One of my digital-cable STB's has been frequently rebooting and displaying error messages (about once every 2 hours). SO they send someone over, and he claims the box was 'going into high-temperature shutdown' because my TV was old and gives off too much heat. Boy, glad it was an SS set...he would've been calling the fire dept. if it was a tube set. But I mean COME ON....Ambient room temperature is at 71F, I had nothing on top of the cable box, and it was sitting right atop the tv (1982 GE).

Plus, I've had the same box paired with the same TV for almost a year now. Well, at least he gave me a brand new box (a Samsung) without much ado.

But doesn't this sound unlikely?

It was not your fault, your cable company is retarded. Those boxes are the worst chinese junk they can force on everyone, I've had several fail like yours. The same thing with all the rebooting and mine froze a lot. Glad they gave you a new box like they're supposed to.

Cable box quality has gone down in the last decade. I have one that I need to keep turned off, or unplug it and plug it back in if I leave it on just so on demand will work.

That's a load of bullcrap. Like has aready been said, those boxes are not of the best quality anyway. And, I've seen some STB's that actually ran hotter than the TV it was sitting on.

I have not had any personal experience with the new digital cable boxes and don't plan to as long as analog cable service is available. Don't know how much longer that will last as they just dropped 4 channels from the analog package and will probably be dropping more until it gets to the point where only local channels + 2 or 3 others will be on analog (Ch. 2-13).

Glad i'm not crazy, thanks guys! Around here the analog signal has gotten very noisy over the years; my guess is that they are just letting it die and aren't maintaining it. I don't think it's my house connection since it was redone once or twice. Shame since a box-less setup works wonders on 80's sets with electronic tuners...especially after the dtv switchover

I just use the VCR tuner to watch anything above 13 on my knob tuned Zenith. They're not maintaining the analog signal too well here, either; but, it wouldn't be cost effective for us to rent a digital cable box for each TV in the house that's on cable.

I got three DTB (digital transport boxes) from Comcast when they went digital a few months ago. All three worked for a few days and went dead. Re-pinging them from their website went nowhere.

A new Samsung HD set, a used Sony XBR set and a DVD recorder with a digi tuner fixed all. All have QAM tuners and I get everything...although the channels are in the upstream Comcast mapping. No HD from the premium levels but that is expected.

I have all my basic channels but mixed up and subject to monthly re-mapping. So what if CNN is not on 31 but 103.7. I can live with that. And the OTA HD channels as must-carry are better than the version that any Comcast box would pass after massive compression.

Several years ago, I had digital cable from Time Warner. The box ran hot, but nowhere nearly as hot as Zenith2134's. I did not have the box on top of my TV; the converter was on the lowest shelf of my entertainment unit (which now is occupied by my DVD player). The box, a Motorola STB, worked extremely well the short time I had it (a couple of years) before digital cable rates went up. I now have bare-bones basic cable running more or less directly to the set (local channels only, plus WGN America, C-SPAN 1, and a couple of religious channels, to say nothing of QVC) and no problems whatsoever with heat buildup from anything.

Every once in a while I toy with the idea of dropping cable and getting a DTV converter box, but every time I read about these boxes getting exceptionally warm (and failing within six months or so) I forget about it. I don't honestly think a DTV box with rabbit ears would work in my situation anyway, as I live in an apartment building and cannot use an outside TV antenna. Rabbit ears, unless they are the expensive amplified kind, won't work here either (and even if they did work at all, it probably would be a crap shoot as I will explain), because I'm some 45 miles from the Cleveland TV stations. It's ironic because my FM radio reception here, using an external Terk "tower" antenna atop my desk with my stereo system (and the built-in whip antennas on my FM portables, to say nothing of short wire antennas on my vintage FM radios), is excellent. I guess the difference is the all-or-nothing nature of DTV signals, and the fact that they are far weaker than FM radio stations.

BTW, why is it now impossible to hear audio from channel 6 TV stations on 87.75 MHz? (Back in my old neighborhood, long before DTV, I used to be able to hear channel eight audio at the bottom of my FM dial.) I thought the sound carriers of digital television signals were on the same frequencies as the old analog ones, unless the DTV stations are on UHF channels. I always thought that the audio carrier of, say, channel six would be 86.5 MHz (4.5 MHz above the lower edge of the channel), regardless of whether the signal was digital or analog. Why I was getting channel 8 audio on 86.5 MHz, however, is still a mystery to me, even to this day, since the sound carrier for that channel is (or was, with analog TV) 184.5 MHz. I was living in a Cleveland suburb at the time that was perhaps 30+ miles from the stations. Hmmm. :scratch2:

Jeff,

Your 87.75 problem is the same as here in Phila. I used to like listening to the Ch 6 news on my car FM on the way home. And then digital reared it's ugly head.

My Ch 6 kept it's same assignment but my Cadillac FM radio did not make the change. It is analog and will never be able to figure out ones and zeros. Digital transmission is useless on anything analog.

The carrier may be the same, but the transport is nothing that anything analog was built for.

The audio on digital TV stations is just a stream of data packets mixed in with the rest of the data packets (video, closed captions, program guide, other audio and video sub-channels). There is nothing resembling a discrete part of the RF spectrum of a TV channel being dedicated to the audio for that station.

Zenith2134, I'm glad you got your box replaced without any real trouble, and thanks for the laugh at the latest "stupid cable-TV company tricks" story. That was a new one.

Speaking of stupid cable company tricks, this old lady that I know had the cable company out to install her cable. She was told that her TV (an '81 Philco with rotary tuning) was too old to accept cable and that she couldn't be connected. BULLCRAP! Do they not know what a matching transformer is? She eventually gave me the set when it developed loose connections and a weak CRT. I patched it up and used it for about a year - ON CABLE!

I talked to the guy who connected our cable and he said that there are plenty of ancient TV's that people want connected - to which they refuse.

If they ever refuse to connect any TV of mine because it's "too old", I won't get a new TV. I'll just go with another signal source.

I think back to the '80's and '90's when those same old TV's were connected to cable and usually had a analog cable box sitting on top of them.

Are cable installers today that stupid or are they just trying to convince people that they need a new TV?

I made the Comcast guy hook up my '49 motorola 7" and he didn't bat an eye. He said as long as I had a matching transformer, I was good to go. He went on to say that he had a Moto "golden view" set from the 40's that still worked! For once, I was impressed.

My girlfriend works for Comcast, and we had a discussion about the quality of boxes the other day (I had a relay on my box die after less than a year). According to her, box quality has really dipped down since Motorola cut production on their boxes, forcing Comcast to go with other vendors to make them. The worst quality box by far is made by a company called Scientific Atlanta. They have pallets of these things that just failed right out of the box. General Instrument also makes a decent box as well. But yes, Comcast has bad boxes-LOTS of them!

Ugggghhh. Those Scientific Atlanta boxes ARE the worst, that's what they keep giving me. Slow hardware, poorly designed menus, poor construction ect. Mine runs at about 140 degrees Fahrenheit at the processor and power supply and it sits NEXT to a 2004 Sony KV-30HS420. The tv is not why this junk overheats, that's for sure.

I had Scientific Atlanta digital boxes for years, and they did have to be changed out frequently. The hardware, IMHO, is a major reason why people are switching to Verizon fiber around here. All I hear from neighbors and friends is how bad the cable menus and equipment is. And I certainly agree...I remember when they switched to the Samsungs, the switched outlet feature went away. Makes me wonder how long it is before the F connector is gone as well.

(Knocks heavily on wood) My Charter Scientific Atlanta hokie box has only had to be replaced once in the 4-5 years I've had it...Guess I'm ahead of the game...But w/summer thunderstorm/power outage season around the corner, we'll see...

