Houston, TX - Comcast / DBS - Page 320

Originally Posted by RussB

I got the same letter today. This is the second phase of the Network Upgrade where the Basic Cable Analog Channels are being removed. The first phase was the removal of the Expanded Basic Service Analog Channels. After the second phase is complete, Houston Comcast will be an all-digital platform.

Originally Posted by RussB

I got the same letter today. This is the second phase of the Network Upgrade where the Basic Cable Analog Channels are being removed. The first phase was the removal of the Expanded Basic Service Analog Channels. After the second phase is complete, Houston Comcast will be an all-digital platform.

Originally Posted by jb4647

...so does this mean that after April 10th, the only way to get any cable programing (worth watching anyway) will be to have some sort of a box from Comcast? The days of plugging a TV directly to coax cable (even with an HDTV) are over?

Originally Posted by Jack Morris

Has Comcast/Xfinity instituted SDV in our area yet?
If not, is there a planned roleout scheduled?

Originally Posted by jb4647

...so does this mean that after April 10th, the only way to get any cable programing (worth watching anyway) will be to have some sort of a box from Comcast? The days of plugging a TV directly to coax cable (even with an HDTV) are over?

Originally Posted by CaptainVideoJW

That's probably not a hard date.

But yes, you will need at least a DTA. Two are provided free with your cable subscription.

https://digitalnow.comcast.com/About...al_Update.aspx

Originally Posted by Jack Morris

We lost all unencoded QAM about a month ago and now everything/every channel requires a cable box to view.

Originally Posted by RobertWy

I can get QAM with my Visio TV. There aren't many. They are in the 600 range. Have you rescanned your channels? Where do you live?

Originally Posted by Jack Morris

Just north of Houston.
Was using a Sony DHG-HDD500 for un-encoded reception of WGN and a few other channels. What are a few of the exact locations(608, 11.1, etc) of these unencoded channels as I'd rather not rescan if possible.
Thanks!

Originally Posted by RobertWy

I can still get channel 54 without a DTV and the others in that range. Maybe I will lose them later. The HD channels are still the same here - 613.1 for Houston ABC13, for example.

Originally Posted by RussB

According to Comcast, if you have expanded basic/starter channels and a TV with a QAM tuner you need a DTA to view expanded basic/starter channels in digital format.

See the following links:

http://customer.comcast.com/Pages/He...dapter-to-hdtv

http://customer.comcast.com/Pages/He...ital-migration

Originally Posted by jb4647

....extra $$ if you want to get full use of your HDTV and see the HD equivilant channels of what's available via basic/starter channels.

I can understand release an standard def DTA for standard def 4:3 TVs but over the next few years those are going to die out and be replaced with 16:9 HD TVs which have been the only one's available since 2007. Thus, I wonder if there are plans to come out with a HD DTA and will 2 of those per household be offered for free?

Without this option I could see it get very expensive to supply every HDTV in the house with either an HD DVR or an HD STB and the subscription rates that go with each.

Originally Posted by logman

Did any one else think the CBS NCAA games looked terrible? The other networks showing the games looked fine but CBS had some weird alaising going on with the wood grain on the court. Like it was over compressed or something.

Originally Posted by Kabuto

In case anyone is still here.

Anyone having problems with their SA box HDMI cutting out on playback of recorded shows only? Live always works fine but on playback of recorded shows the TV keeps occasionally loses sync. On my Mits I get the blue screen and then it will get it back after a couple of seconds. Rewinding to the cutout point doesn't seem to recreate it. This has occasionally happened for a long time, but lately it is happening a lot more.

SA8300

Originally Posted by Kabuto

In case anyone is still here.

Anyone having problems with their SA box HDMI cutting out on playback of recorded shows only? Live always works fine but on playback of recorded shows the TV keeps occasionally loses sync. On my Mits I get the blue screen and then it will get it back after a couple of seconds. Rewinding to the cutout point doesn't seem to recreate it. This has occasionally happened for a long time, but lately it is happening a lot more.

SA8300

Originally Posted by jruhnke

This is a signature you might see if a hard drive were starting to degrade. That doesn't mean it's what your problem is, but I saw similar behavior in the months leading up to my external drive faliure, and it got worse over time. In my case, I had an additional symptom of certain recorded programs showing up in the list but not playing back when I selected them...but that was with the old guide software, too.

Ted when will Comcast launch the 2.0 new guide? i have the new RNG 200N in Houston? The Guide is very beautiful.

Brandon | May 15, 2012 10:56 AM

http://blog.comcast.com/2010/05/new-...#comment-48519

@Brandon, we have a meeting in Houston at the end of the month to go over our proposed schedule and additional details with the local Comcast management team. We have had great success in our launched areas.

The plan is to get On-Screen Guide 2.0 http://www.xfinity.com/onscreenguide2
available to our Houston customers this year just as we have been able to do in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, Tennessee, parts of Louisiana and now Minnesota (and soon New Mexico and Texas).

I will have a better date for your area after our meeting with the Comcast Houston team.

The plan we are following has been to introduce On-Screen Guide 2.0 with AnyRoom DVR initially and then also eventually include all of the RNG devices (RNG 100, 150 and 200) after a certain date in deployed markets later this year.

We do understandably have a controlled deployment plan for the early stages of this guide deployment so we can monitor customer and business metrics, install times, and the overall impact to our customers and to the business.

Even though you already have a Cisco RNG 200N now, getting the new On-Screen Guide 2.0 initially is a factor of getting a Cisco RNG box after a certain calendar date in each market.

After that, the current plan is to arrange to change the on-screen guide on the existing RNG set tops in the On-Screen Guide 2.0 deployed markets. That will require some advance, direct and wide customer communication.

Ted Hodgins replied to comment from Brandon | May 15, 2012 12:07

http://blog.comcast.com/2010/05/new-...#comment-48521

Originally Posted by highgrovemanor

Is there any trick to getting an SA 8300 (or whatever we get in Houston) to remount the shows on an external hard drive that it doesn't seem to be able to load the shows on?

Background: had to move the DVR, so everthing was powered down, and resetup. It took a couple of tries to get it to see the shows on the external, but it did.

Now that its back in the HT rack, it just doesn't want to play the shows. I realize it keeps the listing of the shows on the internal drive, but it shows 16% used and just shows a blank screen on 2/3s of the shows.

So is there a particular power down / power up sequence? The drive has NOT been attached to anything but the current DVR.

TIA! As its gonna be a sad day if I've lost 2/3s of my shows as there is quite a few series I had abunch of episodes to watch.

Steve

Originally Posted by c1courtney

I live in Greatwood as well. I haven't noticed any pixelation issues, but I can't say I watch those channels much. I'll have to remember too look.

Have they replaced your cable since they went 100% digital (requiring the DTA boxes) several months ago? I was having some issues recently, and even though they had pulled a new cable about 3yrs ago (I had pixelation issues on several channels then.) They needed to pull another one (orange cable.) I didn't look at it to closely but it's supposed to be better jacketed to prevent damage from expansion/contraction of ground and water getting inside the jacket.