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Sidestepping A-to-D Convertors For Town Government's Cable TV?
jake-itguy writes "I am the IT guy for a small town municipality. Comcast called me the other day and told me I had to have a digital-to-analog converter for each TV in the municipality, as Comcast is turning off analog cable in September. I did a quick count, and we have 32 TVs across 6 buildings (22 being in the police and fire departments). Most of the TVs are hung on the walls. I told Comcast having a box for each TV was not acceptable and wanted a different solution. Comcast told me there was no other solution." Read on for more details of the situation, and to see if you can offer Jake any advice for distributing cable service within his Indiana town.
jake-itguy continues: "They told me they have been putting these boxes on every TV in each classroom in each school. I laughed when I heard that. I said, 'Do you know how much electricity is going to be needed for each box?' They didn't know the answer. I was bumped up to the next guy in the Comcast hierarchy, who said there was no other solution and I had to pay $3 per month for each box. Being a municipality, we are entitled to free expanded basic cable as a part of the franchise agreement back in 1982.
I know there is a solution, as hospitals and hotels don't have little boxes next their TVs. Unfortunately I haven't found a specific answer to this problem so I am asking Slashdot. Is there a box that can be put in the basement of the town hall that will convert the Comcast signal into a regular digital signal? Most of the TVs in the town have digital tuners per last years a2d conversion of the airwaves. I would be willing to replace the few analog sets with new ones if there is a good solution for this. Each building's cable feed is fed from the town hall. We have a nice big 1-inch cable coming into the building with some splitters coming off the line. Each building gets a 1/2 inch cable. Is there a box that will convert the Comcast signal to analog for the schools? I am sure the schools don't have TVs with digital tuners."
I know there is a solution, as hospitals and hotels don't have little boxes next their TVs. Unfortunately I haven't found a specific answer to this problem so I am asking Slashdot. Is there a box that can be put in the basement of the town hall that will convert the Comcast signal into a regular digital signal? Most of the TVs in the town have digital tuners per last years a2d conversion of the airwaves. I would be willing to replace the few analog sets with new ones if there is a good solution for this. Each building's cable feed is fed from the town hall. We have a nice big 1-inch cable coming into the building with some splitters coming off the line. Each building gets a 1/2 inch cable. Is there a box that will convert the Comcast signal to analog for the schools? I am sure the schools don't have TVs with digital tuners."
If you don't mind them all being tuned to the same channel, you only need 1 converter box per building. Might also need an RF amplifier to help with distribution since by definition splitting the signal attenuates it.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Isn't digital cable ASTC compatible if it is not encrypted?
That a "mere" 22 tvs out of 32 are being used for non-education purposes is absolutely shameful.
Get antennas and cheap converter boxes. Or get a Channel Plus 3025 and only buy one cable box per building and pay $3 a month per box forever.
If several TVs are tuned into the same channel in a building, you could use one box at the point-of-ingest into the building.
So the rules the government makes they can't comply with?
So our analog TVs are going to stop working soon? Why haven't we heard about this? It seems like they would have talked about it in the press or something.
Seriously, dude, I hope you haven't been in your job for more than like 6 months, otherwise this is all on you. Cough up $1600 and get 32 $50 converters. Or tell Comcast you want them to donate them. You have a franchise agreement you can allude to, right?
Hotels frequently have a bank of converters, each tuned to a different digital channel. The outputs of all of the converter boxes are put onto separate analog channels, multiplexed and fed through a distribution amplifier.
You would need a box for each channel you wish to receive. While this may work with a hotel where they own all of the premise wiring to the rooms it would be impractical for a widespread system across a city.
Tisha Hayes
Different problem - the rest of america made the switch from analog BROADCAST to HD. This is Comcast's cable system which switched from analog tuning to a special digital tuning box (that seems to be fairly proprietary and the one I got doesn't work well with a lot of programmable remotes). The purported reason was to free up bandwidth, but the real reason was probably to kill the ability to split the signal.
and provides an alternative to Comcast digital cable?
Hmm, sounds like a book to me.
He's talking about analog being distributed by Cable (most of them still do this), not over the air.
Why couldn't you get a few tuners for the channels you want to distribute - and then modulate them on analog/digital channels and run your own signal? I'm pretty sure this is what hotels/hospitals do.
Never cease to wonder. If you do you have become compliant with the world around you, and that is a very dangerous thing
Couple of points - a "regular" signal is defined as digital! The other is that I would imagine that if you are only watching "basic" cable, then your digital tuners should cover the same frequencies. So there likely isn't any conversion for the digital TVs you already have.
As for the Dig to Ana converters - remember the ads the cable TV folks ran - "You won't have to change a thing if you have cable because we'll keep the analog signal around." Well - Comcast lied! I have to rent 6 (*^#(#^^ boxes for my house!
Have you compiled your kernel today??
I know there is a solution, as hospitals and hotels don't have little boxes next their TVs
Having run into this before, you're right, those places don't have little boxes next to their TVs. They do however have RACKS of them in utility closets where the feeds are split out from the main lines to the sets.
Sorry dude, you may be SOL.
You may want to check the exact wording of the franchise agreement. Depending on how it's worded, if they are required to provide you free access to basic cable and they no longer offer that option, you may have some leverage with them. If nothing else, you may persuade them to give you the hardware at no cost.
I witnessed, many many years ago, a satellite setup for an apartment complex that used a Big Ugly Dish that muxed into a matrix of little individual tuner devices, the signals were recombined and then fed into the local F-type cable netwok, with repeater/amps behind that most likely. I wish I could tell you the brand names of these devices but I just don't remember. Let it be said; Comcrap is not the way to go, you could do much better with Dish/DirecTV (or anyone else's) service, I would suspect, and those companies would be much more helpful than your current "provider." Don't let your F-type cable go to waste, ditch Comcast and mux in the channels to your cable network from another vendor.
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
Get all of the police and firemen to go to the city council and demand they end the Comcast monopoly and while they are at it, have the city council ban encryption of the digital signal.
Without a doubt, Comcast will find a solution for you!!!
Get a converter for every digital channel you care about and retransmit on analog channels. Don't interfere with other channels. You can do this per-building or for the whole town if it's small enough.
Actually, don't, since that would cost too much for the little benefit you would gain.
Put just a few converters in each building and have a remote switch to pick your digital channel and analog channel.
http://www.vecima.com/products.php?line=1026&item=1083
It does the digital to analog conversion in one spot, and is used to handle doing so for large buildings such as hospitals or apartment blocks.
What you want is IPTV over multicast. A number of universities have done this - one is the University of Wisconsin at Madison, which has a pretty bare bones approach using IP multicast and Apple Quicktime. They are also pretty good about giving technical clue if you run into trouble and ask nicely. If you want to spend more money, there is the HaiVision Video Furnace, which is used by, e.g., Brown University.
I have no idea if your contract with Comcast will let you do this, but I believe that the Universities do it by restricting use to only people on campus, so you might be able to do the same.
Do the TVs you use say they are "Digital Cable Ready" or that they have a QAM tuner?
I! Tego Arcana Dei.
If you use haft-inch and one inch do describe coax cables maybe your not the best guy for the job.
Half inch, 1 inch, and "625" (which stands for 0.625", or 5/8 inch) are all industry-standard ways to specify the different sizes of 75 Ohm CATV coax Mr. anonymous dumbass. Yes, I am a CATV engineer.
You need one converter per channel that you need, plus one modulator. The converter provides analog output to the modulator, which puts the analog on the output channel.
You also need splitters and combiners, along with the cable to interconnect them all, and it's a good idea to use un-occupied channels for the modulators. (That's *real* channels, not "fake" digital channels. No channel under 6 is "real").
-> modulator ->
Cable -> splitter(s) -> modulator -> combiner -> your internal cable system.
-> modulator ->
Cable companies use lots of modulators around here, where many cable subscribers continue to use their old sets. They're going to become common on the used market, as other companies do what your cable company is doing. Also available online.
Good luck - and I'm sure there's someone in the tech department at Comcast who knows this stuff.
Let me get this straight, you have 32 Analog TVs and a Comcast is going digital. So you need D-to-A converters, i.e. Digital (Comcast) to analog (TVs) converters. Am I missing something?
Better advice: sue. The FCC is requiring cable providers to maintain analog cable until 2012 unless they provide converters for their customers. Unless I'm misunderstanding, charging their customers to rent the boxes was NOT one of their options.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Since all the other users are fed from your town hall, why feed them comcast cable?
Receive comcast at the townhall, and then transmit analog cable down the lines to all your other locations?
Most hotels do this, they have a single feed into the building and then handle their own feeds into all the sets via various methods (some hotels use iptv for instance).
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
QAM
CableCARD
You tell Comcast you want the boxes at no charge, or you'll be in touch with the city attorney. Electrical consumption is negligible next to the television that is displaying the signal.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
If you bothered to read the complete submission, you would have noticed it's free to their municipality due to an existing agreement.
"Being a municipality, we are entitled to free expanded basic cable as a part of the franchise agreement back in 1982."
At this point, he's trying to stop from using taxpayer money to pay for and run the cable boxes. Hence the point of the submission.
Nicely done on reading:
OP: " Being a municipality, we are entitled to ree expanded basic cable as a part of the franchise agreement back in 1982."
Keyword is FREE, ie, not spending any tax payer money
Why does a city government need cable TV in the first place? Save the tax payers some money and get rid of it.
From the article:
Being a municipality, we are entitled to free expanded basic cable as a part of the franchise agreement back in 1982.
They're not spending tax money on it, and he's trying to avoid spending tax money on $3 a month converter boxes all over the place (as well as the electricity to power them.)
Maybe you missed the part about how it's FREE:
Being a municipality, we are entitled to free expanded basic cable as a part of the franchise agreement back in 1982.
Man, what in the god damned hell makes you think you know anything about running a city?
Anything at all? Any experience in the matter, relative who's done it who you've talked to, basic understanding of how humans and human institutions work........ anything?
You seem shocked about that! It's about the only thing they can do right! Hell, even their HD picture is so pixelated, you can usually find higher quality video online.
In the summary it says: "Being a municipality, we are entitled to free expanded basic cable as a part of the franchise agreement back in 1982." Ditching basic cable will save the tax payers a whopping $0. Comcast signed a deal ... their town granted Comcast a monopoly on cable infrastructure, in return for free service.
Now, it looks like the municipality is learning the joys of monopolies. They don't like Comcast's new policies, yet their own policies prevent competition from stepping in and offering them a solution. Now, they have to come to Slashdot for help.
Reasons for TV in a City:
City/Police/Fire - Weather Disasters
Fire - 24 hr shifts.
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
Any way these boxes can be mounted behind the TVs? I work for a cable company (not Comcast) and our Motorola models are the size of a small cable modem. They can usually be angled somewhat so the IR sensor is still in range.
Being a municipality, we are entitled to free expanded basic cable as a part of the franchise agreement back in 1982.
They are not 'paying' for the cable TV.
RTFA. They get the cable TV for free.
Surely your town has a hotel. Every hotel I've stayed in for the last 15 years (mostly Hampton Inns) has had an analog TV with a fancy remote that looked like a digital interface. Once I saw "rain fade" revealing it was Dish Network behind the covers. If you have credentials to prove you work for the municipality, stop by a few hotels and ask if you can see the equipment that drives their TV system.
And while I'd think it would be nice to cancel the cable and save the town some cash (like another poster suggested), I would expect the fire department to have cable to keep the firemen sane. Well, as "sane" as you can get and still run into a fire.
