[mythtv-users] Comcast bricked my HDHR above 33 - Los Gatos - 95032

[Dave Day]

On 04/21/2010 07:32 PM, Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 4:00 PM, Bob Sully<rcs at malibyte.net>  wrote:
>    
>>      
>>> Message: 20
>>> Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2010 15:26:08 -0700
>>> From: Mark Knecht<markknecht at gmail.com>
>>>
>>> Just reporting in.
>>>
>>> Looks like Comcast converted everything in Los Gatos (SF Bay Area)
>>> above channel 33 last night to encrypted. So far as I can tell only my
>>> low channels got recorded last night, everything above channel 33
>>> didn't record. I've reset everything by hand today but none of it
>>> works recording above 33. Myth Live TV only works up to channel 33.
>>> Nothing else seems to play. Live TV says 96% signal strendth on
>>> Channel 63 (Comedy Central here) and lists the program but nothing
>>> starts playing. The channels af course work on the STB.
>>>
>>> Called them on the phone and got tech support who basically said "Yes
>>> &  tough luck. Use our DVR or don't plan on recording anything."
>>>
>>> Granted, I can still record the OTA stuff which is good, and Hulu gets
>>> some of what we'll miss. I can look into another DTA or two and follow
>>> along with the work others have done here recently making them work
>>> which I'm thankful for.
>>>
>>> Looks like life just got more difficult, and likely a bit more expensive.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Mark
>>>        
>> B*st*rds.
>>
>> Solution (at least a partial one, as you can only record one show at a
>> time): HD-PVR (since you need the STB anyway).
>>
>> Good luck.
>> --
>> ________________________________________
>> Bob Sully - Simi Valley, California, USA
>> http://www.malibyte.net
>> http://www.malibyte.com
>>      
> Thanks Bob, and hi to Simi. I grew up in Camarillo.
>
> I think I could just drop back to using two DTAs with the serial
> control and then record through my two old PVR-150s for SD recordings.
> We don't care much about HD here. It's nice, but we don't ever seem to
> record that way. I guess we're missing out but it's just TV.
>
> But that still leaves me paying $140/month to a company that I've
> truly come to hate. I'd rather find some high-end Internet TV service
> and pay them money. 75% of what I watch on cable is OTA, 25% higher
> channels. I think I can get The Daily Show and Colbert on the Comedy
> Central site, some of the other shows on Hulu.
>
> I end up asking myself why pay this company anything? We all dislike
> them, or worse, and yet we continue to take it. I think this is the
> time for me to look for alternatives. I'm sure it will hurt a bit, but
> sometimes with pain comes gain....
>
> - Mark
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>    
Our family just went through a similar process.  It started with the 
gift of a hand me down HP-8120N which is a quad processor media center 
PC that my brother no longer wanted.  It had a 28"  Hanns monitor with it.

For some reason the motherboard won't seem to take more than 2GB of 
memory and it came with Vista, which seemed to be swapping all the 
time.  My brother was not tech savvy enough to realize what the problem 
was and asked me if I wanted it.

I originally was going to use it as my primary Gentoo workstation (2 GB 
is just fine for Linux), but soon had MythTV up and running on it in my 
home office over our garage, hooked up to an antenna in our attic that 
was left over from our pre-cable days.  We had originally gotten cable 
because the analog TV from that antenna was so poor in quality 
(multipath, ghosts, etc).  Hooking up MythTV to that antenna was a real 
eye opener for me because the quality of the digital pictures I was 
getting now was stunningly good.  Our only TV in the house was a 27" CRT 
in a large (as in takes up the whole wall) custom cabinet.  I noticed 
that the picture on the 28" Hanns was nicer than the CRT and would fit 
in the entertainment center.  A couple weeks more learning about Myth 
and I switched them out.

As the recorded TV shows piled up, I came to notice that most of them 
were also on OTA TV, and since the quality of OTA was now so good, it 
would be great to be able to watch one on cable and record one OTA or 
vice versa.  So I hooked the Myth box to the RG6 from the antenna in 
addition to the S-video from the STB.  That was great for a while.

It didn't take long at all for us to realize that with MythTV we were 
going to have WAY more TV than we could ever watch.

About that same time my brother bought one of those MagicJack gizmos 
just to play with it and found it seemed to work great.
We were paying Time Warner $125 a month for cable and internet and 
Vonage about $35 a month for phone service.

But soon we all started to feel that the $160 a month we were paying to 
TWC/Vonage was way more than we thought it was worth.

So I too bought a MagicJack and we tried it for a month.  It's 
performance had been essentially perfect.

Next I cancelled TWC and switched out our 7Mbit RoadRunner at $58/mo for 
7Mbit EarthLink (also from TimeWarner) for $35/mo.  MagicJack is 
essentially $2/mo so we are now paying a grand sum of $37/mo for OTA TV 
(about 15 channels) + Hulu Desktop + 7Mbit Earth Link cable + MagicJack 
phone service.  And we still have more TV than we can possibly watch.

I still get to use the 4 processors as part of a distributed compile 
farm and really don't miss having it here in the office since I can log 
into it via X-windows or ssh.  Many an evening I have been running 
distributed compiles while the family watches a movie and they never 
know the difference.    Here in my office I have a dual processor and 
21" CRT monitor and get along just fine and with the MythTV frontend, 
can fire up the TV any time I need a break from programming.

Life is good.

Dave
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