Chicago, IL - Comcast - Page 245

I noticed a recent post of yours stating a possible update to the Excel Spreadsheet for Schaumburg. Have you done that? Some time ago my WLS and WGN HD channels went fritzy (two different Sony 768p TV's w QAM tuners). 7.1 shows what could be taken for a 4 screen PIP. I have not rescanned in a while. Do you know the digital frequency for WLS-DT? It is blank in the spreadsheet. Finally, some posters were wondering about DISH service. My opinion is it is really very good and their tuners/DVR's are superior. We've kept a basic Comcast service just to have something to watch during severe weather.

Rammitinski,

Thanks for the information. I previously was in Sam's Club and stopped at the cell phone / Dish booth and asked a few questions. Of course they had no idea what locals were available. No surprise there.

I know there used to be a satellite forum here but it was removed & members were referred elsewhere. Do you have any recommendations for a sat forum to visit?

WCIU is NEVER CSN+. WCIU games are scheduled & produced by WGN, they are called CubsNet/SoxNet/BullsNet. CSN+ SD is on CLTV & CSN+ HD is on MOJO. As was previously noted, blackouts of ESPN coverage are in BOTH teams markets for MLB. The local coverage trumps the national coverage.

www.satelliteguys.us and www.dbstalk.com.

Doesn't the Dish website tell you what locals are available in your area in HD if you put in your zipcode? I know they did with the SD's, but they might also tell you the HD's now.

I did not see that path to a zip code before. I just saw the CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox and that locals vary by market. I checked and the only local HDs are ABC and CBS. I figured if I got them all (NBC, Fox & WTTW-D) then I might not have to worry about an antenna. I'm in a townhouse & there is an antenna in the attic, but I have no idea how it feeds the unit. Cable feeds the wall outlets so I don't know what happened to the antenna feed. It's getting cooler so I might crawl around in the attic & see how the antenna is hooked up.

Thanks for pointing out the zip code

The latest is at:
http://home.att.net/~andyross/Schaum...e_Channels.zip

I don't think there have been any major changes for awhile. WLS and WGN (both mains and subs) are on 120.

I updated the frequency list today. It's not a total recheck, but does include changes I noticed since getting a new TV with a digital tuner that can pick up digital channels.
http://home.att.net/~andyross/Schaum...e_Channels.zip

In playing with my new TV, I did notice a few oddities with digital channels:
The Weather Channel is on 85 according to the cable box, but there is also an unencrypted copy on 86-15.
Public access (35) is on 123-21, but there is a second copy with no audio on 86-4 (a few days ago, 86-4 was QVC with no audio).
WSNS used to be 122-3. For a few days, a no-audio copy was on 86-20, which has now become the 'real' channel. 122-3 seems to be dead.

The HD feed for WBBM has been showing a test pattern since the end of the SEC football game. Analog is fine.

It was on when I switched at 9:58 to watch the 10PM news, but since 10PM it has just been a blank screen. Must be a local issue, network programming seems to be fine.

Mike99

I hope my explanation of the routing of the coax in my In-Laws Townhouse will help you figure out how yours is run including the antenna. This townhouse was built in 1992 by Lexington and also has an antenna in the attic. The building has 6 units, ours is a middle unit. I don’t know what unit has the antenna in the attic, it isn’t ours.

Anyway, 1st I’ll explain the Comcast cable feed into our unit, the “lockbox” for the 6 units is on the end of the building on the outside. From there the drop cable to our unit is buried outside around the back of the building and comes out of the ground to a ground block on the brick. It then enters the unit thru a hole in the brick and heads straight up to the attic above the 2nd floor bedroom.

At the same spot in the 2nd floor attic, the coax comes from the antenna, and is just laying loose on the insulation. Both the Cable line and the antenna line are marked with a nice plastic tag noting what each cable is for.

A 2 way splitter is just laying loose on the insulation, At that point 2 coax lines are connected to the splitter outputs, and head all the way back down to 2 outlets, the 1st floor living room and the 1st floor master bedroom, these 2 outlets are actually back to back on the same wall.

