I pay a lot for high speed Internet from Comcast in northern NJ. Also I hooked up a PC tuner card for analog cable TV and after splitting the comcast cable it was working fine for about six months. I could get clear picture on almost all channels when watching comcast cable tv on my PC through simple Windows-based TV tuner (analog). I guess it would also work for regular analog TV however I don;t have one :)
Suddenly all channels became scrambled, the device is probably working fine, because I tested another brand new one with no effect. can someone explain to me what has happened? was my signal encoded somehow to prevent me from watching analog TV for free as an add-on to internet access I had? can I override it somehow using some other kind of TV tuner card for my PC or software application? I really don't like the idea of paying for set top box and all this stuff, because simply I watch TV maybe a few hours in a month due to lack of time. for that reason I don't will to pay for it.
2007-05-30 14:34:37 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Consumer Electronics ➔ TVs
Cable Internet uses a standard TV channel for the the downloading of Internet data. The channel used is determined by the equipment used by the cable company. The rest of the channels are used for regular Cable TV programming. They all use the same cable. That is why you split the signal one to the TV/Computer the other to the cable modem. Your cable modem is listening for data on its channel. The TV set is receiving all the other channels. The TV will simply skip the data channel as it will automatically determine it is not in a usable picture format.
This is the standard setup. You will receive all the available analog channels and the data channel UNLESS the cable company filters them out. Since the cable company pays the cable networks so much per subscriber they only want to provide the regular cable channels to paying subscribers for regualr cable TV.
So the cable company will put on your cable TV line a series for filters that will remove all the channels except your download Internet Channel.
What happened was the cable system finally put the correct filters in place to block out all but the Internet download channel. The filters are put on your cable TV line coming into your home/apartment in a place that is not accessible by you.
In order to receive regular TV the filters must be removed and it is illegal for you to do so.
2007-05-31 09:12:16 · answer #1 · answered by Jerry 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
If you were not paying for cable service they probably disconnected it. They do not scramble the analog signal. They have to physically come out and put a trap(filter) on the line. Comcast in my area audits all addresses every 6 months. They probably just did an audit for illegals and put a trap on your line to block all analog signal. Your modem uses a digital signal. Sorry this happened.
2007-05-31 09:05:31 · answer #2 · answered by Number 3 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The only way is if you have a digital TV that can tune QAM. And at that will only get the unencrypted channels, and at the QAM assignments rather than the Virtual numbers on a cable box. If you have a Cablecard slot in your TV, you can get the channels properly mapped, and get the encrypted channels. If your TV is none of the above, you will need a box from your provider.
2016-05-17 08:53:30 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Well you didn't buy Cable, so they scrambled the signal.
The installation crews don't get all the work done during the initial install, they can sometimes take months to get caught up.
You're lucky you had it for that amount of time.....
2007-05-31 00:43:45 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