Comcast Going all Digital 2-31

[Spot]

Originally Posted by Spot

They may have been dropped during the transition for a while. I had the very basic tier of cable & rescanned multiple times, but only got the SD Locals with three separate HDHRs. I was able to get an outstanding signal using OTA & promptly cancelled Comcast.....until I got a Prime.

Since I have such a good signal over the air, I haven't retried to see if it was my error...When I called them..they acknowledged that only SD was in the basic package.

OK...I must've made a mistake in my prior attempt. I took an unused HDHR & connected it to cable & was able to get my local channels in HD. Thinking back, I'd bet that they moved the channels & I never did a rescan.

..I'll go back to my dish of Crow now....

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by Spot

OK...I must've made a mistake in my prior attempt. I took an unused HDHR & connected it to cable & was able to get my local channels in HD. Thinking back, I'd bet that they moved the channels & I never did a rescan.

..I'll go back to my dish of Crow now....

It may not have been your error. Subsequent moves here have been fine, but one of the first ones Comcast did here in CT several of the local QAM HD's were lost for several days during the moves. I was pretty PO'ed until the popped back up during a rescan several days later. But they definitely went MIA for several days.
That may have been what happened to your system.

[nyplayer]

Had to do a rescan this morning some QAM channels moved.... no Longer can receive SD channels on PVR 150. So anyone that uses Comcast I recommend a re-scan.

PS they did the conversion yesterday not on the 12th...

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

So anyone that uses Comcast I recommend a re-scan.

Just as an FYI, that is definitely a regional thing. It can vary greatly from area to area. My Comcast here (Avon CT Comcast area) dropped the analog channels almost a full year after I heard reports of it happening out in some states further West. And while they dropped mine around a year ago, you are just getting smacked by that.

What would be nice is for them to give us some way of knowing about QAM channel adds/moves/deletions. They do it all internally in their STB's so they really don't give a crap about people using the tuners in their TVs or QAM boxes like the HDHR. I just wish someone would lock the Comcast execs (along with the Motorola, Pace, etc people) in a room and show them what a REAL interface looks like. People complain about how ugly/plain the stock SageTV UI is (not as much since V7), but have any of these people actually tried to USE their STB's? My GOD they are horrendous!! Excruciatingly slow and with a whopping 12-24 hours of guide data (at least that is all I can get on their STB here). Impossible searches that either find dozens of "matches" or none at all for even relatively simple searches.
If I had to rely on watching television using their STB's, interfaces, and guide data I would be constantly returning STB's with bullet holes in them!

[MattHelm]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

Just as an FYI, that is definitely a regional thing. It can vary greatly from area to area. My Comcast here (Avon CT Comcast area) dropped the analog channels almost a full year after I heard reports of it happening out in some states further West. And while they dropped mine around a year ago, you are just getting smacked by that.

Comcast Chicago has been 100% digital since I moved there, a little over 2 years ago!

Originally Posted by waynedunham

What would be nice is for them to give us some way of knowing about QAM channel adds/moves/deletions. They do it all internally in their STB's so they really don't give a crap about people using the tuners in their TVs or QAM boxes like the HDHR. I just wish someone would lock the Comcast execs (along with the Motorola, Pace, etc people) in a room and show them what a REAL interface looks like. People complain about how ugly/plain the stock SageTV UI is (not as much since V7), but have any of these people actually tried to USE their STB's? My GOD they are horrendous!! Excruciatingly slow and with a whopping 12-24 hours of guide data (at least that is all I can get on their STB here). Impossible searches that either find dozens of "matches" or none at all for even relatively simple searches.
If I had to rely on watching television using their STB's, interfaces, and guide data I would be constantly returning STB's with bullet holes in them!

I agree 100%. I've even seen the "next gen" cable DVRs, and they are worse SageTV -7.0 (that's a negative sign there!!!) So if you ask me, their "next gen" is 14+ versions behind SageTV that is how many years (1 or 2?) old?

As regard to "looks" I still say getting to your recording easy/fast and finding new ones is more important than "pretty". I like a lot of the features 7.0 added, but the looks aren't one of them (don't hate them, just think that's way down on my "care about" list).

[drewg]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

What would be nice is for them to give us some way of knowing about QAM channel adds/moves/deletions. They do it all internally in their STB's so they really don't give a cra...

There is a utility called scte65scan which can scan the channel/frequency tables used by the cable company to populate the tuning frequencies used by DTAs. See http://scte65scan.sourceforge.net/ They have a good explanation on the project's front page.

Using this tool, you can create a script to automatically detect when a qam channel you're interested in is (re)moved, as long as it is included in those tables. (eg, some HD channels might not be, since the comcast DTAs only get SD channels).

