Home cinema - "Can't get any TV" related question

wrote:

On Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:49:23 -0500 Pete C. wrote:

| I once had a bill sent to me from the phone company late. It had the
| usual "pay by" due date. But the bill date actually printed on it was
| a mere two days before. The postmark was the day before. I got it ON
| the "pay by" date. I called in, and they said what I claimed could not
| possibly be, yet I had the proof in my hands. The past due notice came
| out the next day. It took more than a week for them to get it fixed.
|
| Simple matter to escalate to a supervisor and fax them a copy of the
| bill if necessary, though the supervisor should be able to access that
| info anyway.

That was fixed when the manager (above the supervisor) eventually figured
out that the billing production was done late (or eventually figured out
I fully understood they screwed up and was not going to let it go). They
(evetually) knew what happened from their internal info.

A fax would probably have sped things up a bit.

| At least 3 different cable companies and 2 telcos regularly processed
| payments days after receiving them.
|
| So you're one of those people who waits until the last possible second
| to mail a payment, have it experience the variable delivery times of the
| USPS and lockbox processing and then wonder why you always have
| problems? Here is a hint - when the bill arrives, write the check and
| sent it out in the mail the next day and you won't have problems.

I shouldn't have to just mail it the next day. USPS really does a good
job if you give them 2-3 days. The processing is a lot worse than the
USPS.

Usually. I've had cases with the USPS where mail sent from a main post
office (SCF) going across the same small state 100 miles was lost in
the system for about two weeks.

| In one case an electric company had sent me a disconnect notice for a
| month I paid. After calling and talking to a manager, she noticed that
| might payment had been posted just a hour before we were talking. So
| she went to the room where they were doing that and actually found my
| payment. She said not only was my payment being processed 2 weeks after
| the postmark, but so were all the others in the same mailbag. But it
| was "one of today's mailbag" according to her. But at least she put a
| halt to all the disconnects scheduled to clear it up, regardless of who
| was to blame.
|
| Sometimes the USPS isn't perfect you know. It's entirely possible that
| one bag of mail got misplaced and came through late.

That's possible. But any billing processing center should be able to
detect this in the computer system by seeing a pattern of late payments
being entered as a group, and kick out a report to someone with the
authority to check into it and correct for it.

You'd think so, but the folks writing the software apparently haven't
though of it.

| I once had an electric utility send me a $15k bill for a residential
| service that wasn't in use at the time (main breaker off). This was with
| an electronic remote read meter too. Looking at the bill, the current
| reading was 1 KWh less than the previous reading. Apparently the encoder
| in the meter was teetering right at the transition point. Only took a 5
| minute phone call to fix that and the bill was corrected to just the few
| dollars base charge. Good laugh though given that a 100A service wasn't
| even capable of rolling the meter in a month without a meltdown.

Their computer system should have automatically kicked that bill out as
"far too unusual" for some person to deal with.

See above.

| I've had many cases of wrong long distance calls billed to my number.
| This was especially bad when I lived in New Jersey ... nearly every
| month was a few wrong long distance calls, even when I made none myself.
|
| I've never had any case like that either, and again, my bills are
| reviewed each month for expense report purposes. Sometimes I don't
| recognize a number, but with the convenience of the Internet it only
| takes a minute to look it up and figure out what it was.

Some companies are better and some are worse. Outside of New Jersey
there were not very many mistaken long distance calls.

| When I lived in Illinois, the cable company there had serious ingress
| issues on their wires. They also shifted their channeling scheme off
| by one, and so channel 17, the ABC affiliate, was on 18, which was the
| same frequency as the amateur 2m band. They simply blamed all calls
| about interference on "hams are causing that", and never bothered to
| fix their system. And they regularly lost payments, too.
|
| If they have ingress, they have leakage as well. Just report them to the
| FCC. Most of the ingress issues I saw when I worked at the cable company
| were attributable to truckers with illegal amps on their CBs.
| Fortunately that problem is slowly curing itself these days.

Yes, they did have egress. But it was not on a frequency that impacted
anyone. Even then, I was able to DX a remote repeater in Indiana that
was on that exact frequency (repeater output matched TV carrier). So it
was not that strong. I could close squelch on it anywhere in town.

Still may have exceeded CLI limits.

Yet a 5w HT transmitting on just about any frequency in the 2m band from
the street outside a bar could wipe out that channel on every TV in the
place. Every other cable system I saw put some pointless content on that
frequency, probably knowing it was highly vulnerable from ingress at the
levels that generally would not cause problems to the hams. With such
content, few people would ever be tuning there, and so the impact was
minimized that way.

That cable system did their channeling that way so they could offer an
STB that let you tune to the "real" channel number of the local stations.
You tuned to "3" which was really 4 to get WCIA. The same applied to
"15" (on 16) and "17" (on 18). If you used a cable-ready TV, however,
then you would see the off-by-one (e.g. you had to +1 every channel).
Apparently they had special STBs for this. And all this so they would
not be putting channel 3 onto 60-66 MHz on the cable (this much I can
understand).

There is always the stray system run by idiots.

| When my father switched over to a Verizon flat rate plan, they screwed
| that up, too. The switched the local aspect of the plan over on one
| date, but didn't switch the long distance carrier at the same time.
| So there were long distance called billed individually during the time
| the flat rate plan was in effect. The made many excuses why that was
| "normal". It took 2 months to clear that up, and only after I told the
| manager I would be filing a complaint of fraudulent advertising with
| the FTC if they didn't live up to exactly what the promised in writing
| that I had a copy of right in front of me.
|
| What effective date was promised when he signed up? Could it be that
| everything was switched by that date and he just got the benefit of and
| early change on the local side of things?

We were given an exact date and the plan itself kicked in exactly on that
date (about two weeks after it was ordered ... they claimed they had so
many work orders for this kind of change and could only change just so
many per day, and it was backlogged that far ... I have no idea if that
was bovine feces or not). The simply screwed up a part of the process.

I can see the local and LD being separate orders to separate departments
probably not even in the same building. Pretty easy for one to get
delayed.

I find it amazing that you have to get transferred to a whole different
department if you want to order phone lines in a hunt group (for only
two lines no less).

| Corporations are just big screwups.
|
| So are a great many customers it seems. If everyone kept notes when they
| made service changes and paid their bills on time the bulk of problems
| would be avoided.

