Sidestepping A-to-D Convertors For Town Government's Cable TV? 539
jake-itguy writes "I am the IT guy for a small town municipality. Comcast called me the other day and told me I had to have a digital-to-analog converter for each TV in the municipality, as Comcast is turning off analog cable in September. I did a quick count, and we have 32 TVs across 6 buildings (22 being in the police and fire departments). Most of the TVs are hung on the walls. I told Comcast having a box for each TV was not acceptable and wanted a different solution. Comcast told me there was no other solution." Read on for more details of the situation, and to see if you can offer Jake any advice for distributing cable service within his Indiana town.
jake-itguy continues: "They told me they have been putting these boxes on every TV in each classroom in each school. I laughed when I heard that. I said, 'Do you know how much electricity is going to be needed for each box?' They didn't know the answer. I was bumped up to the next guy in the Comcast hierarchy, who said there was no other solution and I had to pay $3 per month for each box. Being a municipality, we are entitled to free expanded basic cable as a part of the franchise agreement back in 1982.I know there is a solution, as hospitals and hotels don't have little boxes next their TVs. Unfortunately I haven't found a specific answer to this problem so I am asking Slashdot. Is there a box that can be put in the basement of the town hall that will convert the Comcast signal into a regular digital signal? Most of the TVs in the town have digital tuners per last years a2d conversion of the airwaves. I would be willing to replace the few analog sets with new ones if there is a good solution for this. Each building's cable feed is fed from the town hall. We have a nice big 1-inch cable coming into the building with some splitters coming off the line. Each building gets a 1/2 inch cable. Is there a box that will convert the Comcast signal to analog for the schools? I am sure the schools don't have TVs with digital tuners."
Maybe the Digi TV's are already compatible? (Score:5, Interesting)
Couple of points - a "regular" signal is defined as digital! The other is that I would imagine that if you are only watching "basic" cable, then your digital tuners should cover the same frequencies. So there likely isn't any conversion for the digital TVs you already have.
As for the Dig to Ana converters - remember the ads the cable TV folks ran - "You won't have to change a thing if you have cable because we'll keep the analog signal around." Well - Comcast lied! I have to rent 6 (*^#(#^^ boxes for my house!
Get satellite (Score:5, Interesting)
I witnessed, many many years ago, a satellite setup for an apartment complex that used a Big Ugly Dish that muxed into a matrix of little individual tuner devices, the signals were recombined and then fed into the local F-type cable netwok, with repeater/amps behind that most likely. I wish I could tell you the brand names of these devices but I just don't remember. Let it be said; Comcrap is not the way to go, you could do much better with Dish/DirecTV (or anyone else's) service, I would suspect, and those companies would be much more helpful than your current "provider." Don't let your F-type cable go to waste, ditch Comcast and mux in the channels to your cable network from another vendor.
IPTV over Multicast (Score:5, Interesting)
What you want is IPTV over multicast. A number of universities have done this - one is the University of Wisconsin at Madison [wisc.edu], which has a pretty bare bones approach using IP multicast and Apple Quicktime. They are also pretty good about giving technical clue if you run into trouble and ask nicely. If you want to spend more money, there is the HaiVision Video Furnace [haivision.com], which is used by, e.g., Brown University [brown.edu].
I have no idea if your contract with Comcast will let you do this, but I believe that the Universities do it by restricting use to only people on campus, so you might be able to do the same.
Re:Why haven't we heard about this? (Score:1, Interesting)
So our analog TVs are going to stop working soon? Why haven't we heard about this? It seems like they would have talked about it in the press or something.
Seriously, dude, I hope you haven't been in your job for more than like 6 months, otherwise this is all on you. Cough up $1600 and get 32 $50 converters. Or tell Comcast you want them to donate them. You have a franchise agreement you can allude to, right?
Go easy on him. As per the summary,
Read on for more details of the situation, and to see if you can offer Jake any advice for distributing cable service within his Indiana town.
He lives in Indiana, that's punishment enough. They just got the internet like 3 years ago. This is coming from a former "hoosier" someone who escaped Kokomo, Indiana several years ago.
Re:Wait, you have ASTC TVs? (Score:5, Interesting)
In the US, afaik, no, they use QAM encoding, same as cable modems. However, many TV's can tune 'Clear' (unencrypted) QAM and ATSC, and all channels that are available over the air (OTA) should be unencrypted on Cable (I believe it's a legal requirement, but cable co's continueally 'accidently' encrypt channels
Re:Cut the cable (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why haven't we heard about this? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why do you need cable? (Score:4, Interesting)
Stupid, off topic question, but is there any place you know of online to read up on things like the Channel Plus? I've been dreaming for a long time of setting up an 'in-home' network where I've got my OTA channels as well as a few 'computer run' channels setup to pass through preexisting coax I have in my home. But have so little knowledge about the topic that I haven't been able to even craft a relevant Google query to start off from.
Re:Government waste (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:In addition to the technical solution (Score:2, Interesting)
Being a municipality, we are entitled to free expanded basic cable as a part of the franchise agreement back in 1982.
Sounds like you may need to have a quick chat with your city's lawyer about whether Comcast is trying to do an end-run around that agreement. That section may make your problem their problem instead.
Or your solution might be there problem. If they have violated the franchise agreement, don't fight it. If you're in Indiana, try giving Cinergy Metronet a call (http://cinergymetronet.com/) and see if they would be interested in moving in. When competition moves in, it tends to lower everyone's prices and improve service. I imagine they would provide boxless options to the city, and the taxpayers would benefit from having an additional choice.
Re:Wait, you have ASTC TVs? (Score:3, Interesting)
In some places, it isn't so much that there's encryption than that the signal is slightly out of specification such that typical authorized devices work fine but that most editing tools can't access the video signal. Fox prime-time programming seems to be a consistent problem. For example, a recorded stream from a Firewire port on a cable box won't decode properly in MPEG StreamClip, but a TiVoToGo transfer can be extracted and converted to editable HDV using Roxio Toast Titanium. (MPEG StreamClip though is still needed to extract the 5.1 audio; Roxio's software only exports stereo.)
This is separate from broadcast-flag problems where you can record a Copy-Once program but you're not allowed to play it back (on a computer). I've been seeing Copy Once asserted on Fox and ABC, but not both ABC affiliates in the same area for the same programming, yet the TiVo be completely immune from this flag.
Re:Why do you need cable? (Score:3, Interesting)
Its range is only 20-25 miles. The CM4228HD has a range of 50-60 miles which is why I would go with that.
Check the power use of old TVs (Score:1, Interesting)
Get a Kill-A-Watt or similar power meter and check the power consumption of the existing TVs. It could very well be that buying a new TV for $200-300 would pay for itself in electric power savings if the TVs are on for a significant time. Of course you'd need to measure the power consumption of the new TV as well, since power consumption labels are not required.
Re:Are they all tuned to the same channel? (Score:4, Interesting)
I read the whole post and everything after the hard numbers was irrelevant. The point was that if someone is living on that meager of an income, television service of ANY kind is the last thing they need to worry about.
Cable television isn't going to increase your earning potential unless you happen to fancy yourself the next Cake Boss.
For the record, I don't have cable. I use an OTA antennae to get the few shows we watch with the kids - mostly PBS. The rest we get from Netflix either streaming on the xbox or shipped.
Re:Are they all tuned to the same channel? (Score:3, Interesting)