Mike Farrington
01-07-2007, 12:44 PM
So, I did a channel scan to pick up unencrypted digital channels from my cable system. Here's a few oddities I noticed.
#1) Some channels have multiple entries without a dash number (ie, 90-1). There are three instances of channel 0, and two instances of channel 131. What's up with these? How are they tuned independently using the keypad since there is no dash?
#2) Some channels, when viewed on my 4:3 SD screen using TiVo's "Panel" aspect view (resulting in a combined letterboxing and pillarboxing), show the first two lines of video which has the closed-captioning data. That's kind of annoying. Shouldn't the TiVo filter out the closed-captioning so it is no longer visible?
#3) Quite a few of the "dashed" channels on my cable system are using three-digits for the right hand number, yet the TiVo only displays two right-hand digits on the banner. It lets you tune the other by entering the numbers, but only shows up to 99 on the right-hand side.
On a side-note, I was able to view some other people's PPV and OnDemand programs, but it isn't that useful since I have no control over their pausing and rewinding. Note to cable companies: start encrypting the adult PPV -- eventually someone will freak out over it. Right now they're going with security through obscurity since there aren't many people out there who can tune these.
-Mike
#1) Some channels have multiple entries without a dash number (ie, 90-1). There are three instances of channel 0, and two instances of channel 131. What's up with these? How are they tuned independently using the keypad since there is no dash?
#2) Some channels, when viewed on my 4:3 SD screen using TiVo's "Panel" aspect view (resulting in a combined letterboxing and pillarboxing), show the first two lines of video which has the closed-captioning data. That's kind of annoying. Shouldn't the TiVo filter out the closed-captioning so it is no longer visible?
#3) Quite a few of the "dashed" channels on my cable system are using three-digits for the right hand number, yet the TiVo only displays two right-hand digits on the banner. It lets you tune the other by entering the numbers, but only shows up to 99 on the right-hand side.
On a side-note, I was able to view some other people's PPV and OnDemand programs, but it isn't that useful since I have no control over their pausing and rewinding. Note to cable companies: start encrypting the adult PPV -- eventually someone will freak out over it. Right now they're going with security through obscurity since there aren't many people out there who can tune these.
-Mike