I keep notes and I pay on time.

| | Once there is some _serious_ competition ... a level where some company
| | decides to do things better to get more than their equal share of customers
| | ... only then will we no longer be screwed by the cable monopoly.
| |
| | And when someone does something better and gets more customers you'll
| | falsely accuse them of being a monopoly too.
|
| As long as the other choices are around, why would I?
|
| Because you're accusing cable of being a monopoly when there are other
| choices around.

Inadequate non-equivalent choices.

| Now, if they get
| so many customers that the others go out of business, AND if that company
| in turn gets worse as a result, then sure, I will make that accusation
| AND it will NOT be a false one.
|
| Uh huh.

Finally, we agree on something.

| | | Too complex. Just need a single high speed data like bringing gigabit
| | | Ethernet to the home from a central POP. Just like power you pay the
| | | company operating those links a transmission charge. What traffic you
| | | bring in over those links you pay the content generators for.
| |
| | That's an option. But if it is multiplexed it is bandwidth limited and
| | not as effective in the future. Then you have to deal with screwups by
| | the company handling the multiplexing.
| |
| | Everything will always be bandwidth limited, it's inherent to any
| | technology.
|
| I should have said limited to a smaller bandwidth, perhaps controlled by
| whoever is doing the multiplexing. At least with raw fiber, there is a
| limit not specifically under the control of some managers trying to cut
| back on services to save money. You get a WHOLE FIBER between you and
| whoever is providing you some service over it (or wherever you have it
| otherwise terminated).
|
| I see nothing wrong with subscribing to X amount of bandwidth. Someone
| with a single TV and computer doesn't need the bandwidth that someone
| with a half dozen of each does.

If they would do it that way, fine. Even FiOS doesn't come close.

The idea of the raw end to end fiber is NOT so much to get the whole
bandwidth of the fiber (but that is a plus). The ideas a

1. It takes away from the infrastructure owner the opportunity to screw
with the people.

2. It is an infrastructure that won't have to be replaced as soon into
the future as something like FiOS will (it can't even handle providing
100 mbps everywhere, much less 1 gbps ... whereas the raw fiber has
much more potential capacity only requiring the delivery providers to
upgrade end-equipment to take advantage of).

Just don't hold your breath, 'cause it isn't likely to happen your way
in your lifetime.

| | With a straight fiber, it's a lot harder for the facility company to make
| | decisions that screw things up. And its a lot easier for a cable company
| | to transmit all channels in parallel.
| |
| | You see, that's the thing, transmitting everything on the cable so
| | people can pick off the 1% or the data that they want is just a waste.
| | When it's a simple IP network, each sub only establishes the connections
| | they need.
|
| And that's why I want the raw fiber to the home, instead of Verizon FiOS
| style shared/FDM fiber bus. FiOS is better than coax, but not anywhere
| near what it could be.
|
| How do you figure it's better than coax? Both are quite capable of
| moving more than enough data. You seem to have an irrational fixation on
| fiber. You do realize that the fiber terminates to electronics on copper
| at each end, right?

Yes, there is electronics there. But that is a concentration point that
can handle a lot of bandwidth that would require extremely high frequencies
on the coax. The fiber is in fact doing extremely high frequencies and
beyond. You can do optical wavelength splitting at each end and get many
times the bandwidth as coax.

Um, yea, that's what happens in cable's F2F and telco's RTs. The cable
F2F node or the telco RT are the concentration point where the cheaper
last mile connections switch over to high bandwidth fiber, DWDM even if
needed.

Fiber also has the advantage of electrical safety by not being a surge
vector.

Eh, sort of. You won't get ground loops, and will likely survive a
primary falling onto the fiber. As for lightning however, it does
interesting stuff and just the moisture in the buffer tubes can conduct
that kind of hit.

Then the only metallic feed into the home is electric power.
And there are even some potential ways around that on the future horizon.

Ok Mr. Tesla...

| FTTH will have a lot of future capacity for things we cannot yet imagine.
|
| We're rapidly running out of things to imagine. There hasn't been much
| of anything truly new in a long time, just incremental improvements to
| existing stuff. VOIP is still the same old telephone, Internet "radio"
| and music downloads / piracy are still the same old radio and making
| tapes for friends, Email is still just sending letters, Internet
| searches and resources are just the library.

Just do it all over IP over EtE fiber and we have an infrastructure that
can serve everyone better.

Sure, you could do it over shared/multiplexed fiber (like FiOS) or even
over coax. But that limits the bandwidth each individual can get to a
level lower than one some people in some countries can already get.

Exactly which countries may those be that have the super duper 'net (and
nowhere to go with it)?

| | | The bandwidth is decent these days. It isn't cable modem speed, but it's
| | | a lot better than dialup. At least one of the sat options can support
| | | VPN connections adequately.
| |
| | Let me know when you can get _one_ full quality HD video stream over it.
| | At least then it is usable to let you select any program from any internet
| | based HD program source.
| |
| | I expect you can right now. Sat is fine on downstream, it's the upstream
| | that is more limited than cable or DSL, and that isn't a factor for
| | streaming one way video.
|
| What is the downstream rate? Cable does 6-8 mbps now. FiOS can do at
| least 40 mbps if set up for that. HDTV over IP will take a LOT. Some
| places in the world have 100 mbps NOW! When will most of the USA have
| it available at a reasonable rate?
|
| 1.5M/200K, comparable to DSL (other than the RT time). I expect it will
| continue to improve as well as more people in remote areas sign up and
| it becomes viable to provision more sat capacity. The RT time will
| always be an issue, but not for a lot of applications.

How many customers can be handled with that level of bandwidth?

Enough apparently, and generally they can allocate more capacity as
needed rather like cable does by splitting heavily loaded nodes.
http://www.hughes.net

When will they get it up to a minimum of 100M/25M (that's plenty of download
capacity for many people and ONE HDTV upload capacity)? That's a target we
need to shoot for with a minimum of 95% having that much available at a
reasonable rate (double that at premium rate) within 8 to 10 years. That's
going to take a LOT of satellite capacity. That's going to take a LOT of
orbital slots, narrow footprints, and much more spectrum. IMHO that is a
waste of capacity when and where that can be delivered by ground fiber (e.g.
in cities).

