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Portland, OR - Comcast - Page 154

post #4591 of 4796
9/7/11 at 5:25pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by scowl View Post

But what is so high profile on KOIN's shared channel that they have to dial down KOIN during prime time to make bandwidth for it? If they have three HD stations on one QAM channel, there's no way they're going to give KOIN half of it and let the other two fight over the remaining 18 Mbps.

Well I think its because on Comcast's network, overall bandwidth is the issue. They compress everything in order to make everything squeeze into the fixed total bandwidth they have on their network with their current technology. Internet, TV, on-demand TV, phone, security, and so forth.
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post #4592 of 4796
9/7/11 at 5:55pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by HTBruceM View Post

Well I think its because on Comcast's network, overall bandwidth is the issue. They compress everything in order to make everything squeeze into the fixed total bandwidth they have on their network with their current technology. Internet, TV, on-demand TV, phone, security, and so forth.

Not for television services. That spectrum is divided into rigid 6 Mhz segments called channels. Each channel transmits a transport stream which can contain one or more programs (stations). Each transport stream has 38 Mbps of bandwidth for all of the stations it carries.
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post #4593 of 4796
9/9/11 at 9:18am
Quote:
Originally Posted by scowl View Post

Not for television services. That spectrum is divided into rigid 6 Mhz segments called channels. Each channel transmits a transport stream which can contain one or more programs (stations). Each transport stream has 38 Mbps of bandwidth for all of the stations it carries.

Doesn't Comcast use the space for the subchannels to carry whatever they want? Like to carry encrypted programming for the other channels that are not on the basic tier? To do that, they have to compress the stream from KOIN6 HD in order to fit the other programming into the other subchannels of the slot they carry KOIN6 HD on. Full 1080i bandwidth is 19mb/s and would consume all the subchannels.

Reference: "Technical Considerations" section of the following wiki article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_subchannel
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post #4594 of 4796
9/9/11 at 10:20am
Quote:
Originally Posted by HTBruceM View Post

Doesn't Comcast use the space for the subchannels to carry whatever they want?

They've only carried MPEG-2 streams so far.

Quote:


Like to carry encrypted programming for the other channels that are not on the basic tier? To do that, they have to compress the stream from KOIN6 HD in order to fit the other programming into the other subchannels of the slot they carry KOIN6 HD on.

The last time I checked they were putting two local stations per channel letting the local station do whatever they wanted with it. That may have changed.

Quote:


Full 1080i bandwidth is 19mb/s and would consume all the subchannels.

It's more like a little over 18 Mbps and two full-bandwidth ATSC stations easily fit into one QAM channel. The cable HD stations however are recompressed and often crammed three or four into a channel. Some are given half a channel like ESPN.

In any case, the bandwidth for television services is not being shared with other Comcast services like Internet or telephone.
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post #4595 of 4796
9/17/11 at 4:33pm
Wow, CBS (706) is just absolutely horrible. I'm watching college football and I'm shocked by how much the quality degrades when there's lots of motion on screen. Sadly I thought this was a one time thing but reading through this thread it looks like it's not. How on earth have they let this go on? Has anyone called Comcast to ask them about why CBS looks so crappy and if so what did they have to say about it?
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post #4596 of 4796
9/17/11 at 6:29pm
This is totally a Comcast problem. KOIN has never looked better OTA.
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post #4597 of 4796
9/17/11 at 6:44pm
I've been meaning to post a rant in this forum for a while. I hope somebody at Comcast finds it "fun for you, fun for me" to actually monitor this forum. What I want to know is, what are they doing around 1 am lately? Two weeks ago I fell asleep watching Leno. When I came to around 3 am, Jimmy Fallon was on my screen, frozen. My 50" PLASMA screen. I'm just now finally not seeing the image that burned on the screen.

Last night while Leno and Fallon were on, I couldn't rewind. So I hit the record button to save everything in the buffer. I got the recording started msg, and when I brought up info, saw the red recording dot. However, I have no recording. I assumed I need to power off to reboot, but when I got up this morning, it's all fine again (except no recording of Leno or Fallon).

What on earth are they doing at night?
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post #4598 of 4796
9/18/11 at 12:43am
We lost all TV, Internet and Phone service for nearly 3 hours this evening from around 6:30 pm to 9:15 pm on Comcast in the Beaverton area.

I called in from my cell phone and there was a recorded message about the outage and that they were working on it hoping to have things up an running within a couple of hours.

My question is this:

What happens if my house is burglerized or the fire detectors go off and my ADT monitoring service can not be contacted?

Who would be responsible for such poor unreliable phone service?

I do not remember ever losing standard phone service from the old-time land carriers in over 40 years, so what gives with Comcast?

Do I have any recourse, other than complaining and asking for maybe some PPV credits for the outage? This kind of reliability (phone in particular .... because of the monitored alarm service) is disturbing to say the least.

