Cox Digital Cable Review

I upgraded to Cox Digital Cable when I was no longer able to get Turner Classic Movies without it. I’ve found that aside from being able to see my classic movies, the set up also have some very interesting extra features. I have the Digital Movie Tier, which includes TCM, Sundance, and various Encore networks. Along with that, Digital Plus was added for free. The movie tier gives me many more options of movies to watch. There are other tiers that you can choose, instead of the movie tier or along with it. The Digital Variety Tier has channels such as Gospel Music Channel and Soap Net. Digital Sports and Info Tier has The Tennis Channel, Golf Channel, and Biography Channel, among others. There’s also Paquette Latino, which has Spanish language channels. The tiers also include Digital Gateway. One tier is $9.99, two are $12.99, three $15.99 and all four are $16.99. You can also purchase a choice of four Digital Premium Services which include multiple HBO channels and other premium movie channels.

Aside from the variety of channels available, what I found interesting was the digital box itself and the features that came along with it. The first thing I noticed was that when you turn to a channel, there’s a bar at the bottom of the screen telling you which channel you’ve landed on, what’s playing, and how long it will be on. The bar leaves the screen after a few seconds so it doesn’t interfere with watching the program, but when you stumble across an unknown program while flipping channels, you’ll know what you’re looking at. You can also bring up the information using either the remote or the box itself. With the remote, you can expand the info to include the plot of the movie or television episode, as well as other information such as actors, ratings and genre. Another plus with this option is, you can find out what’s playing on other channels without having to change the channel you’re watching, and see what’s coming up on a particular channel. You can also pull up a basic programming guide similar to the one that is shown on The TV Guide Channel. This guide seems to be available only by using the remote. You can either see a listing of programs by time, theme, or title. If you select theme, you can choose drama, and then find all the drama programs which are playing and also those which will play up to two days in advance. If you want to see if a particular movie or show is coming on, you can choose title and use the remote to select each individual letter to spell out the name of your program. If you’re program isn’t scheduled, the screen will either give a list of programs that follow your choice alphabetically, or simply say that no listings are available. Since there is no keyboard, you have to select each letter by using arrows, which is time consuming. You can also set an alarm on the tv by programming it to turn to a particular channel at a particular time and to go off after a period of time. Another feature is programming a set of favorite channels so you can easily flip through your most watched channels without having to go through a lot of unwanted channels. There are a few other options, such as parental controls and languages which I haven’t explored completely.

The remote is a universal remote, which is meant to work with the tv, vcr, and dvd player. I wasn’t able to get it to work with my dvd player, despite going through all the steps and being informed that everything was correct. That might be a problem with my dvd player or perhaps I didn’t understand the instructions.

All in all, I find the upgrade was worth it, not only for my movie fix, but also for the additional features that are a part of the digital box itself.