies a set period of time), it gets removed.

I had DirecTV for 20 years. Too many game to play when you want to renew to get a good price. Once I moved to Florida, no way I would ever have DirecTV or Dish - the rainouts happen on far too many days here. No signal for hours, and for any live events you're screwed.

I then had Xfinity. Good internet, good TV... then the rate increases started. I was able to get good rates for 3 years, but this past year the "best" rate they could give me was too much. Went to CenturyLink for 1GB fiber internet. $65/month, no taxes, no fees. Guaranteed for life. Fiber is the best you can get for internet - no issues with bandwidth, user load, etc. They give you the fiber modem for free.

Signed up for YouTube TV. As a T-Mobile customer, you get $10/month as long as you are a T-Mobile customer. So that's $55/month. I have all the channels I need, an unlimited DVR, and all for $120/month. Xfinity's "best" package included 200Mb internet - 1/5 the speed I have with CenturyLink - the same number of channels I regularly watch (yeah, Xfinity says you get 200 channels, but there's easily over 150 of these channels I would never watch), and I save $50/month.

[MrChipster]

Just buy a large external hard drive for backup 4+ terabyte drives are available for under $200

Or buy microSd cards in the 256gb size and store movies very inexpensively

[Luggage]

Spectrum is owned by comcast

[KRMACK55]

Originally Posted by Buckeyephan

When I tried to continue a recorded program that I began last night, I found it and most of the programs I have recorded over the years had disappeared overnight. Tried to have technical services help but they said the programs had disappeared from the cloud. My DVR only has 19% being used. Her suggestion was to either buy the movies or record them again. Not possible since many were from commercial channels or not available any more. So, tomorrow I plan to bid Comcast adieu. We could return to Direct Tv but we also need internet and a landline. How is Spectrum? We are not interested in “cutting the cord” or some of the other methods some people choose to use. My sister did that and by the time she subscribed to the streaming services, it costs her more than before and she has less. I think Spectrum and Direct Tv are the only options for where we live. Looking for feedback from people who use either of those. Thanks.

I had spectrum from June 2019 to August 2021. Their service is awful. I had problems almost every month. I had internet and cable for one TV. My bill started at 142- and ended at 225- before the final month of their cheap plan was 152- for a few channels. I did not have a talking remote or VCR my remote was replaced 6 times. They are a subscription service do I was charged $152- for 4 days of Spectrum. Awful

[MrFlorida]

Verizon and T Mobile both have 5G internet, some of my neighbors have this service and seem to like it.

[Jdelett]

We have Charter and the DVR works fine. We had Charter in a different state with a better DVR. Not sure why this one is different, but it’s meeting our needs. The salesperson tried to sell us the DVR in the Cloud deal, but it wouldn’t work with our brand new Samsung. It was very frustrating because it took them two weeks to get us connected to a regular DVR. We are happy enough with it now. It records what and when we want it to.

Originally Posted by Buckeyephan

When I tried to continue a recorded program that I began last night, I found it and most of the programs I have recorded over the years had disappeared overnight. Tried to have technical services help but they said the programs had disappeared from the cloud. My DVR only has 19% being used. Her suggestion was to either buy the movies or record them again. Not possible since many were from commercial channels or not available any more. So, tomorrow I plan to bid Comcast adieu. We could return to Direct Tv but we also need internet and a landline. How is Spectrum? We are not interested in “cutting the cord” or some of the other methods some people choose to use. My sister did that and by the time she subscribed to the streaming services, it costs her more than before and she has less. I think Spectrum and Direct Tv are the only options for where we live. Looking for feedback from people who use either of those. Thanks.

We use Spectrum, and they are horrible. No Fiber Optics like Verizon. They use copper, so when its rainy, we always have internet issues. We are switching over to XFinity, and Your Tube. Good luck!

[BEETHOVENMIKEY]

We got quite an education over the last 2 years.
We've been Comcast customers for over 30 years and have regretted it almost every year. When there's issues, my blood pressure foibles just at the thought of dealing with them over the phone. I've chewed them out and been sent up the chain over technical issues so many times, if I call in, I'm automatically bumped to their 2nd tier. But, that's not comforting resolve.

