Damned cable companies!!

Recently we were notified by our local cable provider that they will be eliminating the present analog service and going to all digital. I realize the advantages this affords them and their digital customers. However there are a great many of us who still have all our old analog equipment, and don't give a rats ass about HD, never had and never will. We just want to watch TV. So now they tell us that even if we were to go out and purchae new digital sets they won't work because the digital channels will be "encoded" or scrambled if you will. Each analog device will need to have a little converter, (a box a little larger than a pack of cigarettes). This box will process the digital channels and provide a channel 3 NTSC output. You can only get this box from them and it must be rented every month. Is this even legal? Why should anyone go out then and buy a new digital TV with a tuner? You will be paying for a tuner that you will never be able to use. Might as well just buy a monitor. Is there any way around this? Thanks, Lenny

Reply to
klem kedidelhopper
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The folks who just loved their buggy whips had pretty much the same complaint ...

Isaac

Reply to
isw

Comcast did this about a year ago. Except Comcast doesn't directly charge for it. It's unfortunate that your cable service charges -- but the device eliminates the need to buy a new receiver. You'll also find that the picture quality is somewhat better.

It's perfectly legal -- unless there are laws regulating it, which I doubt.

I have a 32" Vizio HDTV in my den. (It's on as I'm writing.) It cost less than $400 at Costco, and has a gorgeous picture, with a near-180-degree viewing angle. (Yes. Really.) Once you've seen HD even on a 32" screen, you will change your mind.

Most cable systems have a "base" service that covers local TV and FM broadcasts and (sometimes) a few cable networks. These operate on frequencies different from those used by the "digital transport" device. If this is satisfactory, you might want to switch.

This is a classic exampe of a situation where "the government" should use tax money to build the infratstructure, then allow businesses to compete.

You're welcome, George.

Reply to
William Sommerwerck

Per klem kedidelhopper:

We're in the Philadelphia area and do not have cable.

Instead, we have a rooftop antenna and a PC application that is basically Tivo on steroids.

It feeds a little black box under each TV. TVs are a mix of digital and analog - the box doesn't care.

Right now, I've got more TV programs and movies on my file server than I could possibly watch in a lifetime.

There was an up front cost and some labor involved, but no monthly cable bill.... and plenty of program material, since the device can record any program any day any time..... the good stuff just keeps building up....

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PeteCresswell
Reply to
(PeteCresswell)

On Wed, 6 Jul 2011 01:28:39 -0400, isw wrote (in article ):

Your analogy fails on multiple levels. Automobile manufacturers didn't have a monopoly on transportation. Nor did they have the ability to render existing horses inoperable. Compared to the current cable monopolies, the telephone company monopoly was downright beneficent.

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Nelson
Reply to
Nelson

Pete Cresswell,

We used to receive free 66 broadcast channels, after the digital switch over. No monthly fee. Of those, 6 stations were worthwhile. One was so good that we would schedule business meetings around their programming, record anything we missed, and spent 20 hours a week viewing their content! It wasn't even in English!

After moving, had to switch to satellite and receive over 800 channels with 147 being presented (cut out those shopping, etc channels), of those 147, around 8 stations are worthwhile, but lost 2 stations which apparently are not available from ANY satellite service, this included that best one!

It's absurd to pay an average of $12/month per worthwhile station and still be inundated with ads at the rate of more than 20 minutes per hour. At this rate, the channels should be 'ad-free' I miss the 'no monthly bills'

Would you elaborate about your system?

Regards, Robert

PS: if you wish we can take this discussion off line.

Reply to
Robert Macy

I forget what they call it here but to save bandwidth the cable "box" only streams TV to your set on the channel you are watching. That way your converter is not being sent bandwidth from every channel. Does that make sense? It really doesn't to me since you can only watch one channel at a time.

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Live Fast Die Young, Leave A Pretty Corpse
Reply to
Meat Plow

If I remember correctly, when the FCC decided that the over-the-air channels were all to switch to digital, they made a separate decision that cable companies would be obligated to continue to support their analog-TV users (in one way or another) through the year 2012.

They *are* permitted to switch their cable plant over to digital transmission, as long as they provide a way for analog TV users to continue to use those TV sets (for another year, at least).