FWIW, I'm on a Comcast all-digital system now, and they move channels around a LOT less than TWC did, when I had them at my old house. Every time TWC added a new digital channel (every month or two), they re-shuffled most of the QAM channels. I don't remember Comcast ever moving anything in the almost 2 years I've been here. I think it has something to do with Comcast being all digital, but TWC (at the time) having ~75 analog channels.


Drew

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by MattHelm

I agree 100%. I've even seen the "next gen" cable DVRs, and they are worse SageTV -7.0 (that's a negative sign there!!!) So if you ask me, their "next gen" is 14+ versions behind SageTV that is how many years (1 or 2?) old?

As regard to "looks" I still say getting to your recording easy/fast and finding new ones is more important than "pretty". I like a lot of the features 7.0 added, but the looks aren't one of them (don't hate them, just think that's way down on my "care about" list).

I resisted going to SageTv 7.0 for quite a while for pretty much the same reasons. I could do things in SageTV 6 MUCH faster than I can in 7. However some of the nice things about 7 finally enticed me. For me the biggest plus what the addition of the plugins database/interface for finding, installing, and most importantly being notified when an update has been posted to one of your plugins.
The "pretty" is just an added benefit.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by drewg

There is a utility called scte65scan which can scan the channel/frequency tables used by the cable company to populate the tuning frequencies used by DTAs. See http://scte65scan.sourceforge.net/ They have a good explanation on the project's front page.

Using this tool, you can create a script to automatically detect when a qam channel you're interested in is (re)moved, as long as it is included in those tables. (eg, some HD channels might not be, since the comcast DTAs only get SD channels).

FWIW, I'm on a Comcast all-digital system now, and they move channels around a LOT less than TWC did, when I had them at my old house. Every time TWC added a new digital channel (every month or two), they re-shuffled most of the QAM channels. I don't remember Comcast ever moving anything in the almost 2 years I've been here. I think it has something to do with Comcast being all digital, but TWC (at the time) having ~75 analog channels.


Drew

I'll take a look at that utility.

Once Comcast went all digital the moves on QAM channels drastically reduced for me also. During the transition though, things were popping up, moving, or going away at an all too frequent rate.

[nyplayer]

They got me last night.... just started to watch a few shows from last night. Covered at the bottom below the play timeline is a Due to improvements a rescan is needed. Now I have to check my recordings from yesterday.

Interesting redaing.

http://forums.comcast.com/t5/Channel...s/td-p/1630605

see screen capture attached.

[MattHelm]

nyplayer, where are you? (Just a city name)???

It sounds like they are starting to encrypted the basic channels, which they are now allowed to do, but they were suppose to give notice before they encrypted them. Does your Prime get them?

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by MattHelm

nyplayer, where are you? (Just a city name)???

It sounds like they are starting to encrypted the basic channels, which they are now allowed to do, but they were suppose to give notice before they encrypted them. Does your Prime get them?

Portland Or.

A rescan helped for now. I was able to watch the episodes using Plex so that worked out ok.

[MattHelm]

I swear at one time, there was a program (Windows command line) for the HDHR that scanned the channels once a day (or when you told it) and checked for any changes. If there was a change, it alerted you. I think I found it on the Silicon Dust web site. This was a LONG time ago, though. (maybe a year after the HDHR came out???)

I think it just scanned the know channels, and looked for ID or res. changes. I remember a filter you could set so it didn't report ALL changes, just the ones you were interested in. Not sure if it would have caught it in your case.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by MattHelm

I swear at one time, there was a program (Windows command line) for the HDHR that scanned the channels once a day (or when you told it) and checked for any changes. If there was a change, it alerted you. I think I found it on the Silicon Dust web site. This was a LONG time ago, though. (maybe a year after the HDHR came out???)

I think it just scanned the know channels, and looked for ID or res. changes. I remember a filter you could set so it didn't report ALL changes, just the ones you were interested in. Not sure if it would have caught it in your case.

You can still do that with Config I believe, but it could be Setup. There is a GUI for one of them which is what we usually use, but you can still feed the actual program with switches and arguments from the CL. Do a search on it over on the Silicon Dust forums.
I recall seeing a message there telling how to scan for channels.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

They got me last night.... just started to watch a few shows from last night. Covered at the bottom below the play timeline is a Due to improvements a rescan is needed. Now I have to check my recordings from yesterday.

They got me too. Here, Avon CT Comcast feed, they moved several channels.
All 4 channels of one PBS station (I live near the border with Mass. so I get both a CT and a Mass. PBS) as well as all the channels for a couple other local networks (CW was one)

I had to do a rescan of all my TVs with QAM tuners as well.

Update (later that evening): ARRRRRGGGHHHH!!!!! I forgot to do an update scan in SageTV on one tuner of an HDHR Prime. Take a guess at which tuner SageTV decided to record on! Re-checked them all to be sure, so all is well now, but I missed 2 shows because of my blunder.