[JCMAN]

I'm not sure where this belief that Optimum was killing QAM in their original Northeast market (excluding Suddenlink and Service Electric) came from.

So let's split the two types of networks/service that Optimum provides in the original territory:

1. Optimum fiber. Optimum went all IPTV on this one. There was never QAM and there will never be QAM. Most subscribers don't even have the option.
2. The classic HFC network, which is what almost all subscribers are on. This one uses both. The newer Optimum One/Optimum TV (mini) boxes use IPTV. The Android, Apple TV, and Apple iOS apps also obviously use IPTV, as well as the Optimum Stream device (a branded rental Google TV device).

Then we have to split into equipment types on point #2:

1. Scientific Atlanta boxes were the backbone of Optimum for a long time. These were retired in August 2024 because they did not support a video codec newer/more efficient than MPEG-2. SA PowerKEY CableCARDs were collateral damage in October as these were the only devices remaining using PowerKEY conditional access and Optimum decided paying Vantiva for a patch/implementing said patch/running the backend services and hardware/etc. wasn't worth it for the <0.006% of households with video TV that had one or more CableCARDs.
2. Samsung HD cable boxes (the HD model is the SMT-C5320; there's a non-HD model I imagine they don't even distribute anymore) are the backbone of the original Optimum territory cable TV base. These are also QAM and have no IPTV capability. Cablevision started distributing these in the early 2010s. These use a non-PowerKEY conditional access, and they are capable of MPEG-4 and H.264 in addition to MPEG-2.
3. The Optimum One and Optimum TV boxes are IPTV based. From what I understand Optimum One boxes (one bigger box that was also the modem/gateway/wifi AP) aren't given out anymore, but the modem/gateways (generally from Ubee) and the Optimum TV boxes (formerly called the minis) are. Once you go on these boxes, Cablevision will no longer give you a QAM based box.
4. The Optimum Stream (branded Google TV device) is also IPTV obviously (no RF).

Many of us here know that IPTV is the future and it's a question of if, not when, cablecos choose to go IPTV only. There are a variety of factors from end user equipment replacement to backend equipment installation/retirement to network plans that will factor in to when in a given service area your cableco decides to call it quits on IPTV, or pursue other moves to regain bandwidth to use for internet.

For Optimum, in the OG NE territory they were relatively a laggard (compared to Comcast/Spectrum) in certain moves to reclaim bandwidth. Internet speeds lagged accordingly. Optimum's messaging has been stronger on expanding the bandwidth opportunities on the HFC network, a seeming admission that the fiber buildout is both more expensive and more time consuming than previously thought:

1. Time Warner started with switched digital video circa 2007. Optimum didn't get around to it in much of the Northeast until 2020/2021. This meant that Tivo users had to get a tuning adapter and someone knowledgeable enough to provision it right (challenging)
2. Shortly after SDV was implemented, in 2021 Optimum started moving downstream internet below 700mhz, even below 600mhz. This actually broke the internet of some long time users, because Optimum used to put wideband CATV blockers at the pedestal as a way to prevent people from watching cable TV without paying. (Obviously with essentially all channels digital and encrypted wideband CATV blockers were already pointless, but "if it ain't broke"...)
3. In Q3 2024 Optimum gives the kiss of death to Scientific Atlanta Cable boxes as they could not support MPEG-4 or H.264 video.
4. At some point, Optimum will have or will switch to having video sent as MPEG-4 or H.264. @rcliff might be the only person who can tell us this other than an Optimum insider or press release (latter unlikely, video codecs are geek stuff) because their Tivo still functions and I imagine the cablecard diagnostic menus list the codec of a channel somewhere. This will allow higher quality channels at the same bandwidth, the same quality channels with less bandwidth, or a combo thereof. (I'd say more channels same bandwidth but who are we kidding, linear Cable TV is dying.)
5. Once the bandwidth is optimized so that cable TV uses less of the downstream bandwidth, Optimum is pursuing a mid-split upgrade to get to 2gbps/200mbps (down/up) on the traditional HFC network. This was announced on the 2024 yearly earnings call by Optimum. They didn't get into the technical explanations of #3 and #4, just confirming that they are doing #5.