If Comcast agreed to give you free cable then I say they should give you free cable. If they are not honoring their 1982 agreement then maybe you could threaten to break that agreement. Try to see if some slightly less evil cable company can come in with a new franchise agreement that includes actual free cable to older government tv's with analog sets. Maybe those other companies will just give you the digital box for free?
Seeing that the input signal is DIGITAL cable and the output is Analog TVs, I would start with D-to-A converters and not A-to-D.
As he noted, they have free basic as part of their franchise agreement with Comcast, so there's no out-of-pocket from the city budget for this service.
As to why they need TV: on-duty firefighters between calls, idling in the station, waiting rooms in city offices, conference rooms with local/national news, TVs displaying city meetings over the city channel, etc.
Analog broadcast to digital you mean, HD doesn't enter into it. If a station wanted to broadcast multiple SD channels instead of HD, they would have the FCC's blessing.
Sorry to nitpick, but too many people think the digital transition was all about HD, when it was in reality nothing to do with HD.
FC Closer
Being a municipality, we are entitled to free expanded basic cable as a part of the franchise agreement back in 1982.
Sounds like you may need to have a quick chat with your city's lawyer about whether Comcast is trying to do an end-run around that agreement. That section may make your problem their problem instead.
I am officially gone from
Being a municipality, we are entitled to free expanded basic cable as a part of the franchise agreement back in 1982.
From the summary.
I, for one, am looking forward to the inevitable
A Very selfish attitude. "Give ME fast internet and to $%^ with those poor people who have old TVs"
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
For those who know nothing about it, check out comcast.com/digitalnow
From what I understand, they are still going to allow your old analog cable tuner to tune into channels 3 to 30 (at least in our area, yours may vary.)
All other channels are being compressed into a digital stream, to take less cable bandwidth, and will be converted on a channel by channel basis by these Digital Transport Adapters (DTAs). You need 1 DTA on each TV you don't have a cable box on IF you want to watch channels above 30. You are now allowed 1 cable box and 2 DTAs free of charge, with each DTA costing $1.99 per month.
This saves them bandwidth for other things (on demand, cable internet, etc.) and essentially upgrades their bandwidth and network without any new hardware along the way.
Enough of this shit. I want my cops & fire department on break to feel like they're well-trained and compensated, trusted professionals, not slave-wagers in the "all your base are belong to the company man" plan. (Also, I want tough and transparent oversight.) Otherwise you get the TSA.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
http://www.rldrake.com/catv-hospitality.php
These are essentially units that pull in all the data at once and allow you to redistribute it without the encryption on the signal.
You would basically have to build your own cable head end, where there is a digital receiver (the D-to-A boxes, so to speak) for each channel you want in your cable system, a modulator per channel which takes the (baseband) output from the receiver and modulates it onto a channel, and a multiplexer which takes the modulated channels and combines them. That signal is then distributed like normal cable. You can take the original signals from digital cable or you can get them by satellite. This is all going to cost more and use more power than just 32 converter boxes. When you next replace the TVs, get ones with integrated digital tuners. Until then, get D-to-A boxes, but buy them instead of renting them.
If the franchise agreement really says you get expanded basic in exchange for them getting the franchise, then I'd have a word with the township's lawyers. Depending on how the deal is stated, it's probably Comcast's problem to make this work, not yours. I suspect that if the town's lawyers had a word with Comcast's lawyers, then someone in Comcast's engineering department would sort things out right quick.
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
No. What the hell are city employees doing watching TV. Shut them off and get back to work you leeches.
I thought Kokomo was off the Florida keys...
Stupidity only gets you so far, then you've gotta try
If all of the cable feeds for the other buildings run back to city hall, why not make city hall a mini headend with X number of cable tuners that are each tuned to one channel, then mux that signal into the cable feed to service the analog TVs. Blonder Tongue is a manufacture that we use at my work place.
crap, mis-modded you redundant so this post fixes that :-(
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
It is spending taxpayer money. In fact, it's making Comcast into a private tax collection agency. Comcast gets an exclusive deal, allowing them to price their service above the rate that a free market would define and the government gets services provided.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
There are two ways to use Comcast digital cable; set top box and CableCard http://customer.comcast.com/Pages/FAQViewer.aspx?seoid=What-is-a-CableCARD
...who said there was no other solution and I had to pay $3 per month for each box.
About the third line of the second quoted section.
How long ago was it when you last had cable? And from where? I get a monthly $5 fee for "renting" my cable box, and another $3 or so for "renting" my modem from Comcast.
Remember back a couple of years ago when the cable industry ran those ads (on Comcast here in W. Mass.) reassuring us all that we didn't have to worry about all this digital nonsense because they had our backs? And here we are a short time later, where they've deleted 3/4 of the channels and reduced the signal quality of what's left. Thanks a ton guys, and you're welcome for all that money I've sent you over the years. I refuse to get their digital box because I don't want Comcast always knowing what channel I'm watching (the one good thing about analog TV is privacy!), and anyway their cheapest digital plan is 3x the price of basic (analog) cable and wouldn't work with my DVRs.
One of my DVRs does have a digital tuner and it picks up *nothing*. Everything is either "Scramble Program" or else a blue screen -- not the one my TV generates on no signal and I don't *think* the DVR does either -- so is Comcast really broadcasting a blue screen 24/7 on the unencrypted channels? Seems a little spiteful even for them.
ANYWAY -- does the town's free cable deal include free broadband? Maybe this has already been done but if not it might be a really interesting project (even if it's not practical for a town): put together a box which decodes video off Hulu/etc., not just into a single NTSC video-out (there are plenty of boxes for that), but with RF modulation to the usual CATV channel numbering system so you could use it to drive a local piece of cable (within a school), and put in a schedule of which videos get played at what time on which channel. That way you could keep your existing TVs and not have to put a 20-watt set-top-box on each one.
If you are interested in following what's going on, the AVS forum (www.avsforum.com) is a great place.
What is happening is that "SDV" (switched digital video) is coming. What it amounts to is that only the selected channel is sent to the box. This frees up bandwidth for more services and channels.
I _DO NOT_ speak for Comcast, just have been following this for 2-3 years. They have a policy of keeping the local HD channels in "clear QAM". Thus, your digital tuner (if QAM is included, pretty certain since 2007 or so) will get your local channels. The conversion is happening gradually, not just with Comcast, but with TW and Charter too.
For folks with BASIC, they provide, as I remember, a 2-13 converter to analog. AIUI, the TV does all of the tuning. Local HD via QAM is there. ... IOW, 2 different cable systems in different towns could have the same TV channel (say 21 for example), on different places, say 733 in one town and 744 in another.
For folks with EXPANDED BASIC and higher services, they provide a tuner box and remote control. Tuning is done by the box. Local HD via QAM is there.
For folks with HD, they provide a tuner box and remote control. Tuning is done by the box. HD follows the channel numbers in most newspaper listings and goes above 200. Nothing above 200 relates, AIUI, to any frequency, just to their own policies
When you have the franchise agreement, I suspect they maintain that your box will be free. I doubt they will pay your power bill . Keep us posted.
Here in Greenville County SC schools, Charter has put multiple (I _THINK_ 8) receivers in a rack. The receivers can be set for which channel they get. The school video distribution system can select which receiver goes to which locations. I believe that, at present, it is SD on channel 3, kinda like VCRs of old.
digital cable boxes will work just fine on old CRT TV's. all they do is understand a different signal. and in NYC digital cable has been the same price or cheaper for years. only reason people stuck with analog is the ability to use pirated boxes that get every channel
Of all the objections to make, this one is silly:
'Do you know how much electricity is going to be needed for each box?'
Cable boxes run pretty warm, but nothing compared to almost any sized CRT TV.
I'm assuming you don't have LCDs or plasmas hung on the walls, since most of them have included Clear QAM support since their prices became reasonable.
If you want encrypted channels (basically anything other than the broadcast networks), you need a cable box, period. (Yeah there is CableCard, but CableCard was an epic failure and CC-ready TVs are rare. You still need to rent the card anyway.)
If you want to have your TVs able to individually tune channels, you either need to switch to Clear-QAM-capable TVs (and forgo encrypted channels) or give in and get boxes. If you don't need individual tuning, a single box and then an analog distribution network will do the job. However this might prove more expensive than just getting a bunch of boxes until the TVs get replaced.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
The problem isn't with his employer, hence no point resigning. Me I'd rather have people in government who in the interest of reducing government expense would actually care enough to doubt what some kid at Comcast says and look for advice elsewhere, despite the hordes of idiots who would surely be jerks when given the opportunity.
Time to whip out the old "do not hire" list...
Name : Larry Bagina.
Reason: Quitter, can't read, anti-social dispenser of useless advice.
Well, if they're like my small town, it's very handy to have the regional (and cable only) news network available to the police, fire, and other emergency during severe weather conditions. This lets them both learn about conditions across the region, but what other cities in the region are doing. During winter severe weather, it's handy to make sure school closures and shelter openings information is going out properly (on local news providers). I.E. as a backup and supplement to the official channels.
Plus, he specified it's in the fire stations, where it will also provide entertainment during off-times.
If you actually bother to read TFA, they get it for free. (I wish my town had been so far sighted.)
You will most likely need a few signal combiners, and few boxes as source and a distribution switch. you will need one box per channel you want to broadcast to your tvs. of course you can time share, example from 1pm - 4pm channel 3 is cnn and the rest of the time is another channel. but this will require planing and probably cost more up front than just using a box at each TV, but in the long run you would be able to handle changes better than you do now with what I assume you are just amplifying and routing the raw cable to each TV. something like this http://www.campuscablesystems.com/system.php
Exactly where in the 'article' is the information about Comcast charging? It's not.
Last time I used cable, the box came free with the service. If you wanted a better box, you paid more. ($10 more for HD, or DVR, or HD-DVR. Yeah, they were all the same.)
Right around here:
"They told me they have been putting these boxes on every TV in each classroom in each school. I laughed when I heard that. I said, 'Do you know how much electricity is going to be needed for each box?' They didn't know the answer. I was bumped up to the next guy in the Comcast hierarchy, who said there was no other solution and I had to pay $3 per month for each box. Being a municipality, we are entitled to free expanded basic cable as a part of the franchise agreement back in 1982.
Exactly where in the 'article' is the information about Comcast charging? It's not.
Last time I used cable, the box came free with the service. If you wanted a better box, you paid more. ($10 more for HD, or DVR, or HD-DVR. Yeah, they were all the same.)
You are partially correct. Comcast charges a per box fee past 4 boxes. If you only have 4 TVs, no extra fee.
It is common for hotels and the like to have a master antenna distribution system. The head end has the antenna combiners, modulators (digital and or analog) tuners/antennas and other program material. You will want an engineer to design the distribution system so each outlet receives the same signal strength and each channel has the correct audio and video levels into the respective modulators.
The general arrangement for a typical system is a tuner for each channel desired feeding a modulator on each desired internal channel. Using modulators instead of just feeding antenna signals eliminates signal strength changes inside the system and if using several antennas for several stations, prevents multi path (analog as well as digital problems can result) due to multiple antennas. Cable channels are tuned with a converter box and then fed into a modulator. This can be digital or analog. The combined and level balanced signal is than amplified by the head end amplifier (with enough headroom to handle the combined signal) and distributed to the receivers so each receives a signal with each channel at the standard distribution strength.