Yea, but their sub base isn't in those cities. People in areas with
access to terrestrial Internet connections will always prefer those over
sat due to the RT delay which isn't going away any time soon. For people
in remote areas it's quite reasonable.

| | | That F2F upgrade was over a decade ago. Fiber terminal equipment in
| | | every subscriber home as well as enough glass to link all those
| | | subscribers back to the head end wasn't practical or cost effective. No
| | | individual subscriber needs direct glass anyway, coax handles more than
| | | enough bandwidth for the final link. The structure the telcos use with
| | | fiber out to remote terminal peds and then copper the last mile to the
| | | subscriber is far more practical even today.
| |
| | I disagree. Fiber all the way is the way of the future. What we do today
| | might be doable on coax. But that is a limitation. And it means doing a
| | conversion from fiber to metal somewhere ... something that will add its
| | own limitations.
| |
| | All the telcos do it with their remote terminals now. The days of
| | individual subs having dedicated connections all the way back to the CO
| | are over, and for good reason. You will always be on a shared connection
| | at some point, and there is no benefit to pushing the transition point
| | further out from the sub at great expense.
|
| But this is a bad idea, and it is the thing we need competition to get
| rid of. Such multiplexing limits bandwidth too low. There is no room
| to expand the bandwidth while the plant is still being amortized. At
| least with raw fiber all the way, the capacity will be enough to last
| beyond the time needed to pay for it.
|
| Wrong. RT is just bringing the CO closer to the subs. You're
| "multiplexed" (not really) at the CO anyway, which you seem to overlook.

At the CO, different providers can be "hooked in" to each fiber, under
my proposal. How would you do this with the FiOS architecture?

I've not looked at FiOS in detail. I'm presuming it's the same old telco
RT architecture, just replacing the copper SLICs with fiber ones. Like
everything else with a large connected user base, you work with the fact
that you will never see 100% utilization on all connections at the same
time.

| Tell me how easily the cable/telcos will be able to deliver 100 mbps that
| everyone can do 2 streams of HDTV over IP on simultaneously.
|
| Very easily if the market is willing to pay what it will cost. There is
| plenty of capacity on both technologies. Both systems use similar
| structures, F2F and RT are effectively the same with expensive high
| bandwidth fiber links feeding to local nodes / RTs that service a
| relatively small number of subs via less expensive last mile links.

The cost for my plan will be lower because it can be financially structured
over a much longer time period, since end to end raw fiber has so much more
capacity. This is about a base infrastructure, not about specific kinds of
delivery. That fiber then becomes the medium for various kinds of delivery
innovation. What if someone comes up with something better than IP later
on? There's a good chance they can deliver that over the raw fiber. But
if you depend on IP for multiplexing, maybe not.

Guess you need to get yourself a patent or two and start shopping around
for investors and a test market.

Still, if we have strong network neutrality rules in place, and they get
enforced, an IP multiplexed architecture would be a lot better than what we
have now. My only worry at that point is long term bandwidth needs. I do
not see that leveling off anywhere below 100 mbps, and it may need to be
well above that (1 gbps would not surprise me).

I can't see a need for anything past 100, that would cover every family
member watching a different HD stream and DVRing a couple to watch
later, as well as little Johnny downloading 'net porn and little Suzie
pirating music.

If the infrastructure provider can guarantee network neutrality AND enough
bandwidth, then the infrastructure technology may not matter. FiOS is not
guaranteeing any of that.

The problem of guaranteeing neutrality and bandwidth is that the
subscribers would actually have to pay the real costs of providing that
bandwidth since the infrastructure provider would have no other revenue
source to pay for that infrastructure, and all the costs associated with
operating and maintaining it.

| | | You modulate it the same way the cable companies do, with a laser RF
| | | transmitter and matching receiver. Remarkably simple gadgets, RF in and
| | | photons out on the transmitter and photons in RF out on the receiver.
| |
| | Which makes it entirely practical for FTTH.
| |
| | Not even close.
|
| You have the technology or not. What I'm talking about is running the
| fiber all the way to a point where any provider can connect to it.
| Verizon's scheme prevents that. And that's a bad thing. That is why
| we need what I proposed.
|
| You're overlooking the fatal flaw in your scheme. Your providers aren't
| based in your local CO/POP, even if you have dedicated glass to the
| local CO/POP your provider will do nothing more than plug you into a
| switch and "multiplex as you say" you with all their other subs over a
| single link halfway across the country to where they are based. This
| provides no advantage over hitting shared links at the F2F node or RT.

At least it is the provider of choice that is doing it, not the provider
of the infrastructure. My proposal is about making an infrastructure of
raw end to end _dark_ fiber. That's an infrastructure that can last many
decades much like twisted pair lasted during the 1900's. It won't have
to be dug up again for a long time, except for repairs (a fraction of
what a rebuild would involve).

Patent your technology, find investors and have at it. Oh, and find some
content providers willing to provide content for your pilot project.

Then what you do over that fiber is your own business (between you and the
provider(s) you pick).

But then how are the DHS and NSA supposed to keep tabs on the
terrorists? For that matter, how are you going to get EAS messages?

For now, multiplex by IP over that is very likely
to be what almost everyone will do. But there won't be any lock in, and
network neutrality can exist with a minimum of regulation to achieve it.

| | | This isn't single channel RF either, it's the whole dang cable spectrum.
| |
| | I know. In fact several whole cable spectrums can be put on one fiber.
| | That would allow a cable company to provide a LOT more programming.
| |
| | Again, a waste. Much more practical to go straight IP and only establish
| | the connections actually being used.
|
| But you still need the bandwidth. The multiplexed approach does do that
| at the growth levels projected before the plant investment amortization
| is done.
|
| No, it doesn't. Your scheme is no different functionally than the
| current structures.

How do you switch to a provider other than Verizon for your IP provisioning
(e.g. the provider that routes IP subnets and establishes reverse DNS and
such things) when doing it over FiOS? My proposal has than inherint by
just plugging fiber into a different provider. What is your idea? Can you
do that somehow? Or do you not want to do that?

I don't see a lot of need really. For any home use the underlying IP
provisioning shouldn't matter. If you want to do some sort of commercial
activity, pretty much all the providers have business class service
available.