---

I didn't care for those SA boxes even back in the analog days. They just seemed cheap built and they ran hot. Before Comcast started using SA brand boxes, they were using Jerrold brand converters. Those seemed to be heavier, better built converters. Somewhere, I've got one of those old Jerrold 36 channel converters with the row of mechanical buttons and a three position switch to select which row of channels you wish to choose from.

The cable techs are probably told to make everything the customers' fault. And if your TV was making too much heat, what would he say about a plasma? Those belch out more heat than a blast furnace.

Charles

I remember when they switched to the Samsungs, the switched outlet feature went away. Makes me wonder how long it is before the F connector is gone as well.

That's too bad. The switched outlet made it easy to turn your TV on and off with your cable remote. I don't think Time Warner (the cable provider in my area) has any plans to replace its digital set-tops any time soon with ones that don't have the switched AC outlet, but that's just a thought I had--they might just do something like that eventually, or perhaps they have already and I don't know it. My cable runs more or less directly to my TV, no cable box (basic service, broadcast channels only); I say more or less because I have an RF modulator and a VCR connected to the TV as well, and the cable line from the wall connects to an input on the modulator. There is a jumper line, I think, from the modulator output to the TV antenna input on the VCR, with the output of the latter connecting to the TV's own antenna port via another cable. Lots of cables behind the set, but it works. :yes:

If the manufacturers of cable set-tops eventually do away with one or both F connectors (cable input as well as the output to the TV), how on earth will the boxes connect to the cable and the subscriber's television? :scratch2: A wireless connection from the box to the cable comes to mind; however, the connection from the box to the user's TV could be a bit more of a problem without a connector.

It's already gone on a lot of boxes now. That's the way it was when I had that Directv garbage. I had to use a modulator for all my sets :mad:

I talked to the guy who connected our cable and he said that there are plenty of ancient TV's that people want connected - to which they refuse.

Are cable installers today that stupid or are they just trying to convince people that they need a new TV?

I used to work for a local access studio for a cable company three years ago... Back then I used to talk to the installer guys quite a bit. They always told me I wouldn't believe how many older TVs they ran across. They would never refuse connecting any of them, but they did say that the older TVs caused more noise and interference to be introduced into the cable system. If that was true, it wasn't all that big of a deal because the individual nodes were isolated and the system had a fiber backbone. Also, as of that time three years ago, if you subscribed to analog cable only, they'd give you an analog set-top box if you requested one. Don't know if thats still the case though, as I remember their supply of analog boxes was running pretty low and I'm sure they didn't mind getting rid of them just to clean out the warehouse.

If the manufacturers of cable set-tops eventually do away with one or both F connectors (cable input as well as the output to the TV), how on earth will the boxes connect to the cable and the subscriber's television? :scratch2: A wireless connection from the box to the cable comes to mind; however, the connection from the box to the user's TV could be a bit more of a problem without a connector.

I can't imagine the coax input on cable boxes would be going anywhere anytime soon... It'd cost the cable company a boatload of money to change out all their infrastructure and switch to a different delivery method. On some new buildouts though, fiber-to-the-home and IP-based delivery is becoming common.

(Knocks heavily on wood) My Charter Scientific Atlanta hokie box has only had to be replaced once in the 4-5 years I've had it...Guess I'm ahead of the game...But w/summer thunderstorm/power outage season around the corner, we'll see...

Power outages do cause cable boxes to lose their programming, requiring a reboot in the case of the fancy digital set-tops; I had this happen more than once when I had digital cable, with a fancy-dancy Motorola digital set-top, a few years ago. Got rid of digital, later dropped expanded basic, and went back to analog when the rates went too high; I now have basic cable, no box, and no more trouble with the cable except when on those rare occasions when the headend loses the satellite signal (as sometimes happens with WGN America or the two PBS stations on my cable), or the picture freezes and the sound disappears. The latter sometimes happens during football season; I watch games with a buddy of mine, and it probably drives him nuts when the picture freezes just at a critical moment during a play. We can't hear the sound, either, as when a digital-TV picture freezes (whether the source is OTA or cable doesn't matter), the sound goes as well.

However, I have yet to hear of a cable box (digital or otherwise) being damaged by lightning although it is indeed possible and probably has happened more than once in the past. The cable operator is responsible, of course, for replacing the box if this occurs, but I'm not sure if their liability extends to the subscriber's television as well if the latter is damaged along with the box. I don't think it does. The cable company's responsibility and liability ends at the cable box; they are not permitted to do anything to the subscriber's TV and are not responsible for replacing the latter if it is damaged by anything, even faults with the cable system.

Don't call the cable company and complain about programming or those little messages (crawls) that occasionally scroll across the bottom of your screen; it will get you nowhere fast. I recently called Time-Warner to complain about weather warnings appearing at the bottom of my TV picture; the representative I spoke with told me point-blank that they cannot shut these off, as they are public service messages sent by the TV stations. The cable company has no control over these or any other aspect of the programming of any television station they carry; the cable operator's only job is to provide the signals to subscribers--the cable company is forbidden by law to do anything to the programming, including replacing the noon and nine p.m. (CST) Chicago newscasts on WGN America with some other program in markets other than metropolitan Chicago. Moreover, one of the local TV stations in Cleveland has a continuous crawl across the bottom of the screen (more news, naturally [!]) during their newscasts; the cable company cannot shut this off either, or modify it in any way. In any event, it doesn't matter to me since I don't watch that station for news anyway.

The hardware, IMHO, is a major reason why people are switching to Verizon fiber around here.
You're lucky to have a choice out there. I hear there are political reasons for keeping FiOS out of my town, and they're cahooting with the Dolans (the family dynasty that owns Cablevision) to keep us choice-free.

As for me, I'm soured on cable. Sure the picture's nice and clear, but it looks like VHS on SD channels...and don't start me on that 1997-looking interface for tha cable box...which takes 30 seconds to load the menu and at least 5 seconds just to change channels.

I'd love to cut the cord entirely when I move but we're kinda broadband-impaired here, and cable looks like my only www choice where I'd like to head, so I'm stuck with Cablevision at least for that.

Boy, what you got there is a box designed for 21" or smaller sets, and you're
tryin' to drive a 25-incher with it...

The ONLY reason we decided to go with cable again was for the internet. The first time we had cable, they ticked us off, concerning the internet, to the point where we told them to turn it all off. Then, we went with directv for about 10 months until we got tired of paying $70 a month to them. Had to pay to get out of that one; but, it was worth it. Then, we used analog OTA for about a year. Finally, we decided to give Comcast another try. Had it not been for the internet, we would be using DTV converters. We tried to get DSL from the phone company; but, they claim it's not available in my area. That only leaves dial up and comcast.

I've gone through at least six Motorola digital cable boxes since the summer of 2007. One cable repairman insisted I did not use good quality coax when I wired the house. I bought unshielded because it was all I could get locally. I replaced the main feed coming in and the line to the den with shielded coax the cable man gave me - no change. This also caused me to run a wire down the side of the house since the jack is under a window and inaccessible with the walls up.

In fact, this computer's DSL modem has been on the unshielded coax and I've never had problem one.

By the end of the year my mother and brother will be in their own house - she's buying a gutted house 300 feet down the street from mine. When they leave, we're shutting off cable TV altogether and going to DTV boxes.

How many DTV channels can you get in New Orleans? I imagine you'll put up an outside antenna.

How many DTV channels can you get in New Orleans? I imagine you'll put up an outside antenna.

There are eleven stations on digital plus their subchannels plus two low-power stations I rarely pick up. All the transmitters are within 5 1/2 miles of me.