So, they made it very easy to switch between the cable TV feed and the antenna feed by just opening the attic trap door and the splitter and all the coax lines are right there, no need to even climb into the attic. Just disconnect the cable TV feed to the input of the splitter, and connect the antenna cable.

All coax is RG59 and the picture is really not too bad considering the townhouse is in Crystal Lake. Hope this can help you.

jay2031,

Thanks for the information. My Comcast coax enters the back basement of my 2 story unit where it connects to another coax which runs a few feet & goes up inside the wall, but I don't know how far. I have 3 rooms fed by the signal, 1 on the first floor. If I take off the wall plate I can see the coax going upward. It's been some time & I don't recall which way the second floor coax runs as seen from taking off their wall plates. But somehow I thought the splitter may have been between the 1st & 2nd floors.

One time Comcast came out because I had a poor picture & the tech did look in the attic & said he did not see any splitter. Of course he might have missed it. He missed removing the filters from the "lockbox", the ones that have not been used in years. Another tech came out later & saw I was the only unit that still had these old filters inline. After removing them my picture cleared up. Anyway I do have an antenna in my attic and have no idea if it feeds just my unit. But I'll go up there on a cool day and see where its coax goes & hopefully there will be a connection similar to yours.

Thanks again.

jay2031,

I went up in the attic & followed the antenna coax. It met with another coax & both went downward. I looked where it went & matched it up with the utility room on the first floor. There's a 4”x4” wall plate next to an alarm panel. I always figured it was for the alarm. I took off the cover plate & there is a 4-way splitter in there and a bunch of coax, including a rolled up unused one labeled “ANT”. So I've had easy access all this time.

I connected the antenna & it works. CBS analog and WTTW-11 analog were quite noisy. I took the splitter out of the circuit and it made a slight improvement. But all the digitals come in good. So if I decide to drop Comcast I'll still have some TV.

Mike - If you're still interested in Dish, I'd suggest one of their all-HD Turbo Packages. Very, very reasonably priced, and even if you have an SDTV, the PQ will be much better (it will beat Comcast's SD hands down). They carry a lot of the standard, national channels, and will be adding more as they become available. Also, with a dual-tuner or DVR, you will receive independent, downscaled HD programming to a second set for no extra cost. (If you don't want a DVR, you can just ask for a 222 dual-tuner. No fees involved at all with one of those.) The lowest Turbo Package, the Bronze, is only $24.99 without the locals.

Another thing I should mention is that AT&T has their lowest tier DSL for only $10.00/mo. for new DSL customers. So if you find a better deal on Dish elsewhere, and add something like that to a Turbo Package, with your phone you may even considerably beat that $100.00/mo. bundle deal. (I don't know how fast that DSL is, though. I have the next one up myself - the $25.00 one, although I only pay $20.00 - and it's plenty fast.)

Rammitinski,

I'm looking at my options. I already have AT&T phone and dsl, so I'm not a new customer. They had a $100/month pkg for phone, dsl and Dish with 100 channels, including locals & DVR.

The 6 month deal that Comcast gave me is about to end and I'm not going to pay $70/month to watch TV. So I'm either going to downgrade Comcast to expanded basic, go 100% OTA, or go satellite with possible OTA for the HD locals. I thought I'd wait till after Oct 1 and call Comcast again in case another promo is offered.

Anyone watching the Cubs tonight on TBS HD? I am finding that the AQ is rather sucky...especially compared to the Sox on TBS HD last night.

I could hear the booing quite clear.

All joking aside, I am hoping that Comcast gets it right tonight. I was extremely disappointed with the AQ last night especially compared to the night before when watching the Sox on TBS HD.
I also watched the RedSox and and Angels game and the AQ was just as poor. By poor I mean I could only hear the commentators and while I did receive it in 5.1, it seemed that only 2.0 was working. I did check my gear.

As a side note: I always do Auto Decode with my receiver with 5.1 sound.

Is this issue related to TBS? The gear at the ballpark? or Comcast dumbing down the signal?
If its comcast, is there someone I can contact about this?