I host my own personal web site and mail server with no issues. Dynamic
DNS keeps my domain pointing where it should, even though I think I've
had two IP addresses in the last four years, and the $15/yr it costs me
for an authenticated mail relay to get around the cable companies
blocking outbound port 25 is perfectly reasonable as is that outbound
blocking.

| | | We used the same type of setup for return feeds as well, with laser
| | | transmitters out in the field feeding back to the head end for live
| | | remotes. I expect it isn't cost effective for your application though. A
| | | more cost effective solution would probably to use a base band video
| | | fiber link and an IR remote link and position the receiver with the
| | | dish. Or just trench some coax and be done with it.
| |
| | The receiver needs to be in his house. And I don't want metal running
| | between the houses. Fiber, RF, or nothing.
| |
| | The power lines are metal running between the houses, as are the phone
| | lines.
|
| There are no power lines BETWEEN the houses. The power lines run out to
| the 100kVA pad transformer which has its own ground. Electric service
| drops bring neutral and ground on ONE COMMON wire, not separate like it
| is after your service entrance panel. If you connect a wire between one
| house and another, connecting it to ground, then what you have done is
| create a secondary neutral path, where differential current that should
| only be flowing on that ONE COMMON wire back to the transformer, can
| ALSO flow across the neutral/ground bond in the service panel, out the
| ground wire to where the equipment is grounded and connected to the coax,
| run along that coax to the other house (even if additionally earthed at
| the coax endpoints, this won't matter), and in reverse back through what
| is in that house and out to the transformer there.
|
| You're confusing your grounding and grounded conductors. As I said, the
| power lines are metal running between houses, your hots and neutral are
| directly connected to your neighbor's hots and neutral, with the
| transformer connected somewhere on that secondary buss as well.

Yes, they are already connected by ONE path. You do NOT want to make a
second path. Well, at least *I* don't (my neighbor doesn't understand
electricty that deeply, so he doesn't have a basis to decide).

Tell that to the folks in the UK with their wacky ring mains...

| There is an old saying that electricity takes the path of least resistance.
| BUT THAT IS NOT TRUE; it takes ALL paths available to it. Some of that
| neutral differential current WILL go over the coax between houses when
| the differential is different between the houses.
|
| Again confusing grounded and grounding conductors. And ground loops are
| only a problem if you don't know how to deal with them.

And how would _you_ prevent parallel currents from flowing in them?

In the case of your remote sat TV mini dish, it's really simple. The
dish itself and it's mount gets a safety connection to a ground rod
(need not be your house ground either). The LNB is isolated from the
dish and gets it's power and ground from it's coax connection to the
other house. If you need an inline amp, it also is coax powered. None of
that equipment needs to connect to your house electrical system in any
way. I'd also suggest using RG11 instead of the usual RG6 to help
compensate for the long run.

| Doing this kind of dumb wiring simply WILL NOT HAPPEN HERE. I will not
| have any part of it.
|
| Probably a good thing since you apparently don't know how to do it
| properly.

If it is metal connected in a loop, it is a problem. How to do it
properly is to not have things connected in a loop.

Again talk to the UK ring mains folks.

| | | Which of those options, for each, are doing everything technically right?
| | | I have 2 data options at high speed from two companies well known to screw
| | | things up. One of them (Comcast) just today made headlines again in yet
| | | another thing they are screwing up (although with Linux, I know what to do
| | | to get around it, and have already done so). The other (Verizon) is just
| | | as likely to screw up something else.
| | |
| | | I'm not familiar with what they may be screwing up.
| |
| | DNS in the latest story about Comcast. It's always something.
| |
| | Ok, what exactly did they screw up?
|
| They modified their DNS servers to resolve NXDOMAIN responses to a
| partner to place ads on a web page. The issue is that that affects
| hostnames even for domains that otherwise exist, and opens a gaping
| security hole for such domains for things like cross-site scripting
| exploits.
|
| So they simply opened a market for further alternate DNS services, like
| we already use for dynamic DNS. We also use alternate mail, news and
| other servers, so they only marginalize any "content" they try to
| provide further.
|
|
| | Note that my definition of "screwing up" may be what they see as "making
| | more money".
| |
| | Exactly how are they making more money with DNS???
|
| You mistype a hostname. You should get an error in your browser when it
| gets an NXDOMAIN from the DNS cache. Instead, it gets an IP address of
| a web page with ads. The company hosting that page pays the internet
| provider a cut in proportion to the volume coming in.
|
| I don't mistype hostnames...

Good for you. I usually don't, either. And my computers are organized to
not be vulnerable. In fact, I have my own DNS resolution, anyway, so *I*
don't see the issue. The problem is so many OTHER computers will be
affected by this. And the more of them that become spam zombies as a
result means more hassle by spam and such for all of us.

So you're saying that Comcast has sold out and is deliberately referring
mistyped DNS requests to a virus laden site? If so, that is a criminal
matter. If the truth is they sold out and are directing those people to
nothing more than advertising, then your claim of the hapless users
computers becoming spam zombies as a result is bogus.

| | | No, like the GHz F2F rebuild they did long before tiny dishes. Like
| | | offering digital commercial free music channels even before that. Like
| | | offering interactive pay per view boxes still earlier.
| |
| | I remember interactive pay per view. I got charged for 7 movies even
| | after I had canceled the service and returned the box. Back then that
| | probably was a rather innovative way to make money (bill people for
| | stuff and delete it if they complain).
| |
| | I remember changing out LNBs on the 10m dish at the head end that
| | handled a few PPV channels. When we finished and went back inside we had
| | about a dozen voice mails from cable pirates complaining that we knocked
| | out those channels for an hour. There were zero buys reported on the PPV
| | computer. Those idiots are lucky that we didn't sick the cops on them.
|
| You should have. Seriously, you should have.
|
| We're techs, 'aint our problem. Sad though that there were so many
| pirates that a dozen were dumb enough to complain.

As much as cable company management always promotes the idea of reporting
cable theft, I'd have thought they would have made it part of the job of
the techs to at least report what they see. I do know of a case when I
lived in an apartment building of a tech who came out to fix a problem I
had. He mentioned he found 2 other apartments that had connected up their
own cable illegally. He disconnected them, put a new lock on the box, and
said he'd be reporting that to his supervisor through a standard procedure
they had for just such things. This was around year 2000.