There is no sign that Optimum intends to imminently discontinue QAM service, nor that they have done so in any service area including Suddenlink or Service Electric as additional areas. Of course, the CableCARD end of support came with relatively little warning, and plans can always change. I still wouldn't recommend anyone on Optimum (including areas using non-SA cablecards that still work) buy new Tivo equipment, unless they're at a point where they'd be okay being told it won't work <7 months from now for whatever price they paid.

The long term direction is, however, clear. The network will go IPTV at some point.

A funny quirk of this dichotomy is for how behind Cablevision (Optimum's legacy parent) was in doing SDV and whatnot, they were extremely innovative in others. Optimum pioneered the cloud DVR (where you selected a program to record on a diskless cable STB, and then it recorded at the headend). They were sued over it and had an injunction in 2007; in 2009, the supreme court OKed it. So pioneers in some ways, laggards in others.

And I'll wind down my diatribe by talking about the split between the apps for phones/tablets: there are actually TWO apps to watch TV on Android/Apple iOS. One is just called Optimum. The other is called Optimum TV. They are functionally identical except one only works for people who have legacy QAM Samsung STB & CableCards, and the other only works for people who have IPTV based boxes. I couldn't remember which is which, but the split shows there's a split architecture. And as mentioned earlier - once you switch out of the Samsung STBs to IPTV, they won't let you go back. However, the Samsung boxes are everywhere here - pretty much any business you go to with a TV or friend/family member's house that has Cablevision has a Samsung box. The IPTV based hardware is essentially nowhere because it gained a terrible reputation on first rollout and the Samsung boxes work fine, so people just exchange for another Samsung box if they have problems.

Thanks for attending my TED Talk!

 

[cshilton]

I'm not sure where this belief that Optimum was killing QAM in their original Northeast market (excluding Suddenlink and Service Electric) came from.
...

Thanks for attending my TED Talk!

Thanks, not to change the subject but I'm running a MythTV on Optimum right now. My capture stack is a Hauppage HD-PVR backing up a Samsung box. I change channels via an IR blaster. Aside from MythTV's brittleness, this all works great. For those not in the know, the HD-PVR is a USB device that converts Component video into H.264 available as a stream at your computer's USB ports. No, you don't want one because they are limited to 1080i video.

Change of subject question: I have a set of channels, at least two, that won't tune on the Component Video connected Samsung box behind my MythTV. TBS and FOOD-TV are two of the channels. I have a second HDMI connected Samsung box directly connected to my TV. The HDMI box tunes these channels just fine.

I'm asking because the people here seem to have a lot of technical information on the Optimum HFC network. If you have insights on why a small set of channels won't tune, feel free to PM me about it. I'm not ready to start a new topic and this isn't the right place to publicaly discuss MythTV anyhow.

Lastly, yeah, a future test will be to swap boxes and see if it's all Samsung boxes + component or just my MythTV one.

Pardon the interruption.

 

[northbanker]

I'm not sure where this belief that Optimum was killing QAM in their original Northeast market (excluding Suddenlink and Service Electric) came from.

...

Thanks for attending my TED Talk!

Wow, you have deep knowledge of the Optimum provider infrastructure. Thanks for sharing that, even though I had to look up a couple of acronyms!

I wonder if you or anyone else can confirm an assumption I've been making about my Tivo's that used to work with mCards...

As I understood it, the key functionality of the internal mCard is that it allowed the Tivo OS to find/switch/record a specific channel for a specific time/duration. So when Optimum stopped supporting mCards my Tivo could no longer do that channel switching.

Then I cast my memory back to a time when my original Series 2 Tivo didn't have cablecard compatibility and it used a slightly hokey IR gizmo which connected by wires from my Tivo and then acted as a remote control to my Cablevision set top box.

The other poster directly below you (@cshilton) talked about some sort of IR blaster that he used (perhaps) to do the kind of channel switching that my old Tivo did. So here's my question...