Believe it or not, I erected an outdoor antenna last year after losing DTV signals during a thunderstorm. Well, I still lose DTV during heavy rain. The outdoor antenna is directional and I don't have a rotor, so I really didn't gain anything for my efforts. I'm probably going to take it down soon and use rabbit ears on the set top.

I've gone through at least six Motorola digital cable boxes since the summer of 2007. One cable repairman insisted I did not use good quality coax when I wired the house. I bought unshielded because it was all I could get locally. I replaced the main feed coming in and the line to the den with shielded coax the cable man gave me - no change. This also caused me to run a wire down the side of the house since the jack is under a window and inaccessible with the walls up.

In fact, this computer's DSL modem has been on the unshielded coax and I've never had problem one.

By the end of the year my mother and brother will be in their own house - she's buying a gutted house 300 feet down the street from mine. When they leave, we're shutting off cable TV altogether and going to DTV boxes.

They always start by blaming your inside cable or equipment. I must have spent over a week of vacation trying to get them to get cablemodem working properly. My neighbor gave up on digital cable at that point. I finally found on the FCC site where my local provider had been cited quite a few times for cable leakage. I took a printout of that and a complaint form when I went to their main office. That finally got their attention and they sent someone out to look for cable leakage. There was a really strong emission at the end of my street. When he removed the cover from the directional coupler he received a shower of water.

That gave my cablemodem life and my neighbor was able to get digital cable.

John

I live in eastern Lake County, Ohio, 35 miles east of Cleveland--an area I call "RF never-never land" for TV and ham radio, although my FM broadcast radio reception is great (I consistently get every Cleveland station and a few out-of-market ones clear as a bell and in stereo, just as I did when I lived in the suburbs). I am about 40 miles from the transmitters of the seven Cleveland TV stations, so I am pretty much tethered to cable if I want decent reception. As it is now, the analog signal of channel 3 (the NBC affiliate in Cleveland) did not reach here at all with an antenna; five, eight and the UHF stations (five) were iffy at best, except for the CBS affiliate on channel 19. I hate to think what the situation is or may be today, with digital. If channel 3 didn't reach me in analog, and the other stations were iffy to poor at best, then I don't think OTA digital would be much better.

For Ryan (AUdubon5425): If you live literally in the shadow of every local TV station in New Orleans, you probably have much more signal than you'd ever need, so you should have good luck with DTV boxes and antennas. The only thing I'd watch would be reflections from tall buildings, if there are any such structures near your home; these obstructions used to cause ghosting with analog TV (there was an article in the [now defunct] Electronics Illustrated magazine about 45 years ago on how the construction of the then-new World Trade Center in New York could affect adversely the area's TV and FM reception because of signal relections causing ghosting and other problems) and could create areas in which the DTV signal is nonexistent, while other areas will have an extremely strong signal.

Jeff,
Update on Ch 3, From their website:
"July 12, 2009: Channel 3 moves to "all digital" broadcasting on digital channel 17 at 10 a.m. (Previously, the station was broadcasting on digital channel 2.) The station would continue its analog broadcast as the "nightlight" station in Cleveland, broadcasting only transition information through July 26th when the analog transmitter was permenantly shut off"

From the FCC site is a somewhat confusing list of TV stations and construction permits for TV stations in Cleveland.

http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/tvq?state=OH&call=&arn=&city=cleveland&chan=&cha2=69&serv=&type=0&facid=&list=1&dist=&dlat2=&mlat2=&slat2=&dlon2=&mlon2=&slon2=&size=9

You can click on the call letters to open a great wealth of information on each station... power, antenna height and pattern, projected coverage*, call sign and ownership changes... fun stuff!:yes:

*perhaps somewhat optimistic for rabbit ear users.

jr

My cable company is terrible. (Cox) Awhile back I was having issues with everything. Digital,internet,phone. Even tho I told them it was intermittant, and mainly affected when it was windy or rainy, they came out 5 times, and blamed everything on me untill the 5th call. First-off, the digital box shocked the tech, so he blamed it on my "old" TV. (a 1981 System 3) then blamed it on the VCR. Even tho I brought up a new 13" for them to hook to the box (with the same results). They treated me like crap like I was making all the problems up. It ended up being a small wire outside the house that ran from under the box outside into the basement.
They are also rude and whenever you call for ANYTHING they blame the customer and start off saying it will be a hefty charge if it's inside wire problem. I then inform them "Oh... I pay for your inside maintanence contract, so I guess you'll be right out..."

Jeff,
Update on Ch 3, From their website:
"July 12, 2009: Channel 3 moves to "all digital" broadcasting on digital channel 17 at 10 a.m. (Previously, the station was broadcasting on digital channel 2.) The station would continue its analog broadcast as the "nightlight" station in Cleveland, broadcasting only transition information through July 26th when the analog transmitter was permenantly shut off"

From the FCC site is a somewhat confusing list of TV stations and construction permits for TV stations in Cleveland.

http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/tvq?state=OH&call=&arn=&city=cleveland&chan=&cha2=69&serv=&type=0&facid=&list=1&dist=&dlat2=&mlat2=&slat2=&dlon2=&mlon2=&slon2=&size=9

You can click on the call letters to open a great wealth of information on each station... power, antenna height and pattern, projected coverage*, call sign and ownership changes... fun stuff!:yes:

*perhaps somewhat optimistic for rabbit ear users.

jr

Someone over at channel three is very confused. The station never broadcast over on channel 17. All I get there is some religious station over in Canton, Ohio. Channel three was never over on channel two either. All I get over on that channel is some station called "WRLM." Channel three has been on channel three since it went on the air sixty years ago, until they ripped out their regular transmitter and started fooling with this "digital" nonsense. Now, the only way I can get the station (and every other channel over in Cleveland) is on cable. It's things like this that make me very sorry I left the Cleveland suburb I grew up in. At least there, my TV reception was half decent with an antenna, and no one needed cable.

Thank you for the link to the FCC's internet page. However, I don't think I would understand any of it -- and I can't see why I need to know any of that information anyway, even if I could understand it.

Someone over at channel three is very confused. The station never broadcast over on channel 17. All I get there is some religious station over in Canton, Ohio. Channel three was never over on channel two either. All I get over on that channel is some station called "WRLM." Channel three has been on channel three since it went on the air sixty years ago, until they ripped out their regular transmitter and started fooling with this "digital" nonsense.

No, they are not confused over at channel 3, the FCC data shows that they HAVE used Ch 2 and are likely NOW using Ch 17 to transmit their signal. Most TV stations actually did change their transmitter frequencies to allow for the digital transition. Since stations had a long history of being identified by a certain channel number, the digital system was designed to allow "virtual channels"... a OTA digital box in Cleveland would receive the former Ch 3 on Ch 17 but would indicate it as Ch 3 on its channel list. The cable companies would also keep it on Ch 3 to avoid confusion. Believe me, and the WKYC website (and the FCC), Ch 3 does not transmit from Cleveland on ch 3 anymore.

The religious station in Canton that was on 17 is now actually transmitting on 39, but the digital boxes will report it as 17, using the transmitted PSIP Information to display 17 as a "virtual channel".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WDLI-TV

jr

I have Time-Warner cable service here in So. Ca. I was having trouble accessing the on demand service. The service rep. tried all the things he could do from the local office. I re-booted the box and he tried several tricks to restore on demand service. So we scheduled a service call. The service tech said it wasn't the box. Which I suspected. He fixed the problem at the connection going into the building. But...stll changed out the box over my objections. He replaced the heavy duty Motorola all metalbox w/clock and switched/unswitched AC plugs with a piece of crap black plastic box half the size w/ no clock and no AC outlet. Said "He had to do what the service order form requested." I missed that very accurate clock and the AC plug on the old Moto box. Called TW and said I'm on my way over to their office with the crap plastic box and want to exchange it for my old metal box. They did and all is well. I always dred the service call syndrome.