Yea, we had plenty of drop issues at apartment complexes, and for repeat
ones it might get escalated to authorities, but those are cases with
easy physical evidence and physical tampering. Tracing the callers who
left voice mails complaining when their pirated pay per view went out is
more effort than anyone cared for, at least in ~'94.

| | | An important feature in a tuner box for me is the ability to select a set
| | | of channels to be my "favorites" and allow me to "channel surf" just those
| | | without having to spend 10 minutes stepping through a zillion junk channels
| | | I have no interest in just to "see what's on" (and the program guide is not
| | | any better). It's not a hard concept. It would be done in a preference
| | | menu.
| | |
| | | The Motorola box does exactly that.
| |
| | Then maybe Comcast should offer that box, or at least turn the feature on.
| |
| | The last time I looked it was still legal for you to own your own cable
| | box. As long as it's compatible with the system you can get whatever box
| | you want.
|
| Owning and usable are different things these days. Comcast here encrypts
| all digital channels now, even those originating from OTA. All that one
| can tune with their own TV or STB are analog channels. To get digital
| over the cable, you have to have their box. Oh, cable card might be able
| to work, but Comcast has a reputation for making sure it has problems all
| the time.
|
| You just have to be willing to deal with the FCC and the local
| regulators enough that the cable company gets the message.

Or Congress.

Just a well written letter, perhaps from your attorney, to the cable
company offices and cc'd to state regulators and the FCC typically gets
adequate attention.

| | I should check to see what box maker/number my brother has.
| |
| | | There needs to be several preferences available for a family. In
| | | each set, you can enter up to 24 channels you want to have as favorites.
| | | Then when you select a set, channel up/down selections go around that set
| | | in the order programmed.
| | |
| | | No multi use favorites on the Motorola box, but these days every family
| | | member has their own box and TV anyway so it doesn't much matter.
| |
| | I'd need the multi user favorites. It should have TEN sets (using one
| | digit to select). Press a digit then press FAV and it switches to that
| | set.
| |
| | Send a feature request to Motorola or the box manufacturer of your
| | choice.
|
| Better yet, send me the firmware source code, development tools (I may
| already have those, since most boxes these days are Linux based, anyway),
| and a box with the JTAG port intact.
|
| I suspect a feature request has a lot more chance of becoming reality.

You have a contact at Motorola?

I'm sure you can find it easily enough on their site if you track down
the division making the boxes.

One thing I have heard is when cable companies buy these boxes, they pay
for each feature they want to have included. Those they don't want may
actually still exist in the base hardware design, if hardware needs to
exist for the feature, but the custom software will disable it, or even
not include its appropriate driver or firmware management at all.

I don't know how the financial end of it works, I expect that's all way
up the corporate ladder with the various box manufacturers reps
schmoozing the cable execs to get the multi million dollar order. I
expect any features the exec ask for will be included free if it makes
the sale. Certainly the cable companies have options on how they want to
configure the boxes to operate in their system.

I do know that this is a practice for internet routers bought by cable/telco
providers. The provider specs what they want in the router. I would not be
surprised if the cable STB can be done the same (especially with the next
generation of boxes really being an STB and router all in one).

Well, the router part makes a lot of sense as it's a big supportability
issue. The consumer market routers have an awful lot of configuration
options that can create havoc in the clutches of a clueless user. The
cable/telco providing a router to a customer wants one with a minimum of
extra features so they can provide support for it without incurring a
lot of cost. This should be just fine since the user selecting the cable
company provided and supported home router is typical not tech savvy so
they'd never miss those features.

I do note that the various telcos and cable companies typically provide
quite a few configuration white papers for popular consumer routers on
their support web sites, just with the disclaimer that they don't
support those routers and don't call them for more support on them.

| | | NO BOX OFFERED HAS THAT FEATURE, YET. The first company to do that MAY
| | | get my business (but not if they are a royal screwup in other things).
| | |
| | | As I noted, the Motorola box has favorite channel selections and channel
| | | surf rotation through them.
| |
| | But only one set. I need at least three sets just for myself. A box
| | should have TEN sets. TEN sets. That's "10" in decimal.
| |
| | If you watch that much TV, you need to get a life, not a new cable box.
|
| It's called "downtime". I don't watch that much TV. This Monday evening
| all I watched was the news at 6 and a special program WTAE had on at 9:30
| covering spring severe weather stuff for this area.
|
| Wasted time is more like it. For severe weather info I use a NOAA
| weather radio here in tornado alley.

Call it waste if you want. I do like a little time off.

For my time off I try to find other activities.

Replying in this thread could be called waste, too.

It could be, but it's filler while waiting for other stuff.

| When I take a big break from doing stuff on the computers, I do go watch
| some TV sometimes. I want to be able to surf around the select channel
| groups quickly. One group are the info channels (History, Discovery,
| H&G, PBS affiliates, etc). Another group are all the news channels.
| The third group is when I'm taking a prolonged downtime and want to
| watch something more like movies, USA Network, other OTA stations.
| Mixing these groups is my only option with a single favorites set and
| that is probably too many to be confortable with considering the SLOW
| rate the cable boxes these days complete a channel change.
|
| Well, I just generally enter the channel numbers and find that fast
| enough. I don't find channel changes on these Motorola boxes to be
| noticeably slower than changing channels on the TV itself.

I can change channels about 2 per second and get a good idea what is on
all the channels in the round. Entering channel numbers manually would
be slower. OTOH, new digital boxes are slower at everything, so maybe
it won't be that much different in the future.

Some years ago when I spent more time in the video world I experimented
with watching different programs on two side by side TVs with audio to
left and right of headphones. Kinda scary, but it can be done. Now I try
to fill my free time with more productive activities.

| | | To Comcast's credit, they have offered to replant the "drop" from their
| | | pedestal to my service entrance for free to move it from where it comes
| | | in now, to come in where the electric does (at present it does not and
| | | that increases the lightning surge hazard). But I need to do this at the
| | | same time for the phone lines (they come in where the cable does) and
| | | Verizon is wanting to charge over $500 to move the wires.
| | |
| | | Anything past the ped / demarc I do myself. As for lightning hazard, it
| | | doesn't make any difference where it comes in, only that it is connected
| | | to a proper ground block and ground rod and preferable has some
| | | additional suppression close to that ground block.
| |
| | It does make a difference. Everything needs to be connected to a single
| | set of grounding electrodes IN COMMON to avoid voltage differential in
| | nearby strike surges. That means everything comes in to one place OR a
| | "huge ass" copper grounding interconnection be welded in. At least the
| | cable company tech I talked to also understands this, as did his manager,
| | and in fact they wanted to go ahead and make the change before (but where
| | they wanted to run has gas, water, and power, so they or I need to get
| | those marked first).
| |
| | Unless your house is huge, that differential isn't significant and if
| | your suppressers can handle the actual induced surge, the differential
| | is irrelevant.
|
| Plug-in suppressors aren't designed to handle that kind of thing that
| results from differential grounds. They are designed to handle differential
| voltages on the power wires, or shunt impulses from phone/cable into the
| ground wire of the power circuit. There are many kinds of surges they
| won't protect from, and some of them will be worse with multiple service
| entrance points in the house.
|
| Are you talking about ground loops, or lightning induced voltages? Make
| up your mind, they are not the same thing. If you have ground loop
| issues there are plenty of effective ways to deal with them.

