I live in an apartment complex (somewhat large, about 20 buildings) and we have 'community cable' in all our wall jacks.

from what I understand, being at an apartment where you're not really allowed to install non-dish antennas - you either pay for cable or you get a basic 'free' package that I think is called 'must-carry' stations.

ie, some stations must be carried and the signal available to the wall jack for even non-paying 'customers'.

I have DTV, so for a long time I never even tried to see what was live on the building wire. but recently I bought a hdtv QAM tuner for my pc and have been getting the free PBS stations (kqed-hd, mostly) just by connecting my tuner to the building wiring and nothing else.

but in the last few days the signal went away completely. first, most stations were not tunable and when I did a scan, I got one large main channel and 25 subprograms. I never saw that before. and then the next day, I see nothing - my scans return no signal at all on the wire.

so, my question is - does 'must-carry' apply to me? is the local cable company compelled, legally, to give me at least the local public and OTA style stations? (when you are in an apartment, you really don't have the option of just putting up your own yagi, etc.)

next question, how do I call the cable company and explain that I used to get must-carry stations but I don't, now. yet I'm not on their books as a subscriber. given how poorly they tend to treat actual paying customers, how am I going to put in a trouble ticket, in this case?

TIA,

"Must Carry" is local channels and Public Service/Access channels and whatever they else they want to provide. If they provide them in analog, they do not have to provide them digitally and have every right to encrypt at any time they desire.

I wonder, are you getting AT&T Cable, or something else?

It may be that:

1. You are on AT&T Cable, and they have previously been filtering out everything above the "Basic Cable" or "Expanded Basic Cable" tiers. That's what you are probably calling "must carry"...just locals and a few other national channels.

It might be that you were getting some "ingress" (leakage) of the local OTA channels in to your cabling, up in the part of the spectrum that had channels filtered out. Now, AT&T must have added-in digital channels...one of which is what your box "found" on a scan.

2. If you are not on AT&T, maybe your apartments have some SMATV or MATV system, a type of "Private Cable" system. Again, something must have been changed in the system. Maybe they are tying in to AT&T, or maybe they are adding in some digital locals, but haven't got them running yet. If so, the channels you got before might still be ingress, but they might have tightened up some connections someplace.

The laws are not finalized yet on digital "must carry", where stations can require the local Cable company to carry their digital signals. Analog must carry , of course, has been on the books forever. Most systems do carry locals "in the clear", if they carry them at all.

Remember, though....the same law that allows satellite dishes, also allows OTA antennas.

First: Keep in mind that the broadcaster determines whether their channel is "must-carry" or not. Just because a channel is a local broadcast channel doesn't mean it is "must-carry". The broadcaster could have elected to charge a retransmission fee, and in that case, the must-carry rules are irrelevant.

Second: As alluded to above, the current must-carry rules require that for channels that have both analog and digital signals, the analog signal must be carried, and for channels that have only digital signals, the digital signal must be carried. Also note that sub-channels need not be carried; that's the service provider's choice, not the broadcaster's.

I wonder, are you getting AT&T Cable, or something else?


comcast, via my apartment complex.


Remember, though....the same law that allows satellite dishes, also allows OTA antennas.

does it? I've been trying to read up on this and all that I find says that dishes are allowed (was this lobbied by the dish companies?) but it didn't really include yagi antennas, for example. otoh, it said that if you have a bit of 'exclusive access' area (that only you have access to) then you can do what you want, sort of. its the sort-of part (IANAL) that I don't get. but there were exceptions called out for the dish and not a yagi or omni or any other kind of non-sat antenna. I wonder what that means.

at any rate, I think I found what happened. here's what I ranted about (link is better; no need to re-rant):

http://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3954

short rant: we were getting a 'bulk deal' from the cableco and it was always included in the rent. now, we have new building mgmt and they decided to discontinue this bulk-account with the cableco and so toward the end of the month the service went dark. to get what I was getting before, as part of the rent, I now have to pay $20 and upwards - and also have to schedule in a time for the installer to come by - and probably remove a trap he installed just a few days ago. oh, and for anything that isn't on special, an INSTALL FEE is going to apply. (yes, I'm quite annoyed at this).

even if I decide to now pay what I was getting before for free, its still a week long wait to get someone out (so they say).

in terms of 'must-carry', yes, I now see that this concept is not at all related to my situation. I was mixing up concepts, I guess ;) I had been assuming that the basic 'local channels only' service that was coming thru the wall, no matter what pkg you ordered (even none) was something I could count on. it had always been there, for a long time (years). and it was always included as one of the things you get when you pay rent.

this was quite a rude way for the building management to, uhhh, try for yet another money grab. I had no notice at all that they would simply yank service. its called 'pull the plug and see who comes running' game.

sigh.

Must- carry was a term used by Dish Network for modulating a second round dish to the input of the primary dish to gain international channels and regular and local channels simultaneously. The must-carry install was not lucrative to both the installer and vendor and has since been omitted. Sometimes the installation was unsuccessful in gaining the 148 satellite orbital position, while the main dish could gain sight for the 101 and 110 spots. Now, all channels are found from the Dish 1000, Dish 1000.2 and Dish 1000+, so only one dish is lagged on a home.