[mythtv-users] QAM question

Mark J. Small msmall at eastlink.ca
Sun Apr 9 17:31:07 UTC 2006


On April 8, 2006 05:06 pm, Steven Adeff wrote:
> On 4/8/06, Mark J. Small <msmall at eastlink.ca> wrote:
> > Hi everybody.
> >
> > I'm thinking about taking the leap and getting a card that can do QAM
> > decoding for my cable system.  My biggest worry is this; what happens
> > when the cable system changes its channel map?  I assume that the only
> > way that I will notice is that some recordings fail.  It sounds a little
> > scary to me.
> >
> > I know that the channel map changed recently on my system,  and there is
> > nothing stopping my provider from changing it again next week.
> >
> > Mark
>
> digital channels don't use the traditional channel method, so its very
> unlikely that your cable company will change what channel the digital
> channels are broadcast on, they will just remap the cableboxes to link
> them to the different channel.
> so basically it shouldn't be a problem. at worse, you rescan to find
> where they moved them to...

Actually, my cable system just changed frequencies for some digital channels a 
few weeks ago.  They added a new analog channel, and all of the digital 
channels that were on that frequency are now somewhere else.  

I was bored one day, and found the frequencies for all the digital channels 
using the service menus of my cable box.  I don't have the energy to do it 
again right now, so it could be that many of the frequencies have changed.  

My point is that if my cable system does this again, then there is no way for 
me to know about it until my recordings start to fail.  This would really 
stick if it happened at the beginning of a 2 week vacation...

My cable company is planning on adding several new channels soon, so I really 
don't know how much the digital channels will jump around.  Failed recordings 
would really mess up my WAF.

>
> if you want cheap entry, the Avermedia A180 works great with kernel
> 2.6.15 and can be had for ~$70, which I think is the cheapest QAM
> capable PCI card available right now.
>

I've been eyeing that one, thanks.  

Mark


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