I never said these were the same thing. One is relevant for considering
one goal, and the other is relevant for considering the other goal. These
are differnt goals (wiring between my house and a neighbor vs. making sure
my house is best protected from lightning and other surges).

Well, as I noted, for your remote sat TV mini dish application, there
isn't any need to connect to your home's electrical system.

| | | Just wait for IP everything. Just another authenticated login on a
| | | remote server somewhere whether you're placing a phone call, watching a
| | | video channel, listening to a music channel, etc. No need for any
| | | special cable box or anything, just your normal home network plugging
| | | into a single gigE at the demarc.
| |
| | If I get the while gigabit bandwidth, that would be great. Still, I want
| | it coming in on fiber, not metal.
| |
| | Nope, they're going to bring back tin cans and string just for you.
|
| That's not digital. I want digital. Give me smoke signals! Yeah!
|
| It's digital if you tap out Morse code on the cans.

OK, I suppose you can do that, too.

| | | Right now, what Comcast and Verizon offer here cannot stream HDTV. What
| | | Verizon is testing in at least one city could do HDTV, but I'm not sure
| | | how many streams, and how much gateway/peering capacity they have for it.
| | | But eventually, the idea is to stream video from anyone that wants to offer
| | | it.
| | |
| | | Not much of a priority for me. Most of my TV viewing is on an SD 17"
| | | LCD. I got my OTA boxes, mostly for my camper, at home the two stations
| | | I can get without putting an antenna on a 400' tower have nothing of
| | | interest except for live weather radar on one sub channel. My TV viewing
| | | is mostly CNN, the various Discovery Networks channels, the local
| | | weather radar when a big storm is approaching, and the Food Network.
| |
| | As you suggested "Just wait for IP everything". That should be IP all the way
| | to any endpoint anywhere on the net (not just to the cable company headend).
| | Then if I want to connect to one of CNN's many news channels in HD, I can. Or
| | maybe I'll connect to BBC or NRK.
| |
| | That's ultimately the only way that will be practical, and it's already
| | the way it is for some things like VOIP, VPNs, email, etc.
|
| We still need to get it out of the minds of the cable companies that they are
| the gatekeepers of what TV programs we get to choose from. IP technology
| gives us the ability to go anywhere in the world with a 32-bit or 128-bit
| "channel" number, and get anything we want. Ultimately it will be all data
| providers. But they just can't resist sticking their fingers in the pie.
|
| The cable companies are simply trying to provide the channels that most
| of their subs want. Like anything else, if you're the oddball, you're
| going to have to go to a little more effort to accommodate your wishes.

However, they don't like the idea of network neutral IP based "channel"
selection, where anyone can choose from any channel in the world. They
are used to being the gatekeeper. Note that this is NOT about gating what
channels you see so much as it is about gating what customers the content
providers see. That is because their motivation is to get money out of the
midsized and smaller content providers. The really big populat networks
like CNN and TNT can demand money FROM the cable company. The smaller ones
have to pay the cable company to get delivered to customers. That all
changes with IP.

As I noted, if it's just an infrastructure provider then you have to pay
the true cost of that infrastructure since there is no other revenue
stream. How about you get the government to revive the economy by
providing jobs to all the unemployed building a new national fiber optic
highway - CCC ala 2008. The government can operate the infrastructure
and tax you to pay for it, and they can be neutral since they aren't a
content provider.

| So we need competition to be able to choose a provider that keeps things
| working right. If we had such competition now, there's a chance one of them
| would offer IPv6 and then we can connect to the few places that are starting
| to be on IPv6 only. Eventually provider will need to do that. But which
| ones will be dragging their feet too long? My bet is the cable companies
| and telcos will drag the hardest and longest.
|
| Telcos have certainly been on the trailing edge of technology (at least
| outside the CO) for a long long time.

And then there are electric companies trying to set up BPL services. That's
deploying something that is already obsolete. They'd be better off running
some fiber in their right-of-way paths, even if it is FiOS-like.

They're trying to provide more salable services using their existing
infrastructure, not build a whole new one.

wrote:

|
| A fax would probably have sped things up a bit.

It might have. I didn't have one at that time. I don't have one now, either.

Got a computer with a scanner? That works too.

| Usually. I've had cases with the USPS where mail sent from a main post
| office (SCF) going across the same small state 100 miles was lost in
| the system for about two weeks.

On rare occaision, I've seen problems with USPS. The rate of USPS
problems is a tiny fraction of problems with billing/payment processing.

Not in my experience, YMMV.

| You'd think so, but the folks writing the software apparently haven't
| though of it.

Maybe. Maybe the feature does exist, and they have not elected to pay
for it.

Perhaps.

I do know that phone switches for years had arrays of options that the
phone companies could pay more for. I read about a case where the name
feature of caller ID was unavailable to subscribers of a certain phone
company only because that phone company didn't choose to buy that extra
software feature. Turns out the feature was actually in the system,
and someone enabled it by accident while doing remote support and it
actually started working for all caller ID customers. Then a few weeks
later they turned it back off and it caused an customer uproar.

The system image stored in Flash on the converter box may well have all
the feature code present. Maybe the "number of FAV sets" variable is
set to whatever the cable company is willing to pay for.

