Cable Co. claims this was my fault:

[zenith2134]

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.

[matt_s78mn]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

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.

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

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.

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

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.

[jr_tech]

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

[NowhereMan 1966]

Originally Posted by zenith2134

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.

[NowhereMan 1966]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

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.

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.

[NowhereMan 1966]

Originally Posted by ChrisW6ATV

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.

[NowhereMan 1966]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

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.

[Bill R]

Originally Posted by NowhereMan 1966

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.

[NowhereMan 1966]

Originally Posted by Bill R

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.

[Jeffhs]

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.

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.

[radiotvnut]

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.

[AUdubon5425]

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.

[radiotvnut]

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.

[Carmine]

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

[jstout66]

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.