With more modern Tivos, is it NOT possible to fashion an IR psuedo-remote-controller like this? I've been assuming that it's NOT, but I figured I should just validate that assumption.

TIA!

 

[cwoody222]

With more modern Tivos, is it NOT possible to fashion an IR psuedo-remote-controller like this? I've been assuming that it's NOT, but I figured I should just validate that assumption.

TIA!

No. There is no (remotely useful) way to do that.

Your TiVo needs a CableCard supplied by your provider to function.

 

[JCMAN]

Change of subject question: I have a set of channels, at least two, that won't tune on the Component Video connected Samsung box behind my MythTV. TBS and FOOD-TV are two of the channels. I have a second HDMI connected Samsung box directly connected to my TV. The HDMI box tunes these channels just fine.

Optimum's own Samsung boxes handle switched digital video fine, and I don't believe either of those channels you mentioned are switched regardless. I would be suspect of a signal issue. If you wanted certainty, you could try bringing the HDMI box that works with something like a computer monitor to the point where the coaxial cable connection is for the MythTV box, and then see if the channels tune at that location.

If you have an older ARRIS modem on Optimum, you can get signal levels (for the internet) at http://192.168.100.1 in a web browser. Unfortunately the newer Optimum gateways by Ubee do not provide signal level information.It's not 100% 1:1 because you may have fewer/different set of splitters and in home wiring, but if the signal levels are marginal on the modem, it's very possible that your drop from the street is bad.

My parents had issues with a tuning adapter and certain channels/internet hiccups on Spectrum, finally got a truck roll and a tech, the tech took a measurement first at the wall plate (not fully tightened, fixed that for free), then at the splitter, then the drop (the cable coming into the house), signal still bad. He then went up the pole and measured the drop from the pole to the ground, that cable was bad. About 20 minutes later and the signal levels were insanely good - actually so hot that I had to switch them from an actively amplified 5 port splitter (no loss either direction) to a non-amplified splitter that lost a few dB on every output.

(Counterintuitively, it is possible for your signal to be too hot, and it can cause issues similar to weak signal for cable internet. For downstream you want your signal to be between +/- 7 dBmV, with 0dBmV being ideal.)

Optimum hates truck rolls and will threaten you with an $80 charge if it turns out being from wiring in your home. I used to use the modem's diagnostics page as a way to get certainty on that, now my Ubee gateway lacks this.

Actually doing some research, you can access a diagnostic page on the Samsung cable box. Note that in this example image, the Forward data channel (Optimum backend -> Samsung STB) is yellow for non-ideal signal, and the inbound quality is red, indicating that the strength of the channel on that frequency is bad enough where it's likely to impact operation of the STB.

 

[northbanker]

If you have an older ARRIS modem on Optimum, you can get signal levels (for the internet) at http://192.168.100.1 in a web browser. Unfortunately the newer Optimum gateways by Ubee do not provide signal level information.

At risk of taking this thread further off-topic, but because you seem to know quite a bit, I'd like to quickly ask this:

I use Optimum for Internet. Been using an old Arris modem for several years. But a month or so ago, after a tech support call, they shipped me a new modem/router to install, that they said would allow me to get better speeds. It's an Altice 44378. But I wanted to pre-disable all WiFi on this new router because I have my own WAP's. So I patched my laptop to the Altice, hoping to locally manage its settings, but no luck... no local webpage to login to. It seems it's only manageable via Optimum's web portal? Is this true? There's no way to manage these newer routers locally??

TIA again!

 

[JCMAN]

At risk of taking this thread further off-topic, but because you seem to know quite a bit, I'd like to quickly ask this:

I use Optimum for Internet. Been using an old Arris modem for several years. But a month or so ago, after a tech support call, they shipped me a new modem/router to install, that they said would allow me to get better speeds. It's an Altice 44378. But I wanted to pre-disable all WiFi on this new router because I have my own WAP's. So I patched my laptop to the Altice, hoping to locally manage its settings, but no luck... no local webpage to login to. It seems it's only manageable via Optimum's web portal? Is this true? There's no way to manage these newer routers locally??