For that many sets and channels I highly recommend contracting the head end package and distribution. A typical company is like the one in this link. Disclaimer, this is from a google search and not an enforcement. I used to do this for hotels with satellite C band and Ku band. Cable loss, splitter insertion loss and such can be worked up from a good CATV system engineering handbook if you want to roll your own. Work from the set back to the head end to find the required head end amplifier signal level. Don't start by stuffing in a cheap amp and trying to make up the shortfall downstream. The result will be clipping, harmonics, distortion, and corruption of signal. This is not a home antenna project.
http://www.mgacom.co.uk/casestud/study3.htm This is what you are looking for. Tell Comcast this installation will be part of a MATV head end. Get in touch with the right engineer. He will be hard to find as they want to sell a box a set and that is the primary consumer level response. You want a system engineer instead of the sales force. Find him.
The truth shall set you free!
I run into this mentality every frack'n day. Municipalities and their employees who feel that somehow they deserve "special" treatment because they're "the City".
Yeah, how dare the municipality demand free service for a few locations as part of an agreement to give Comcast a monopoly on cable television service. Why can't poor little Comcast ever catch a break? All they want to do is have complete control over wired television access, eliminate consumer choice, and squeeze every last cent out of their subscribers with cheap stunts like this digital converter box fiasco. They're clearly the little guys getting beat down by the man!
Just enforce the damn contract that states the town gets free cable as part of the franchise deal. Seems to me if Comcast wants to change things on their side, they still need to take steps to ensure they honor the contract. Or else, well, you figure it out.
It's probably cheaper for Comcast to provide the equipment to do single point D-to-A for the city than to lose their franchise. But I could be wrong.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
First off, Comcast is lying to you. They are changing from unencrypted digital cable (which most recent TVs can deal with just fine on their own) to encrypted digital cable. This allows them to reduce signal theft and also allows them to charge customers for every TV in each customer's location instead of getting one flat fee per customer.
If you are only watching the major over-the-air broadcast networks for your area (your local ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX affiliates) the cable company is legally required to redistribute those signals unencrypted. Your TVs with digital tuners should be able to pick those up. If you need to watch things like CNN or FOX News, you're pretty much stuck with getting a bunch of Comcast boxes. There may be some solutions that would allow you to centralize the Comcast tuners and redistribute the signal as analog, but you'd still be stuck getting as many Comcast boxes as there are digital channels that you want to watch.
I'd throw this over to your legal team. If they are required to provide you with free cable, I think it could be easily argued that they must also provide boxes to decrypt the signal if they choose to encrypt the signal. The argument that "we're giving you free signal, pity you can't decrypt it..." seems hollow to me if they are required by contract to provide free cable to the city. The electrical costs should be negligible if you're already powering a TV in these locations.
Beyond that, welcome to the world of being a Comcast customer, where you get letters in the mail that effectively say "We've just found a way to charge you more money!".
Exactly where in the 'article' is the information about Comcast charging? It's not.
Go back and read it again, focusing in particular on the paragraph after "jake-itguy continues". You'll find what you missed there. You might want to rethink your comment. Personally, I think forcibly phasing out analog and charging extra rent for the digital converters smells more like a less than ethical money grab to me.
comcast DTA's are a joke and you get less then what used to be on analog cable.
In Chicago land that's
CSN +
CLTV
SCI-FI
Speed (parts of the area)
and more.
I actually work for a TV company... might be able to give a little insight.
Most headends for hotels, hospitals and the like are comprised of a rack of STBs, each tuned to a specific channel. The output is modulated as an RF signal and combined with all the others, so the incoming digital signal is effectively converted to analog for redistribution on the local coax network.
So, if you're wanting to display more than 32 services, you'll need at least that many STBs at your analog headend. You'll also need to manage the infrastructure to distribute it to the six buildings, which would probably mean running underground cables underground, and if there is any sort of distance you'd need some RF amplifiers. You might be able to get around some of that using something like a slingbox over IP, but again, added cost.
Finally, there's the management aspect. What happens if a channel moves to another channel number? You'll have to retune the box. If a box goes down for any reason, you'll have to replace it as the channel will be knocked out. And one of the less fun aspects of managing a TV system is that people treat it as a utility... if it's down, expect to get a call, even at 3AM.
If I were you, I'd push your cable company to donate STBs in order to keep your relationship rosy. That way, no $3/month fee (which does seem wrong based on your agreement), and none of the buildout/management headaches.
Best of luck.
Still not dead.
um... just read... he says Comcast told him $3 per box
Adding to that:
Education: View Presidential speeches, inauguration or other important government functions like the Senate floor.
I mean, since the market has been deregulated, there must be some competitors in the market that can offer you cable besides whatever you have now. That's the point of the free market, to allow competitors to offer better service and have people choose which offering they want to take - there should be no state-subsidized monopoly on either cable or internet providers.
You could also use another type of TV provider: IPTV, Satellite - they should all have something in their commercial range that allows you to get your content and convert it back to analog.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
So wait, if they are ending their end of the bargain, it seems reasonable to end the comcast monopoly on you city.
put together the numbers of what this will cost, and complain to your elected supervisors. suggest terminating the cableco's franchise. god forbid they should lose their right to print money by ... delivering service.
Remove the caps and hold to a mirror.
http://www.atxnetworks.com/bulk-qam-to-qam-gige-analog
Does exactly what you want - it can bulk-decrypt cable channels and output them as CleaQAM. Unfortunately, if you only have 32 TVs, you likely can't afford it.
To be quite frank, Comcast doesn't care about you. 32 sets is a small setup. Something like that, or using modulators is how the big boys do it, but you're talking $10,000+ (if not $100,000+) depending on your requiements.
make Comcast put the full analog line up + HD ver of the old analog channels in clear QAM.
To bad with comcast it's OTA clear qam or the at junk DTA that does not even get the full starter line up or the $8 per tv box / cable outlet fee.
Wasn't part of the statement of problem that they are wall-mounted analog-only TVs, and therefore can't have boxes at the site of the TV? "Free boxes or my lawyers will eat you" doesn't help solve the problem, and city lawyers have better things to do than this. In any event, from the description of the situation Comcast is certainly not trying to "get around" anything; they are still providing basic cable for free. It's just not analog; the city has to go digital like everybody else. FCC mandate. The question is how to do so without converter boxes at the TV itself, not who to sue.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
Were the TVs that plug into the cable free? Were they repurposed from other tasks that are useful? (TV/VCR carts used to replay tapes, camera footage, evidence)
Is the electricity free?
Who services the AV equipment? Do they work for free? Were the TVs wall mounted for free?
Aside from education (Cable in the classroom), what purpose does having cable serve civil servants?
I dunno, maybe they want some insight as to what's going on in the community. Or do you prefer your government to operate blind and in the dark?
I thought analog TV was turned off a long time ago...guess I was wrong!
No. What the hell are city employees doing watching TV. Shut them off and get back to work you leeches.
News, weather, traffic. Being able to receive emergency broadcasts during, er, emergencies (or to monitor that said broadcasts by the city are indeed being transmitted.) Same for things like school closings etc. C-SPAN. Watching city council meetings on the local access channels. There are plenty of good reasons.
Really? People need this explained?
Police and firemen are two kinds of jobs which can have different definitions of "work". Jobs in which you are waiting for a call (something to happen) often allow for personal time and even sleep such as in the case of firemen. Same deal for soldiers- you're always "at work", but not always on patrol.
Hell, I was a third-shift NOC guy for a while and there was very little actual work to do during a routine shift.
"I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it further."
My big questions about this article are two: why are they setting up TVs for city employees to watch in the first place, and why do they have a monopoly franchise agreement with Comcast? Are the citizens of the town being served by this sweetheart deal?
Did you miss the part where the boxes cost more to the consumer, both in box rentals and electricity?
who said there was no other solution and I had to pay $3 per month for each box.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Then use four boxes to convert to analog and then amplify the signal into your own analog network.
The alternative is to just flip them the bird and forget about having TV at all on the premises and stick to using radio channels. NPR would do fine.
Life still goes on without TV.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Believe it or not, we've had almost the same situation where I work; a little city just outside Sacramento. Comcast changed everything from analog to digital, except for local stations, and then even those went to digital. Eventually, our IT department got Comcast to come out and install a device in each of our buildings that will rebroadcast all of the digital channels as analog via the building's wiring. That, or the IT department has something else going on that I don't know about (despite that I'm the person in Facilities who runs all the cabling for when they installed the black box... Which just /had/ to be in the server room, rather than in the closet where Comcast's cable comes in, which we later found was BS and just a means for the IT admin to try and exercise control over everyone.)
So to answer your question: Yes, Comcast does have the device to do this. They're just being retarded about giving it to you, or perhaps they "don't have it" in your market.
No, it's not a "different problem"... you simply assumed he was referring to the broadcast transition to digital. Fact is, many cable subscribers in America had to switch to using cable boxes or DTA boxes, and we are continuing to be forced to do so. So, he's not "wrong" as the rest of America is being forced to switch as well... I do agree with the notion that this is essentially a "loophole" allowing the cable companies to continue to force cable boxes down our throats.
n/t
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
More like Fire and Ambulance guys that live in the fire house. You work 12 hours on, only a small fraction of that will typically be active duty so filling the rest or the time with entertainment is fine. It's the price you pay for faster response times than a volunteer department that has to rush to the fire house before heading out to the fire.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Don't forget "500" and "750".
A former CATV engineer in recovery.
This ain't rocket surgery.
comcast still does this, actually.
It's pretty much against regulations for them to be able to turn this off, too.
I agree, i can understand having 3-5 for monitoring the news etc locally, but 32 TV's is a little overkill, but then again maybe i don't fully grasp the distribution of these 32 TV's? are they all in one building? who's using them? what are they used for? are all 32 on all the time? it would be nice to have some of these questions answered before jumping to any one conclusion. But i see no reason town government needs that much tv...
Digital ready TVs don't need the box. If they are on the wall I would assume that at least some of them are newer digital TVs.
And they do have a small, channel limited box.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
Waiting areas in hospitals, taxpayer funded clinics, and other municipal offices. They mayor certainly needs a TV handy, as does any office impacted or having to react to national news. As you said, firemen (and others) on 1on-2off shift rotations. Guard desks in rather un-trafficked locations (can't stare at a video camera showing no change all day). There are a lot of reasons a municipality has a TV contract. Most of them actually do pay for much of it.
What's likely the issue here is that the vast majority of the TVs in use here are older tubes, and do not support digital cable decoding onboard as pretty much every TV does today. ("cable ready" TVs all do analog, but mostly only HDTVs do digital as well). If Comcast is not using a digital TV compatible signal, they should provide the boxes at no charge as part of their agreement to provide basic cable service.
If the municipality is still using 5+ year old TVs in great numbers that are not digital capable (TVs over 24" were all to be digital capable as of 2005, half of all of them in 2004, and all TVs 32"+ before then), they should switch, as the electric savings alone will likely pay for the TVs over the next 5 years, and that's not Comcast's problem. In order to hook up their free cable, they had to buy those TVs inistially, right? Anything more than 5 years okld in a government building is legally depreciated, and should have been scheduled for replacement. The municipalities' failure to rotate out TVs crossing age markers by including such in the budget is their own problem.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Actually, cable companies are allowed to charge customers for D to A set top boxes:
http://www.dtv.gov/consumercorner_3.html#faq1
Of course. We should all cling to antiquated technology despite any gained efficiencies or better use of a limited frequency spectrum.
