Hartford, CT - Comcast - Page 8

The major disadvantage of Dish or DirecTV is that you have to use an antenna for the local channels in HD. They also require a commitment which Comcast doesn't. DirecTV is supposed to start providing CT locals in HD in April. I would start with Comcast and then check out DirecTV once they have the local HD available.

I think its likely a single digital stream or single HD stream, but I would think it needs to be a stream per person using the service at the time. Because each person is watching something different or controlling it different ways (pausing, RR, FF, etc).

I bet it uses up a whole bunch of bandwidth. But, I could be TOTALLY wrong too .

OH MY! I am speechless. The DD logo is not present, yet, verified with status screens.

ADS

2 WFSB (CBS)
3 CN8
4 WVIT (NBC)
5 LOCAL *
6 WTIC (Fox)
7 WEDH (PBS)
8 WTNH (ABC)
9 WCTX (UPN)
10 WHPX (PAX)
11 WTXX (WB)
12 WGBY (PBS)
13 WRDM (Telemundo)
14 HSN
15 NSCN
16 TBS
17 EW//NJ
18 WUVN (Univision)
19 EDU ACCESS
20 CT-N
21 GOV ACCESS
22 CSpan
23 CSpan 2
24 AMC
25 OLN
26 TWC
27 Travel
28 NESN
29 ESPN
30 ESPN 2
31 FSN-NE
33 Golf
34 FX
35 TNT
36 USA
37 Court TV
38 Hallmark
39 Lifetime
40 ABC Family
41 Nick
42 Disney
43 Carton Network
44 Animal Planet
45 A&E
46 History
47 Discovery
48 HGTV
49 Food
50 TLC
51 TV Land
52 Sci Fi
53 Spike
54 Comedy
55 E!
56 MTV
57 VH1
58 BET
59 FNC
60 CNBC
61 HNN
62 CNN
63 MSNBC
70 QVC
71 Shop NBC
95 TV Guide Channel
96 Local Access
98 Shop At Home
99 PIN


NO ADS

32 YES
97 WEDH


* Black screen

Revised 2/14/06


Wonder why YES is not in ADS. WEDH seems to be a dupe.

Did these just show up today as ADS??

I woke up at about 1:30 AM and decided to flip through the channels instead of watching the olympic coverage I had seen earlier. I noticed that the picture on the channels looked better. As I did not see the Dolby DD (it has since appeared on a few more channels) I would move up the channel lineup, power off the box and hit OK for the menu and verified that all the channels wth the exception of YES and WEDH (which is a dupe of an ADS channel) are all broadcasting in 256 QAM.

I was shocked as I did not expcect to have 99.9% of the analog channels in ADS.

On another note, channel 5 is no longer a black screen, it is back to the Community BB, complete with DD logo.

Wow - still analog here in Windsor for all channels (except for digital simulcast on locals in the 80's)

I just noticed some of my channels tuning slower on my TV with the CableCard, which is usually what it does for digital or HD channels. I popped into the diagnostic menu, and confirmed that it was tuning a digital channel. It appears we also have ADS happenning on the Plainville system! To the best I can tell, here are the channels in ADS right now. All are QAM256.

2 - CBS
4 - NBC
6 - FOX
8 - ABC
9 - UPN
10 - WHPX
11 - WB
13 - WDRM
18 - WUVN
22 - C-SPAN
42 - Disney
70 - QVC
99 - HSN

The locals/broadcasts made sense, but some of the other channels seem kind of random. C-SPAN but not C-SPAN2? QVC and HSN but not Shop at Home? Disney?

I feel like an idiot. What does all of this mean? What is ADS? What is QAM256? And where are you seeing the Dolby DD?

No problem - I didn't know at first either.

ADS means "Analog Digital Simulcast". That basicially means that they are taking some, or all, of the current analog channels (channels under 100) and broadcasting them again in digital on another channel. This is part of the transition to get rid of the analog channels, which are using up over half the bandwidth on the cable.

QAM256 is how the signal is being transmitted. QAM stands for Quadrature Amplitude Modulation. There are other QAMs, like QAM64, but the goal is to get everything on QAM256. The higher the QAM number, the more bits you can push. Note that QAM is just how the channel is sent to the home - it has nothing to do with what video/audio scheme is used (MPEG2, Dolby Digital, etc).

I don't know where they are seeing the Dolby DD. My guess is on the on screen display somewhere. I don't have an HD cable box - I use a CableCard TV - so I don't see it. I dig my information out of the TV's CableCard diagnostic screen.

Thanks for the education - useful information.

I'm in East Hampton CT (Comcast) and would prefer to use a cable card rather than a set top box since I'm not interested in PPV or On Demand. Comcast says that it won't install cards now and is waiting for some unspecified period until Motorola provides "newer/better" cards.

Any news or experience you all have?

I think they are just giving you a hard time about getting one. I'm on the Plainville Motorola system, and got my card about a year ago. My friend is on the Middletown Scientific Atlanta system, and just got a CableCard installed last month.

You might want to call up and try pushing them a little harder about it. See what they say/do.

YES Netwrok is now ADS, we are 100% digital.

Thanks for the suggestion. The tech is coming out Friday (tomorrow) morning.

By the way - PPV does work with CableCard. You just can't order PPV from the TV, or on demand. But if there was like a boxing or wrestling, or some kind of event at a scheduled time on one of the PPV channels you want to watch, you can call up and order it.

Thanks for that info.

BTW, the tech couldn't get the Scientific Atlanta card to work after 1.5 hours and three calls to Comcast tech support. The card is recognized by the Sony, but the TV won't download any channels. Naturally, the TV was blamed. Sony provided telephone tech support without results and recommended a local repair shop. They couldn't find anything wrong with the TV or card reader and think it's the card. I'm waiting for Comcast right now.

Any similar experiences out there?

I still only find those listed below here in Windsor:

Originally Posted by cheneyp
I surfed the digital channels and found the following:

Simulcast

80-2 WTXX
80-3 Univision
80-4 WVIT
80-5 UPN
80-6 WFSB
80-8 PAX
80-9 Telemundo
80-11 WTIC
80-12 WTNH

Others

93-10 On Demand Previews
94-6 Fuse

I did but maybe I didn't go through all of the possible sub-channels on my TV QAM tuner - it does take awhile... I'll check tonight

Quite possible. I assume you are finding your ADS channels on your Comcast box so you don't offhand know what digital subchannels they are on?

I'm on the Plainville system and can confirm these results. In my previous post we were partially ADS, but we appear to be pretty much fully ADS now.

I only see one analog channel left. Its channel 97, WEDH.

OK - I checked last night and found several more ADS channels on my TV:

81-10 CN8
81-7 WGBY
81-11 EWTN
81-1 CTN

I did find 2 shopping channels - I assume they are HSN and QVC but since I don't spend a whole lot of time watching these, I didn't much care to note where they are...

Still have more searching to do - ran out of time last night...

Now at least I can remap my HD DVR to these channels instead of the analogs for better rec quality (when I am forced to record SD!)

WEDH on 97 will not be ADS as it is a duplicate of WEDH on channel 7 which is already ADS. For some reason they did not place this duplicate with the ones in the 700's marked as Local Access.

Am I the only one not able to receive WGBY on Comcast channel 12 or CT Network on channel 20 in West Hartford?

No bandwidth my arse!

Today, or yesterday, Comcast put the programming back on INHD2. They did not remove Universal HD.

InHD, INHD2 and UHD are all broadcasting in HD. Where's this lack of bandwidth? Lying bastards!