Digital mixed messages

[J Kendrick]

The TV stations are now busy telling us that if we already have cable and a digital TV that we don't have to do anything when the change-over to digital transmission happens at the end of the month and that our TV reception won't be interrupted...

But -- at the very same time -- the Cable companies are telling us all that even if we do have cable and a digital TV with a built-in digital tuner... we must still get a new cable box with yet another remote to play with or we will lose some of those same TV signals.

So... Which is it? Are the TV stations right and we don't have to do anything if we already have cable and a digital TV... or... is the cable company right and we will all have to get new digital cable boxes to avoid losing channels?

Why are we now getting two different stories here? Why are the TV stations telling us one thing while the Cable companies are telling us something quite different? Is it a technical issue with the cable companies or are they just out to take advantage of the change-over to bill us all even more money?

[PMC]

There are a couple of different scenerios...

If you have an analog tv set... you will lose everything, unless you have a cable link... however your analog picture will lack width to a digital signal that gets pushed through cable. About 30% of the video width will disappear.

If you have a digital tv, then you can get local digital (non cable) signals, however on cable you need the set top box because cable scrambles the signals to fit the number channels into the space available.

Anyone buying a PC-TV for their computer should make sure that the device does digital and not analog. There is product dumping on analog tuners. They are cheap and will soon be useless.

The Hauppage and ATI brands are the best for digital PC-TV tuners. They cost from $60 to $120, and the difference is the software that comes with the device... some do single and some do multiple PVR as example... always read the box and model number, then do a web page lookup on the model number, before purchase.

A digital PC-TV machine needs a fast dual or quad core cpu...a quad core GPU is especially true as the monitor size gets larger.

[jon]

One additional piece to add to PMC's explanation: it is unlikely that Canadian TV stations will continue to keep Standard Definition in mind after "The Digital Switch" at the end of this month.

We've already seen this issue on U.S. channels. Most, if not all, PBS programming that extensively uses captioning is often unreadable because the beginning of the caption is chopped off the left side of the picture because Standard Definition (SD) feeds are just the High Definition (wider, 16:9 v.s. 4:3 for SD) feed with the left and right chopped off. It also means you are always missing part of the picture.

Programming had previously been created in two versions: Standard Definition (narrow) and High Definition (wide).

Bottom line: watching Standard Definition ("analogue", narrow) channels will get more and more annoying as time passes, as producers forget that all their audience is not watching the High Definition ("digital", wide) picture they are creating.

[jon]

Reading this Shaw page
http://www.shaw.ca/dtv/
I do not get the same impression that I am left with after reading PMC's explanation.

As I read it, "If you subscribe to a cable or satellite television service, such as Shaw Cable or Shaw Direct, or view your programming via the Internet, you will not be affected by this transition." means that Shaw will continue delivering the Analogue channels it does today. In Standard Definition.

At the same time, I have not heard anything to indicate that Shaw will begin delivering ANYTHING on the frequencies used by OTA digital/HDTV stations. In other words, hook up your TV's digital tuner to Shaw's coax feed and you will get nothing. To get digital/HDTV channels from Shaw, I am almost certain that you MUST have an HD digital box AKA set-top box.

I'm not picking a fight with PMC. I am just expressing my confusion based on what I have read from Shaw.

To put things in the simplest terms, there are two cable company customer situations today:

1. customer with coax directly attached to TV;
2. customer with coax attached to a Shaw box of some sort or another, and the Shaw box attached in one way or another to the TV

I wish Shaw would make it clear, in the above link, which scenario they are talking about.

[PMC]

As you pointed out all PBS channels are digital, and don't show properly when viewed through coax in analog, which says that your analog tv running on cable coax will get the image sliced about 30%.

If the Seattle/Spokane stations turn off their analog transmitters then more analog channels will get chopped because there is no conversion from 16x9 to 4x3.

Anybody know if the Canadian channels will be turning off their analog transmitters ?