Your argument to "save some money" is essentially fail. They stated they get the service for free. The only thing costing the tax payers anything here is the power to run the TV's which even without cable still use power as they would probably be viewing DVD's or VHS tapes etc... Ditching cable in this case wouldn't save any money at all...
Noone writes jokes in base 13!
comcast charges $X per box, beyond the first box for your residential service. Same with ATT and most other cable companies. This guy is not residential. Municipalities are on similar terms as commercial entities. Completely different world and price structure.
It's bull shit and I want one box outside my house that will turn their digital signal to clear QAM so my tvs and computers can interpret it effectively.
Well this could be seen as a breach of the agreement on comcast's part, which would then allow the town to open up to competition and find a different solution, however most cable co's are on "friendly terms" with each other and try not to step on the other company's toes regarding customer base...
Noone writes jokes in base 13!
Ask your question in this forum. Comcast techs hang out there and may give you a better answer.
First, disclaimers. I don't work for Comcast, but I do consult to them. I don't speak for Comcast in any way. I am under NDA, so I can't give you the sort of specific technical information you need. There may be any number of reasons why this thing wouldn't work in your circumstances, or why Comcast wouldn't choose to provide you one.
Having said all of that, you might want to look into the MDTA. It's the "solution" you're sure exists ;-)
It is POSSIBLE that one of these could be connected to your 1 inch (probably 850) hardline. But be aware that it doesn't mix with digital video services, though CableModems and MTAs work fine when hung off of it.
-Peter
Maybe the correct job title would be "CATV technician". Engineer is an "industry-standard" for a college degree equivalent. People invest huge efforts to be called engineers; more than learning all about CATV.
Not that you might not be right in your correction, but you started calling names and getting titles... so I couldn't resist.
Mr. anonymous engineer.
(BTW: this.author != this.parent.parent.author)
They will not always work on all old CRTs. I recently got a digital box from Comcast, and the coax output was not enabled, despite the instructions telling you to hook it up using the coax and the tech later insisting that I tune my TV to channel 3. Had to use composite, which not all old CRTs have.
I have a 25 year TV set and a digital cable box/DVR. I use an RF converter (should be about USD$20-30/each) to watch TV. My cable company (not Comcast) told me I had to get a new TV to use the DVR but this works!
Yep. Hours of boredom punctuated by times of sheer panic.
Your town gave them contract, they are trying to change the terms after the fact. Inform them this is unacceptable, and will require a renegotiation in their contract. They will cave in instantly, if they lose the contract for your town it will be a huge loss to them. Walk down the hall and inform the council about this.
I commented elsewhere in this story about MDTA, but you might consider how TINY DTAs are. One strip of command adhesive would stick it to the back of the TV. Done.
The three bucks, well, I can't help with that ;-)
-Peter
I would change the TVs for TVs with digital tuners, install an ATSC antenna on the roof and buy a bunch of high band RF amplifiers....
The folks pushing Dish/DirecTV, this has problems especially for a municipality that most likely needs LOCAL channels more than national cable channels. I got robbed blind by DirecTV 3 years ago who promised me I'd be getting my local channels in HD through the dish and not through an external antenna (I know I live in a broadcast problematic area). They screwed me so bad, I had no working local TV and to this day they say I owe them over $1000 for early cancellation even though I never received the "services" my contract says I should have. I since invested in a massive antenna to get OTA+Netflix and couldn't be happier.
Beware the satellite providers, they are not governed by your local cable board and as a result you have no practical recourse with them if they decide to behave dishonestly (Which in my experience at least with DirecTV shows they do indeed behave very dishonestly). Don't even say BBB, I filed a complaint there and BBB doesn't do what you think it does (All they do is give the company a chance to respond and no matter how they respond, if the company responds at all even if to say, screw off, BBB considers it a "positive resolution")
Good luck. Comcast is reclaiming QAM space by doing this. As a guy in the cable industry who works with (not for) Comcast, I doubt that you'll have any luck.
You may be able to finagle free DTAs from them, but you'll still have to use them. Any other solution will be pretty pricey.
For 32 screens, get individual boxes. Otherwise you're going into the cable TV business yourself, with a very tiny customer base. Yes, you can get multichannel QAM to NTSC converters for enough money. Then you have to get the upstream cable companies to authorize them, which means you have to sign up as an MDU bulk account, like a hotel. Then you have to manage the thing. You'll probably have to publish and distribute a channel guide, for example.
Then someone on the analog net will replace their screen, and the replacement will be all-digital. But they'll only get the channels you have authorized on the bulk account for your little private cable system. They'll complain.
The multichannel conversion units are for installations where all the screens are identical, like hotels, hospitals, and prisons.
Health clubs have to deal with this, and they typically don't do it with a cable box for each viewing screen.
"There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now."
Comcast: That'll be $12 per month please.
"pr0n": An anagram of "porn," possibly indicating the use of pornography. - www.microsoft.com
I realize that this does not solve this engineer's problem...but why does a small municipality need TV in their government buildings? Workers should not be watching it, and presumably nobody is living in these buildings or hanging out there in their spare time. The only use I can think of is for waiting rooms, and a few donated newspapers/magazines would solve that.
so basically your going to give him Sh*t for using correct terminology, and not give him any solutions despite the fact that you're a catv engineer?
As someone noted upthread, this is probably going to see the most use in fire/EMS stations, where you have to pay guys to stand around and wait 24/7 even if nothing's going on. I'm pretty hard on government waste, but a thousand dollars a month so the firemen can have cable... it's a benefit that costs very little but provides them a great value.
An exclusive deal? Are you sure?
The reason I am asking is that exclusive cable TV franchise agreements we made illegal on a federal level in the USA with the Telecommunications Act of 1996. While I do appreciate your outrage about exclusive franchise agreements, I would appreciate the outrage more if the thing which you are outraged about was real.
Q: Do you know what pisses me off more than exclusive franchise agreements?
A: Uninformed people that spread lies.
Comcast certainly has a franchise agreement (for easement rights and such). It is, just as certainly, not exclusive.
There are ZERO regualtions one way or the other. Most MSOs continue to broadcast analog channels to prop up their fees for digital cable while claiming it's to not lose the "millions" of analog only subscribers (or force them to rent a box, which is exactly what's happening here.)
In fact, there is significant pressure to kill analog entirely. Those channels eat a fantastic amount of space.
Hi, you should really think about upgrading your tv's, since the older CRT systems waste more power. Make a modest investment in new tv's instead of just purchasing cable conversion products which will take more power and additional costs. Doing the math for long term savings would be difficult, but the existing tv's will eventually need to be replaced anyhow.
You really don't have a better alternative--look at the reasons why cable companies switch to digital cable--it takes less power to transmit digital signals. Your city should be looking to follow along with the trend rather than trying to be its exception.
If it's just an issue of the TVs being wall mounted it's a simple solution. My high school had wall mounted TVs; they solved the VCR issue by having wood shop make shelves, and mounted them near the televisions. If it's a matter of security too maybe talk to metal shop. Its not a tiny town I live in but it's still small. We used the metal and wood shops to make things the district needed to maximize resources.
In graphic design all the students made tickets for school dances, pamplets, etc. With the best being selected by the person needing them for mass production(we had a binder so small booklets could be printed and bound with glue.)
If the cost of them is the issue then I'm not sure about a solution.
Reasons for TV in a City:
Since this is vague and sounds like a 1940's comment, I'll add in a 2010 comment:
To watch while you want to watch TV
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
traffic
The entire town owns 10 TV's outside of the fire and police departments. I don't think they get traffic reports, unless it's "Dave, old man Watkins got drunk and hit a telephone pole at Main and Elm. Can you go arrest him and tow his car out of the way?"
I fear the solution may be above your pay grade. You have a franchise agreement with Comcast. You need to have your municipal legal department review that agreement and see if Comcast is in violation of that agreement by switching to exclusively digital signaling. You need to have high level persons in the municipality negotiate with Comcast to either get a new franchise agreement or to get compensation via free digital tuner boxes for your analog monitors. Or, buy all digitally tuned TVs and laugh Comcast off.
I would be shocked if the franchise agreement was not being violated by this move so following up with legal on reviewing the agreement would be step numero uno. I would also make absolutely sure that the powers that you report to are thoroughly informed as to what is going on and what you are facing. Heck, they may say screw it and chuck the whole thing and make the individual organizations buy and pay for their own cable/satellite service on an "as needed" basis. Then your problem is solved as it would no longer be your problem.
Hi all (first post, long time lurker), I am IT for a PEG (Public, Educational, and Govermental) station that provides 3 SD channels to the regional Comcast Headend which then provides it to all residents of the local municipality. I know a fair bit about this subject and while not an expert, I have seen a fair number of deployments similar to the one you are describing and I am aware of a commmon and time-tested solution. The situation the OP is describing is going to be one encountered by an increasing number of folks as it makes a ton of sense now for cable providers to move to digital only. The cable provider at my location (Comcast) is doing the exact same thing and has just finished moving all non-basic channels to the digital tier. There are countless reasons for the transition to digital delivery including more bandwidth for IP applications as well as an increasing number of HD channels being delivered. My very first inclination would be to demand digital converter boxes from your cable provider. If you have a pre-existing franchise agreement under which you are entitled to delivery of the expanded basic channels then the cable company is clearly obligated to honor this agreement regardless of the channel delivery. My hope would be that you fight for digital converter boxes for each one of your televisions. These are small, mass produced units that the cable companies provide to cable subscribers for free or a low one-time or monthly fee. This is important: DIGITAL CABLE IS ALMOST ALWAYS ENCRYPTED NOW BY THE CABLE COMPANIES. EVEN IF YOU CAN RECIEVE CHANNELS WITH A CLEAR QAM TUNER OR BY PLUGGING DIRECTLY IN TO YOUR TV, THE CABLE COMPANIES WANT YOU TO USE THEIR TUNER AND WILL MOVE IN THIS DIRECTION IF THEY HAVEN'T ALREADY. THIS ALSO PREVENTS YOU FROM RECIVING CHANNELS YOU DONT PAY FOR. THEREFORE SIMPLY PURCHASING QAM TUNERS OR TV'S WITH BUILT IN QAM TUNERS WOULD LIKELY BE A WASTE. I am very surprised that the cable company dosen't already have a mechanism in place for providing free digital boxes to cable-connected municipalities and schools. In my town, all the schools receive free cable and the signal is amplified and split throughout the school. I'm not sure if this is a cable company courtesy or part of legislation. It sounds like all your TV's are traditional standard definition televisions that have built in analog NTSC tuners. You are going to need digital tuner boxes from your cable company no matter what, but you have a choice as to wether or not you have one for each TV or just purchase one for each channel and use a deck of analog modulators to deliver your channels to your televisions. It would work something like this: 1) The cable company connection to the building. This is either via fiber to a small node/DA inside the building, or simply via a coax cable like that delivered to residences. Either way this connection ends in coax. 2) You then take this coax connection and split the coaxial connection to the number of channels you want to deliver to your televisions. 3) For the number of channels you want to deliver, you need to match this number with an equal number of digital cable boxes provided by your cable company. 4) Each one of these digital cable boxes will be tuned to a different channel provided by the cable company. E.G. 1: The Weather Channel, 2: CNN, etc. 5) You also need to purchase the same number of analog cable modulators. These will allow you to assign each cable provided channel an analog channel within your building. 6) After modulating each digital channel to an analog channel, you need to combine these into a single coaxial connection. 7) At this point you will likely want the connection to pass through a distribution amplifier if you don't already have one. This simply amplifies the coaxial connection for delivery throughout the entire building. 8) The connection will then pass through your existing splitter and coaxial wiring connecting all your televisions throughout your building. The problem is that you would have to repeat this for each one of your municip
There was a local newspaper column about Comcast's switch to digital encoding for everything and the requirement that everyone have a cable box (shades of pre-cable ready TV again). As with all things local newspaper + technology, it was shockingly short of facts.