TIA again!

In the interest of keeping this thread on topic, I will reach out to you via direct message.

 

[northbanker]

In the interest of keeping this thread on topic, I will reach out to you via direct message.

Yes, perfect approach.

 

[cshilton]

Optimum's own Samsung boxes handle switched digital video fine, and I don't believe either of those channels you mentioned are switched regardless. I would be suspect of a signal issue. If you wanted certainty, you could try bringing the HDMI box that works with something like a computer monitor to the point where the coaxial cable connection is for the MythTV box, and then see if the channels tune at that location.

If you have an older ARRIS modem on Optimum, you can get signal levels (for the internet) at http://192.168.100.1 in a web browser. Unfortunately the newer Optimum gateways by Ubee do not provide signal level information.It's not 100% 1:1 because you may have fewer/different set of splitters and in home wiring, but if the signal levels are marginal on the modem, it's very possible that your drop from the street is bad.

My parents had issues with a tuning adapter and certain channels/internet hiccups on Spectrum, finally got a truck roll and a tech, the tech took a measurement first at the wall plate (not fully tightened, fixed that for free), then at the splitter, then the drop (the cable coming into the house), signal still bad. He then went up the pole and measured the drop from the pole to the ground, that cable was bad. About 20 minutes later and the signal levels were insanely good - actually so hot that I had to switch them from an actively amplified 5 port splitter (no loss either direction) to a non-amplified splitter that lost a few dB on every output.

(Counterintuitively, it is possible for your signal to be too hot, and it can cause issues similar to weak signal for cable internet. For downstream you want your signal to be between +/- 7 dBmV, with 0dBmV being ideal.)

Optimum hates truck rolls and will threaten you with an $80 charge if it turns out being from wiring in your home. I used to use the modem's diagnostics page as a way to get certainty on that, now my Ubee gateway lacks this.

Actually doing some research, you can access a diagnostic page on the Samsung cable box. Note that in this example image, the Forward data channel (Optimum backend -> Samsung STB) is yellow for non-ideal signal, and the inbound quality is red, indicating that the strength of the channel on that frequency is bad enough where it's likely to impact operation of the STB.
View attachment 104709

 

[cshilton]

Optimum's own Samsung boxes handle switched digital video fine, and I don't believe either of those channels you mentioned are switched regardless. I would be suspect of a signal issue. If you wanted certainty, you could try bringing the HDMI box that works with something like a computer monitor to the point where the coaxial cable connection is for the MythTV box, and then see if the channels tune at that location.

...

Surprisingly enough, I do have an Arris Cablemodem at the house. But, I should just stop asking silly questions before diagnosing things thoroughly. I apologize about the noise. The issue was that the cable was loose on the "wall" side. Standard PEBKAC error.

To your point about splitting the signal, my connection starts with a three way splitter at the direct to the street side. I take a -7.5 db tap and that goes to the Arris Cablemodem. I take the other tap and that goes to an 8-way Winegard active splitter / amplifier. The signal coming into the house is in range for the cablemodem but the passive splitter arrangement I used to have lowered the signal to much and my TiVos had problems. Of course this was back in the Jack Bauer / "24" days.

 

[JCMAN]

To your point about splitting the signal, my connection starts with a three way splitter at the direct to the street side. I take a -7.5 db tap and that goes to the Arris Cablemodem. I take the other tap and that goes to an 8-way Winegard active splitter / amplifier. The signal coming into the house is in range for the cablemodem but the passive splitter arrangement I used to have lowered the signal to much and my TiVos had problems. Of course this was back in the Jack Bauer / "24" days.

Your setup sounds pretty good for what you're doing, and probably not in need of any changes. If you do have issues, I have no issues at my location with Optimum using an 8-way PPC tap with an integrated MoCA filter. I don't use the passive output and the only con of that is that Optimum voice service won't work unless I have a UPS/generator power to the splitter, but with Optimum neglecting to maintain any of the battery/backup power equipment at the local node, once the power goes out OV isn't going to work power to the modem/splitter or not.