Certainly common in a lot of high end software to sell individual
features. Sometimes it's all in the code to begin with and just
disabled, sometimes it is separate modules to add.

| | I once had an electric utility send me a $15k bill for a residential
| | service that wasn't in use at the time (main breaker off). This was with
| | an electronic remote read meter too. Looking at the bill, the current
| | reading was 1 KWh less than the previous reading. Apparently the encoder
| | in the meter was teetering right at the transition point. Only took a 5
| | minute phone call to fix that and the bill was corrected to just the few
| | dollars base charge. Good laugh though given that a 100A service wasn't
| | even capable of rolling the meter in a month without a meltdown.
|
| Their computer system should have automatically kicked that bill out as
| "far too unusual" for some person to deal with.
|
| See above.

I tend to believe the programmers _did_ think of it, at least if they were
the good programmers around. Very often good ideas get quashed by middle
management using the excuse that it was not a feature that was asked for.
I know; I've done a lot of programming in a lot of places, including a
Linux OS build for the Intel board targeted for such boxes.

Anytime you get a "design committee" most of the design goes out the
window and what's left gets hacked together.

The most critical frequencies, the aircraft band, was not operational on
that cable system at all. But that's common on many cable systems.

Still no guarantee they met their CLI figure.

| I find it amazing that you have to get transferred to a whole different
| department if you want to order phone lines in a hunt group (for only
| two lines no less).

It probably goes on a different switch. And maybe you can't even keep the
old phone number in the new group when going from a single line to two in
a hunt group (at least years ago).

Doubtful, it on the same switch as everything else in the area, it just
has to go to a different department where they know how to set it up on
the switch.

| Enough apparently, and generally they can allocate more capacity as
| needed rather like cable does by splitting heavily loaded nodes.
| http://www.hughes.net

There's only so much air capacity. It's a lot, but I don't think it is enough
for everyone to get it that way. There's only so narrow you can make those
small beam footprints from the satellite because it requires larger and larger
antennas up there to do it.

The directionality of the antenna on the ground does the job. It doesn't
matter if the sat footprints overlap if the dish on the ground only sees
one of them at it's focal point.

| Yea, but their sub base isn't in those cities. People in areas with
| access to terrestrial Internet connections will always prefer those over
| sat due to the RT delay which isn't going away any time soon. For people
| in remote areas it's quite reasonable.

I see a solution of fiber in the cities and satellite in the remote rural
areas as a good combination. Gradually fiber can move out to most of the
rural locations. If they can get power there, that can eventually get
fiber there. And maybe the electric company might be the one to do it on
a neutral provider basis.

A lot of those rural areas don't have power lines, they are off grid.
Sat or other RF connections are all that will service them.

| I've not looked at FiOS in detail. I'm presuming it's the same old telco
| RT architecture, just replacing the copper SLICs with fiber ones. Like
| everything else with a large connected user base, you work with the fact
| that you will never see 100% utilization on all connections at the same
| time.

A lot of detail about it is online. I haven't read it all, but I have read
enough. It does the cable TV part by "cable" spectrum modulated onto one
wavelength. Data is on another wavelength or two. Demodulate the "cable"
wavelength and you get output suitable for a typical cable STB. But it is
fiber right into the home (and they cut off the existing copper twisted pair
so you can't go back).

So it's WDM, nothing new or exciting. That last part has proved to be a
big issue.

| Guess you need to get yourself a patent or two and start shopping around
| for investors and a test market.

It's not an invention that's patentable.

That won't stop them from issuing a patent for it anyway. Just get a
design patent on the architecture and get some lawyers to defend the
invalid patent. The side with the most lawyers and money wins,
regardless of the validity of the patent. That's how it's done these
days.

| I can't see a need for anything past 100, that would cover every family
| member watching a different HD stream and DVRing a couple to watch
| later, as well as little Johnny downloading 'net porn and little Suzie
| pirating music.

You are assuming HD streams will stick with existing formats. There is
more beyond high definition. We just don't have practical ways to send
that out, or produce it the way TV programming producers work. And it's
not cheap, yet. But in several years it will be more viable. If there
is a bandwidth to reach homes, it will. 3840x2160p120 on a wall size
screen would make great sports (what it most likely will be used for).

I doubt it. Plenty of folks don't care about HD in it's present form,
much less anything higher res.

| The problem of guaranteeing neutrality and bandwidth is that the
| subscribers would actually have to pay the real costs of providing that
| bandwidth since the infrastructure provider would have no other revenue
| source to pay for that infrastructure, and all the costs associated with
| operating and maintaining it.

The provider the homeowner selects to have their fiber plugged into would
be the one covering that cost. They would pay the infrastructure management
company. Then the provider bills ... somebody. They may, for example,
offer a service that is free to homeowners, aggregating all those eyeballs
to _sell_ to upstream program content providers that pay for it through
advertising based programming. I'm not saying that would happen. But it
could.

A twisted pair cost a LOT of money to put in way back when they did that.
It took years to recover the plant costs. The fiber can be the same way.
The up front investment would be viable because the infrastructure provider
would get a legal monopoly and would be the only "go to" provider (and a
regulated one at that) to get fiber to homes. Such a monopoly justifies
very long term investment expectations with lower yields, just as it did
when phones first went in, and even when cable first went in.

Have you seen any long term investment project like that in the US since
the '50s? Everyone is nearsighted these days and only interested in
making a fast buck. That's why the stock market has turned into the
distorted mess it is now.

| Patent your technology, find investors and have at it. Oh, and find some
| content providers willing to provide content for your pilot project.

It's not an invention that's patentable. It's existing technology.

Your design is the innovation added to existing technology. You can
easily get an invalid patent for it and then pay some lawyers to defend
it as noted. That's how it's done these days, lots of clearly invalid
patents out there, just a lack of anyone with the motivation and funds
to prove they are invalid.

| I host my own personal web site and mail server with no issues. Dynamic
| DNS keeps my domain pointing where it should, even though I think I've
| had two IP addresses in the last four years, and the $15/yr it costs me
| for an authenticated mail relay to get around the cable companies
| blocking outbound port 25 is perfectly reasonable as is that outbound
| blocking.

How do you think this will play out on IPv6?

No idea. I haven't paid much attention to IPv6 since it seem to still be
a long way from showing up much of anywhere.

| Tell that to the folks in the UK with their wacky ring mains...

Actually, I have mentioned that before. The ring circuits can end up with
current flowing on two paths. BUT ... if the circuit wiring ampacity is
equal to the branch breaker/fuse (usually 30 amps), it's basically safe.
If the wiring can only handle 15 amps, then if you supply that circuit from
TWO breakers/fuses that are 15 amps each, you can still get 30 amps out of
it (but I don't know that they allow this kind of thing there).