This type of outage with Comcast has happened once before about a year ago in my area.
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post #4599 of 4796
9/18/11 at 7:05am
Quote:
Originally Posted by George-O View Post

[edit]

My question is this:

What happens if my house is burglerized or the fire detectors go off and my ADT monitoring service can not be contacted?

Who would be responsible for such poor unreliable phone service?

George-O, my mother lives in Lake Havasu, Arizona, and has cable internet and phone through a small cable company. Precisely because of reliability issues and their fear of potential liability, they do not allow subscribers to have monitoring services (alarms, "help I've fallen," etc.) in their homes.

I have ADT, too, and realize with Comcast phone I'm at risk of it not working when I need it most. (Of course, a smart burglar would cut the phone line outside.) You can buy a cellular back-up from ADT, btw.

What bothers me more than the risk I am assuming is that there is never a credit on my bill for these frequent outages.
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post #4600 of 4796
9/18/11 at 7:55am
In addition to the other things I just whined and ranted about, lately I am getting loud occasional popping noises on KGW that are the kind of transients that could blow a tweeter. Used to have this problem on KOIN when going from local station breaks back to network, but never on KGW. And on KGW it seems random, unlike on KOIN, where I knew when to expect it. (I don't watch KOIN much anymore--are there still transient pops there?)

When my HT system blows out because of one of these pops, that's when I'm finally going to have had enough of Craptastic, and if they won't cover the damage (hah! like they're going to do that) switch back to DirecTV.
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post #4601 of 4796
9/18/11 at 10:07am
Goes to 11 ..... I like your suggestion of cellular phone monitoring and will look into it .... Thanks.

BTW, KOIN also seems okay now for me, but used to have momentary random audio drop-outs up to about 6 months ago.

I've not noticed any issues with KGW, but I will start watching it more carefully now that you've mentioned it.

Thanks again.
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post #4602 of 4796
9/18/11 at 10:10am
How is this even acceptable? Do people really not care that this kind of thing is going on? Granted it doesn't look this bad all the time but when it happens for a few seconds over and over it really gets on my nerves. Channel 706 KOIN on Comcast examples.









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post #4603 of 4796
9/18/11 at 12:40pm
I haven't watched KOIN much lately, but I'm tuned into the Bills/Raiders game now, and it's TERRIBLE. I get pixelization when the camera pans across the field. The gridlines waver, and any motion is just hash. I never thought KOIN was this bad before on Comcast. Might as well not even be in HD.
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post #4604 of 4796
9/18/11 at 1:39pm
Haven't had cable for 15 months now and still don't miss it. OTA and Netflix/AppleTV is working for me. Just wish KOIN or KPTV would add the MeTVNetwork soon.
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post #4605 of 4796
9/18/11 at 5:57pm
BTW, are we talking about KOIN-HD via a Comcast cable connection (either an HD STB/DVR or the HDTV's QAM Tuner)?

How about an OTA antenna? Does KOIN-HD look better directly via an Over-the-Air antenna?

UPDATE:

FWIW, I watched both the KOIN-HD local news and some of the CBS Sunday Night Prime Time programming (the Good Wife) on 706 via my DCX3400-M and can see blurring/pixelation/blocking whenever the news anchors rapidly move their heads or characters move swiftly ..... still shot graphics like the weather stats look okay but not as sharp as the other HD channels.

I think, unless viewing KOIN-HD via an OTA antenna reveals that these problems do not exist, that maybe the problem is on KOIN's transmission end?

BTW, one thing I have noticed is that KOIN-HD is also frequently lost by my QAM tuner connected to the Comcast cable (Channel 6-1) ..... I have to perform an HDTV rescan to find it again for a while. However, I never seem to lose HD channels 2-1 or 8-1 or 10-1 .... just 6-1 ... weird. Is Comcast moving KOIN-HD around more frequently than the other local HD channels?
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post #4606 of 4796
9/18/11 at 11:37pm
Continuing with my watching of KOIN Channel 6 HD thru tonight's CSI:Miami, I'd have to conclude something's not right (at least feeding-in thru Comcast's cable .... both thru the DVR and my HDTV's QAM Tuner).

Comcast CS (via phone) claims it is the local station's fault.

I'd really be curious to hear from anyone using an OTA antenna about their HD Picture Quality with KOIN-HD (I've learned over the years to take things from Comcast with a grain of salt).
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post #4607 of 4796
9/18/11 at 11:51pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by George-O View Post

Comcast claims it is the local station's fault.

Yeah, KOIN's 18 Mbps is forcing them to recompress it down to 10 Mbps.

Quote:


I'd really be curious to hear from anyone using an OTA antenna about their HD Picture Quality with KOIN-HD (I've learned over the years to take things from Comcast with a grain of salt).