Switching their plant over to digital - yes.

Requiring the use of some sort of access/descrambling device - yes.

Requiring you to rent the access/descrambler box only from them... very possibly not. Back in 1996, Congress passed a law which largely outlawed the practice of "You must rent your cable box from us!" policies by the cable companies. The intent was to allow consumers to buy their cable set-top boxes on the open market, if they wished, and connect them to the cable TV system.

Most cable companies (with a few exceptions) are now required to provide support for "CableCard", a technology which moves the cable-TV descrambling electronics into a small plug-in card (similar in size to the PCMCIA or PC cards used in laptop computers). You buy the set-top box (plain or DVR) on the open market, you get the CableCard from your cable TV provider, you plug the card into the set-top box and "pair" the card to the box, and you're now able to view the digital channels.

The cable companies are allowed to charge a monthly rental fee for CableCard devices.

Up until recently, the cost of a CableCard rental (for your own set-top box) was often the same as the cost of renting a whole descrambler box (which, in most cases, is actually required by law to contain/use a CableCard). The FCC has recently changed the rules on this, requiring that the rental fee for the CableCard be split out separately and be

Further information:

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Most of the simple cable-box descramblers provide better forms of video output than "channel 3 RF" (which is the *poorest* choice for quality reasons). Most of them have, at least, "composite video", and many have S-Video. Neither of these require a tuner (they'll work fine with a suitable video monitor). More up-scale converters generally have either component or HDMI or both.

Put up an over-the-air antenna (if you don't already have one), and get a cheap OTA digital converter. Since the government was subsidizing the purchase price of these for quite a while, there are probably a bunch of them sitting around unused in the homes of people who have since upgraded to digital-capable TVs. You can probably pick one up cheaply, or perhaps even for free via FreeCycle or CraigsList or a local want-ad.

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Dave Platt                                    AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page:  http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
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Reply to
Dave Platt

Per Robert Macy:

The brand name is "SageTV".

Their web site sucks canal water, so don't judge the product by their web site.

The essential components are:

- TV Tuners:

I have four so the system can record up to three shows at a time while we're watching something.

My make model is "Silicon Dust HD Homerun": 2 devices with 2 tuners in each. IIRC mine were about $160 per box (i.e. $320 for all 4 tuners)

- The SageTV Application:

It's about ninety bucks and runs on any Windows or Linux PC - including Windows Home Server.

I tried a Linux-based freebie analog called "MythTV" for several months before laying out the bucks for Sage.

Some swear by Myth... but for me it was like a part-time job and I never got it running dependably.

The SageTV application is the part that reads/controls the tuners and records whatever you want. Also, if you want, the PC it's running on can be connected to any TV - or you can just use the PC's monitor as your TV. If you only have one television and you're willing to do your PC work in that room that's probably something to think about.

If you are watching "Live", it's actually recording and you're watching the recording -albeit in real time. Tune into ABC news fifteen minutes late, and you can start at the beginning and fast-forward the commercials.

This is definitely an enthusiast's product and not a dumbed-down foolproof "appliance". That's not to say you won't be able to set it up once and forget it... but the developers are obviously a bunch of Linux weenies and parts of the product's UI reflects this. For instance the setup screen that lets you customize all of the buttons on the remote control presents the commands by order of their internal ID#. Heaven forbid, they should sort it alphabetically.... but that's small potatoes in light of the product's functionality and reliability.

- The Little Black Boxes:

Actually, you could run the SageTV application on a PC next to your TV and not use the boxes, but the more common approach is to use the PC running Sage as a "server"... located, say, in the rec room, and connect the little black boxes to each TV. The boxes, of course, are actually computers - but they have no moving parts and only pull 5-6 watts.

I forget what arcane, BS name Sage uses for the boxes, but the model name on mine is "HD200" and the most recent mode is "HD300". The industry term-of-art seems to be "media extender".

- The Wires:

Stuff gets from the SageTV PC to the little black boxes over Ethernet cables. I've also run the connection over WiFi using a bridge that worked, but Those Who Know generally say that if you can pull the cable, do it.

