[mythtv-users] Comcast goes Mpeg4 in Atlanta

[Gary Buhrmaster]

On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 9:44 PM, Kirk Bocek <t004 at kbocek.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 12/12/2015 8:53 PM, Gary Buhrmaster wrote:
.....
>> According to a post here:
>>
>> http://forums.xfinity.com/t5/XfinityTV-and-Equipment/HD-Enhanced-Program/m-p/2650965#M138185
.....
>
> I was hoping to find an MPEG4 test channel here in my Comcast SF Bay Area
> setup.  Doing a channel scan on my HDHR Prime I see 998 CTCH ColorBar and
> 1999 EAS. However Myth cannot tune or record from either of them. Nothing like
> the channel 1992 or 1995 mentioned regarding the Atlanta area.

As the referenced post from an official Comcast employee states:

"Bay Area customers are going to be notified starting 12/14, so
channel 1995 won’t be available until then"

So, with the presumption that the statement is still
operational (and it is just a presumption, I have no idea
if they are still on schedule, or whether the official rep's
statement of "Bay Area"(*) was accurate) the test channel
will not happen until they start sending the notifications
(and presumably after the CableCARD channel maps
are updated), and for all I know the channel might be
different when they actually send the letters.

The 998 (and 999 and 1999) have "always" been there
(not new for this transition).  I do not recall a problem
recording 998 (the color bars) but AFAIK 999 is for
internal use only, and I have heard reports that the
1999/eas channel is sometimes special (I recall seeing
a Fedora login screen at one point).  You may need
to use the channel editor to add those channels to
your system in order to record from them (I am pretty
sure Schedules Direct does not have them in their
database, so if you used fetch data to create your
channel table, they likely are not in there).  You
almost certainly will need to manually add 1995 (or
whatever) if/when it created in your CableCARD channel
maps.

It should be noted that once Comcast updates the
channel maps you can use either wget/curl or the cli
to save a ts file for the test channel directly to disk
(which you can throw into your video library).






(*) I will point out that the "SF Bay Area" is actually a
couple of different regions to Comcast, and historically
I have seen reports that (for example) the east bay had a
different schedule for some updates than SF proper (which
usually included mid/south peninsula).  It is location,
location, and location all over again.