Comcast relegating some stations to digital only in Washington, D.C.
[Image courtesy of Brent Nelson, thanks Harry]
Filed under: Industry, Regulatory, Cable
[Image courtesy of Brent Nelson, thanks Harry]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
keith @ Jun 11th 2008 8:09PM
You don't need to upgrade to digital cable to get these stations. TVs and VCRs with QAM tuners will get them, just do a channel scan. The FCC forbids scrambling local broadcast stations.
engadget.mlc @ Jun 12th 2008 2:04PM
Oh really? Here in Chicago, even our locals are scrambled (I've hooked Clear QAM tuners up, like our Bravia). They can (and probably will) get an FCC exemption.
If I were out there, I'd go FiOS in a heart-beat. Oh.. wait.. everyone I know out there already has.
keith @ Jun 12th 2008 3:22PM
Call Comcast and tell them they can't scramble them. The only exception is if they can prove major cable theft problems. Do a new channel scan, they be under different channel numbers such as 105.2 instead of 12.1. If you still can't get them and Comcast won't fix it, you need to complain to your local franchise authority. Charter does not scramble them. Charter scrambled a local 24 hour weather channel by mistake. I emailed and told them that was not allowed and it was fixed within a day.
keith @ Jun 11th 2008 8:31PM
Comcast is not moving the stations in the Washington market. If you read the article, they are only moving the Washington stations in the Baltimore market. The Baltimore stations will still be analog.
RC @ Jun 14th 2008 12:46AM
Yeah, this article was poorly written. About a week ago we got messages on our boxes that lineup changes would be coming on June 25 for HD expansion. Channels 4,5, and 9 are the DC affiliates and they are going digital.
David @ Jun 13th 2008 12:55PM
Just because you are a digital cable subscriber does not mean that you would not be affected by this change. I'm a digital cable subscriber, but only have one active digital cable box. My other three televisions and/or TiVo's are using analog only without a box.
DavidB @ Jun 16th 2008 7:54PM
Wherever they do it, I sure hope they do a better job (for their customers) than they have been doing here in Manassas VA. Right in the middle of Tiger's put on 18 to outright win the Open and the NBC digital channel drops completely off line. Thank goodness I could still turn to channel 4 and see the rest of the tourney (in crappy SD).
Apparently the NBC affiliate here has some really crap back end equipment that can't at all deal with HD. They must have someone sitting there watching the feed and having to flip a switch back and forth to enable and disable HD. The signal on often drops out when a show goes to commercial until 'poof" a 480i SD signal carrying commercial pops in. Then your show starts back up and is in crappy 480i SD until 'poof' the HD comes back. And any time they scroll weather alerts across show, the signal drops down to crappy 480i.
It's funny, you'd think local affiliates would be scrambling to do things right with HD? Especially with locally generated content (like news). But only 1 of our "big 4" does news in HD. So hey ABC, NBC, and FOX, you want my eyeballs back you better get going on HD!!
Joe @ Jul 11th 2008 6:52AM
Just talked to a Comcast Service technician who said these digital channels would be going in and out until 27 July, but would then come back in as Analog. I pressed him but he didn't sound confident on what is actually happening. So either he didn't really know what is going on, or Comcast is screwing with its customers again...