-Steve D.

I do not understand what has happened to television since last June. All I know is that the numbers on my TV dial are all mixed up for some channels since then. I get channel 25, for example, on channel 10, CBS channel 19 on channel 4, the MyNetwork affiliate on channel 43 is on channel six, and so on. The only stations that are on the right numbers anymore are 3, 5 and 8 from Cleveland. I don't know if something messed up the numbers the last time we had a thunderstorm here last summer, or what happened; all I do know is that every channel on my TV other than 3, 5 and 8 don't show up on their right numbers anymore.

This whole business about virtual channels and whatever is extremely confusing to me. As I said in my post, channel three has been on channel three as long as I can remember; the little numbers on my TV screen that show what channel my television is on always say channel 03, not 2, 17, 39, or whatever. (In fact, there is nothing on channel 39 on my cable.) As I also said, the station I do get over on channel 2 is something called "WRLM"--and that's not the NBC network channel in Cleveland. The NBC channel in Cleveland is on channel three and has been since the mid-1950s. I don't know where you get the idea it was, is, whatever, on channel 17, but as I said, the only thing I get over on 17 on my cable is a religious station over in Canton, Ohio.

Oh, if only I could go back to the 1960s, when all we had in Cleveland on television was channels 3, 5 and eight. In the suburb where I grew up, we got those three channels, on their right numbers, just fine. It opened up a can of worms when educational channel 25 went on the air in Cleveland in 1965, as that station's signal just wasn't powerful enough to reach our area.

As far as the cable system here, 5 is CBS, 6 is ABC, and 7 is NBC. It's been that way for 30+ years, as long as there's been cable service here.

As far as OTA, virtual channel 11 is actually broadcasting on RF channel 11. Before the digital switch, the digital RF channel was on, IIRC, 49. When they shut down the analog transmitter, they shut off channel 49 and moved back down to VHF channel 11.

I think virtual 24 is on RF 24

Virtual 30 is actually on RF 31

Virtual 14 (PBS) is on, IIRC, RF 44.

Our CW affiliate, which is OTA 11.2, is on channel 8 on the cable. The affiliate actually goes by "Meridian's CW 8"

Jeff,
It is all about "branding". Ch 3 has been known and recognized by that "brand name" for many years, and even though they don't transmit on that frequency any more, they have kept that identifier as their "brand name". The cable company has also chosen to continue to distribute the channel on Ch 3, so that is where it shows up on your set. The illusion is complete.
Since you are a ham, you likely know that one does not "mess with" the FCC... here is a link to the info on the FCC website, showing the former Ch 3 using Ch 2 and Ch 17.

http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/tvq?list=0&facid=73195

http://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/cdbs/pubacc/prod/app_det.pl?Application_id=1314700

hope this helps,
jr

---

Please explain to me in words I can understand (not technical jargon) why my TV channels are all mixed up on my TV dial. As I said, I get three five and eight on their right numbers, but the other stations are mixed up terribly -- PBS 25 is on 10, MyTV 43 is on 6, CBS 19 is on 4, and so on. The only other station that comes in on its right number is the ION station on channel 23. I don't know if this is all because a thunderstorm, power surge or whatever damaged the on-screen channel dial on my TV or if the cable company is trying to confuse its subscribers to death. I cannot afford a new TV. How do I tell now where the stations are?

BTW, what on earth is going on with CBS? All I get on the CBS channel here is basketball all day and all night, except between six and seven when the news is on--sometimes. If the game slops over past six p.m. EST, I lose the evening news.

If I were to give up my cable and put up an antenna with a rotor, could I get the CBS network without the basketball games? I don't care what city the station comes from -- in this area, Erie, Pennsylvania, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne, Indiana -- whatever. I just want my CBS service back. If this is for any reason not possible, when will CBS be back on its regular schedule? For that matter, why weren't the basketball games put on one of the sports channels, rather than hogging CBS for goodness knows how long? I saw the same nonsense going on with NBC when it dropped all its programming for the 2000 Olympics in a place called Vancouver, wherever that is. That nonsense lasted two weeks and almost drove me nuts.
Why aren't these sporting events put on channels intended to be sports channels, such as ESPN? I don't think this is fair to people like myself who aren't interested in sports; as a matter of fact, I think the news is much more important than sports any day of the year.

You, sir, are a HEATHEN, & a possibly dangerous HERETIC... Not wanting to watch a bunch of semi-Neanderthals bat, run, or dribble a ball of some sort up 'n' down a field or a large room, or in the case of the mega-event named after a watery beer, watching idiots sweep the floor for an oddly-shaped river slick ?!? Gasp ! Horrors ! What are you, some kind of gawdam Communist or something ?!? You're sposed to LOVE these pointless displays of machismo, & spend yrself silly buying the worthless crapola that is hawked during these endless contests...

"Please explain to me in words I can understand (not technical jargon) why my TV channels are all mixed up on my TV dial."

What is the "jargon" that you don't understand? Perhaps I can provide some definitions.

"BTW, what on earth is going on with CBS? All I get on the CBS channel here is basketball all day and all night"

I am not a sports fan either, but I think this is called "March Madness" which seems to be playoff games. I see the same stuff on my CBS channel as well, so I suspect that looking for another CBS affiliate would not help. This will be over fairly soon :yes:

By the way, I looked up WRLM, the station that appears on Ch 2 on your cable system, and it is actually transmitted on Ch 47 from Canton OH. It may be using its former analog channel number (Ch 67) in its "brand name".

http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/tvq?list=0&facid=43870

jr

Hard to make everybody happy don't call the cable company CBS is playing what people want to watch and they want to broadcast. Call them if you don't like what they are broadcasting.

Regarding my comment about the F-connector going away--I didn't mean the cable input from the street! That'll always be there (at least with cable tv) I meant the connection to the sets themselves. More and more people are hooking up the tv's with HDMI, component video, s-video, and good ol composite video. New sets don't have NTSC tuners anymore, etc....so I bet they will drop the RF out on the boxes someday.

Please explain to me in words I can understand (not technical jargon) why my TV channels are all mixed up on my TV dial. As I said, I get three five and eight on their right numbers, but the other stations are mixed up terribly -- PBS 25 is on 10, MyTV 43 is on 6, CBS 19 is on 4, and so on. The only other station that comes in on its right number is the ION station on channel 23.

I'll try to explain this as easily as I can... Traditionally, when cable channel lineups were put together, cable companies had several things to consider. First off, consider that in the days before DTV, for local broadcast channels that broadcast on analog VHF channels (channels 2-13 over the air) in a local market being served by a cable company. The cable company will often put those particular channels on cable on different channel number assignments than what is broadcast over the air. A big reason for this was to prevent interference from the over the air signal bleeding into the cable system and causing interference to the cable channel. In areas where that particular broadcast channel's transmitter is nearby, the cable companies will often leave that channel blank. For example the local cable company where I live does not have anything on cable channel 8 even though we have a local CBS station that broadcasts on 8. The cable company opted to put them on cable channel 7 instead. Cable companies often follow channel placement guidelines though. For instance news channels like Fox News, CNN, Headline News, etc. like to be grouped together, sports channels like FSN, ESPN, OLN, etc. also like to be grouped together. This makes it easier for the cable viewer when they are channel surfing. When the cable companies sign contracts with these program providers, that is when it is decided what cable channel they will be located on.