What I don't understand is why Comcast doesn't use in the clear ATSC digital encoding for their "analog to digital" conversion? I finally got a TV with an ATSC tuner and was surprised to see ATSC digital channels on the cable coming out of the wall without a box.
Of course I know the conspiracy angle is Comcast just wants to nickel and dime everyone as much as possible, but the ability to just connect a TV to cable without a box has been a strength of cable vs. satellite (along with a simpler wiring scheme). When the box becomes a requirement to get ANY TV, I think they lose a competitive advantage over satellite.
The article I read said they would be supplying 1-2 boxes for free to all subscribers. Given the relative stupidity of most people and the inherent added complexity this adds to cable, wouldn't it be more profitable in the long run to just encode via ATSC and not deal with all the nuisance of boxes and box support and box replacement, ad nauseum?
Vecima Networks has designed and manufactures a box for comcast called "Terrace" that does something like what you want. It takes a digital signal (the channel lineup) and converts it to regular analog signals. 82 channels worth. The channels are mapped from a configuration file, and the channels can be put on any analog channel depending on how the box is configured.
The OP should seriously consider this product: http://www.vecima.com/products.php?line=1026&item=1083
When Comcast announced they were switching all these old ladies in assisted living over to digital I just knew it was going to be a disaster. Sure enough, the residents keep forgetting how to use them, and keep grabbing the old TV remote to change channels (which won't work duh).
They've tried hiding the old TV remotes in drawers but then the residents get mad and want to know who stole them.
What should we be doing? Lighting fires in the community so we have more calls to respond to (yes, I know the fire service has had issues in the past with arson)? Maybe we can booby trap your Grandma's home so we have more BLS trauma calls?
Seriously, though - when not on calls, we're writing reports. We're training. Reviewing. Washing (most fire apparatus in our district get washed top to bottom 4+ times a week). Drilling. Community service.
But if I'm on a 12 or 24 hour shift, then yes, there's a TV there and if there's nothing else that needs doing, then we watch it. Or we snooze, so when it's 3.47am and we get a call to your grandmother for a cardiac issue, we're as rested and recharged as can be.
Just as an aside, I know our district is somewhat rare in that we are largely volunteer (8 paid staff), but yet have shift allocations where our volunteers reside at the firehouse for 12 hour shifts and 24s on the weekend. Part of the volunteer induction program here is that there are shifts, your attendance is expected, it's not "respond from home if you feel like it for the cool calls".
So, Comcast has a franchise agreement from 1982 that they are about to break. Let them break it, then sue them for breach of contract and have their franchise revoked. Allow rebidding among rival cable providers and choose one that fits your needs and offers the community the best value.
The whole community (except local Comcast stakeholders) wins!
You need to converts Comcast Digital Signal into analog.
You have many TVs. well, not reallybut irrelevant.
You have three solutions:
1) Get a box for each TV
2) Get new TVs
3) Get a D to A control on the head end and run the cable from there.
1) Is going to be your best option strictly for cost.
2 would cost 500 bucks plus labor for each TV.
3 would cost you about 150K Plus training.
I suppose you could grab the signal and actual broadcast it on a UHF channels. But that way lies madness.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Dear Mr. Government employee,
Get the digital box from Comcast and set the channel to Sesame Street. Broadcast the channel over analog to all the municipality TV's. Maybe then you guys will learn to count and balance your budgets.
I have to post this anonymously because I used to work for Comcast's Engineering division.
For those who are interested into the rationale, it is because Comcast is trying to reclaim bandwidth. Digital channels take up much less bandwidth than analog stations.
Doesn't say how many they have to give you. I got 2, #3 would have been rental with no option to buy. Before this i could run as much as i wanted.
I still think the entire thing is BS, just to get us back like it was in the old days where they had you over a barrel. Monopolies, rentals per TV, charges for EVERY service call.. Its about time to drop tv again.
Its all a f-ing scam.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
But at least they are consistent.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Not to mention situational awareness for natural disasters, civil or military issues for the local area, region or state. This is the same reason most all military facilities have tv's.
Talk to the manager of the local Comcast office and explaine your situation to him, as well local commercial sales. They should be able to help you in some form possibly cut a deal of some sort too. Talkling to Comcast from a distance like it sounds you were will get nothing done. Those that are closer will be able to help you more. If you use them for other services like hi-speed you can tell them you will switch to something else and they might be more apt to help then too. Cable companies hate to lose customers and just an idle threat usually works wonders for discounts.
Check out Blonder Tounges Solutions page.
But, why the HELL does the government need TV? Government employees should be WORKING on my dime, not watching TV.
Let the TV's go dark. Put a sign on each one that says, "Although Comcast is legally obligated to provide cable TV service to , they are no longer providing that service. apologizes for the inconvenience. Please contacts 888-(comcast) for more information."
You might be able to shame them into giving you the boxes for free ...
I will create a sig when innovation restarts in the U.S.
I've a professional AV person in your state and we're out there to help. In the case of a hotel or hospital they have a cable head-end where they have rack full of receivers. From there they break out to a custom CATV distribution system. Then they can use the analog tuner in their displays.
Do not power strip the cable box as they will stop working and need to be reauthorize after or lose the guide data / Channel map.
I am the IT Director for a private club that has restaurants, athletic facilites, hotel rooms, etc. We had Comcast running throughout our entire facility until they forced the same change onto us. Much like you, it was impossible for us to place digital converter boxes on exercise equipment because of the issues around look, power and most importantly, the boxes we received had no manual controls, so each one had it's own cheap remote. You can't exactly stick remotes on a row of treadmills and bikes.
So like other people mentioned, the alternative we chose is a SMATV system with DirecTV. The principle is the same regardless of the provider, you have a dedicated converter box for each channel and then you combine all the signals and then you can redistribute them over a single coax cable to your TVs. Our system for 40 channels cost about $20k for all the equipment and labor and we were fortunate that all we are only a single location.
So, your options are, 1. Go with a SMATV type system. 2. Use digital converters at each TV. If you decide to go with the converters, the ones that Comcast provides for free are about the size of 2 decks of playing cards side by side so they are much smaller than the basic ones from Dish or DirecTV. I don't know how flatly mounted to the wall your TVs are, but tying these to the back of your TVs will probably be your easiest and most cost-effective option.
Oh and for all of you wanna be contract lawyers advocating that he sues or he should stand up against Comcast, do everyone a favor and stop posting. The contract says they have to provide cable, period. It doesn't say anything about how Comcast can deliver the cable or what equipment is necessary. If Comcast is forcing the converter on him, than you can argue that the converters should be free. They did provide them to me, and every other business in my area, at no cost.
The digital channels are encrypted and need a box or cable card to view but comcast makes you pay like $3-$8 per box $16-$20 per HD DVR and about $8 for cable card + outlet.
digital cable tv is sent out on the cable system in QAM format usually QAM256, any TV with a QAM tuner should be able to get all the unencrypted streams, which could be as few as the OTA channels or could be as much as what used to be the Analog lineup. Most recent Digital Tvs should have a QAM tuner. Hook the cable up to your newer TVs and do a Digital channel scan and see what you can see. For encrypted channels you either need a converter from the cable company or a TV equipped with a CableCard, this Cablecard is available from the cable company usually for a monthly fee i.e. $1.75, the cablecard allows your tv to decrypt the encrypted channels from the cable company if your authorized to view them.
There are products that can convert QAM256 Digital Streams to their Analog replacement i.e.
http://www.vecima.com/products/MDU-Gateway/Terrace/terrace_br_r07_standard.pdf
however they are 1) expensive, this model is probably >$20k 2) require your own Cable to output the channels on. 3) require all of the channels you want to convert to analog to be on a max of 16 QAMs or require a second MDU-Gateway for the other QAMs your interested in. Comcasts whole video lineup is probably in 40-50 QAMs
it is hard to tell from what you described, whether there is one feed into town hall which feeds the other buildings and nothing else (i.e. other residential/commercial customers) or if, more likely, all of your buildings are on the same part of the cable plant feeding other customers. If it is the former, a MDU-Gateway could be placed at the input (digital cable feed) to Town Hall and its output (analog) could be fed to the other buildings, the disadvantage is you likely would not be able to comingle all of comcasts lineup in digital and the analog lineup further along the system, rendering all your newer TVs as analog only TVs, and Internet access could also be affected behind the MDU-Gateway if Comcast uses those channels for internet. If it is the latter, you are at Comcasts mercy for getting analog tv to your part of the node, it may be possible to convince them to offers some channels in analog to you but not very likely, they have likely earmarked all the freed up spectrum for more HD channels, or Internet bandwidth.
To recap: if you only interested in the unencrypted cable channels, using a TV with a QAM tuner is the way to go, if you also need encrypted channels at some locations you can install Tvs with CableCards or use a DTA or converter.
A MDU-Gateway is an option, but for the number of TVs you have seems like super overkill, and quite expensive (especially if your paying) and most certainly will have negative consequences, such as can't get all the channels you want, slower or no internet available behind device.
Analog TV is not coming back, digital tv is only going to become more prevalent, upgrading the TVs where appropriate seems like the way to go to me, if thats not in the budget you may need to consider the DTAs as the short term solution.
Don't forget "500" and "750".
A former CATV engineer in recovery.
Heh, I've worked on the other side (equip supply) for the CATV division of ADC, worked for C-COR, watched those stupid bastards go down the crapper, good times (fiber to the home? No, no one will ever do that).
Love those frosty head-ends in the summer, and how the playboy channel (etc) is monitored 24/7 because, you know, it's important!
Dave
I live in a small town that runs it's own cable tv, phone, and internet. All as part of a co-op. Basically, everyone in town owns a piece of the company, and shares in it's profits. Anyhow, we are still analog cable here, which works out good for me as my media center pc acts as my dvr. http://www.springvilletelephone.com/
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
If you have a big internet pipe to each location, you could set up a series of receivers that acted like dvr's, then replace each TV with a PC capable of connecting to the dvr's. This will also allow you to access other media from your external sites, but it will probably cost a bit to replace all the displays. This will also make it easier to switch providers in the future.
Also, if Comcast has broken their contract, they should lose their franchise agreement. There are numerous content providers that might like to take over the franchise in your area.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Just tell Comcast that if they do not come up with an acceptable solution, you will simply look into revoking their franchise and finding a cable company that will be willing to work on a solution with your. The town holds Comcast by the family jewels. Take advantage of that.
So in other words, they have unilaterally decided to stop offering the service. That's how you should look at it.
It's pretty much against regulations for them to be able to turn this off, too.
And yet you didn't even cite a single one. Hmm....
Solution: tell them to shove it, and that the city isn't responsible for their business decisions which violate the terms of the franchise agreement.
They can either provide a proper solution, free of charge; or renegotiate the terms of the franchise agreement, so that you can really screw them with their pants on.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
We do it all the time in schools and it is really easy. First, choose how many channels you want to modulate through the facility. Let's say 10 for the sake of discussion. You would then get 10 cable boxes. You would run these cable boxes into multiple modulators then through a combiner and out to the rest of the system. Each TV can tune to any of the 10 stations you selected. If you need to modify one of the channels (2-10), simply re-tune the cable box. Blonder Tongue has a plethora of modulators, demodulators, and converters to suite your needs. I would use the MICM-45 modulators http://www.tonercable.com/index.php?id=3&ProdID=229. They go into a chassis (MIRC-12V) w/ a power supply (MIPS-12C) and you can house up to 12 in 2 Rack units.
