Boston, MA - Comcast - Page 2

Instead of investing big $$$ into switched services, why not just spend the $$$ to give away the digital converter boxes and get rid of more analog channels? I realize down the road switched may be the way to go for other reasons....

Because ultimately, I think the demand for bandwidth for those new HD channels will far exceed what they can reclaim from the analog channels.

Suppose they plan on adding 100 HD channels. They'd need to free up 50 analog channels for that, and even if they gave away digital converter boxes to everyone, they'd still royally honk off people who've been relying on directly tuning the locals on their VCRs or TiVos.

Then again, I'm not quite sure where they'd find 100 HD channels. The sats are probably inflating their numbers from having to carry a bunch of the major market stations, and no one would really receive all of them.

What is FCS 1, 2 and 3?

Here's an article about the debut of some devices with the next generation CableCards.

http://hd.broadcastnewsroom.com/arti...e.jsp?id=99651

FOX College Sports, They are known on the air as FOX College Sports Atlantic, Central and Pacific.

Is anyone else here experiencing frequent audio dropouts with FOX HD? I'm a recent Adelphia-Comcast convertee, but have been experiencing this problem for at least a year before the Comcast cutover. It seems to occur mainly (If not only) during shows like "24" and "House" and probably happens at least 5 times per episode. I'm experiencing the same issue with two different sets connected to Scientific 8300HD DVR boxes. It's very likely a problem with FOX, as I don't have any frequent audio problems with other HD channels, but I'm curious to see if anyone else has the problem before I begin the likely fruitless exercise of calling Comcast support.

My understanding is that support for CC2.0 is a matter of design. Some consumer electronics are designed with a high probability that they can be readily upgraded to support CC2.0, while others are not.

I saw my first bill under the "new" rates.

Still $3.79 for a cable box. With the SD DVR only $9.94 including the box perhaps the slighly lower rate of $13.74 is correct.

Also keep in mind that even if a box supported multistream and 2.0 cablecards that doesn't mean these boxes can support SDV and other two-way services. The reason for this is that the box itself must have the hardware to enable bi-directional communication. CableCard 2.0 cards can support two way services but they still need to interface with bi-directional hardware. Right now current S3 Tivo DVR boxes aren't bi-directional and as such they can never support SDV as they exist today. Now if Tivo could make a USB dongle or something clever that would add that missing bi-directional support to existing S3 users things might be fine.

The USB dongle would be a fine idea for those of us who shelled out for an S3, but I doubt that Cable Labs (or whatever the name of that organization is) would allow the output of a cable card to cross such an easily interceptable link.

I could be wrong. Hope I'm wrong. I mean, I did spend all that money on what's probably going to prove to be an interim product, but you know...

(Just hoping that at least the major locals remain unswitched.)

In theory, the dongle wouldn't have anything to do with the content that the CableCard is protecting. It simply needs to send the Out of Band (OOB) data back upstream to the head end, covering such things as channel changes, VOD and PPV selections, etc.

Folks at TiVo has posted on TCF that the current S3s will likely never have bi-directional support. I suspect that if we see a TiVo than can handle SDV, it'll be a new piece of hardware, perhaps the "S4".

I don't think a usb dongle would work. In order to communicate upstream a device will have to have a modulator that either speaks the proprierty OB (unlikely) or DOCSIS, which uses QAM. Basically a CE device would be a cable modem inside it to work two-way.

anyone else getting a lot of "to be announced" on their guide past 6-7 days out??

That happens occasionally. Recenly, however, that's been happening less and less.

Last night I noticed a new channel pop up. # 848. There was a VS logo in the top right corner of the screen. Is this our Inhd2 replacement?

This is the Comcast Vs./Golf HD channel which is mostly a waste right now, I guess the will have a lot of Hockey and Golf in HD.

-Ken

I had assumed it would be 865.
I see Verses SD moving to 48,and perhaps golf to 53.

Thanks for the info man!

848 is in the Springfield/Holyoke DMA

So for a second week in a row, Smallville is in SD letterboxed on 856. Interestingly enough it is in Dolby Digital 5.1, which is odd since it's usually DPL II...proving that it's coming from the local affiliate, not the network feed. Is someone asleep at the switch there? Supernatural was in HD last week....annoying.

Yay they fixed it...right after I sent the above post.

We in Fall River now have 848.

I think someone at Comcast is "thinking" and lumping all "Sports" channels in the 840 - 855 range.