Ok, now that I've explained the 2-13 cable channels/broadcast channels, take note that the frequency allotments for channels 2-13 on cable are exactly the same as they are for broadcast TV... that explains why you can take an older TV with rotary tuners, plug cable tv into it and you will be able to receive whatever cable channels are on cable 2 through 13 on the VHF tuner of the TV. This was done because in the very early days of cable, there wern't many channels, and there were no cable boxes... people just plugged the cable into their TV and used the TV's tuner. Obviously though, more cable channels came into existance there was a need to add more channels to cable. For over the air broadcasting, there is a big gap of frequency spectrum between VHF and UHF channels, but on cable there is no gap. Channel 14, 15, etc. continue from 13 in the same manner. Cable can do this because it is a closed system, meaning that signals are not intended to escape from the cable, and the cable system uses shielded coax cable and so is therefore protected from interference from outside sources.

Anyway, that being said, the cable companies will take the UHF broadcast channels and will ad them to their cable lineup, sometimes using the same channel number as the over the air signal, and sometimes not... there is no specific rule on this. But, as another post has explained, the cable company will set up "tiers of service" - meaning channels are grouped together that are intended to be sold as certain packages. With analog basic cable, this basically means that when a customer subscribes to basic cable service, the cable company can put a special blocking filter on the line that drops to your house that blocks out all channels above a specific point.

I don't know if this is all because a thunderstorm, power surge or whatever damaged the on-screen channel dial on my TV or if the cable company is trying to confuse its subscribers to death. I cannot afford a new TV. How do I tell now where the stations are?

You may have noticed this all the sudden because perhaps your cable company needed to shuffle channels around for some particular reason... usually because of contracts with the programming providers. However they should have notified you through the mail or from a bill insert or something like that - if they didn't, well shame on them that's bad customer service.

You have a couple options for discovering where the channels are now... You could go to a website that has channel listings for your area and just print that off and keep it near the tv. (one such example would be www.tvguide.com) You could contact your cable company and ask them for a channel lineup card. Or if your local newspaper publishes a TV Week or similar insert, just grab that to look at the channel lineup.


BTW, what on earth is going on with CBS? All I get on the CBS channel here is basketball all day and all night, except between six and seven when the news is on--sometimes. If the game slops over past six p.m. EST, I lose the evening news.

If I were to give up my cable and put up an antenna with a rotor, could I get the CBS network without the basketball games? I don't care what city the station comes from -- in this area, Erie, Pennsylvania, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne, Indiana -- whatever. I just want my CBS service back. If this is for any reason not possible, when will CBS be back on its regular schedule? For that matter, why weren't the basketball games put on one of the sports channels, rather than hogging CBS for goodness knows how long? I saw the same nonsense going on with NBC when it dropped all its programming for the 2000 Olympics in a place called Vancouver, wherever that is. That nonsense lasted two weeks and almost drove me nuts.
Why aren't these sporting events put on channels intended to be sports channels, such as ESPN? I don't think this is fair to people like myself who aren't interested in sports; as a matter of fact, I think the news is much more important than sports any day of the year.

No, all CBS affiliates are carrying the games as they are a national feed on the CBS Network. Are you not familiar with March Madness? It's just a basketball tournament and will be over before too long. Also, you should realize that not every single household in the U.S. has cable or satellite... believe it or not there are people out there who still rely on an antenna for over-the-air TV reception, and maybe they like sports. The TV networks do the best they can to cover what they think the viewer wants, but obviously they can't satisfy everyone all the time.

Jeff,
I made some guesses about the service for your location, and found the channel lineup for the basic Time-Warner cable for the area around Mentor OH:

2 WRLM TCT 67 Cleveland
3 WKYC NBC 3 Cleveland
4 WOIO CBS 19 Cleveland
5 WEWS ABC 5 Cleveland
6 WUAB MNTV 43 Cleveland
7 HSN
8 WJW FOX 8 Cleveland
9 WBNX CW 55 Akron
10 WVIZ PBS 25 Cleveland
11 QVC
12 Government Access
13 TV Guide Network
14 EWTN
15 WGN America
16 C-SPAN
17 WDLI TBN 17 Canton
18 WQHS Univision 61 Cleveland
20 WEAO PBX 49 Akron
21 WGGN TBN 52 Sandusky
22 NEON
23 WVPX ION 23 Akron

Note that in some cases the cable company has matched the cable channel to the "virtual" or "brand name" channel for a given station, in other cases they have not. Some national services such as C-SPAN, QVC, HSN and EWTN do not have a "brand name" channel. In the case of Ch 8, after the digital transition, they *actually* ended up transmitting again on Ch 8, So the "brand name" and cable channel and the real over-the-air channels match!
jr

One of my digital-cable STB's has been frequently rebooting and displaying error messages (about once every 2 hours). SO they send someone over, and he claims the box was 'going into high-temperature shutdown' because my TV was old and gives off too much heat. Boy, glad it was an SS set...he would've been calling the fire dept. if it was a tube set. But I mean COME ON....Ambient room temperature is at 71F, I had nothing on top of the cable box, and it was sitting right atop the tv (1982 GE).

Plus, I've had the same box paired with the same TV for almost a year now. Well, at least he gave me a brand new box (a Samsung) without much ado.

But doesn't this sound unlikely?

It should not do that, our cable set top boxes set on top of our 1982 Zenith System 3 (now we have a FIOS box on it) and we never had problems like that. Like you, if I had it on top of my 1970 Zenith Chromacolor, he'd freak out.

Several years ago, I had digital cable from Time Warner. The box ran hot, but nowhere nearly as hot as Zenith2134's. I did not have the box on top of my TV; the converter was on the lowest shelf of my entertainment unit (which now is occupied by my DVD player). The box, a Motorola STB, worked extremely well the short time I had it (a couple of years) before digital cable rates went up. I now have bare-bones basic cable running more or less directly to the set (local channels only, plus WGN America, C-SPAN 1, and a couple of religious channels, to say nothing of QVC) and no problems whatsoever with heat buildup from anything.

Every once in a while I toy with the idea of dropping cable and getting a DTV converter box, but every time I read about these boxes getting exceptionally warm (and failing within six months or so) I forget about it. I don't honestly think a DTV box with rabbit ears would work in my situation anyway, as I live in an apartment building and cannot use an outside TV antenna. Rabbit ears, unless they are the expensive amplified kind, won't work here either (and even if they did work at all, it probably would be a crap shoot as I will explain), because I'm some 45 miles from the Cleveland TV stations. It's ironic because my FM radio reception here, using an external Terk "tower" antenna atop my desk with my stereo system (and the built-in whip antennas on my FM portables, to say nothing of short wire antennas on my vintage FM radios), is excellent. I guess the difference is the all-or-nothing nature of DTV signals, and the fact that they are far weaker than FM radio stations.

BTW, why is it now impossible to hear audio from channel 6 TV stations on 87.75 MHz? (Back in my old neighborhood, long before DTV, I used to be able to hear channel eight audio at the bottom of my FM dial.) I thought the sound carriers of digital television signals were on the same frequencies as the old analog ones, unless the DTV stations are on UHF channels. I always thought that the audio carrier of, say, channel six would be 86.5 MHz (4.5 MHz above the lower edge of the channel), regardless of whether the signal was digital or analog. Why I was getting channel 8 audio on 86.5 MHz, however, is still a mystery to me, even to this day, since the sound carrier for that channel is (or was, with analog TV) 184.5 MHz. I was living in a Cleveland suburb at the time that was perhaps 30+ miles from the stations. Hmmm. :scratch2:

I always picked up WJAC, channel 6, our of Johnstown PA on my FM radios. Since NBC always had the Olympics for the most part, it was nice to follow them in my car. I'm a delivery driver and one thing I wished for was to follow them as I drove about but DTV put a stop to it. :(

The audio on digital TV stations is just a stream of data packets mixed in with the rest of the data packets (video, closed captions, program guide, other audio and video sub-channels). There is nothing resembling a discrete part of the RF spectrum of a TV channel being dedicated to the audio for that station.

