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COMCRAP's System Upgrade

L

LITTLEBOYBLUE

So Comcast is force-feeding all kinds of hardware so we can have a system "upgrade". Like the digital box...it's ANOTHER case where you have to turn the tuning capabilities over to an external device (set TV to Channel 3 kind of thing).

So anyone who has TIVO, for example, can no longer use the internal tuner to record ?? If it works like the set-top box, it means you have to MANUALLY change channel ... not to mention the whole Tivo record two channels at once capability is null if you use the adapter. Unless you bypass the adapter and only record channels 2-29.

I just love how ComCrap, MicroSoft, and everyone else seems to love going BACKWARD in functionality whenever they do some kind of major renovation (or at least until they apply for the next Government bailout).

Surprised there hasn't been more pushback on this. Not to mention they are doing their upgrade 10 days after the DTV conversion so they can COMPLETELY confuse about 80% of the households, who probably have no concrete idea of what is HD Radio vs. what is DTV television vs. what is ComCrap's system "downgrade", etc.

I'm thinking when someone starts making a Hulu recorder (or we can record the feeds directly off the net) the rest of this stuff will get bypassed and pretty soon advertisers' only significant option will be radio. So maybe it's a GOOD thing?
 
Hmm, if they wouldn't even do the "enhancing our network" thing, people would get CrapCast because they could get Digital Cable or whatever without having to take 2 days off work to even install it!!

The tickers that say stuff about the transition should say "If you have Verizon FIOS, DirecTV, or Dish Network, you do not have to do anything., If you have Comcast, you have to install boxes to get channels above 29 or else "Boo Hoo!"

-crainbebo
 
I believe the FCC was supposed to ban cable companies from requiring proprietary boxes to access their system, but they've been letting all these cable systems including Comcast, file for waivers to this rule, while others are trying to switch to switched digital video for some channels, which requires 2-way communication.  Something that CableCard can't do right now.

Then you got CableLabs, who under pressure from movie studios, won't allow you to use a CableCard tuner for your PC, unless your PC is CableLabs certified.  Microsoft was working with DirecTV to make a USB box that allowed Windows Media Center to tune in their channels, but that's since been cancelled.  I guess DISH is now working on such a device, but DISH lately has been having trouble in the local-channel-carriage department with a number of broadcasters (example: Fisher Broadcasting).

It's a sad case of none of them agreeing to any set standard for getting the signals out to the consumer, in a fair manner.

Comcast has already shut-off analog expanded basic here in Federal Way.  Didn't really affect me, being on limited basic already, but their filters were letting Ch. 30 and 31 in while they were still analog. (FSN and ESPN).  And right now while Comcast is waiting for their waiver, the whole expanded basic lineup on digital is open to anyone with a QAM-capable receiver without a CableCard (I happen to have one in my PC).  I guess Comcast found a loophole to waiting for the waiver to be granted, by doing this.  Doesn't help anyone that has analog-only equipment though.
 
I still have expanded basic on the analog big screen TV downstairs in the rec room/basement. It's just connected to the wall cable input. Does this mean after Friday it won't work?

Well that just takes the biscuit!

So....when are they finally going to expand the FM channels lineup? I don't see KKWF here. Or KFNK, KEXP, KNHC and KBKS either. They should throw in more Vancouver/Victoria stations and maybe even some Southwest WA/Portland (even Spokane?) stations too. There's room on the grid for a LOT more stations.....
 
Cable customers will have these choices:
a) Digital converter box ... must tune TV to one channel and change channels on the box. Not very TIVO friendly, unless you get new state-of-art Tivo and get an adapter for the tivo from Comcast.

b) Get the small Digital to Analog converters ... this deal with channels 30+; but you still tune the TV (or other device) to channel 3 and change channels with the new adapter. You get two of these per Comcast account (Digital); and pay $1.99 for each additional TV if you want more than channels 2-29.

c) Just plug the cable into a device (TV, TIVO, etc.) without the converter...and live with channels 2-29 (and NO, they have no plans whatsoever to reallocate most popular cable channels to this band, so ANY cable channels 30+ require the box).

d) Tell ComCrap to go to hell and go to Satellite/Dish.

e) Give it ALL up and spend time socializing with your friends and family. I'm really leaning this way!!!!
 
SeattleObserver said:
Dave Ross was discussing this on KIRO-FM this morning.

