[Dave A]

It was a quiet day at the ballyard until a few emails came in complaining about their office tv not working. I have some RF plant issues and thought it was more of that. So I looked at a few sets and all the in-the-clear signals I get from Comcast were gone. I went to a flat-screen I have connected to my Comcast node before it hits my RF insertion plant and it had all the channels on their EIA channels but "scrambled signal" on all of them.

I run a plant of 750 tv sets and only 220 are on cable boxes which were not affected. That leaves 530 sets that just went dark other than my local channels. Most don't count as they are in public areas and use my own insertions for them. But the office sets are on a limited clear QAM service that gives us just the local channels we need in the office area. In a bit of luck when we upgraded a few years ago to HD, I kept 10 analog modulators connected to a stack of 10 Comcast boxes for a few areas that did not have HD sets. Using them I was able to return local tv on those channels for the day.

I called Comcast engineering and they told me they flipped all the "must carry" clear QAM overnite to encrypted set top boxes (STB) per a FCC ruling from a few months ago allowing this. Stick a fork in basic cable on your 1997 Magnavox. There is nothing off-the-wall now here. Boxes are the rule of the day.

At my DVHRC radio club meeting tonight I mentioned this and one of our members from Allentown, PA said that Service Electric did the same thing overnight on their system.

By luck, my system is on a service Comcast calls the MDU. Multiple Dwelling Units = apartments and can be reversed. My friends at the Comcast-owned Wells Fargo Center are not so lucky. They are classified as residential and are out of luck.

I checked at home tonight and my clear QAM is still there. I am not on the Phila system and originate from a suburban office feed. Counting down till that is gone.