Honestly, this has been the best HD I've seen in years. Compare this screen shot from Comcast (pulled from my Tivo):

http://home.comcast.net/~scowl/HMM-Comcast.jpg

And the very same screen shot OTA:

http://home.comcast.net/~scowl/HMM-OTA.jpg

It's like 2004 is back again.
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post #4608 of 4796
9/19/11 at 12:47am
scowl ..... So are you saying that Comcast is compressing KOIN-HD more than ABC or NBC or FOX, which all look much better than CBS via my DVR (also the same issue with all my neighbors)?

Either way, I am filing a written complaint to Comcast about the quality of my Channel 6 HD PQ.

Thanks!
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post #4609 of 4796
9/19/11 at 7:48am
Quote:
Originally Posted by George-O View Post
scowl ..... So are you saying that Comcast is compressing KOIN-HD more than ABC or NBC or FOX, which all look much better than CBS via my DVR?

I don't quite understand the technical stuff so maybe you can clarify in non-technical terms.

Either way, I am filing a written complaint to Comcast about the quality of my Channel 6 HD PQ.

Thanks!
I urge you to do that. I sent an email complaint to Comcast (which I urge all of you to do too). They responded that it must be a wiring problem in my house. I countered with a link to this thread and doubt that all of us have a wiring problem that manifests itself on the same single channel. We'll see what happens next.
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post #4610 of 4796
9/19/11 at 8:46am
Quote:
Originally Posted by George-O View Post
scowl ..... So are you saying that Comcast is compressing KOIN-HD more than ABC or NBC or FOX, which all look much better than CBS via my DVR?
I haven't checked on what Comcast is doing with the other channels. I only checked KOIN because someone on the OTA thread noticed a huge difference between the Comcast and OTA bit rates for it. I discovered that not only did KOIN crank their bit rate up to the maximum in June giving us the highest possible HD quality, but Comcast was doing the opposite, recompressing that bit rate down 45% giving Comcast subscribers the lowest possible HD quality.

I don't care because I receive all the locals OTA.

Quote:
Either way, I am filing a written complaint to Comcast about the quality of my Channel 6 HD PQ.
My prediction (if they do anything) is that they'll inch the bit rate up a little, maybe to 12 Mbps. Then if the complaints continue, they'll inch it up to 14 Mbps. I doubt they'll ever give Comcast subscribers the quality that we OTA viewers are enjoying right now. But I could be wrong!
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post #4611 of 4796
9/19/11 at 12:06pm
I'm not a lawyer nor a technical expert on TV or cable signals, but I can look up FCC regulations. And in the FCC regulations, Title 47, Part 76, subpart D, 76.62, item (b) it says (highlighting is mine):

(b) Each digital television broadcast signal carried shall be carried without material degradation. Each analog television broadcast signal carried shall be carried without material degradation and in compliance with technical standards set forth in subpart K of this part.

As far as I can tell, the KOIN-HD signal on Comcast is certainly materially degraded.

If I don't hear something from Comcast in a couple of days, I plan to complain to the Mt Hood Cable Regulatory Commission, who supposedly has jurisdiction in this sort of thing. Their phone is 503-823-5385. They also have a website.
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post #4612 of 4796
9/19/11 at 12:21pm
Does KOIN, or the ownership of KOIN, run another channel on cable that they don't broadcast OTA? Has anyone checked the frequencies to see how many channels are positioned in that QAM slot, is it being shared with another KOIN entity possibly?
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post #4613 of 4796
9/19/11 at 12:37pm
Another good point of contact might be the engineering department at KOIN.

http://www.koinlocal6.com/content/ab...t/default.aspx

Engineering Comments or Questions
E: Rick Brown rbrown@koin.com koin_engineering@koin.com
P: 503-464-0600
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post #4614 of 4796
9/19/11 at 12:56pm
A reply from KOIN. It might be nice if more people would contact them since based on the reply they didn't acknowledge any issue with the Comcast feed and may be inclined to treat me as a lone nut job.

Quote:
Thanks for writing in. KOIN provides the HD feed directly to Comcast equipment at the KOIN Center in downtown Portland. It is the same feed that goes to our transmitter site. Unfortunately, once it enters their equipment it is converted to light and sent to their headend where it is “processed” for their system. I will forward your concerns to the contacts I have at Comcast and hopefully there can be some resolution.

In the meantime, if you are able to do some work on your end, our transmitted HD signal is available for free, uncompressed, on UHF channel 40 here in town. All you would need to do is add some kind of antenna and an “RF A/B Switch” to route our transmitted signal to your DTV tuner. It will require a little patience but if you locate the antenna setup menu on your DTV tuner you can bypass the cable converter box and use your internal DTV tuner to pick up high quality HD pictures not only from KOIN but all the local stations. Some people set up an antenna on the roof or use an internal antenna connected to the DTV tuner and connect the HDMI connector from the Comcast converter box to the DTV inputs so that you would not need the “RF A/B Switch” and simply choose between “tuner” or “HDMI” inputs to watch your programming. I set my sister’s DTV system up like this in Springfield and they are always able to pick up the best possible signal for the program.

