So I've got brighthouse dvr digital cable, which is awesome when it WORKS. Yesterday somewhere around 90% of the channels dont work. Sometimes they work, for a while, then get pixely and black out, the sound blurs, etc. Yesterday the channels flat out don't come in at all. It's been like this since getting it like a year ago. Every time I call the answer is "there's technicians working in your area". which is bullshit. I've never seen a single truck around here unless someone is just getting it installed for the first time. Is this common for digital cable?!

It's probably a subsidiary. All the little mom and pop cable companies have slowly consolidated. Jones Intercable, Cox Communications, etc have all joined forces against Comcast and Verizon. Here they are called Broadstripe.

And yeah, periodic outages while they are still tuning up are common. We lose digital internet access about one day a week, average.

Does that same problem happen if you move the cable box to a different cable jack in your house?  Alternately, if you have multiple boxes, does it affect all of them at the same time?

The problems you're describing are very common with digital signal degredation.  The pixelation is because of the compression cable companies use to reduce bandwidth costs; when one of those packets of compressed information is lost or corrupted, so is that part of the screen.

the internet isn't terrible, it goes out every couple weeks. not that they ever apologize for it.

theres only one cable box, its always plugged into the same TV. I admit I don't know much about it, there's an actual harddrive in the cable box? and its connected to the internet? god i sound 80 but Im new to this.. *thinks back to the rotary phone*

Yeah, your newness will make it hard to troubleshoot the situation.

Okay, good news!  Brighthouse seems to be a Road Runner reseller/partner.

You should be able to go to www.help.rr.com to look up the status of the services in your area.

Look for "Network Status" under some of the menus there.  It could be under either "Quick Links" or "Member Services" or something similar.

Long story short, see if you can use their own systems to identify if you should be having problems.  If they're not showing network issues or planned work, but your TV is all jacked up, then you can call them on it.

"We have repairmen in your area."
"Really?  Because your network status page says everything should be fine right now.  How about you GET a repairman into my area tomorrow to do some hardware & line tests?"

oh cool, thanks. I go to the brighthouse website all the time and there isn't shit on it. I just thought they were in denial of any problems at all. 

fucking annoying when im in the middle of a show and out of nowhere the screen gets pixely and blacks out, makes me cuss and throw stuff. luckily most of the shows i watch are online but UGH. a lot of channels don't come in at ALL.

*studies*

Depending on your area, you can probably get AT&T's U-verse setup.  Consider your options. 

is that dsl? been seeing ads for the att setup.. dsl fuckin sucks though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-verse

Everyone I know who is using this service likes it very much.  "DSL sucks" used to be true, but I'm not so sure it is true anymore.

It is true in Australia.