FIRST: Comcast discontinued DVR service over 3 - 4 years ago in this area. If you have one of the two Xfinity DVR units they issued, it's a dead box, except for the electronics. Since the last DVR was issued, they've had 3 different Xfinity comm boxes (basically a communication/computer device). Everything you have done over the last 3+ years, has been CLOUD based. You may see the same recording lights flashing, but that's simply the electronics. When they did it...as you've discovered, you lost everything recorded on the DVR. Up in MD, before we moved down here, I lost many hours of recordings I was saving.
SECOND: when Comcast switched everyone to cloud, cloud storage was 250mb. However, about 2 years ago, in fine print, they dropped storage to 100mb. They did not advise people with any fanfare. Depending on your recordings,, you should have noticed the percentage of storage available, in the top right corner of your recording SAVE menu, drop significantly. Again, if you had things recorded and saving when they made the change, you lost everything. You should be noticing that you get pop up notices to upgrade to more storage. If you don't... again, if you have an almost full cloud storage allotment, and you have new programming to record, your oldest recorded programs will be deleted to make room and they cannot be recovered. Again... they want you to buy more storage.
THIRD: depending on where you live in TV, will depend on internet alternatives. We live on the north side, which us serviced by CenturyLink. They offer fiberoptic, here, which is far superior to any other service. We moved into our new house about 18 months ago, signing up with Comcast, but once the 2 yr agreement is up, we're going to CenturyLink for internet and upgrading to 500mbps. CenturyLink also carries full programming, and we'll evaluate at that time whether to get full CenturyLink package for internet and TV, or just get internet and stream other services.
Good luck.

[Skip]

Keep "Blast" Internet from Comcast until T-Mobile covers all of The Villages with cellular-internet at a lower price.
LoCast (app) was free and were sued by the networks and were just shutdown. Too bad. Others may take its place for local network feeds at no charge. (LoCast asked for donations and that's why they were sued.)
We use YouTube-TV. Got first month free and months 2 and 3 at reduced rate (search for bargains). Love it. No contracts. Pay as you go every month. Quit and restart anytime. Comes with UNLIMITED "recording" (in the cloud) which is really just indexing of every show or episode you want to save into the future. Get channels I didn't get before with Comcast TV. Our data use is less (50%) than Comcast's monthly cap of 122GB. Only channel we sorta miss is the Weather Channel. (There are other weather stations however.) They are working on adding it to the lineup. YouTube-TV (a Google product) can be added to almost any smart TV or Roku Box or other streaming stick, even the old ones that now sell for $10. You can upgrade to 4K if you want to be amazed and you have a new 4K set. And no outages during storms like with satellite services.
We love YouTube-TV.
I tried VOIP for phone service but it didn't work for me. So if you bundle to get phone AND internet, make sure you have a way out of the "year long contract" if the service doesn't meet your expectations.

Skip

[TNKYGAL]

We are fairly new to The Villages. We used Spectrum until recently in our other home and have used both AT&T and Direct TV in the past. Spectrum isn't available in our area of TV, so we chose Xfinity for our internet service. We are not yet full time in TV, so a part of our decision-making was that we did not want to pay year round for television in either place. So we dropped our Spectrum TV and have gone to YouTube TV. YouTube TV allows us to change our home area twice per year, so we only need one service for both locations. Their service is is about $20/month less than we were paying (the main difference being the broadcast & equipment fees), and again, it stays with us for both locations without having to pay additional for TV in TV!
YouTube TV has unlimited DVR, but programs stay for only 9 months. We really like some of the features, especially when recording & watching sports. I know the OP expressed that there is no interest in a streaming service, so based on my experience, research, and options for our locale, I'd recommend Xfinity. But should there be a change of heart, look into You Tube TV, especially if you still maintain two homes!

[rogerrice60]

.we use Spectrum for everything and we'll pleased with their service

[Fenster]

I had Comcast as well. They are thieves.
They programming is not bad, but their business practices are larcenous. I called several times to complain and got nowhere.

[jedalton]

Originally Posted by Buckeyephan

When I tried to continue a recorded program that I began last night, I found it and most of the programs I have recorded over the years had disappeared overnight. Tried to have technical services help but they said the programs had disappeared from the cloud. My DVR only has 19% being used. Her suggestion was to either buy the movies or record them again. Not possible since many were from commercial channels or not available any more. So, tomorrow I plan to bid Comcast adieu. We could return to Direct Tv but we also need internet and a landline. How is Spectrum? We are not interested in “cutting the cord” or some of the other methods some people choose to use. My sister did that and by the time she subscribed to the streaming services, it costs her more than before and she has less. I think Spectrum and Direct Tv are the only options for where we live. Looking for feedback from people who use either of those. Thanks.

and I will show you what I have done for a lot of the villagers. Average savings $125/mth757.748.6060

[jedalton]

boy, all of you are wasting a lot of money.
how about this:
all local, sports, movies, series, including NFL network, red zone all nfl games, all MLB, NHL and much more.
$27/Mth after firestick setup.

[DaddyG]

Originally Posted by villagetinker

This is interesting, I had my DVR die, and was told that all the recordings went with it. I got a replacement, hooked it up and the next day all the recordings were back! No idea why or how this happened.

The same thing happened to me. The DVR appeared to be erased by a power surge. I ordered a replacement thinking all was lost. Then I bought a surge protector. Next day, I unplugged the DVR, plugged it into the surge protector and it rebooted completely and restored all the recordings I thought were lost. Lesson learned: always reboot before surrendering.