Basic cable comes with the rent where I live, and none of the digital channels are available as part of basic cable, when they should be. I need the set top box to watch digital channels and they cost extra... so I am waiting to see what the new version of basic cable is going to be...

[jon]

If the Seattle/Spokane stations turn off their analog transmitters then more analog channels will get chopped because there is no conversion from 16x9 to 4x3.

Anybody know if the Canadian channels will be turning off their analog transmitters ?

I can dig up references if you like, but I know for a fact that there are no "regular" U.S. stations on the old analogue Channels 2 to whatever the top of UHF is. That was part of the transition that happened over a year ago. They all went dark, as the U.S. government wants to sell the spectrum. I say "regular" because I think some low power translators were allowed to stay on (for a while?).

In Canada, it is different. Major markets will go off the air, but smaller markets will stay on for a few years, as the CRTC offered them an extension when they cried "we don't have the money". The CBC also got a few exceptions in larger markets.

As you might guess, a lot of TV DX'ers in the U.S. have been having a lot of fun logging Canadian analogue channels before they go dark, now that they have almost no U.S. stations to cause interference.

[PMC]

Don't know where Shaw gets the feed here. It seems to come from a couple of locations. Certain channels always stop working at the same time, when they get repaired or adjusted.

Swapped some cable around for testing purposes. Normal use is the set top box to a digital tv tuner

I ran the set top box to an analog tv tuner... all the basic cable channels appear to work normal, including PBS, thus some conversion is occuring because it gets clipped without the set top box feed when using coax.

[MIKE FM]

I don't have Shaw, and am actually watching new DTV over the air signals. Looking at the channel listings for Edmonton, channels 23-50 say you need a digital box. I thought you used to be able to hook up any analog TV and you could get all analog channels 2-50 plus a few in the hundreds. Has this transition happened already with Shaw cable:

http://www.shaw.ca/uploadedFiles/Bundle ... 3A2199S117

http://www.shaw.ca/Television/Digital-N ... Customers/

[TRENT310]

Good time to make a switch is when OTHER things are making a switch.
For example, the recent switch to telephone 10-digit dialing in Alberta was a great time to switch PBX systems to a different internal dial plan as well. If you do it at any other time, the client and end user sees it as an inconvenience that you have decided to create (they won't understand the technical reasons like, avoiding having your DID numbers overlap across several NXXes on a 4-digit DN length, etc). If you time your change so that it occurs when the rest of the public network changes, then you can lump it all into one change activity.

Shaw's own HFC/RF network is essentially their own 'spectrum' (within the limits of the cabling) so the way I see it is that they have every right to decide what goes on within their own network. If you remember the USA's transition to DTV, Comcast did the same move.

When you hook up a TV's built in ATSC/QAM tuner to Shaw's network, you will get the unencrypted channels, which in Edmonton are only the DMX/Galaxie music channels. You used to be able to get local stations in digital like CKEM-DT and CITV-DT but that is no longer the case. Note that the tuner of course has to support QAM which is the modulation scheme used on the Shaw HFC network. ATSC's 8VSB modulation scheme is really designed to deal with the technical challenges with broadcast wireless transmission (multipath, fade, EMI interference, etc) but is not as bandwidth efficient as, say, 256QAM where you could run multiple data channels (or one higher bandwidth bonded data channel) WHEN you are on a physical network with known and engineered characteristics.

So back to what I first said, Shaw is taking advantage of this digital TV transition to also shift some things around on their own network. This is hardly new as Shaw has been slowly moving specialty channels off analog NTSC over the course of the past 7 years anyway.
The regulatory part only involves your LOCAL television station and whether the end user will be able to watch their LOCAL television stations post-transition. Shaw will CONTINUE to provide basic cable service (including the minimum LOCAL service) post DTV. Therefore as far as users are concerned, their reception of local TV stations will not change.