848 Vs/Golf
849 ESPN
850 ESPN II
851 NESN

which could mean the leftover "weather" channel (845?) will get (re)moved

This is because they have been lumped before

48 ESPN Classic
49 ESPN
50 ESPN 2
51 NESN
52 FSN

At one time Speed was 54 and golf was 53.

What we'll see over the next two to five years:
OCAP - Open Cable Application Platform - What this means) essentially, television service providers which offer 'pay for' services will be able to, via OCAP standards, embed program descrambling information within the video stream as opposed to being bound to using a proprietary data stream outside of the video stream. This in turn means that if you have ANY device which is OCAP compliant be it a TV, Daewoo cable box with 5 HDMI outputs and 2 360GB HDD's, a computer with a QAM tuner, etc. they will all be able to process scrambled video and display content which you pay for. This must accompany a form of return data delivery to the headend which may or may not be proprietary. The possibility does exist to operate in a continued one-way fashion, but there would be little advantage to that.

MoCA - Multimedia Over Coax Alliance - What this means) a next gen delivery path for data whether it is IP internet, VOIP or video. This technology is a true implementation of two way communication which can exceed 100Mbps. This communication occurs over your existing in home coaxial cable and presents no interference to traditional linear RF signals. In addition to this technology supporting what you'd think it would interface with, consider a MoCa compliant refridgerator, oven, microwave, printer, telephone, iPod, stereo, multi-disc CD/DVD player, lighting system and on and on. MoCA will reduce the need for running new CAT5 wiring in a home as the home would generally have more cable drops than CAT5. It is more reliable than 802.11x.

When combining OCAP and MoCA, what you will see is a standards compliant approach to integrating the technologial furnishings you own and those furnishings which are yet to be developed. OCAP's use of MoCA as a return path to a service provider enables true, flexible and standard two way communication for continued interactivity and control over both your furnishings and the content for which you subscribe. The bottom line is this, OCAP will allow you to receive the 'pay for' content wherever you want to see it (cable box, computer, refrigerator screen while you're eating you fruit loops) and MoCA will provide that open standards delivery path to communicate with the MSO and the rest of the world. Who ever thought their refrigerator would automatically place a peapod order every Friday night at 11:30 using cable and a shopping list stored in their SD card. Check out your available beer in your fridge before you leave work using MoCA to you fridge's web server.

"I gotta upgrade my fridge's SD card memory size because it doesn't allow me to to store all the beer brands I have defined in my random order selection que (there's full screen jpegs of each bottle in a 360 degree view)."

I actually like that weather channel, it is very convenient in amongst the HD channels. It would seem to me that it would be pretty easy to make a HD weather channel.

-Ken

Check out this article

Comcast: 'We're Not Worried About DIRECTV HDTV'
http://www.tvpredictions.com/burke020107.htm


Here is a snippet:
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The cable operator now offers less than 20 national high-def networks in most markets. But Burke told Wall Street analysts that Comcast will not try to match DIRECTV's HD lineup which is expected to include a large number of variety channels.

"We're not going to radically change our game plan," he said in an investors conference call. "We think we offer a superior HD experience."

Burke instead said Comcast will focus more on high-def movies, sports and local channels, which he said are most popular among his subscribers.
----------------------

When will Comcast wake up? They obviously don't get the fact that HD is here to stay and "I want my HDTV" is what people are saying!

Grrrrrr...

-t

Is WSBK-DT (838) taking up bandwidth of a full HD channel even though they hardly broadcast in HD? Or does the bandwidth only get taken up when they broadcast in HD? If it is, why not begin with removing it?!?

Talk is cheap. Who cares what anyone is "saying"? I believe Comcast knows exact what people are driven to one subscription television service over another by, which is really all that is important. We, here on the AVS Forums, are only a small percentage of the people and generally aren't representative of the general public.


The channel takes up the full bandwidth of an HD channel all the time.

I'd be OK with that, if they give us movies that respect OAR, have Dolby 5.1, etc.

I'm fairly satisfied with the lineup now, adding the HDNET channels would be my next choice. They also need to keep the quality high and not start lowering bitrates or start over-compressing.

Comcast has to move analog channels to digital to free up the bandwidth to add more HD channels while keeping the same bitrates. see no reason why Comcast cant go to from 70 analog channels down to 40-45 analog channels. This would be enough for all local brodacast, goverment , and the most popular cable chnnles to remain on the analog tier , and free up over 250 MHz of space for HD and more SD channels.