Podcast link here: http://icestream.bonnint.net/seattle/kiro/2009/06/p_Dave_Ross_Show_20090608_10am.mp3
Click to expand...

Well it starts out with the report/interview of the city council proposition of Bellingham being a sanctuary for AWOL soldiers (Love it or hate it, that's just Bellingham.) I think we should put signs at the southern city limits warning Seattle people this is no ordinary town. And that's just DRIVING in Bellingham (the street grid looks like it was designed by Lewis Carroll.) Welcome to MY world.

Then we hear the story of the Comcast mess and Dave hits it right on the nail.

Since the majority of cable people in Puget Sound are on Comcast, this is not going to sit well. Especially after we've all been promised we'd all be "ready" with the simple fact of having cable in the FIRST place.

Why did they have to WAIT and lead us on like THIS. They already had this planned obviously - probably even since last year. A major MASSIVE system upgrade like this takes a LOT of pre-planning.

Now, when we're down to the very wire with the transition. I'll say 97% of the common people on Comcast are unaware of what's REALLY in store this weekend ("RELAX! YOU'RE READY WITH COMCAST!" is the mantra STILL playing in our skulls fer chrissakes!)

This...isn't...going...to...look......good....
 
The Comcast version takes place ten days AFTER the DTV conversion. Therefore it's an unrelated system upgrade that they are trying to slide into their customers' hands while everyone is confused. I doubt during their "extensive planning" that they would pre-plan ten days of down-time.

I think I'm just tired of being lied to by all these media companies. Comcast, Dish, Clear Channel ("yup, we're all LOCAL"), etc. Not to mention the 2 billion fliers I get every week from Qwest. If I politely refuse the direct mail and politely refuse all those people who call for the "courtesy account review" (thereby eliminating some jobs), would they be likely to pass those savings BACK to me in the form of lower rates???!

I do think caca to be hitting the fan soon when people wake up over all this. Last phase was the manufacturers quietly drove VHS machines off the market. Only ones you get now have no tuners in them (line in feed only) ... leaving the only option to record being the DVR's that you have to pay to rent (TIVO is subscription, cable/dish are proprietary rentals...the general at-large machines all quietly disappeared from the market).

Just getting tired of this.
 
I don't think all this is true about needing a converter box for ch. 29-74 if you have a dtv/digital tuner T.V.(?)
In my case I have a Samsung dtv and although CMT & Oxy (ch. 50-61) are longer there I do get them on ch. 103-10 and 103-11. and all I did was rescan the tuner and found BIO and History Int.plus a number of radio channels. I also get the channel guide split screen(no text though) just video.
There are some channels that locks on but no video..PPV? HBO? ect. I don't know.

As mentioned there numerous radio channels on already although I don't no them all.
Just can't get into listening to radio on T.V.

Yea comcast sucks but what choice do you have? Satellite in the Pac. NW isn't that great.

Get yourself some good cable and rescan your T.V....Did you get any new channels?
The converter box from Best Buy I have no idea what they do hooked to cable..but they work great with dvd recorders without tuners.
So I'm told.
 
Just to add all the channels from ch.4 to 74 & ch.99 are also in the 79-xx, 1xx-xx channel range.
Including the local dtv channels 7,7.1 7.2 4.2 13.2 get my drift?
 
gr229 said:
I don't think all this is true about needing a converter box for ch. 29-74 if you have a dtv/digital tuner T.V.(?)
In my case I have a Samsung dtv and although CMT & Oxy (ch. 50-61) are longer there I do get them on ch. 103-10 and 103-11. and all I did was rescan the tuner and found BIO and History Int.plus a number of radio channels. I also get the channel guide split screen(no text though) just video.
There are some channels that locks on but no video..PPV? HBO? ect. I don't know.

As mentioned there numerous radio channels on already although I don't no them all.
Just can't get into listening to radio on T.V.

Yea comcast sucks but what choice do you have? Satellite in the Pac. NW isn't that great.

Get yourself some good cable and rescan your T.V....Did you get any new channels?
The converter  box from Best Buy I have no idea what they do hooked to cable..but they work great with dvd recorders without tuners.
So I'm told.
Click to expand...

If you have a DTV with a CableCard slot, Comca$t I believe rents those cards out for $5/month.  I think they'd need sometype of serial address from the TV though, to "pair" it with the CableCard.  Then you could get all of the digital channels, including HBO/Cinemax/etc... with it.

