OT: Little-known "ClearQAM"

prairiedogpics wrote on 2/2/2009, 1:32 PM
My HD cable story:
I have a Pioneer plasma. When first got it, I rented the HD DVR from Comcast, which worked fine. But the economic times, and the fact that my wife and I and the kids don't watch enough TV made me return it and downgrade to Basic cable, saving me $65 a month. However, I still wanted the local channels in HD, but I'm too far from the OTA signals.
I was just about to rent Comcast's basic HD box (for $8.99 a month), when I remembered something about QAM signals.
I had my plasma's digital tuner scan the cable feed and, sure enough, all of my local Chicago channels in HD showed up in the tuner. No HD box required!!!
I have since read that this is rarely, if ever, advertised or even mentioned by cable companies: that they must send "ClearQAM" signals over cable so even basic users have access to the HD feeds.
I just bought a QAM-capable HDTV tuner PCI card for one of my PCs that will now act as my DVR, and since I have a PS3, I can stream the recordings to my HDTV via PS3 Media Server (already tested with .tp recordings)
Sweet!!!

See the 2nd paragraph above "References": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QAM_tuner

Comments

Coursedesign wrote on 2/2/2009, 3:39 PM
Brilliant!

plasmavideo wrote on 2/6/2009, 12:43 PM
Be aware that (at least in our area) Comcast routinely shifts the channel locations around, especialy when they add or subtract channels from their digital tier. They then burst program everyone's set top boxes, so the customer does not have to worry about knowing that a channel has moved from 77-1 to 88-3, but instead tunes in channel 211 as always.

One knowledgable acquaintance says they do that to frustrate people into getting the set top boxes.

You may have to rescan often to refind those channels.
Coursedesign wrote on 2/6/2009, 1:27 PM
Comcast is fully dedicated to customer satisfaction, and they have one of the highest customer ratings of any company.


Ooops, my bad, that was Amazon.

Never mind....

:O)
Xander wrote on 2/6/2009, 2:31 PM
I have Comcast, but hate them with a passion. If could switch, I would.

Amazon on the other hand is awesome.
prairiedogpics wrote on 2/6/2009, 8:04 PM
I'm no friend of Comcast. I tried Vonage and then Comcast's own VOIP over their cable lines for two years. Service was constantly intermittent; you could hear people, but they couldn't her you, choppy voice quality. I finally bailed and went back to an AT&T landline.
I'd jump to Verizon's FIOS in a heartbeat if it was in my area.

They can shuffle the channels all they want. I'm not renting anymore equipment from them...