Even if you're a small municipality, I'm guessing you have enough residents that Comcast doesn't want to lose the entire town.
Explain that Time Warner has managed to solve this insurmountable technical problem and can deliver both analog and digital signals and that if Comcast can't you'll be putting the franchise up for bids.
Don't tell this to the tech monkey, send it on official letterhead to the biggest cheese that would still care about a town of your size.
fireman live in the house when on duty and they need stuff to do when they are there waiting for the call.
I just got through doing this for my building. You need something like this from ATX networks: http://www.atxnetworks.com/audio_video_deletion_insertion Its kind of expensive, but comcast is their biggest buyer of these things, so if you call Comcast and talk to the right guy you can get it for free like I did.
Really? What do you think happens if comcast tells every customer they must have a digital box and charges money for it? Have you ever heard of antitrust? Tying?
analog broadcast over public tv was removed. Not so over cable. However, yes, comcast would love to lose it, I'm sure.
I measured mine at home, and it uses 3W, either off or on, makes no difference. As for alternatives... The university I work at has kept it's analog, and comcast has said it will keep it that way since it didn't want to pay for a box to go in EVERY dorm room, and in many of the classrooms, and other spaces. That said, that would have amounted to well over 4000 boxes. The campus also handles all it's own distribution... so really, all they had to do is keep giving us analog. So, we got to keep our standalone analog feed while the rest of the city got moved over to digital. I'm guessing they split off our signal before any of the injections they do for cable modems, HD, etc, so they don't have to worry about clobbering the analog frequencies with stuff they've repurposed those frequencies for. That said, your need is rather small... so I can't imagine Comcast is going to cave on this issue. I'd get them to cover the cost of the boxes, and just double sided tape the things to the side/back of the TV, and use the IR extender that comes with them. Power is going to be your biggest headache, since they use a wall-wort. =/
Eh, it's the typical "engineer inflation". I'm a software developer, but my official job title is "software engineer".
And janitors are "sanitation engineers".
Just deal with it, it isn't going away.
If Comcast would give you the Expanded Basic channels without encryption, TVs w/ QAM tuners wouldn't even need a box.
However, scanning for digital QAM channels can take ages (depending on the TV) and most will have strange channel numbers like "56.10".
When I was setting up my Media Center PC to get the unencrypted QAM channels, I found that "56.10" is NOT the same as "56.1"
Comcasts $3 boxes are junk look bad on new tv's and it's about $8 /m each for ones that have the guide / HD / VOD / and the full channel line up.
The $0-$3 /m box is for old analog tv's but even then comcast messed that up my not letting them get the full channel line up and I'm not talking about stuff like HBO and showtime basic stuff like local sports over flows, sci-fi, and more are missing from the DTA.
I am a MythTV user with Comcast, and am dealing with this same problem. Short version: yes, you need a converter box of some kind unless you're really lucky.
Comcast is doing the "digital transition" on the cheap, because they are required by law to provide free converter boxes. Apparently, breaking the standard makes the logic in the free converter boxes cheaper.
Here's how it works: the old analog channels are now being broadcast digitally in a tight block of channels, all unencrypted. Nominally, they use QAM (the digital tuner standard in the US), but the channel data is broadcast in-band using a special Comcast-only protocol instead of out-of-band as regular QAM requires. So, when you ask a standard QAM tuner to auto-scan for channels, it won't find them, because the standard channel data for these channels isn't available.
Of course, they also broadcast normal QAM digital channels--all encrypted. So, you'll need the usual converter box or CableCARD for those. Supposedly, they are broadcasting some of the local/public-access channels in Clear QAM as well in some markets. I haven't seen this in my market. (Fishers, Indiana, a suburb of Indianapolis)
It gets worse.
One of the "features" of this protocol is a special mapping of "virtual channel numbers" to QAM channels. So, if channel 28 was the Discovery Channel on the old analog lineup, Comcast might move it to digital channel 63-5, but then map 63-5 to "28" via their special protocol. Then, when you use their free converter box, you tune it to "channel 28" like you used to, and there's your Discovery Channel. As a side benefit, it allows Comcast to move the channels around at will for whatever reason, so Discovery could move from 63-5 to 72-11 today, and to 15-1 tomorrow, and no one would notice, because it's all "28" to the converter boxes. Word is that they're taking advantage of this to remap channels around as the "digital transition" progresses; one rumor is that they're remapping channels into an area blocked by the old line blockers as space becomes available.
So, there's a utility that can make sense of this weird Comcast protocol (http://scte65scan.sourceforge.net/), but anything that relies on a one-time scan will require frequent rescans until the transition is complete and Comcast is done screwing with the channel lineups in your area. Non-open TV apps and hardware tuners are just plain out of luck.
I fought with this for a week, and then just broke down and ordered my free converter box and an IR blaster (for channel changing).
At least my kids are getting the right idea. We have an antenna as well, so for them, "OTA broadcast channels == good" and "cable == crappy".
Replace the televisions.
I'm actually not kidding. One of the (rather prickish-seeming, by the way) arguments was "Do you know how much electricity that will cost?".
Well, you're running old CRT televisions. How much more efficient is a flat panel? Have you bothered to do the very basic calculations to determine when you will pay back the electricity cost, if that's even an argument?
I'm sorry for sounding a bit like a jerk, but I hate (HATE HATE) the mentality that some people have where the first impulse is to throw up roadblocks and explain why something is intolerable. Look at it as an opportunity, and proceed from there.
Nothing. The rule only states local channels have to be available. There is nothing stating they have to be free or analog (in a digital only system.) If you don't have a "digital cable ready" TV, you'll need a box. And that box is not free.
They can do this. They will do this. And there is nothing you can do to stop it.
(And only an idiot would try. Those analog stations waste a lot of space.)
Most Hotels, Hospitals, College Dorms, and some Apartment Complexes, all use speciality equipment to distribute TV programming on channels they choose. Usually, they have a tuner box (for Cable or Sat), then send the output to a distribution panel which changes the frequency the channel is on.
An alternative idea is to replace all TVs with TVs with Cable Card slots, which remove the need for a cable box.
As local channels, and really most below 29/30 will be left analog, then boxes could be attached to TV in areas that really need the other channels, or simply remove the ability to have the expanded basic channels in city facilities.
The final idea is to revoke Comcast's license, until they provide you with alternatives.
But you will have licensing issues, comcast probably won't LET you do anything like this. You could get some QAMs and remix the signals on your own mini-cable head-end but it's pricey and not easy. Also, you'll eliminate what Comcast is actually pushing--they (we) are getting extremely close to pushing interactive applications (commercials) out through digital channels.
The other reason they want to do this is bandwidth.
Honestly if they have a separate feed for your group and that ENTIRE FEED only delivers basic cable, then they certainly can continue to deliver it with no problem, but for the most part these feeds are shared and they want the bandwidth to deliver more channels to people above the "basic cable" level.
Sounds like they are breaking their contract with you though, I'd seriously consider using this as an excuse to bring in another solution...
There are many IP based solutions out there that run over gigabit and are easy to deliver. You can bring them in over IP, decode them into a cable just like Comcast does now and pass that to all the classrooms--or just bring it via IP all the way (IP will require a "Box" of some sort so this may not gain you much).
There are many companies that work with municipalities to do this kind of thing--I worked for one called Ciena. Call them and ask what it would take. Comcast will fight you in court though.
You could also look for a setup like FIOS--they are always trying to get into new areas and might be willing to supply the hardware without rental fees (again this is fiber to the endpoint so it will require a box).
I'm afraid that the days of getting analog over cable, unless you OWN the cable, are pretty much over.
Anonymous as I work in the industry...
OTA only will not work in Chicago for sports. Trying telling that to the fireman that they can see there team as it's on a cable channel that needs a $8 box to view.
worked for C-COR, watched those stupid bastards go down the crapper, good times
Kind of feel that way about the entire industry. It was fun for a while, then deregulation kicked in, the merger/buyout frenzy began and working conditions for the employees got worse. I finally had to bail on it.
(fiber to the home? No, no one will ever do that).
I worked for United Cable installing fiber to the home on what I believe was the first CATV system in the U.S. to do that, in Alameda, CA. That would have been back around 1983 or so.
Love those frosty head-ends in the summer, and how the playboy channel (etc) is monitored 24/7 because, you know, it's important!
Don't want to disappoint the paying customers, after all...
This ain't rocket surgery.
At this point, he's trying to stop from using taxpayer money to pay for and run the cable boxes. Hence the point of the submission.
Wait... a government employee trying to save his taxpayers money?
This guy needs to be either fired, or sent to congress...
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Here in the UK almost all schools have multimedia projectors in all the classrooms. VCRs can be hooked up to show old tapes when needed, but mostly it's either DVD or video files, played via PC or laptop.
If thats the main use, a stack of boxes for the channels back at HQ and a streaming server. Also in most UK schools, most TVs are not connected to any aerial or cable system at all and do not get live TV!
More to the point, a stack of boxes, one per channel, each outputting an analogue feed, tuned to frequencies of your choice. I have a feeling you'll find it's how most hotels do it. It's only cheaper when number of channels is less than number of TVs you're supplying.
Maybe the answer is obvious, but, couldn't OTA broadcasts solve each of those needs? If they can't get signal, why not ask the FCC for help in letting the nearest towers up the wattage?
Really, it sounds like Comcast just buttered their franchise deal with "free cable for the city." That alone taints the whole thing, I think.
If all those TVs need to show all the channels, then you'll either have to add a converter box or replace the TVs with ones which can handle Comcast's signals. If you don't like Comcast's signals, advise the city to require that Comcast use other signals the next time the agreement is negotiated.
recycle the old uni-tasker TVs and run MythTV over your network - lots of added features.
Comcast just sent their Detroit area customers a digital tuner box that is now required - even if you have a digital television. They have not be offering local channels unencrypted like they are supposed to, and now you need a D/A converter box and then plug the analog outputs into the spiffy new HDTV. Fortunately I have Wide Open West where the local channels are offered in HD for free unencrypted and the rest of cable can still be tuned in without an external box.
My mom asked if there was a simpler way, and I said "switch to WOW".
If Wow pulls this crap too, I'm switching back to my attic antenna.
The shady part seems only to be that the converter boxes are rented. I had to replace a DSL box when I switched providers, for a one-time fee. IANAL, but I would imagine that if Comcast is changing their delivery due to a federal requirement, any agreements that were made prior to the requirement would no longer be valid, since Comcast cannot both meet the updated federal requirements and the customer agreement without incurring extra costs not considered by the original agreement. At any rate, there's no way this gets decided without spending a long time in court.
Sorry, but sometimes hardware has to be upgraded, and it's not always fair to stick the vendor with the upgrade costs. I don't like settop rentals - you keep paying and paying even after paying more than the original cost of the hardware. Example: my new DSL box was $75CDN. At $3 a month, I'd be giving my ISP extra money after only 2 years. I think the best way would be to charge the customer for the box, and find a way that a customer can take their box to a different provider (much like the cell phone issue). Admittedly, a much more difficult solution, but it takes away any question of "bad faith" about the reason for changing the broadcast signal.