Of course this does not address any issues with Comcast but it might be a workable solution for you in the short term. I always watch the transmitter signals from my home in Tigard for the local stations and even have a DVR that records only the “off-air” signals. I only use the Comcast converter for cable programming when I want it. I hope this helps you out. Let me know if you need more information on how to pick up our transmitter signal.
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post #4615 of 4796
9/19/11 at 2:11pm
Okay .... I tried to use the "Send Us an email" link to file a complaint while logged into My Comcast but the link is dead. When I called, the CS rep said there no longer is an email address for complaints and gave me the following physical address to mail a hard copy letter:

Comcast Cable
14243 SW Terman Road
Beaverton, OR 97005
Attn: Customer Service

However, I stumbled onto a feedback link on the Comcast website that seems to let you file a complaint:

http://www.comcast.com/customers/feedback/default.cspx

BTW, here is the text of what I sent them (both via online feedback and a hard copy letter) .... hopefully others here who experience similar KOIN-HD PQ issues will take a moment to do the same:
______________________________________________

Good Afternoon,

I have my first two formal complaints regarding Comcast service (finally, after 8 years of service at my home):

1. HD picture quality on KOIN-HD Ch 6 has been horrible over the last few months .... just terrible. New wiring was installed at my expense by Comcast personnel last year for another issue related to AnyRoom service, so this new Ch 6 problem is not related to my in-house wiring. When I install a set of rabbit ears and view Ch 6 over the air directly, is a perfect picture. Please consider adjusting your recompression of the local KOIN-HD signal to restore its HD PQ to the proper legal level in accordance with FCC regulations, Title 47, Part 76, subpart D, 76.62(b) ..... A high quality level that I would expect to receive based on my monthly payments to Comcast over the last 8 years. For further discussion of this KOIN-HD PQ issue (from your other Portland area customers), please visit the online AVS Forum discussion at:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...3#post20969413

2. I am deeply disturbed that a nearly 3 hour system-wide outage on Saturday evening September 17th had left my home unprotected from burglaries or fire as my alarm monitoring company (ADT) lost contact with my home. Any further such outages (especially of phone service) will regrettably force me to re-evaluate my long-standing customer relationship with Comcast.
________________________________________

I have my doubts that Comcast will do anything, but maybe if they get enough complaints, they will ..... we shall see.

I also copied KOIN engineering with my complaint to Comcast.
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post #4616 of 4796
9/19/11 at 2:21pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by roobieroo View Post

A reply from KOIN. It might be nice if more people would contact them since based on the reply they didn't acknowledge any issue with the Comcast feed and may be inclined to treat me as a lone nut job.

I contacted them too. In addition to describing the problems, I told them, truthfully, that because of the quality of signal issues, I switched from KOIN to KPTV to watch a different football game.
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post #4617 of 4796
9/19/11 at 2:29pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by crossbeaux View Post

I urge you to do that. I sent an email complaint to Comcast (which I urge all of you to do too). They responded that it must be a wiring problem in my house. I countered with a link to this thread and doubt that all of us have a wiring problem that manifests itself on the same single channel. We'll see what happens next.

When I called Comcast they claimed there is no email address to send in a complaint .... just a feedback page and a physical street address that I listed in my previous adjacent post.

Can you post an email address if you still have it please?
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post #4618 of 4796
9/19/11 at 4:12pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by George-O View Post

When I called Comcast they claimed there is no email address to send in a complaint .... just a feedback page and a physical street address that I listed in my previous adjacent post.

Can you post an email address if you still have it please?

Go to this page and choose the email option. You'll fill out a form, but they do get it.

https://www.comcast.com/Corporate/Cu...ContactUs.html
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post #4619 of 4796
9/19/11 at 8:22pm
Thanks .... In fact was what I used.

FWIW, KOIN-HD thru Comcast cable at this very moment during the start of the new CBS Fall Season looks terrible, while OTA with rabbit ears KOIN-HD looks great.

Shame on Comcast.

Shame on Comcast.

Shame on Comcast.
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post #4620 of 4796
9/19/11 at 8:27pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Goes to 11 View Post

I have ADT, too, and realize with Comcast phone I'm at risk of it not working when I need it most. (Of course, a smart burglar would cut the phone line outside.) You can buy a cellular back-up from ADT, btw.

My neighbor (a police officer) just mentioned that the smart burglars all carry cell phone jammers now .... so much for that option.
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