- Storage:

Video is disk-hungry. A ripped movie takes 4 gigs. A recorded one-hour TV show takes between 4 and 12 gigs depending on the def. Looking at my files, "American Experience, Eyes On the Prize: Ain't scared of Your Jails, No Easy Walk" is taking 11.3 gigs.

But you can get 2-tb drives for less than a hundred bucks each and 1-tb drives for 50-something.

- (Optional): PC-based functional equivalents of the little black box. One allows you to watch your stuff from anywhere in the world, but doesn't play ripped movies. The other one only works within your home, but will play ripped movies. Each one was about thirty bucks when I bought them, and one copy of one of them comes with the SageTV app.

Fast forwarding of commercials has tb seen tb believed. The remote that comes with the little black box is programmable and I have one skip setting at 10 seconds and the other at 1 minute.

It's been at least five years, probably more, since I've seen more than 20 seconds of *any* commercial. This is especially gratifying around election time..... -)

Of course, there's a freebie trial period for the application, so all one really needs to try it out for nothing is a PC and a tuner card.

If you decide to dabble in it and need some support I'd be glad to share my limited expertise. Confirm at FatBelly full stop Com.

There are also some helpful fora at

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PeteCresswell
Reply to
(PeteCresswell)

That can't be correct. How does the cable company know which channel you want to watch? That's the only way bandwidth into the box could be reduced. The only bandwidth reduction would be between the cable box and your TV set, which is only getting channel 3 instead of the entire TV RF spectrum.

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David
dgminala at mediacombb dot net
Reply to
Dave M

I think there are two different issues being conflated here.

The biggest gain, in switching to a digital distribution system, is that it's possible to carry several digital programs within one 6 MHz channel allocation (which is only enough to carry one analog NTSC channel). Cable operators love the idea of being able to make more channels available through their existing cable plant, and they could carry the equivalent of 3 or 4 standard-definition programs (with decent video quality) in one channel slice.

That's the first part of the "bandwidth savings". All of these channels are available simultaneously to the subscriber (although any given set-top box or TV is only able to tune to one of them at a time, unless it has picture-in-picture capability).

This is the way that almost all digital cable-TV set-top boxes work, or have worked up until recently.

There's another technique coming into use on some cable systems - "switched digital". In this system, some of the less-frequency-viewed channels are not being sent down into any particular part of the cable plant at all times... they're only transmitted when somebody wants to watch them. This *does* require "upstream" signalling from the cable set-top box to the cable head-end. If a viewer tries to tune to an obscure channel (say, the latest Bollywood film translated into Polish), the set-top box sends a message over the cable net to the head-end, saying "I want to see station #87265.35, please". The cable head-end, finding that it's not currently sending that station, locates a free frequency on the cable system, starts downlinking that digital station on that frequency, and sends a message back to the set-top box saying "OK, tune to channel 78 and decode digital substream 4". The system keeps transmitting that obscure station until the last viewer watching it changes to a different channel... and at that point the head-end can stop transmission and reclaim the frequency.

This approach yields "bandwidth savings" by allowing a cable operator to offer a vast number of different channels (including numerous video-on-demand / pay-per-view selections) without having to reserve cable bandwidth for all of them, all of the time.

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Dave Platt                                    AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page:  http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
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Reply to
Dave Platt

It's all done via TCP/IP through the DVR. I'm not going to go back and research it but the idea I gleaned was to be selective to the needs of the cable bandwidth. Google Time Warner headend and DVR or something like that. It's been awhile since I looked at the data for their system but they claim it saves bandwidth. Oh, just remembered it's called SDV or Switched Digital Video or some crap like that. Good luck.

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Live Fast Die Young, Leave A Pretty Corpse
Reply to
Meat Plow

Thanks for the clarification. I'm not up enough with the technology other than to read the service menus on my DVR and remember words like SDV , Carousel read erros etc... and know the TV cards operate via tcp/ip. I also did a little reading and the SDV does operate here as you describe. Only sending out more frequent watched content from the headend via fiber then to the wire nodes hence saving bandwidth.

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Live Fast Die Young, Leave A Pretty Corpse
Reply to
Meat Plow

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