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
Comcast notified you that you will need the converter boxes because your municipal offices receive expanded basic service. However, if there are certain televisions that are only ever tuned to basic channels, including your ABC/NBC/CBS/Fox affiliates or public access/educational/government channels, then you probably do not need converters for these TVS. Basic channels will continue to be available in analog NTSC format for the foreseeable future in all but a very few areas. You'll want to confirm that you are not in one of those regions. Expanded channels, such as ESPN and CNN, are moving to digital exclusively in all Comcast markets.
It is my understanding that for the time being only channels above 30 are being switched to digital. So technically, Comcast will still be in compliance and all the local network channels should still be available.
yes, in motels right now you surely do see the damn boxes
all of NJ- a box on every tv where the signal is supplied by comcast
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Here is the problem I have with paying a grand a month to keep firemen occupied and alter. The cable companies have got an exclusive license to steal in most cities where the city allows only one franchise. The city should have free cable to these locations as an obligation to having that franchise. In fact, it appears that it is a stipulation of the agreement that was originally made in the 80's and someone should remind them of that.
I'm not big on governments suing corporations, but in this case, I think a trip to the city attorneys office and asking them to look into it might present the opportunity to remind the cable company of their obligations and how that obligation had not changed when their tech did (in other words, because they changed systems does not mean the city should get any less then the FREE basic cable as the agreement states regardless of any extra equipment that might be needed because of the change). If a confident resolution can't be found, I would encourage the city to revoke the franchise agreement, immediately start taking open bids to replace Comcast, and look into suing them for any perceived benefit they might have acquired by being the only legal cable provider in the area for so long. Or at least present the case where that might happen to make Comcast wake up.
It may well be that the people he has talked with so far are somewhat unaware of the details and obligations of the agreement and when it is brought up, the supervisor they go to is clueless too. Perhaps getting the attention of the legal department is what will fix his problem.
the box will on power-up be de-authorized, and you have to call comcast to have the box re-authorized for it to work.
takes 10-15 minutes on a good day.
can occasionally cause other boxes on your account to stop working.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
This may take some investigation - but if the the digital system they are moving to, includes Clear QAM, you can just buy Digital TV sets that are so equipped. No pay channels will come up, no PPV or special subscription channels, just the basic channels in digital. BrightHouse has a similar system here, with agreements to carry SD versions of the off air broadcast stations, and most non-pay cable services - Discovery, History, USA, etc. are available.
However, if they are moving to a server based system, with boxes that request the channel to be fed - as does FIOS in our market, you are stuck with trying to make them stick with the franchise agreement. It depends on the terms, perhaps it has run out, and never renewed. In the day - I worked for a major cable operator, and the franchise agreements included public access channels, local origination, and community and government facilities, with equipment provided by the cable operator. Also included, was something called "lifeline basic" - off air broadcast channels provided over the cable for a nominal fee, to a boxless cable ready tv.
Check the franchise agreement - there may be something that requires them to provide these services, even if they have to provide the boxes at their cost to do so.
Sorry - Errors from my BlackBerry
quote "You could also look for a setup like FIOS--they are always trying to get into new areas"
fios is halted
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=fios+halts+expansion&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Well to be fair its an easy mistake to make. I dont have a tv, but i assumed that they had shut off rabbit ear channels as well as the ability to "split" cable between multiple sets with those dollar store splitters that we had when we were kids. I assume that converting everything to digital would have had both of these effects. Now you need a digital cable box to receive the digital signals. Probably you need a different one depending on whether it is over the air or coaxial cable, but i had assumed that the digital requirement by the US government and these corporations would make all signals digital now ( as in bye bye analog everything). I thought thats why people were complaining so much, because everyone and their grandmother splits their cable to multiple tvs. I thought that was the whole reason that the us govt decided to buy everyone cable boxes at 70$ per unit or somesuch. I find it hard to believe that a 70$ box is little more than an antenna to receive OTA signals, but i guess i was wrong.
In both cases you need to buy a new box, per tv, so really it is easy to get confused, especially if you are not a tv user for the last 10 years and missed out on the whole digital cable box idea.
The guy was slightly snarky but this is ask slashdot we are talking about. I was under the impression that the whole point of ask slashdot was to make fun of the person asking the question!
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
I refuse to get their digital box because I don't want Comcast always knowing what channel I'm watching...and wouldn't work with my DVRs.
What DVR do you have? Why couldn't that DVR manufacturer know what you're watching?
Pull some strings and threaten to revoke Comcast's franchise license. That'll produce results!
You will most likely need a few signal combiners, and few boxes as source and a distribution switch. you will need one box per channel you want to broadcast to your tvs.
Basic cable generally has like...60 channels, which means 60 boxes to cover all the channels. Since the guy only has 30 TVs, that doesn't make any sense and he's right back at square one. Could you pick and choose which channels to send out? Sure, but who wants to be the guy to pick which channels go out to all the city buildings? Kind of reminds me of when I had to select the company health plan...
Not all digital channels are encrypted. A lot of basic+expanded is sent "in the clear" meaning its using QAM, but its unencrypted and accessable by and set capable of QAM conversion.
Noone writes jokes in base 13!
Why couldn't you get a few tuners for the channels you want to distribute
And who chooses which channels to distribute? Sounds like a thankless job...
not on comcast it's basic / OTA only in QAM
comcast Chicago land does and they DON't put CSN + on the DTA's.
Part of the city government's job is to coordinate emergency response.
I've small town halls that incorporate police and fire dispatch, and I've been in the emergency coordination centers in large city and county installations.
By the time you cover everything from the 911 call center, emergency response room, and things like lunch rooms and break rooms, you've got at least 20-30 TV sets running around. For the most part, they will be tuned to news channels, and you can bet they're in use during emergencies.
Comcast hierarchy, who said there was no other solution and I had to pay $3 per month for each box. Being a municipality, we are entitled to free expanded basic cable as a part of the franchise agreement back in 1982.
It looks to me, like Mr. Government employee has a point, and that Comcast is contractually obligated to provide those "$3 per month" boxes for free - part of the cost of getting the franchise.
Maybe then you guys will learn to count and balance your budgets.
While the IT guy generally isn't responsible for balancing the budget, as you seem to think, he actually is doing a good job of it here by trying to get rid of unnecessary costs.
What would you have him do? Roll over and take the added costs lying down?
Most of the TVs in the town have digital tuners per last years a2d conversion of the airwaves
Does that not make them "digital cable ready" TVs?
Contact your local cable franchising authority and/or the FCC.
Have your town's attorney review the ordinances and contracts governing Comcast's franchise (right to deliver cable to your town). If they are out of compliance on anything, then your town can force the issue by either penalizing them financially or revoking their franchise (this is the best solution for anti-customer utilities like Comcast). Just the mere threat of this on city letterhead with the appropriate signatures should take care of your issue. Bonus: Comcast has increasingly become predatory towards their customers and has earned the title of one of the country's most hated companies and the local politicians can score big with voters by beating up on them.
Yes Comcast, you suck that much.
-- $G
If they're all fed from a centralized spot, get a couple of the comcast boxes and some modulators. You can build your own channel lineup, ditch unwatched channels, and not need to swap out tv's...not real cheap, but would take care of every tv fed out of the hall
on a side note, cable companies are removing analog for a) more bandwidth b) knocks cable theft almost completely out of the picture
most fire departments no matter their schedule 12hrs, 24hrs etc have normal duties that last a normal 8hr work day
Maybe. But I'd doubt they have a cablecard slot; almost no TVs on the market bother with it anymore -- SDV made it useless and the consumer electronics industry isn't going to play cable's game of whack-a-mole.
"I'm sorry, I'm just the IT guy. Let me transfer you to someone who gives a fuck." ... and transfer the caller to the city attorney, telling him/her that Comcast is trying to weasel out of their franchise agreement.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Get a Kill-A-Watt or similar power meter and check the power consumption of the existing TVs. It could very well be that buying a new TV for $200-300 would pay for itself in electric power savings if the TVs are on for a significant time. Of course you'd need to measure the power consumption of the new TV as well, since power consumption labels are not required.
Waiting rooms too? If your sitting around waiting for service, watching a channel your municipality (ie taxes) paid for seems fair. .com got to roll out cable, your city gets to view some tv as part of the fine print.
The
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/01/municipal-fiber-needs-more-fdr-localism-fewer-state-bans.ars
Note the ban in some state for municipal fiber.
So TV franchise agreements might be illegal, but roll out laws seem very strict in some states.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Black Box sells a video multiplexor. In our building we have four cable (satellite) boxes tuned to different stations. The mux takes an input from each of the cable boxes and puts it on a different analog TV channel. The TV's can then change between the four available channels to pick the programming. In our case, we have CNN, Fox, Weather Channel, and MSNBC.
So what 32-42 in lcd units for all, the mounting systems, wood or duct work to make it fit, new decoders on every unit, protective plastic over the front cut to size and fitted, rental costs to the .com?
Thats 32*$x000, almost a teacher, police officer, nurse or firefighter for 1 year.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I work for a company that makes these products. I don't know about every region but I think all of the Comcast line up would be under conditional access. So first thing that would be required would decrypting the programming. Siemens and Motorola both make cable cards that can decrypt six programs at a time. I believe we make the highest density unit that accepts such cards and it holds four so is capable of decrypting 24 programs in a single unit. This unit would be a little over $20,000 and you may need two to handle the full line up.
The programming would still be digital so you would then require a bulk QAM to analogue unit. We are currently producing such a device but there is one on the market already that can handle 80 programs at 528x480 or I believe 40 (maybe a few more) at full D1 resolution.
All of this would depend on your eligibility to distribute such programming and if Comcast haven't mentioned these solutions you probably either are not entitled to distribute the programming in the clear or they believe they are beyond your budget.
The solution that tends to be used in hospitality is Pro-idiom encryption. Many special order TVs are available with Pro-idiom decryption integrated and they are often found in hotels for managing PPV or premium channels.
Basically this isn't cheap and CableLabs are very strict on who is allowed access to this technology, and as far as I know the CableLabs system is completely secure for now.
Or because they don't want a fucking box at all, and instead would like to use the perfectly good tuner their TV came with instead!
My TV has a QAM tuner. Why the fuck should I have to pay $5/month to Comcrap just because it feels like encrypting its QAM signal? The answer is "because Comcrap can get away with it," which is asinine. This bullshit needs to be stopped!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The easiest solution, but impractical since it doesn't save money:
1. If you need only a few channels, buy as many boxes (1 per channel) needed, and then wherever the central cable distribution is, put the boxes there and permanently tune them to those channels, then get a set of RF modulators to tune them to the appropriate channel for the cable run in the building. As an added advantage you can use the TV's as a broadcast point during emergencies. Unfortunately, this means you're fixed to those channels. This costs you electricity for the additional equipment and possibly boosters.
2. Run a pair of cables to any TV's that are only supposed to show one channel, and have a central control for it. Boosters and splitters are required.
3. If the channels needed are on the digital TV spectrum (In Canada, our cable company doesn't so this is a no-go here), you can replace just the TV's where those channels are needed. If the other TV's are always on a fixed channel, see point 2.
