The price for my Rogers cable connection finally jumped (all of the discounts and introductory offers finally expired) to where the difference between my good old cable and digital cable was negligible. I used to be a Time Warner Digital Cable subscriber, though I have been reluctant to adopt the Rogers Digital Cable service. I am an early adopter, but I have held back on Rogers Digital Cable for more than 12 months. Here are some of my reasons:
- Price
This is always a stumbling block of new technology adoption. But until last month my cable bill was 35% less with regular analog cable. With a recent raise in rates it is negligibly different than the price of digital cable. Price was the main reason that I did not upgrade to digital cable, basically I was not willing to pay $30-40/month for the additional digital specialty channels. - Features
Great, I now get over 200 channels. Why is it when I sit down to watch TV there is still very little on. I miss the features and benefits of a Personal Video Recorder. I want my Tivo. Why doesn’t Canada have Tivo yet? Great, I get more channels, but why not improve how I watch TV now. - Convenience
Digital cable requires that I change my current home theatre. I have to get in behind the theatre console and reconfigure the mess of wires. When will consumer electronics companies realize that I will trade all of this for no-nonsense solution. This inconvenience far out weighted the benefits of more channels.
Rogers Digital Cable is a great example of a company not understanding what their customer needs are and misinterpreting television watching behaviour. Rogers must have analysts/business consultants/marketing analysts that review all of the vast stores of customer data and analytics but they still don’t fundamental understand how or why I watch TV. Until they do, they are doomed to add more features that I will adopt after the price has been reduced.