Shaw can do whatever they please with the non-local specialty services. From a technical standpoint (pretty much my only standpoint) we have to manage and maintain the network to deliver the content. Transparent to the end user. With a managed digital cable box, changes on the network can be made significantly easier. "Channels" are no longer physical locations or frequencies but merely a number to refer to something. In the past, if some channels needed to be rearranged for technical needs, you would have to tell the customer, take out ads in newspapers, send them letters to inform them that the channels are changing and they need to reprogram their televisions/tuner-enabled devices accordingly. With the cable box, the physical locations (frequencies) of the data signals can be moved around with no major change to the end user. You hit all the cable boxes with updated tables incorporating the new technical changes. The user accesses the channel the same as before, but the cable box knows to look at another data stream instead.
Same thing with the PSIP used on ATSC... the transmitter can actually be on the channel 47 allocation, but the TV interprets it as channel 13-1.
Spectrum is freed up for other services like the new DOCSIS 3.0 multi-channel bonding that is allowing for the new 50 and 100 megabit internet download speeds and improved upload speeds.
That is only one of the reasons towards this move. Another reason is flexibility of channel packages - in the past (and still at this current moment), when you ordered or cancelled services, someone would have to go out in front of your house to the pedestal (or aerial access terminal) and physically remove or add notch filters to allow or block channel tiers. Now you can order single channels at a time, and the channels can be added or removed pretty much instantly without having to send a technician out. Mainly removing access - a lot of the time service can be cancelled (or overdue charges, etc.) and it would continue to be delivered for months because no one has bothered to come out and pull your cable yet.

I think we all got that letter from Shaw explaining the situation and upcoming changes, and I find absolutely no confusion or grey area in that communication. They provided a clear cut table denoting "classic cable" service used with analog NTSC tuners built into TVs and other video devices, and then the tiers that will require a digital cable box. The left column denotes the NTSC (cable bandplan) channel ranges and the rest of the channels outside of that range will be discontinued and only watchable with the cable box.

NTSC is NTSC - whether it's broadcast over the air or confined within a 75-ohm coaxial cable. It's taking up the same bandwidth for the same content. The reasons for switching to digitally delivered audio-visual content applies in both situations. If you could fit 4 HD channels within the space taken up by one analog channel wouldn't you switch? If you could deliver non-TV stuff like internet and telephone service at the same time, alongside the TV, wouldn't you do it? These days, data is data. There is no longer a clean cut separation between 'phone service' or 'tv service' or 'internet service' it is all DATA. And you manage this one data network and dynamically shift resources between all of those end services depending on what is in demand at the moment. These days I'm moving a lot of traditional telephony and data networks to

As I mentioned, Shaw previously offered local HD channels without encryption and you could receive it directly with your TV. In the USA, cable companies are required to offer at least local stations without encryption so the customer can use the QAM-capable digital tuner of their choice. For example, I know Comcast in Washington State offers all the local stations as well as the community channels unencrypted. Most TVs that can receive ATSC standard 8VSB will also receive QAM but not ALL of them.

So, recapping my points.
- The cable technical change is not directly related to the over-the-air television technical change.
- I believe it is a smart management decision to make your change while other things are changing and not at some random point in time before or after that.
- Viewing local channels on analog devices will remain the same as before. That is a minimum level of service. You are not required to purchase new equipment to watch local television stations when you are a cable customer. The messages are correct - you will not be affected by the OTA DTV switch.
- If you are watching specialty channels on your cable service to continue watching your specialty channels it is recommended to obtain a digital cable box.

[jon]

I think we all got that letter from Shaw explaining the situation and upcoming changes, and I find absolutely no confusion or grey area in that communication. They provided a clear cut table denoting "classic cable" service used with analog NTSC tuners built into TVs and other video devices, and then the tiers that will require a digital cable box. The left column denotes the NTSC (cable bandplan) channel ranges and the rest of the channels outside of that range will be discontinued and only watchable with the cable box.

I, for one, have not yet received that Shaw letter. Despite the fact that I have Shaw phone, Internet and TV. Maybe it is still stuck in the backlog from the postal strike.