4. Screw the cable company and use legal means for them to do #1
kick the slimy bastards into the next county if they won't give you want you want (within _some_ reason).
they operate under your authority, and the city has every right to void the franchise agreement if the cable company isn't following it to-the-letter.
and even if the exact type of complementary service isn't specified, i'm sure there's plenty of complaints for poor service, unethical billing practices, etc. that can be used to form a solid case against them to push the issue to an ultimatum (fix your service or get the fuk out, NOW)
Have you ever tried to manage digital cable channels on a QAM-capable digital TV? Assuming the channel is unencrypted, which sometimes they "accidentally" become encrypted, companies like Comcast & Time Warner Cable give the digital channels bizarre numbers (I've seen things like channel "103-221"). Once you get used to a numbering, they switch them around, requiring you to spend 20-30 minutes to rescan the channels (e.g. "103-221" is now "97-87"). Their goal is to make it so inconvenient and frustrating in order to get you to rent the box, so you won't have to deal with the hassle of their movements.
Cable boxes get a secondary data stream that says "make QAM channel 97-87" appear as "201" so when they play the QAM shuffle , it's transparent to those who rent the cable box...
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
Professionals pay for their own TV service and don't watch TV during the time they're being paid.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
go on ebay/craigslist and just buy some comcast boxes. http://cgi.ebay.com/MOTOROLA-COMCAST-DCH70-Cablebox-SHIPS-TODAY-LOOK-/350370650862?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5193b7daee
Short term: have the city attorney read the franchise agreement, hopefully they'll find good evidence that Comcast's ability to perform on its end is not the city's problem. Tell Comcast to take their $96 bill, shove it up their antenna, and send you the boxes.
Better: turn off the cable and give first responders a good ATSC antenna, a Wii, and a Netflix subscription. Ok, that's probably more expensive even if Netflix gives you a sweet deal, and there's the bandwidth, but it's the principle dammit!
Long term: 1982? Seriously? Time to re-negotiate the CATV contract. Require them to provide all non-premium digital TV over clear QAM so normal digital-ready HDTVs can pick it up, both for your sake, and for the citizens.
There are devices at some Comcast customer sites that take an IP stream, demultiplex it, and remodulate it onto a small-scale cable system. I know this because I've been wrestling with Comcast over trying to connect a TiVo to my mother's apartment building's system. It appears that they previously negotiated their own deal for x number of channels and include the basic service in the rent. Somewhere in an apocryphal email from a tech, they mentioned that there was a cable vista box deployment there.
Surprisingly, Comcast doesn't seem sure as to whether this system will pass their other digital/HD content. I have had a very helpful lady from a regional office working with me after I got on the comcast.com website and used the "Email a VP" function.
I think given that you're a municipality, you might get good (or at least some) results if you try this.
Good luck with Comcast. Their free DTA's will only tune to channel 99 via the remote unless you use the up channel input. It will not accept three digit entries via the remote. The DTA will tune channels above 100 you just have to hit the up channel input several hundred times to get what you want. Despite all this working fine before their "Upgrades" they will refuse to provide you with a box that functions properly over the range of your subscription without a monthly rental. Every single time they claim to improve our service it sets us all back cash. I'm sure they are laughing all the way to the bank.
More like waiting rooms. You either put a distraction in there or people make their own, especially when one can be waiting 2-5 hours to see someone about licensing, paperwork or various registrations and fines.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
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Cable television isn't going to increase your earning potential unless you happen to fancy yourself the next Cake Boss.
There, fixed it for you.... No recipes -- no real, consistent discussion of techniques -- just cake porn. Bakers learn to bake by baking.
If comcast is required to provide basic service as part of the franchise agreement, get the town's lawyers involved. They will be much more motivated to provide a solution if the franchise is at risk.
We are the 198 proof..
Police and FDs usually have a little extra money left over. Get the cable company to spring for one A-D converter per building, and then tell each building they will need to buy their own if they don't want to all watch the same channel. You're the messenger of bad news, they won't shoot you over it. This is what is known as "passing the buck".
moox. for a new generation.
The reason hotels and hospitals don't need the converter boxes is because they have their own head end on site ( a mini-cable company ) which sends the legacy analog signals through the facility.
The cost of setting one of these up, and having someone maintain it would be too much. The companies that do this for hotels wouldn't be interested because they make their money off pay per view movies and stuff. Hospitals probably do it because it saves them a ton of money to be their own cable company, they have so many rooms.
If you want simple cable service that the firemen and police aren't going to complain about all the time... just get the converters.
No Engineer is an "industry-standard" for a Charterd Status just geting your Bsc is the first step on the road.
well RG is how coax is normaly defined
Since charging you money would be a breach of contract. I would let them charge you money and then call Verizon et al. and tell them that they are free to provided cable service to your town. I see it as a win win for everyone.
insert inflammatory comment here!
Actually, a similar show, Ace of Cakes, inspired me to give cake building a try as an experiment. I literally had never baked any kind of cake beforehand. Impressed with my work, I received requests for and fulfilled a handful of orders for friends and family. I posted pictures of those cakes on the internet and started getting orders from people I had never even met before. I believe I could have turned it into a viable business, but found it to be too time consuming amongst my other ventures.
The moral of the story is that cable television most certainly can increase your earning potential if you are willing to turn it off and try out some of the things that you have seen.
"Hi! Is this the Dish Network sales rep? I'm Joe from the City of Hoopatella, Georgia, and we're revoking Comcast's cable franchise for breach of contract. We'll still need TV service for our offices. Think you can help us figure something out?"
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Trust me when I say I know your pain. In the month I had service with Comcast back in March I talked to probably around 50 to 60 different Comcast employees to try to resolve this BS issue. When I originally signed up for service they told me that the basic cable would give me all the channels I was looking for. Then I found out that they were only in extended basic (funny how they will tell you one thing to rope you into their service). Well after finding out about this I got roped into buying another package and several of those boxes, but afterward I called to complain and they said I only needed a cheaper package to get the stations. Then without my permission or scheduling an appointment with me they started sending out technicians to pickup the small converter boxes because they forgot to inform me that the package that I had now (the third package I was on) was only allowed one digital converter box. Safe to say at this point I was really pissed and called them fuming outside the train station and probably had people taking video of me yelling and swearing at them about this issue. At this point I canceled my service, and they still had the audacity to demand payment for me.
After doing plenty of research on this issue, your best option is to use another service other than Comcast. They are not a company that has the best interest of customer in mind, no matter how much their commercials say otherwise. My first thought when I found out I needed those boxes was to just get a third party digital converter, but that doesn't work because the converter has to be registered with Comcast. The only other possibility is to reduce the number of boxes you use and split the signal to multiple TVs, but this is annoying because not every TV can watch something different. You can try to work with Comcast on this issue, but they only have their interests at hand and will not work with you on this issue, I talked to around 60 people.
If you have another service available use it, dish won't work because you will be in an even worse boat. There is probably no ideal situation, you could use an antenna, but then you lose a lot of channel selection.
I was a Combat Engineer in the military lol my schooling was only a few months. Im sorry does it hurt your feelings when someone else uses your title... awwww..
HA! In some countries you need to be a member in good standing (yup this means paying up) of a national engineering body in order to be called an engineer, so your 'college degree equivalent' is no universal definition either.
I would find out who your Business Customer Service rep is and contact them about this issue. Bottom line is you will need to install some sort of decryption box to get the signal to the TV’s. This type of conversion has been going for the last 10 years. What they are asking you to do is not out of the ordinary for the industry. The Hotel solution is not going to work for you. That solution requires about 10K worth of gear to make 32 analog channels show up without a box at the TV. This would have to be replicated at every location you need service. They refer to that solution as a Mini-Headend. Some hotels have more advanced system that use special modules that plug into the back of the TV (A BOX) that has the decryption chip built in. So whenever there is a digital signal and it is encrypted, it needs something to unencrypt it, a box. I see some of the posters listed D to A devices and I think I saw a D to D clear QAM device. They cost more than the 32 channel Mini-Headend solution I mentioned earlier. There should be someone at Comcast that can help you work out the best possible solution for you departments needs. Are all these locations fed by direct fiber to mini-nodes or GPON? If so ask if they have a Hotel FTG (Free To Guest) channel package they could switch you to. That should be in the clear analog or digital. Also see this article that explains whats going on... http://www.multichannel.com/article/366818-Cable_Tec_Expo_2009_Comcast_s_Project_Cavalry_Priority_Do_It_Yourself_DTAs.php Good luck,
These networks—particularly full fiber-optic networks—are natural monopolies. There is no natural “market” any more than one could imagine a competitive market in streets or metro airports. This is infrastructure—the foundation for many other markets.
Cable is a demonized industry. Please note that phone and wireless companies also fight fiber roll outs. The article you linked to had a link about another fiber fight in Monticello,MN where the fight was with the local phone company.
The cable company (whichever yours is) has direct competition from multiple satellite TV companies in every market they service. The Sat-TV companies do not pay a franchise fee. They do not pay local taxes. They do not provide free service to public city buildings like schools and fire stations. Fighting multiple competitors for TV customers, phone customers and, in most locations, data customers makes it very hard for two cable companies to run parallel lines and infrastructure and fight both each other and all the rest of the pack mentioned above. You don't see cable companies fighting in the same market because they both lose and only sattelite and phone companies win.
On the other hand Cox and NCTC were evil in that story you provided a link to. No doubt about it. But private industry often gets its panties in a bunch when the state attempts to nationalize their business. Personally, I am a socialist so I love what that city did. Fuck Cox Cable.
All I am getting at is that cable gets lied about. Now it gets a bad rap for things it has done. But is also gets a bad rap for things that are patently untrue. The lies are perpetuated by opponents and often by well meaning but uninformed people. Even your response made it appear that cable was the sole cause of municipal fiber bans when the reality is far more complex. It is fashionable to hate utilities, but cable gets a far worse rap than it deserves.
Just get a computer that supports video at each location. Use the current cable for internet access.
While you are correct that there is no "out-of-pocket" expense for the service, make no mistake that the city is paying for the service. Were it not for the "free" services that Comcast is providing, the city could squeeze more franchise fees out of them. So while the service doesn't take money out of the city's coffers it does keep the city from getting money they would have otherwise received. The effect on the bottom line is the same.
Sorry to nitpick, but too many people think the digital transition was all about HD, when it was in reality nothing to do with HD.
This would have a bit to do with the whole "HD's so good that the government's requiring all stations to switch to it by June 2009 so get your box now" commercials that used to be all over television.
It would be cool if they just paid shareholders and looked after the networks.
Grow, upgrade and move more packets. Add extra services and move more packets.
The problem is the desire by the simple packet pushing networks to understand that paying customers are making 'billions' on 'their' networks for 'millions' and wanting a cut.
Add to that an inability to roll out into some areas unless a community tries first.
With the "local taxes" comes a walled garden of consumers and the right to roll out networks - not a huge minus.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I work for a college and Comcast has said that they may be able to continue to send us the Analog-based signal over fiber to our pole-mounted translator since it wouldn't affect the surrounding neighborhood (which will be forced to STB every TV). The signal from the Comcast office usually travels long distances over fiber and is translated in nodes to copper for each neighborhood. You may be able to ask if yours is a dedicated line and have service continue as it already exists. (It's probably just easier/cheaper for the office to split a duplicate signal to all fiber nodes than make specific packages for special areas/businesses). Each channel encoder in the Comcast office should be able to create various digital or NTSC analog frequency patterns.
We have almost 1000 dorm rooms which we refuse to add cable boxes in. The idea of going with another vendor (Satellite) is a possibility (multiplexing a bank of tuners to existing copper) but we can't afford the hospitality rates compared to our really good Comcast bulk rate. To even consider some of these devices and the costs associated with their implementation is out of the question for a private school like ours, let alone the poster's municipality which wants to just see their free cable TV.
The dedicated fiber note was actually the Comcast Engineer's suggestion, not my question!