I'm surprised no one has made a radio that picks up digital TV audio like we had when we had radios that had AM/FM and channels 2 thru 13.

Please explain to me in words I can understand (not technical jargon) why my TV channels are all mixed up on my TV dial. As I said, I get three five and eight on their right numbers, but the other stations are mixed up terribly -- PBS 25 is on 10, MyTV 43 is on 6, CBS 19 is on 4, and so on. The only other station that comes in on its right number is the ION station on channel 23. I don't know if this is all because a thunderstorm, power surge or whatever damaged the on-screen channel dial on my TV or if the cable company is trying to confuse its subscribers to death. I cannot afford a new TV. How do I tell now where the stations are?

BTW, what on earth is going on with CBS? All I get on the CBS channel here is basketball all day and all night, except between six and seven when the news is on--sometimes. If the game slops over past six p.m. EST, I lose the evening news.

If I were to give up my cable and put up an antenna with a rotor, could I get the CBS network without the basketball games? I don't care what city the station comes from -- in this area, Erie, Pennsylvania, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne, Indiana -- whatever. I just want my CBS service back. If this is for any reason not possible, when will CBS be back on its regular schedule? For that matter, why weren't the basketball games put on one of the sports channels, rather than hogging CBS for goodness knows how long? I saw the same nonsense going on with NBC when it dropped all its programming for the 2000 Olympics in a place called Vancouver, wherever that is. That nonsense lasted two weeks and almost drove me nuts.
Why aren't these sporting events put on channels intended to be sports channels, such as ESPN? I don't think this is fair to people like myself who aren't interested in sports; as a matter of fact, I think the news is much more important than sports any day of the year.

I think it would be a cool idea to put games on the subchannels, or vice versa, for people who are not into sports. My late grandmother was upset when she "missed her stories," when sports was on. Well, KDKA-TV, channel 2 here in Pittsburgh should open up a "2.2 channel" and put her stories on that one, use standard def, but she will still see them. Heck, if she was still alive, she would be using a set top converter box with rabbit ears on her 1962 B&W RCA. At least she would be able to get UHF on it, it had not UHF tuner. :D

I'm surprised no one has made a radio that picks up digital TV audio like we had when we had radios that had AM/FM and channels 2 thru 13.

We sell a cheap portable radio for about $15.00 at Wal-Mart that does just that along with am/fm and the weather band.

We sell a cheap portable radio for about $15.00 at Wal-Mart that does just that along with am/fm and the weather band.

Too bad it can't pick up the digital TV audio. :(

I read the post regarding digital cable boxes rebooting and showing error messages if the boxes get too hot, and was amazed. It should not matter whether the TV the box is connected to is tube or solid-state; the box should work just as well with either type.

Also, I honestly don't believe your cable operator would "freak out" if one of their technicians saw a digital STB hooked up to an older tube-type television; at least they shouldn't, as should be none of their business how old a subscriber's set is. Take Doug, drh4683, as an example. He has TVs in his home anywhere from 30 to sixty years old, and probably has at least several of them connected to cable at any given time. I bet the cable company doesn't bat an eye.

All makes of digital cable boxes, again, are designed to work with any type of TV made, so if a cable tech saw what you described it would be, to say the least, unprofessional behavior on his or her part. These days, older TVs, to say nothing of late-model sets without digital tuners, absolutely need a cable or satellite connection with a cable box to work at all, no thanks to the DTV system the FCC forced on us last June. :no:

There is one case where any television ever made in the last 50 years will work on a digital cable system without a box, however, although with that particular hookup all you ordinarily get, at best, is expanded basic cable which, at least in my area (I have Time Warner cable) runs from channel 2 to channel 99 or so. Anything higher than channel 99, of course, is digital, and you need a box to get those channels. I have TW's basic (what I call "bare bones" basic) cable which is broadcast channels only, plus WGN America and a very small handful of special-interest and public-affairs channels. I do not have or need a cable box with this service, although I did have digital cable several years ago. The box, a Motorola metal-cased unit which was built like a tank, ran warm, but not so hot as to burn one's hands or fingers. I'd still have digital cable today if the rates hadn't gone sky-high about five years ago. Crying out loud, even expanded basic now costs $55.67 a month, which was much too high for me as I live on a fixed income. I had my service downgraded to basic a couple of years ago and now use my VCR and DVD player for programming I used to get on cable. Same level of enjoyment (even more, really, since I can pick and choose what I watch with a VCR and DVD, as I have a rather large library of programs in both formats), but a lot less strain on the wallet. :yes:

I think we've got around 55-60 channels on our analog cable. Over the past couple of years, they've removed 8 to 10 channels from the analog package and moved them to digital. Comcast has a type of starter digital package that includes the regular expanded basic channels + the channels that were moved to digital + a bunch of music cahnnels. I think the idea is to get a digital cable box in as many homes as possible. I just wonder how long it will be before a digital cable box will be required to receive anything on cable. At least now, I can still use the mechanical tuner on channels 2-13.

Speaking of prices, expanded basic cable here runs around $56/month. I remember about 15 years ago, when the price hit the $40 mark, my Dad saying "if it goes up again, I'm cutting it off because there ain't nothing on that TV worth this much money a month". He passed away not too long after that. I can also remember, back in the early '80's, when the cable bill was less than $20/month. There wasn't as many channels; but, the quality of programming on what channels we did have was better. Heck, we didn't know there were any cable channels above 13 until we got our first cable ready set in '84. Even at that, there were more channels above 13 that were scrambled than not. We could still hear the audio, though.

I may be wrong about the price, but...

In 1981 Cox was installing cable lines in my neighborhood. A serviceman went door to door as they made their way up the block asking if we wanted a line run to our house. I could swear that when my mother asked how much cable cost he said $16 a month. The only extras I remember were HBO. Showtime and Cinemax followed, then the Playboy Channel. So on one of those old Jerrold boxes 32 of 36 channels were "regular" service.

I'm not sure how they did it for the others but if you didn't subscribe to HBO they simply put a trap in the line where the cable entered the house...when we moved into a townhouse in 1986 the trap was INSIDE, on the end of a length of coax sticking out the sheetrock.

I've never tried it; but, back in the '80's - people used to claim that they could receive HBO by wrapping a piece of foil around the coax and sliding it up and down the wire until the picture came in.

Another guy told me that he was able to watch a PPV boxing match by fiddling with one TV to get the audio and another TV to get the picture. I'm sure these were both rotary tuned sets.

Now, all the premium stuff is on digital; so, no sliding foil over the coax or playing with two different TV's to get a picture.

Cable TV is the thing where you have to PAY for tv? Wow, you people must all be rich!

I remember when my small town got cable. It would have been 1979-1981 ish. You got channels 2-13 and if you had a premium channel they supplied you with a small box. If you slid the switch to the left, HBO. If you slid it to the right, Cinamax.
Not long after, the went to Jerrold boxes which had a rotary knob (as they added more channels).
Speaking of cable and the "issues" of today, the cable guy is scheduled to come out today. I have 2 digital boxes. A DVR in my "office" room and a standard digital box in the bedroom. The box in the bedroom will now only display 5:00 and won't load. You can only get a few channels on it, and I fully expect a hassle from Cox as they always blame it on me (the homeowner). Let's hope this service call will go okay. Speaking of bills... I remember when I first got cable, it was under 30.00 a month. Now, since I have phone, internet, premium channels and 2 boxes, my bill is more than the rent I paid on my house in the late 80's. Rent was $175.00 a month. Cable bill now, is around $200.00.

