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Old 11-12-2013, 09:30 PM
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Dave A Dave A is offline
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Must carry channels gone in Phila

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.
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Last edited by Dave A; 11-12-2013 at 09:37 PM.
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Old 11-13-2013, 12:50 AM
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Ouch!
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Old 11-14-2013, 01:54 PM
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I'm near Cleveland and have Time Warner cable service. TW moved several channels (ShopNBC, Speed, Travel Channel and G4) to digital recently. I spoke with one of the customer service representatives over the phone a couple months ago and was told the company will not "drop" any channels, but they might as well have done just that as I don't get those channels on my flat screen anymore. I do not have a cable box; my cable connects directly to the TV.

How much longer will it be before TW starts moving must-carry channels such as CNN, TBS, TNT, et al. to digital, forcing folks like myself to use a cable box? Not that those channels are that important to me (they aren't; I'm perfectly happy with my local channels and their subchannels), but I don't want to pay the extra $10 monthly rental fee TW is charging for HD cable boxes. Even DTAs (digital transfer adapters)--those small cable boxes used with older analog TVs--come with a $0.99 rental fee after the first year; moreover, the cable operator will not mail these boxes to subscribers, who must go to the local TW cable office and pick them up personally. I cannot downgrade my cable to broadcast basic, either, without incurring a hefty early-termination fee (my cable service is part of a three-way bundle--cable, Internet and home phone).

I have cable because I do not get good reception using an OTA antenna (my Clear TV indoor DTV antenna gets every channel in this area but two--the two whose subchannels I watch the most), and do not want to go to the trouble of installing an outdoor antenna. However, if Time Warner does decide to move most or all must-carry channels to one of the digital tiers, I guess I'll just have to accept my situation the way it is. It will be no loss to me since, as I said, I am perfectly satisfied with just the broadcast channels and their DTV subchannels; any programming I do not currently receive over the cable I can always get on DVD, so I have no use or need for any of the must-carry channels.

I have no use for HDTV, either, but since flat screens are the only kind of TV now sold anywhere, and analog sets don't work well on so-called digital cable (my two analog CRT TVs will work on cable, but one channel, the NBC affiliate, is carried on Time Warner cable in HD and does not fill the screen vertically), I guess I don't have much of a choice. I personally believe HDTV is a fad that will fade into oblivion eventually, anyway. Quad (four-channel) sound in the 1970s comes to mind. The system went out of style and was all but forgotten by the early 1980s.

I see HDTV following the same dark road. The stations will continue broadcasting in ATSC (far too much money has been invested by American television stations in new transmitters, antennas, studio gear, etc. for station owners to even think of going back to analog), but HD television is, IMHO, a flash in the pan that may not last much longer. If the failure of 4-channel sound to develop into a successful method of sound reproduction is any indicator, I predict HDTV may die a quiet death in about five years (witness the failure of 3D motion pictures in theaters in the '50s), leaving us with only memories of the "old days" of what we used to call high-definition television.

Don't get me started on 4K, 8K and ultra-HD. These are extensions of HDTV that may fail as well within a year or so after they are put into place and are operational in this country. Innovation is one thing, but change just for the sake of change (HDTV taking over from NTSC and replacing that standard, making existing NTSC TVs unusable, is one example) makes no sense.
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Old 11-14-2013, 03:07 PM
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Jeffhs, I don't know if I agree with you.... Americans seem to have an large appetite for useless electronics. Remember there was no real need for cell phones when there was pay phones everywhere. We were pretty much forced into the cell thing. And the bigger the screen, the more 4k, and 8k stuff yer gunna need. The only way I see it playin out yer way is if we begin living more like the rest of the world. And to that I remember seeing home sizes beginning to come down in sq. ft. per average house.... So will that limit the size of tv screens we kinda think is "big enough" For our room, we stuck with 25" 4:3.

I Do see 3D kinda crashing.... I would not want to have to wear glasses to see a 3d news broadcast or even begin to think they will produce 3D vampire shows..... or will they....

As to the tv boxes for everyone..... TWC has began $14.95 internet only service here in NY, I know they are bleeding subscribers like crazy. I bet they are taking a lesson from the airlines. Lower the price on service, then build up on add-ons just so the basic service works on yer set.... You know they have statistics on what the average person has, so lets put a few financial road blocks in there for ya- Can't go on vacation without a bag..... $$ Carry-on charge $$ Most people don't have $5k in there savings account, so lets see where do banks set the free checking threshold.... Let me guess..... could it be.... wait.... oh.... yup.... $5k.

TWC and others for that matter mostly think, even though they are bleeding subscribers, that they got ya-.... And if they can get you into digital, then HD ain't far behind for you.... Then it'll be 4k.... And they are very busy selling people on mobile for their service too, so they will be wanting to take tv bandwidth again in a few years.... We're gunna loose tv as we knew it all together in about 12 years.... It will all be pay demand tv over the internet, even if its that stupid version of broadcast they now call wireless.....
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Old 12-09-2013, 10:04 PM
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I think it's a matter of control. Now, without their damn box, people can no longer get lucky and connect a TV to cable and see a channel.
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Old 12-09-2013, 11:00 PM
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It is also kinda a 'Big Brother' thing since they can monitor which programs you watch, and when you stop watching...Places like viewership survey companies and the government might have use for the data, and the former would likely be willing to pay for it...
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Old 04-19-2014, 03:30 PM
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Be great to suggest just where "Little" Brian Roberts might insert a running Roto-Rooter, but that would be oh so not nice.
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