If your TV doesn't have a CableCard slot and it's just straight OpenQAM, all it'll ever pick up is the limited basic, without a box....at least eventually.  Temporarially Comcast has expanded basic opened up here at least in King County, while awaiting some kind of FCC approval for those free boxes they are giving out, but it's only temporary.  However, the local HDs are apart of "limited basic", so those will still be there after Comca$t re-encrypts channels 29-74.  Before Comcast started the transition and opened up expanded basic unencrypted, WeatherScan, TVOne, and C-Span 3 were open, so I think those are joining "limited basic".

As for the ascinine channel mapping on QAM-capable TVs...  Like over the air, they got a physical channel and a virtual channel.  So far the only channels that get virtual channels are the local stations, possibly because I think by law they have to pass-on all PSID data given by local stations, to the customer.  The rest are rediculous and don't match to the cable system's default channel numbers.  The public access channels are up in like, channel 117-1052 (or something to that effect).

I used this to help map the channels on my computer's DTV card...

http://www.silicondust.com/hdhomerun/lineup_web/US:98003#lineup_287335
(This is for Comcast in Federal Way, but most of their channels up and down the Puget Sound are pretty much the same.  It doesn't list the audio stations though)

If your TV doesn't have an option to manually map the physical channel numbers to more sensible virtual channel numbers, you'll have to "go with the flow" with the phsyical channel locations on the system.  Hopefully they change this in the future once all of the transition is complete... (except perhaps having to add a .1 or -1 to the end of the channel number...I manually did all this through Media Center on my computer)

Also another "loophole" in their system.... i've read reports online that if your neighbor is watching a program on On-Demand, you may be lucky enough to "intercept" the video coming into their company-provided box if you land on the right channel/sub-channel assigned to incoming On-Demand video!  Unfortunately, that's the only way to get On-Demand on a 1-way system on a QAM-Capable receiver.

Hope this helps!
 
LITTLEBOYBLUE said:
I think I'm just tired of being lied to by all these media companies. Comcast, Dish, Clear Channel ("yup, we're all LOCAL"), etc. Not to mention the 2 billion fliers I get every week from Qwest. If I politely refuse the direct mail and politely refuse all those people who call for the "courtesy account review" (thereby eliminating some jobs), would they be likely to pass those savings BACK to me in the form of lower rates???!
Click to expand...

At one point some of the female Comcast reps began asking for me personally to begin their spiel. And I, a sucker for awesome stuff on TV would listen and rack up the charges accordingly.

My wife put a quick end to that. She's already cancelled Starz, HBO, Showtime and all my international a'la carte channels and now she's telling me she's going to get rid of digital itself - my god, On Demand, DVR, crystal clear FM radio..GONE? How will I survive? - completely.

"We don't need it and you're too busy on the computer to even watch half this crap you pay for every month without thinking twice. Now you either make up your mind or I will make it up for you"

She tells me there's nothing really special about the digital channels and if I wanna watch classic music videos, I can see them on the VH1 web site on the computer instead of VH1 Classic on TV ("It's all the same stuff without the reruns, plus you get to pick the videos" she says), if I want to watch international channels ("You keep blabbering to me about how Channel 5 in Bangkok is so cool, then cool, let's just get rid of TV Japan which I have NEVER seen you watch") Movies? ("We still have Netflix...speaking of, when was the last time you USED it?")

I'm not filthy rich, but there's just some things I think I just GOTTA have, just for ego probably. But she also said I had better start living up to my Quentin Crisp quote signature on this board.....

OUCH!

Anyway I got a week to decide....what would YOU do?
 
Another decision

#6: Tell ComCrap to go to hell and get FiOS.

I hear FIOS has wayyyy more channels than ComCrap. ComCrap has no ABC News Now. Verizon has it.

-crainbebo
 
As someone who lives literally in the shadow of the three big TV towers on Queen Anne Hill, Comcast reception has been messed up over and over again in my neighborhood. Often I think it's when someone else in my building or nearby moves in and out and, voila, pixellation and video/audio stutters all over the place. Other times, it's just on the "weaker signal" channels, mostly in the 40s and 50s.

The RF impact of these towers overwhelms the cable inputs to my building and causes these channel to blank out. Like when you accidentally pull the plug on the digital cable box and have to wait an hour for the channels to come back. Only with the RF, they never come back. I've had repair people out more times than I can remember, and only one of them eventually figured this out and was able to successfully fix it. At least I'll often get a credit on my bill when I complain about the lost basic cable channels.