The current still flows only on conductors intended for current flow. That
is not the case if you hook up an alternate path for neutral to return to
the source via the neighbor's house.

Ground loops have nothing to do with the neutral, you are confusing
grounding and grounded conductors again.

This is one of the issues with using water pipes for grounding. Such pipes
are generally metallic all the way. If they have a low impedance path to
the neutral wire (which is bonded to ground at the service entrance), then
it forms an alternate path via the neighbor with the same hookup.

Again, grounding vs. grounded. The bond at the service entrance does not
make the grounding conductors a path for the currents on the grounded
conductor.

| In the case of your remote sat TV mini dish, it's really simple. The
| dish itself and it's mount gets a safety connection to a ground rod
| (need not be your house ground either). The LNB is isolated from the
| dish and gets it's power and ground from it's coax connection to the
| other house. If you need an inline amp, it also is coax powered. None of
| that equipment needs to connect to your house electrical system in any
| way. I'd also suggest using RG11 instead of the usual RG6 to help
| compensate for the long run.

That would require a separate dish for each of us, and well separated
wiring. I still wouldn't have it _on_ the house. And the off-house
space is blocked by the same grove of trees.

Yes, a separate dish. And no reason not to have it mounted on the house
if it's connected to it's own ground rod.

| If it is metal connected in a loop, it is a problem. How to do it
| properly is to not have things connected in a loop.
|
| Again talk to the UK ring mains folks.

That's not the same thing. The ring wiring is intended to carry current
in all the paths. If the loop is partially made of wiring NOT intended
to carry current, that's a problem.

And in the case of the dish I noted, there is no loop and can be no
ground loop current. Of course ground loop current is not related to
neutral current and ground loop currents are virtually always very low
and well within the current carrying capacity of the grounding
conductors involved.

| Good for you. I usually don't, either. And my computers are organized to
| not be vulnerable. In fact, I have my own DNS resolution, anyway, so *I*
| don't see the issue. The problem is so many OTHER computers will be
| affected by this. And the more of them that become spam zombies as a
| result means more hassle by spam and such for all of us.
|
| So you're saying that Comcast has sold out and is deliberately referring
| mistyped DNS requests to a virus laden site? If so, that is a criminal
| matter. If the truth is they sold out and are directing those people to
| nothing more than advertising, then your claim of the hapless users
| computers becoming spam zombies as a result is bogus.

My bad. I went back and looked it up again. It's Verizon, not Comcast.
Also, Earthlink was doing it.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...rror-page.html
http://securitywatch.eweek.com/brows... re_web_1.html
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/secur...raffic_go.html

No time to read those at the moment.

| As much as cable company management always promotes the idea of reporting
| cable theft, I'd have thought they would have made it part of the job of
| the techs to at least report what they see. I do know of a case when I
| lived in an apartment building of a tech who came out to fix a problem I
| had. He mentioned he found 2 other apartments that had connected up their
| own cable illegally. He disconnected them, put a new lock on the box, and
| said he'd be reporting that to his supervisor through a standard procedure
| they had for just such things. This was around year 2000.
|
| Yea, we had plenty of drop issues at apartment complexes, and for repeat
| ones it might get escalated to authorities, but those are cases with
| easy physical evidence and physical tampering. Tracing the callers who
| left voice mails complaining when their pirated pay per view went out is
| more effort than anyone cared for, at least in ~'94.

You mean they didn't leave a callback number? :-)

I don't recall any of them being that stupid, though it would certainly
have been possible to track the source.

| I'm sure you can find it easily enough on their site if you track down
| the division making the boxes.

That's not the kind of thing I'd expect to find on web sites anymore.

You'd be surprised what you find out there. I recall collecting some
very interesting info from the web site of a military division of
Motorola.

| I do note that the various telcos and cable companies typically provide
| quite a few configuration white papers for popular consumer routers on
| their support web sites, just with the disclaimer that they don't
| support those routers and don't call them for more support on them.

Mine is a WRT54GL. Yup, the "L" version.

I have on of those as well. Actually the original before they made the
"L" variant and made the regular one cheaper to produce.

| Some years ago when I spent more time in the video world I experimented
| with watching different programs on two side by side TVs with audio to
| left and right of headphones. Kinda scary, but it can be done. Now I try
| to fill my free time with more productive activities.

I did that the other day with WTOV's analog (via cable) on one set, and
WTOV's digital (via indoor loop antenna) on the other set. The two second
delay was very annoying. OK, that wasn't productive.

Yea, the echo doesn't exactly reinforce the content. It does work with
different content on each side.

| Well, as I noted, for your remote sat TV mini dish application, there
| isn't any need to connect to your home's electrical system.

It would have to be far from any metal for my liking.

You are exceptionally paranoid. Ground the dish with it's own ground
rod. The LNB assemble is insulated far more than it has to be to isolate
the very small potential voltage difference.

| As I noted, if it's just an infrastructure provider then you have to pay
| the true cost of that infrastructure since there is no other revenue
| stream. How about you get the government to revive the economy by
| providing jobs to all the unemployed building a new national fiber optic
| highway - CCC ala 2008. The government can operate the infrastructure
| and tax you to pay for it, and they can be neutral since they aren't a
| content provider.

The revenue stream can still come from upstream via the content provider
that leases the fiber as authorized by the homeowner it terminats at.
If the same fiber were owned by a content provider that was using content
to supplement it, they would still have the same base cost in the fiber
plant to pay for. The cost they need to cover is still about the same as
the lease cost. So the customer choice content provider can still do that
as they are in the loop on the costs (unless a homeowner wants to lease it
direct for some purpose, like cross connecting it to another fiber leased
to go somewhere else like his place of business).

At work we've got DWDM links many miles over dark fiber. I don't see
that reaching the residential level in any of out lifetimes, if ever.

| They're trying to provide more salable services using their existing
| infrastructure, not build a whole new one.

But the existing infrastructure can't scale up to the level to provide data
at a bandwidth that can support a few HDTV streams, or a couple UDTV streams,
to every home. They can't do what is available now in Seoul Korea unless
they go back and upgrade the FiOS infrastructure. My end to end dark fiber
plan would last a lot longer.

The executives don't care about any infrastructure investment that will
last past the time they implode the company and escape on their golden
parachute.