Did anybody have comcast problems last evening (10/1)? On our new Samsung LCD virtually all of the qam hd channels were missing, just showing black with a "missing or weak signal" message from the set. I did a rescan of all channels, and poof! they were all gone. We are in Barrington, and have the usual analog/no stb with comcast. So my usual channel 2-1 or 5-1 for example were not captured in the rerun of channel setup. I checked the coax and it seemed fine. Analog channels were okay, but seemed weak.

Is there a spreadsheet for the Barrington/Lake Zurich comcast channel lineup?

Does anyone know when we will be getting the dreaded "all digital, here's your one free stb" letter? I've read that comcast wants to completely shutdown the analog tiers by the end of 2008.

It would either be TBS or the TBS truck at the park. Issues where a specific provider is mucking up a signal are rare.

yea it was bad. I had static in the rear channels when Derosa hit his home run.. generally the crowd sound was just lacking and I think there was a Nascar driver in the booth judging from his accent

That would be Tony Gwynn.

Hello, I have comcast basic cable and HSI. I just got a hdtv and I see the hd channels as 7-1, 7-2, ect. but they appear to be encrypted. I suppose that I need to get a box and pay the $7/mo for HD? Is that my problem? Would I get On-Demand for the added $7/mo or is it extra? Would I need a box for each tv in my house? Thanks!

Hello All,
My Comcast is out of the Prospect Heights office. Using the cable Directly into A tv works fine. I find the Local channels in the 122 and 123 groups but on Channels like 104.33 i See a label that says Sports and 4 mini screens display different broadcasts. The top left one looks to be the Golf channel and that's the one the audio is from. What's up with these. IS their a way to get to the other 3 or to expand any of them?
Thanks in advance

Actually I just found out that hitting the MTS button switches the sound but still can't separate the images

Can anyone please confirm with me when the Chicago market will receive more HD channels? I have spoken to three different customer service representatives-Maria, Linda, & Evelyn- and they all told me that Comcast will be adding the following channels in October: Lifetime, Lifetime Movie Network, MGM, Travel Channel, ESPNews, FearNet, Toon Disney, Biography, & Planet Green. One of them told me October 15th & another one told me by the end of last month.

I have had no audio from my CBS HD station since last night. Is anyone else having this problem? Every other station seems to be working fine and I'm getting audio from the SD CBS station.

WBBM's audio has been f'd up since the move to their new studios. Lately, they seem to be 'upconverting' stereo to 5.1, but the level is VERY loud, and it's either distorted or has some nasty strong treble boost.

Letterman has always been plain stereo/ProLogic, but now it's that harsh-sounding 5.1. Can anybody watch Letterman on another CBS station and let me know if it's switched to 5.1, or if this is a WBBM issue?

I presume that you have no set top box and that you have the Comcast cable coming from the wall and going directly to your HDTV. Does your HDTV have a QAM tuner & did your HDTV do a channel scan during setup in order to find all the channels?

I'm guessing it did because you said you get 7.1. But if you get 7.1 then it should not be encrypted. What does the picture look like? Is it just black?

For a few weeks now, Comcast's guide information has not indicated HD for any high-definition network programming, though what should be in HD still seems to be coming in HD.

If you check what's upcoming in HD, 187 (WLS) shows only news and late-night past-season reruns of "Lost"; 188 (WMAQ), 189 (WBBM), and 190 (WFLD) list nothing; and 192 (WGN) lists only some sports events.

Is that all over the region or is it a problem only in Chicago Area 2?

I do have a QAM tuner hdtv, the picture is clear for a moment, then sometimes jerky, sometimes a wobbly horizontal bar, sometimes it froze for a second. Same thing on all the digital sub-channels none watchable. I was told by a guy at Circuit City that I probably only have the expanded basic, not digital cable. He said I need to have the box to get digital cable & high def. I DON'T WANT A BOX! I seem to remember that when I signed up a few years ago that they installed a filter trap in the backyard box since I didn't want any premium stations. Wonder what it would do without the filter. Also, wondering what happens in 2/09 when everything goes digital? Will Comcast downgrade the signal to analog so they can charge you for digital?

I decided today to connect the old OTA ant, and it works just great! I am getting all the local hd stuff. I maybe soon dropping the cable and just keeping the HSI.