---

Our HBO was on channel 4 and used the system you described up until around 2003-04. I remember the other higher numbered premium channels having the picture scrambled; but, you could still hear the audio. It was sometime around '04 when they took all premium channels off of analog and moved them to digital, making it necessary to have a digital cable box to view them. Our VHF channels are mostly local with a few special interest channels. 2 is mynetworkTV, 3 is WGN America, 4 is home shopping, 5 is CBS, 6 is ABC, 7 is NBC, 8 is CW, 9 is PBS, 10 is FOX, 11 is QVC, 12 is a local access channel, and 13 is ESPN. Our cable company still offers a package where you can get channels 2-12 for around $9/month.

When the kids in the neighborhood wanted to watch HBO or whatever channel that our parents wouldn't pay extra for, we'd simply go next door. The old lady who lived there had a son who was high up in the cable company; so, she got everything that was available through comcast at the time. I remember that Jerrold descrambler and her Zenith CCII console TV quite well.

I remember when my small town got cable. It would have been 1979-1981 ish. You got channels 2-13 and if you had a premium channel they supplied you with a small box. If you slid the switch to the left, HBO. If you slid it to the right, Cinamax.
Not long after, the went to Jerrold boxes which had a rotary knob (as they added more channels).
Speaking of cable and the "issues" of today, the cable guy is scheduled to come out today. I have 2 digital boxes. A DVR in my "office" room and a standard digital box in the bedroom. The box in the bedroom will now only display 5:00 and won't load. You can only get a few channels on it, and I fully expect a hassle from Cox as they always blame it on me (the homeowner). Let's hope this service call will go okay. Speaking of bills... I remember when I first got cable, it was under 30.00 a month. Now, since I have phone, internet, premium channels and 2 boxes, my bill is more than the rent I paid on my house in the late 80's. Rent was $175.00 a month. Cable bill now, is around $200.00.

I grew up in a small suburb of Cleveland that did not get cable until 1982. The analog cable boxes at that time were made, IIRC, by Jerrold and had 12 buttons, one for each channel. There was also a three-position switch on the far left-hand side of the box that selected one of three banks of cable channels these buttons could bring in; the fine tuning control was a large thumbwheel affair at the other end of the box. IIRC, position #1 of that switch set the buttons to select channels 2 through 13, #2 selected 14-27, #3 selected 27-40. I don't remember anymore what stations went with what buttons on that box, although I do know that channel 43 (an independent UHF station in Cleveland at that time, a couple of decades before MyTV) came in on channel 4, channel 25 (PBS) came in on channel 10, etc. The only stations that came in on the same channels as were marked on the buttons on the box were the Cleveland network stations, channels 3, 5, and 8.

Some of the buttons on our boxes were undoubtedly for premium services such as HBO, Cinemax, et al. I think HBO on our cable at that time was on channel 2; I don't know about Cinemax or Showtime. I only had HBO for a month. I had it disconnected when I found that the service was showing only a limited number of motion pictures, and those they did show were repeated over and over a week at a time. One month of that was about 30 days too many, which was why I got rid of the service when I did.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I downgraded my cable from expanded basic to what I call "bare bones" basic (local channels only) a few years ago, when the price of the former went up to over $55 a month. X-basic was nice to have, but I can get the same programming on DVDs and VHS videos, and it doesn't cost me a dime above what I paid for the DVDs and tapes in the first place. Another advantage is that my DVD and VHS collection contains programs and movies I like, not the networks' current picks that, far more often than not, do not match my tastes, even remotely. I did not care for NBC having preempted its prime-time programming for the Olympics and I'm not crazy about the basketball tournament now showing on CBS, but no matter. It's at times like this that I pop a tape in my VCR or a DVD in my DVD player if I want to watch TV, other than the news. Having a library of programs like mine is like having my own private TV channel, that shows only the programs I enjoy. Call my "station" WJHS-TV, channel 4 (JHS being my initials). VK member jshorva65 has an avatar that shows a color bar test pattern; overlaying that is "WJSH-TV Channel 1 Warren, Ohio." I don't know if he made this especially for his avatar or if he had a closed-circuit video "channel" similar to mine.

That mechanical Jerrold box sounds just like the ones I remember. I still have one somewhere and it worked the last time I used it. Of course, if/when cable delivery goes all digital, it will be nothing but a giant paperweight.

When cable tv was new in Memphis, they blocked HBO by using a tool to pierce the cable. They would use this every few inches and then make a loop of the cable. You could tell which homes had HBO and which ones didn't by looking at where the cable from the house connected on the pole. If there was a loop of cable no HBO, no loop HBO. As the service techs were doing calls they would look at the poles with no loop and check to see if that address had HBO, if not and there was no loop they were busted. I knew people that would climb the poles and remove the loop of wire. When Cinamax came along they added an extra trap at the pole. Same problem with cable theft though. People would just climb the pole and remove the trap and the cable loop then they had all the channels. Then came scrambling and a lot of bootleg cable descramblers came on the market. Some worked fairly well. You just didn't want the cable guy to find one on your set. They frowned on it.
I think cable systems are required to be all digital sometime in 2012. Then I guess we will all have to have boxes.

I think I read somewhere where the cable companies could go digital at will; but, they had to make the local channels available in an analog format until at least 2012.

I suspect that bootlegging, with everything going digital and the STB's being addressable, will be much harder now.

When I was a kid, back around '89 or so, we visited someone's house and he was bragging about how he climbed the pole during the middle of the night to connect his own cable and then he managed to get a descrambler from someone. He was very proud of the fact that he stole the cable and was getting everything they offered for free. I told him that he wouldn't be laughing when he got caught, which I think eventually happened. He's now no longer on this Earth to be bootlegging anything.

I remember some comcast commercials a few years ago that went something like, "service technicians are checking service levels in your area; so, if you are using cable without paying for it - you will be cut off with the possibility of stiff fines". They then went on to say that if you "came clean", you would not be terminated and they would sign you up for paid service, no questions asked.

Time Warner Cable converted to all-digital well in advance of the DTV transition, as I was told by a customer service representative over the telephone some time ago. TW's lowest tier of service is basic, what I call "bare-bones" basic cable, which is local channels only plus a few special interest channels, including WGN America and, in my area, a local sports channel known as Sportstime Ohio or STO. The monthly rate for basic cable here is around $13, while X-basic (expanded basic) is well over $50.

Time-Warner has no plans that I am aware of to do away with basic service or convert it to digital (requiring a box); they don't need to because, as I mentioned, the entire cable system is already 100 percent digital. For subscribers such as myself with basic service and an analog television, the local channels are converted from ATSC to NTSC before the signals ever get to the subscribers' televisions. To receive the digital service, which goes to channel 1000 and beyond (TW recently put the local TV channels' HD feeds, at least in my area, on cable positions above 1000), a digital cable box is required between the cable coming from the wall and your TV. The box receives the TV stations' digital signals and converts them to NTSC so they are watchable on standard televisions. However, I am not at all sure how this works if you have a flat-panel HDTV (I don't). My best guess is that, in this case, the software controlling the box can be modified such that the box will send unconverted ATSC signals to the television (the latter will then treat the signal as if it were OTA ATSC), but again, this is only a guess, and probably not a very good one at that since I am not that familiar with how digital television works. As a matter of fact, the more I read the posts in these forums here at VK, the more I realize how much I did not know about NTSC analog TV, despite the fact that I collected old TVs over forty years ago in my hometown (my basement was full of old cast-off sets in various conditions at the time). I realize now I was little more than a "tube switcher" in those days, and I know next to nothing about solid-state analog sets or today's flat-panel HD digital ones. I hope to learn more about FPs, HDTV and other new TV technologies as long as I am a member here at VK; many of you are darn near television experts, and my hat is off to each and every one of you.

