San Francisco, CA - Astound

Desperate to get rid of Comcast now that they are requiring STB to rec non-basic channels in June.

Astound's website states they have On-Demand and HD channels with STB.
I'm interested to know if it is possible to pick up any HD stations thru Clear QAM without STB in San Francisco. Please list Clear QAM channels if you know. Thank you!

I actually have Wave Broadband in Washington State. There are areas in the San Francisco area (I believe) that have Wave Broadband as well.

As an FYI, Wave Broadband is a "sister station" to Astound Broadband. Anyway, I was just reading that you were looking for HD via ClearQAM. Since my ClearQAM is far different than yours, I will only say this. I have done a search not too long ago, and I have only come to realize that I get FSN HD via ClearQAM.

Here's a tip for you. Anything you get via ClearQAM, you will immediately get for free on your STB. Doesn't matter what package it is!

I've been with Astound (RCN) for 10 YEARS now! and am happy with them. Can't remember the last time I have any prob. Outages, there were a few in the 10 years span were quickly fixed. A couple of times, my broadband was dropping, so I called and told the tech, "I'm dropping packets." So he says, OK, hooked up his scope whatever, and went oh, ya... I am on it. The next morning everything was honkee dooree. He ACTUALLY UNDERSTOOD precisely what I was telling him! These days u just don't get this kind of competence.

I have the basic, no STB box, and I get the local channels Fox-CBS-NBC-ABC-PBS etc in full glory HDTV digital on the 100+ channels. Just last week, they duplicated all their analog channels into DTV (albeit not HD, still 480i) but still clearer than the analog.

I pay $62 bux monthly cable + broadband. Has more channels that I ever need. So OK, I'd like HBO and a couple of premiums, but I ain't paying double just to get a couple of extra channels and deal with the &^%$* STB box.

A few years ago, I tried Comcast (forgot why I decided to do that) and after 2 weeks, taking advantage of their 30-days trial, immediately switched back to Astound.

Service wise/price I can't do better. U just have to look at their lineup and pricing and compare.

That's exactly how it works here between Comcast & Wave Broadband (Astound is Wave, and vice-versa). Wave Broadband features more "affordable" packages, when Comcast fights for the best. While I may not have as much programming on Wave Broadband, I pay for what I watch! Same with my internet. Speed isn't that much different, but it still saves me at least $17 a month.

Monthly Cable Bill comparison ... I'm saving approximately $38 on Wave Broadband.

Has anyone out there gone through the painful process of mapping all the channels available with a QAM tuner for Astound? By mapping I really meant to say, has anyone made a list with the station names and channel numbers? This would save me hours of time identifying them so that I can configure my Sony DVR TV Guide.

Thanks.

I actually started doing this. Attached is a rough list I put together. Though I'm late to reply and you may have already done this

I have a question for Astound HD users. I just picked up a Samsung LN46B750 and upgraded to Astounds regular HD service. Most HD channels look pretty poor quality. Mostly watching the Olympics, the quality looks so compressed and during lots of action, it is noticeably broken up, pixelated, and all kinds of strange noise.

Anyone else have this issue? I am trying to determine if it is normal, a service issue, cable box issue (Motorola DCX3400), or the TV.

 

astound_channels.txt 3.6123046875k . file

I get NBC HD and other over-the-air channels via both an antenna and via Astound. In my experience Astound does not further compress any over-the-air-channels, and the sizes of the files my MythTV setup creates bear this out.

I have, in the past few weeks, seen odd signal dropouts on one channel, HBO HD, and really ought to call the company to request someone be sent out to check signal strength. It's not the cable box, as the issue occurs on two boxes.

I noticed that Astound recently remapped some of the HD channels. Now I can't find ABC or CBS HD via clear QAM. I've had my TV scan a couple of times. The channel lineups are almost the same as what's listed in the attachment above.

Any ideas? I type in the channel number with my remote and there's nothing there.

I did find these additions:

126-6 Boomerang
117-8 Nat Geo (instead of 117-11)
116-4 KOFY HD (instead of 116-42)

90-36 Speed

I hope some people are still reading this topic...

I wish there was some guarantee about the clear QAM lineup offered by CableCos...

Having to rent a STB for every drop is unreasonable.

Just a week or more ago Astound re-jiggered the channel mapping (invisible to STB renters) and now KQED-HD is encrypted.

I feel LOCAL channels should not be encrypted since they are available with the BASIC package.

If they charge a premium for other channels, I understand their reasoning for controlling access to those. Heaven forbid we should be able to watch something we are not paying for out of the $55/mo. fee!

Is anyone reading this not using a STB?

Can you get all the local OTA channels (INCLUDING the HD feeds)?

I still need to get a splitter so I can split the cable to the TV before it goes to the STB. I haven't checked for the QAM channel lineup since the listing I posted a while ago.

Thanks.

I had gotten the list you provided and a spot check of several of the channels no longer match your list.

In fact, in the time I spent, I did not find one that did.

Made the switch to Astound in SF a while back and can confirm with the earlier list that they have a pretty good offering of clear QAM channels. Found the channels does change, so you need to re-scan from time to time. On a scan this past week, getting all the locals in HD and new to the line up is Disney HD.

Also have it hooked up to a HDHomerun DT with Windows 7 WMC. Took some time to re-map the channels, but was able to pickup all the channels. If you are having trouble picking up clear QAM channels, would suggest checking your line/splitter, and trying a new RG59/RG6 cable.

Anyone using their cable cards? Thoughts? Pricing tips?

Some new info...

Astound just re-assigned a few channels again. The main changes that affected me seem to be:

KPIX 5 CBS HD - Now on 116-5.
KQED 9 PBS HD - Now on 105-313.

This is an improvement, since I was watching CBS 5 HD and it was glitching pretty regularly. The new channel is perfect.

When I notice that the channel has changed, I have my HDTV scan for new channels and figure the changes out. Then I transfer them to my HTPC, running Beyond TV, to capture them.

This topic has now been added to the main US Thread Index. Hopefully it will be easier for others in this area to find it.

I have Win 7 and have not been able to get the Windows Media Center to recognize Astound HD channels. I have a Hauppauge HVR-1600 tuner connected to an Astound cable with only one splitter (Monster 2 GHz) for the two tuner inputs.

The setup recognizes 304 channels, most of which are QAM, but none of them appear to be HD channels. I don't have any of the HD channels mentioned in the replies above, such as 116.5 for CBS 5 HD and 110-46 for ABC 7 HD. If I directly enter one of the HD channel numbers I get a "No Signal" message.

I have loaded the latest Hauppauge driver and have modified the registry as suggested by some other sites, but I still don't get any HD channels.

Help. Any suggestions on what to do next?

For the past couple weeks the Speed channel HD has come in very poorly for me (sometimes not at all). It frequently hiccups and it seems worse in the evening (The Car Show I recorded was unwatchable).

Anyone else having issues with Speed channel? Wondering if this is a Speed <-> Astound feed problem or a local issue. I don't notice any problems with any other channels. All other HD channels in my package come in crystal clear and rarely ever hiccup.