It will be interesting to see how the analog shut-off tomorrow affects my cable reception. Lately, the temporary video stutters were all over the dial, then finally cleared up again last week. Now, I can see a verticle 'shadow' band move left to right across the screen when it goes dark - happens on all channels, 2 to 501 to 933, etc. It's similar to when a local analog TV channel interferes with adjacent channel over the air reception - but just strong enough to cause a line across the screen without blocking out the other signal.

I wonder -- with the extra bandwidth from the analog turn-off, can we get a campaign going to ask Comcast to add more of the local and nearby radio signals? Their carraige of 101.1 from Vancouver shows that they can easily access to enhance their FM offerings. Just can't imagine why they picked another 'classic rock' station and ignored all of the other FM formats from our neighbors. There's a lot of speciailzed formats they can pick up from Vancouver and Victoria that will have a minority audience here that might just help boost their cable subscriptions if word gets out that they're now carrying the Chinese, Hindi, and Aboriginal Voices stations (96.1, Red FM, AVN), and others who would enjoy non-commercial classical/world music from Espace Musique, and the talk on CBC Radio 1 from Victoria. Wouldn't mind a few Portland signals, too, or Northwest Public Radio from Mt Vernon or B'ham, or KSQM from Sequim (I heard that one on the car radio into Surry BC last weekend!)

If cable is supposed to offer speciality formats (well, that's been their pitch all these years), this is easy for Comcast to do and brings them some disenfranchised (pun intended) viewers and listeners who will appreciate the specialized ethnic and arts formats that local radio and TV won't or can't offer.

And a rep at Comcast told me they really truly will consider suggestions from the public. Just, my experience suggests, not from interested subscribers one at a time.

And when are we gonna get the HD version of CBC and its digital networks? Newsworld would be a great option to CNN. There's really no world news at all on Comcast, apart from a few one hour newscasts on CBC and BBCAmerica. I also vote for CNN International and BBC Newsworld 24/7 = at least they work on more than one story an hour and offer spot news around the clock.

Happy viewing,

GL
 
I personally would LOVE to see (more like HEAR) more Vancouver/Victoria stations on Comcast. With digital, the bandwith is practically endless. KUGS is a NICE addition, but if they added CFRO 102.7, CHLY 101.7, CKMO (an AM station on 900 kHz, but worth it) and CBC Radio One and Two on the public end of it, it would be HEAVEN.

Some extra commercial stations like Virgin 95.3 (CKZZ), CFOX, CJJR, CIOC, CHQM and CKYE would be totally AWESOME.

I also think there's room to slip in some Portland and Spokane stations. Why not even some LPFMs around the area like KMRE, KWPA, KYAO, KYRS and many others?

I think there's room for everybody on Comcast Digital - including ALL the AM stations....

It can only HELP radio in many ways. You can find your favorite radio station EASILY and with PPM, that's a bonus. It helps sort which format styles work and which do not. Of course, that's all in the carrier of the PPM, but whatever works, works.....It's not just an old boy's game in radio anymore......
 
Even down at a friend's place in Aberdeen, Comcast carries NONE of the local stations down there (KSWW, KDUX, KJET, etc...)  It's basically the same feed that the Puget Sound gets.  It sounds like they just collects major stations along the same fiber link up and down I-5, and deliver it to all the Comcast systems in Western Washington, even if those places aren't anywhere near I-5.

Would like to know what Comcast carries on their FM lineup in Centralia.  If it's the same as the Puget Sound area....proves my point.  I wouldn't be suprised though it it's system carried all the Portland stations instead of the Puget Sound area stations.  Anyone from down there on here?
 
swhyde1980 said:
Even down at a friend's place in Aberdeen, Comcast carries NONE of the local stations down there (KSWW, KDUX, KJET, etc...) It's basically the same feed that the Puget Sound gets. It sounds like they just collects major stations along the same fiber link up and down I-5, and deliver it to all the Comcast systems in Western Washington, even if those places aren't anywhere near I-5.

Would like to know what Comcast carries on their FM lineup in Centralia. If it's the same as the Puget Sound area....proves my point. I wouldn't be suprised though it it's system carried all the Portland stations instead of the Puget Sound area stations. Anyone from down there on here?
Click to expand...

Best you can get from down that way is KAOS and KXXO. I would like to hear more and if Mr. Wolfenbarger can get HIS stations offered by Comcast, it would help get a more rounded picture of Puget Sound radio via Comcast......
 
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