Cablevision HD Changeover, plus Multistream Cards

[TishTash]

As many of you may know, Cablevision (in some parts) are rearranging their HD premium channels, moving a patchwork of 700 slots to a consolidated 800 skien of consecutive channels.

A) Season Passes seem to have found their way to the new channels, amazingly enough. Kudos to the TiVo software.

B) Individual recordings don't appear to have done the same, i.e., it appears that recording a 7xx channel will record an announcement of the new channels.

Easy enough to check the To Do List and manually change it with Upcoming Showings, but I was just wondering why Season Passes seem to be converting. I'm pleasantly surprised that they do, but I'm not sure why B) doesn't follow given A). Any theories?

P.S. When one of my CableCards stopped working (probably because it was entered incorrectly), I got my first Cablevision Multistream Card. (I had been using two Single Streams for each unit.) I'm not sure if it's coincidence, but the Tuning Adapter has stopped powering down randomly, I stopped getting random freeze-frames from certain HD channels, and (very importantly) I can now close the cover! So my advice is if you have a choice, definitely go for the MS CC.

[dbenrosen]

Easy enough to check the To Do List and manually change it with Upcoming Showings, but I was just wondering why Season Passes seem to be converting. I'm pleasantly surprised that they do, but I'm not sure why B) doesn't follow given A). Any theories?

The season passes are actually not set up by channel number but by network name. I know because when I switched from Cablevision to Fios all of my season passes moved over seamlessly, which was much better than I expected. Individual recordings, particularly those set via the manual record by time and channel, are just that, linked to a channel number.

P.S. When one of my CableCards stopped working (probably because it was entered incorrectly), I got my first Cablevision Multistream Card. (I had been using two Single Streams for each unit.) I'm not sure if it's coincidence, but the Tuning Adapter has stopped powering down randomly, I stopped getting random freeze-frames from certain HD channels, and (very importantly) I can now close the cover! So my advice is if you have a choice, definitely go for the MS CC.

Glad to hear that is working for you. I had a Tuning Adapter with my TiVo HD that had a multi-stream card and it constantly had problems, which is when I finally gave up on CV and went to Fios.

[TishTash]

The season passes are actually not set up by channel number but by network name. I know because when I switched from Cablevision to Fios all of my season passes moved over seamlessly, which was much better than I expected. Individual recordings, particularly those set via the manual record by time and channel, are just that, linked to a channel number.

Wow, that makes enormous sense. Thanks for the elegant explanation!

Glad to hear that is working for you. I had a Tuning Adapter with my TiVo HD that had a multi-stream card and it constantly had problems, which is when I finally gave up on CV and went to Fios.

That was me for about a couple weeks, but things have settled down. Given that the whole CC/TA setup is something of a spit-'n'-bailwire solution for an actual cable box (which has its own issues), it is a miracle that it's actually working. I take it FiOS has enough bandwidth to avoid SDV (and thereby TAs) altogether, so granted, that's one less possibe problem; does FiOS provide MS (or SS) CCs?

[TishTash]

The season passes are actually not set up by channel number but by network name....

Individual recordings, particularly those set via the manual record by time and channel, are just that, linked to a channel number.

Well, an update of sorts: Individual recordings set at the old channel number (not set up via manual record) automatically recorded at the new channel number. So perhaps that goes by network name as well.

[dbenrosen]

FIOS uses Multistream cards. They charge more for each card than CV does.

[rainwater]

Well, an update of sorts: Individual recordings set at the old channel number (not set up via manual record) automatically recorded at the new channel number. So perhaps that goes by network name as well.

Individual recordings never use the channel number they were set on originally. It goes by whatever channel the channel id is currently pointing to. The only recordings that will not move with channel changes are manual recordings based on time/channel.