The Best Guide to Cable Packages and Alternatives

Mid-Hudson Cable

Mid-Hudson Cable is a cable company run by Cablevision in eastern New York state, providing service to Columbia, Greene and Southern Albany Counties.


Mid-Hudson Cable, a division of Cablevision, is the primary cable provider in Columbia, Greene and South Albany counties. They show the way in which Cablevision is able to tailor its service to a particular service area, while at the same time keep its overall corporate culture. On this page, I will discuss some of the specials of Mid-Hudson Cable, and some of its unique features.

Mid-Hudson Cable Television

Mid-Hudson Cable provides a range of television packages, from basic cable all the way up to HBO. Mid-Hudson works according to an “a la carte” system, rather than a tiered system. In other words, after you’ve gotten their basic pack, you can then choose additional channels to add to your channel options. Just make sure you add everything up before you purchase.

Broadcast Basic: I’ve written dozens of articles on cable television, and Mid-Hudson Cable is the only company that I have encountered that openly advertises its basic cable, which is very impressive. Basic cable is required by the FCC and provides the channels that local broadcasters would provide, plus some local channels,. It has 22 channels and costs $21.95/month.

Basic: Basic is completely different from Broadcast basic. It includes all of those channels, plus the standard non-premium cable channels (i.e., the ones that include advertising). It has 74 different channels and costs $59.95/month.

Digital Basic: This package adds some additional 60 channels for a cost of only $8.95/month. This sounds like a great deal (and it is), but requires purchasing the Basic package. So, you can’t just get Broadcast Basic and Digital Basic.

Premium Channels: You then have the option of adding the premium channels HBO, Cinemax, Showtime with the Movie Channel or Starz with Encore for $15.95 each. Note that this includes more than it sounds like. For instance, HBO is really seven different channels.

Spanish Tier: It is also possible to get 11 Spanish channels as a part of their Spanish tier. These are basically Spanish versions of other channels. It costs $6.95/month and requires that you at least purchase their Basic package.

A complete listing of their television channels can be found here.

Mid-Hudson Internet

Mid-Hudson internet service, unlike its television service, has unfortunately gotten poorer reviews from users such as those here, here and here. In general, the complaints center around speed and stability.

Mid-Hudson Cable offers internet service for $49.95/month, which offers 5 Mbps of speed. However, many people have complained that their service is significantly slower than this. Worse, they have also complained that their complaints were not very well handled when they brought them to the company.

One of the nicer things about Mid-Hudson Cable internet service, though, is that it can be upgraded rather inexpensively. You can have up to 10 Mbps if you pay another five dollars per month or up to 15 Mbps if you pay another ten per month. Usually internet prices become exponentially more expensive the faster they become, while Mid-Hudson doesn’t charge much more for additional speed.

My recommendation, then, would be to look for other options for internet. However, if you do decide to go with Mid-Hudson Cable, then I would suggest at least getting 10 Mbps. It is a good bargain for that extra speed, plus, if you find your speed starts dropping below 5 Mbps, you’ll have better grounds to complain about the speed of your service.

Mid-Hudson Cablevision also provides telephone service, but only for those who have internet services with them. Since I’ve already disrecommended their internet service, I will therefore need to disrecommend their telephone service. In a package with internet, telephone service costs about $20/month for unlimited calling to the continental United States and Canada (sorry Hawaii). It does come with a lot of nice features like call forwarding, call waiting and a do not disturb fuction.

Mid-Hudson Packages

Mid-Hudson Cable bundles together a number of their services into bundles that provide savings. They have four different packages available, each of which will make the services cost less than if you bought them all together:

All the Right Connections: Combines the Basic packages with internet and phone for $131.25/month. For the first year, this package costs $99/month.

Digi Pak: Combines Basic and Digital Basic with internet for $116.00/month. Note that this package does not include phone service.

Basic Speed Pak: Combines Basic with one premium channel and internet for $122.45/month. This pack doesn’t include phone service.

Movie Pak: This service combines your premium channels so that the more of them you purchase, the cheaper each is. Two premium channels cost $26.95, three cost $32.95 and all four cost $42.95. This Pak must be combined with at least the Basic television package.

Note that these packages are themselves a la carte. In other words, you can add additional channels and services to them (for example, you could add Spanish television to any of them).

Conclusion

Mid-Hudson Cable provides a good range of television channels at reasonable prices. They have done a good job of being upfront with customers about prices and available channels. The difficulty many customers seem to have is their internet service, which has been said to be slow. Still, as a television provider, they are well worth looking into if you live in Columbia, Greene or South Albany counties.

Please feel free to see their official website here.

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