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Channel 117 on analog cable - what is this?

J

justthenumbers

http://i38.tinypic.com/214s8q9.jpg

My mom has Expanded Basic analog cable, with no digital cable box. This is what shows up on Channel 117, regardless of whether I'm watching on a TV with a direct-to-the-wall hookup, or if I have a VCR in-between.

At my residence, I have cable service with the same company, but I live in a different part of the metro area. With this setup, when I tune to Channel 117, I just get a black screen & my TV says "No Signal".
 
I also saw something similar to this on a Cogeco system in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, while on vacation this past April, with classical music playing in the background. I think it was on channel 62 analog or something, close by to the other channels.

The old Vision Cable in Pinellas County also carried this channel as well, with a ticker saying that the channel is for testing purposes only. Therefore, in my opinion, the channel is used mainly for engineering purposes to measure its signal and making sure it is within the proper parameters.

Though of course, not every cable system offers this channel -- today's Bright House does not have it (the channel was gone by the time Vision Cable became Time Warner).
 
Yeah, I've seen that on some Comcast systems too. It's a data readout for technicians, used on some of the systems that have older infrastructures. The newer ones have computerized sensors which are read by the repair techs on-site to test the signal strength.

One of those channels 117 or 118 is used for broadband internet on a lot of systems too.
 
BRNout said:
Yeah, I've seen that on some Comcast systems too. It's a data readout for technicians, used on some of the systems that have older infrastructures. The newer ones have computerized sensors which are read by the repair techs on-site to test the signal strength.
Click to expand...

Comcast Atlanta doesn't have it (there is a blank channel 117 that autotuners lock into when scanning for channels), but they did have a digital channel 117 that was either locked up, blank, showing a test pattern with "Comcast Media Center", or what appeared to be teleconferences (the channel disappeared recently). I have no clue why it was even there in the first place.

I would suspect this is a relic of older non-broadband headend systems (although they may have digital cable and may be using fiber optic transmission). I have seen these before while travelling. Does anyone know why they would have a need to transmit these out in the open?
 
Looks like they are monitoring Return Path signals, since I think the frequency readout (at bottom left) shows 24.87 MHz.
So it's probably being used for Return Path alignment and troubleshooting.

Funny thing, in Salt Lake City, we have a similar signal being broadcast on MMDS frequencies from one of the mountaintops. It's a Hewlett-Packard spectrum analyzer display. I don't know who it belongs to.
 
AT&T Cable had this in Central Connecticut on Analog Channel 81 back in the day before they got taken over by Comcast. Nowadays COMCAST is digital only for channels 24-64. The only channels you can get without a box are:

3 CBS, 4 NBC, 5 Public Access, 6 FOX, 7 PBS, 8 ABC, 9 MY-TV, 10 ION, 11 CW, 12 PBS (out of market), 13 Telemundo, 16 TBS, 17 EWTN, 18 Univision, 19 Weather Channel, 22 C-Span, 70 QVC, 95 Educational Access, 96 Government Access, 98 CT-N (CT Government Programming), and 99 HSN.
 
MarcB said:
AT&T Cable had this in Central Connecticut on Analog Channel 81 back in the day before they got taken over by Comcast. Nowadays COMCAST is digital only for channels 24-64. The only channels you can get without a box are:

3 CBS, 4 NBC, 5 Public Access, 6 FOX, 7 PBS, 8 ABC, 9 MY-TV, 10 ION, 11 CW, 12 PBS (out of market), 13 Telemundo, 16 TBS, 17 EWTN, 18 Univision, 19 Weather Channel, 22 C-Span, 70 QVC, 95 Educational Access, 96 Government Access, 98 CT-N (CT Government Programming), and 99 HSN.
Click to expand...

That is completely not true. Analogue cable in Hartford works fine.
 
Whale said:
MarcB said:
AT&T Cable had this in Central Connecticut on Analog Channel 81 back in the day before they got taken over by Comcast. Nowadays COMCAST is digital only for channels 24-64. The only channels you can get without a box are:

3 CBS, 4 NBC, 5 Public Access, 6 FOX, 7 PBS, 8 ABC, 9 MY-TV, 10 ION, 11 CW, 12 PBS (out of market), 13 Telemundo, 16 TBS, 17 EWTN, 18 Univision, 19 Weather Channel, 22 C-Span, 70 QVC, 95 Educational Access, 96 Government Access, 98 CT-N (CT Government Programming), and 99 HSN.
Click to expand...

That is completely not true. Analogue cable in Hartford works fine.
Click to expand...

It's true in Bristol, New Britain, and Plainville. They ran articles about it in the Bristol Press and Herald. All the subscribers got letters stating the change was taking place 8-25.
 
Marc is indeed correct. Unless your TV has a QAM tuner, you will no longer received the channels that were on the expanded basic lineup previously. I'm in New Britain (CT) and that's how I get USA, CNN, CNBC, etc.
 
I meant the analog cable channel lineup. With Comcast in New Britain, CT (near Hartford), we still have analog service on channels 3 to 13, 16 to 22, 70, 95 and 99.
 
I remember years ago on my Aunt's tv I was flipping through the channels and found Comedy Central on 116 with picture and audio while 36 which was also Comedy Central had no audio but picture. I thought that was really weird. It doesn't do that anymore though.
 
I wouldnt mind having an analogue tuner that went up to 1000 just to see whats up there!!

A friend of mine had a sony cable ready set that went to 1000 and he found a test pattern on 140 and music in the 800s! (This was 10 yrs ago or so)
 
Sounds like that Sony TV was just engineered for a global market.

That Sony probably had 1,000 channel pre-sets, not 1,000 channels.

I've seen a good few UK TVs that have 100+ channel pre-sets, analog cable ready, but all you had was UHF 21-69 and at best 4 channels... In our case channel pre-sets 1-8 were tuned to BBC 1, 2, ITV and Channel 4 - the first 4 being the London variations and the second 4 being the Southern variations. Channel 9 was for the VHS. Channels 10-199 were never used on this Philips set I remember we had.

On our local TWC analog 99 is an engineers' test pattern of coloured bars.
 
Reviving this topic ;)

I was in the Oxford Suites in Yakima, WA last month. I remember seeing that engineering purpose channel on Channel 96 analog. This was with Charter Cable. When you pressed the channel button on the remote it skipped past it, but you could find it manually with the channel number keys.

-crainbebo
 
The Dude said:
I wouldnt mind having an analogue tuner that went up to 1000 just to see whats up there!!

A friend of mine had a sony cable ready set that went to 1000 and he found a test pattern on 140 and music in the 800s! (This was 10 yrs ago or so)
Click to expand...

Actually, I believe some of the old Sony TVs, just cycled some of the channels on different numbers (add multiples of 125), but I think that there were also offsets, so folks didn't really see much on the "large" channels.
 
My local cableco, EastLink, has a similar channel (around ch 70 IIRC), but to my knowledge, doesn't run any music in the background...
 
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