I don't have Shaw, and am actually watching new DTV over the air signals. Looking at the channel listings for Edmonton, channels 23-50 say you need a digital box. I thought you used to be able to hook up any analog TV and you could get all analog channels 2-50 plus a few in the hundreds. Has this transition happened already with Shaw cable:

http://www.shaw.ca/uploadedFiles/Bundle ... 3A2199S117

http://www.shaw.ca/Television/Digital-N ... Customers/

This is the first I've heard of Shaw cutting channels that you can pick up via coax on your old (i.e. - analogue Standard Definition) TV without a cable box. Forums like digitalhome.ca have been saying for months that that is the whole point of the Personalizer service that Shaw introduced earlier in the year. To create a sizable customer base that gets NO channels without a digital box. So, that Shaw can really cut down the number of channels offered on coax without a digital box, freeing up that valuable "spectrum" for more digital content. As TRENT says, every one of those analogue channels they get rid of equals about 3 HD channels, or other content.

Not that anyone thinks that Shaw will "ever" (OK, not for 10 years) stop delivering the old analogue/Standard Definition Channels 2-13 on coax without a digital box.

[Mediatype]

An interesting situation arises when Shaw cable, (who also owns Global, specialty channels and almost everything else it seems on the spectrum in HD) is approached by some of the other smaller players who are upgrading their signals to SD and are also able to add HD at the same time, are told to go apply to the CRTC and are refused the placement on HD cable. Hmmm... Seems like a conflict of interest or taking advantage of a regulatory messy situation. Any thoughts?

[jon]

Here is the official Shaw announcement on their large scale cut to Analogue channels (channels you can receive on coax without a digital box):

Shaw’s Digital Network Upgrade
At the same time that Canada is changing television signals from analog to digital, Shaw is also
undergoing a change.
We’re upgrading most of our network, in order to do so we are moving analog channels to digital to free up
our own bandwidth that will bring customers more high definition channels, increased Video On Demand and
faster Internet speeds.
We are upgrading our network neighbourhood by neighbourhood from now until the fall of 2012. Shaw
customers will be receiving letters about the Digital Network Upgrade. Shaw’s Network Upgrade affects
customers in the following way:
- Customers with Analog Tiers: All channels are moving from analog to digital, except for Shaw’s basic
channel line-up (this includes channels like Global, CBC, CTV, NBC, etc.). Customers with analog
tiers will need a Shaw Digital Box to continue receiving the same television experience.
- Existing Digital Customers: Customers who watch television with a Digital Box will not be affected
by the Digital Network Upgrade unless there are televisions in the home without a Digital Box.
Televisions in your home not connected to a Digital Box will require a box to continue receiving your
analog tiered channels.
We’re here to help with any of your questions – visit http://www.shaw.ca/networkupgrade to learn more about
Shaw’s Digital Network Upgrade or visit http://www.shaw.ca/dtv to learn more about the Canadian Digital
Transition. For 24/7/365 service, call us (toll free) at 1.888.472.2222.

[freqfreak2]

Good time to make a switch is when OTHER things are making a switch.

Okay, here's some reality for you.

Former OTA viewers are now relenting and finally signing up for cable. And the cable folks are telling you (no, forcing you) to get digital boxes installed.

All this in September - the worst time of year for telcos, BDUs and real estate (think start of school).

So the cable guy didn't show up when promised (a true story) and you call Shaw to find out what gives ... only to hear it's a three-hour wait to speak to a customer service rep due to "higher than expected call volume."

Are they nuts?

Two planned-in-advance and significant changes are introduced simultaneously involving loss of signal and the calls are higher than expected?

It's a good thing these people don't have a monopoly so I can take my business elsewhere.

Ooops ... they do have a monopoly. Darn!

And here's the punchline:

Tonight I get a call from Shaw's marketing wing asking me if I'm interested in their latest bundle promo. And they're going to deliver this how?

Sheesh!

[TRENT310]

CJEO 56 Omni is the last Analog NTSC station on air in Edmonton as of tonight... and they're still on right now.


I haven't had that kind of bad luck with Shaw. I'm on their Business plans though. They called out a guy at 3AM to fix my internet once (their problem). I'm happy.