That mechanical Jerrold box sounds just like the ones I remember. I still have one somewhere and it worked the last time I used it. Of course, if/when cable delivery goes all digital, it will be nothing but a giant paperweight.

I thought cable TV was already 100 percent digital everywhere in this country. (Time Warner Cable converted all its systems, including the one serving my area near Cleveland, to full digital perhaps two years ago, well in advance of the DTV transition.) I doubt that your Jerrold cable box would work on today's digital cable systems. When did you last use it? Has the cable system in Meridian been converted yet to full digital, or is it still analog in some parts of your area? :scratch2:

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I can screw my cable directly into the TV and receive channels 02-60'ish. If I had a digital cable box and subscribed to the service, I could connect that box between the cable line and my TV and receive the same 60 channels, plus the digital channels over 100. I have several analog cable boxes and at present, they all work as intended. Comcast has moved several channels from it's analog package to digital. How long will the remaining analog channels be around? Who knows; but, I'm sure a time is coming where a box will be needed to use cable.

I remember when my small town got cable. It would have been 1979-1981 ish. You got channels 2-13 and if you had a premium channel they supplied you with a small box. If you slid the switch to the left, HBO. If you slid it to the right, Cinamax.
Not long after, the went to Jerrold boxes which had a rotary knob (as they added more channels).
Speaking of cable and the "issues" of today, the cable guy is scheduled to come out today. I have 2 digital boxes. A DVR in my "office" room and a standard digital box in the bedroom. The box in the bedroom will now only display 5:00 and won't load. You can only get a few channels on it, and I fully expect a hassle from Cox as they always blame it on me (the homeowner). Let's hope this service call will go okay. Speaking of bills... I remember when I first got cable, it was under 30.00 a month. Now, since I have phone, internet, premium channels and 2 boxes, my bill is more than the rent I paid on my house in the late 80's. Rent was $175.00 a month. Cable bill now, is around $200.00.

I remember when we first got HBO in 1978, we had a small box on the set, you tune it to channel 6 and turned the box on by sliding the switch to the right. I think I still have that box somewhere. We got our 1982 Zenith in early 1983 (still in use everyday) it was cable ready so we got some channels free. The company when to Jerrold boxes and never bothered to ask for the old HBO box back.

Living in Canada, we had cable early on, around 1970 or so. For the first 10 years or so it was just channels 2-13; that was a big improvement over the 2 english-language and one french-language channels we got OTA. With cable you got (in our town) your local channels, plus ABC, NBC and PBS (no CBS until the mid-80s), plus a community channel, a weather forecast and stats channel (unmanned, just scrolling text), and a newswire channel that was quite popular.

Around 1980 or so our cableco started playing around with what was becoming available by satellite. A rumor was that you could get some US channels if you had a converter, even though those channels were not allowed to be shown here. We picked up a block converter (by Philips, IIRC) which was a silver box about 3"x6"x1" that had cable in and out connectors and a AC adapter for power. It output on the UHF scale, and sure enough, if you cruised that dial there was HBO and a couple of other forbidden channels free for the taking.

Later on those disappeared as Canada's first specialty channels were authorized. Again you needed a converter to receive them, and the cableco installed traps on your line depending on what you were paying for. We stepped up and bought another Philips converter box, this time one with a LED channel display and remote control.

Digital came around several years ago and although there was no reason to get it at first, soon more specialty channels came along that were digital-only. The cableco here used Motorola boxes exclusively. I have been through several as they seem to be finicky. A couple of months ago they showed up at my door unannounced with a DVR box and installed it for a free trial. It probably is worth the $5 a month extra that it costs and I'll probably keep it after the trial.

I thought cable TV was already 100 percent digital everywhere in this country. (Time Warner Cable converted all its systems, including the one serving my area near Cleveland, to full digital perhaps two years ago, well in advance of the DTV transition.) I doubt that your Jerrold cable box would work on today's digital cable systems. When did you last use it? Has the cable system in Meridian been converted yet to full digital, or is it still analog in some parts of your area? :scratch2:
I doubt any place still has all-analog cable service. Nor does any place likely have "full digital" cable, because there are still plenty of people who want to tune in their basic local channels on older TVs, without a cable box. So, there is a mixture of digital and analog signals in the system. Digital signals can also be either "scrambled" (encrypted) or clear (non-encrypted), but most cable systems seem to encrypt far more of their digital channels than they ever did analog ones. Most if not all current TV sets can tune in the non-encrypted digital cable channels (as well as analog channels) with the cable connected directly to the TV set just as with CRT TVs in the past.

I'm surprised no one has made a radio that picks up digital TV audio like we had when we had radios that had AM/FM and channels 2 thru 13.
It might not be feasible to build digital-TV sound radios. Digital signals cannot be manually tuned with a knob as on the analog radios, and most stations have more than one channel, so you would need some kind of LCD display on the radio for channel setup. The tuner for TV sound would be no simpler or cheaper than one in a TV. At that point, it is just more sensible to go ahead and build a whole TV set. There are a number of portable digital TV sets available now for less than US$100 with 4-to-7 inch screens. None have AM or FM tuners, though.

I remember when we first got HBO in 1978, we had a small box on the set, you tune it to channel 6 and turned the box on by sliding the switch to the right. I think I still have that box somewhere. We got our 1982 Zenith in early 1983 (still in use everyday) it was cable ready so we got some channels free. The company when to Jerrold boxes and never bothered to ask for the old HBO box back.
It was 1975 when Home Box Office was first available. I remember when it was announced, and my thought was "How can they put movies on your TV set? The screen is not the right shape, not like a movie-theater screen." It did not even occur to me that they would just chop up the movies to fill the TV screen the way broadcast stations had always done. I guess I was looking for letterboxing even when it didn't exist yet.

When I was a kid we had cable and I tried connecting it to a stereo receiver. There were a couple of interesting things... they deliberately rebroadcast the popular stations on different frequencies so that there wouldn't be multipath between the cable signal and the over-the-air signal. Also, there was one station that was just a constantly repeating two-tone beep. I believe that they used that signal to sniff out illegal cable connections. The cable company employees could just tune a portable FM radio to that frequency and check for the signal coming from a property that was not paying for cable service.

I remember those Jerrold boxes, I also remember the Hamlin boxes (http://www.ioniabid.com/uploaded/2009-10-0/6b92572e2D4db32D4f042D8f7b2Dfc8603ee9e6a094.JPG) with the big slider for channels 2-58. They had a primitive remote control system where the channel selector was tethered to the actual cable box by a long cord. When I was growing up we had the Oak box with a single knob for channel selection (up to channel 36). If you wanted premium channels you had to pay a monthly charge for the Zenith SSAVI box (http://akn-systems.com/rogers/zenith.jpg) with remote.

Also, there was one station that was just a constantly repeating two-tone beep. I believe that they used that signal to sniff out illegal cable connections. The cable company employees could just tune a portable FM radio to that frequency and check for the signal coming from a property that was not paying for cable service.

I know of one cable system that did this... except that the story was the FM radios in the cable service trucks would be tuned to that frequency so that as they drove around town doing their daily work they could easily sniff out illegal cable connections, and other leaks in the system.