[olug] Slightly OT: COX digital channel numbers (mythTV users?)

[Daniel Linder]

On Wed, July 26, 2006 12:08, Sean Kelly wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 11:30:42AM -0500, Daniel Linder wrote:
>> Someone wrote:
>> >> Okay. Here's what I get:
> I'm just a "Someone" now? I see how it is.

Sorry -- the attribution got lost in all the reply links...

>> He says that just recently they posted a list of the COX Omaha QAM
>> channels.  He also said that COX is looking at switching to a system
>> that
>> defines QAM channels on the fly, which will makes our work more
>> difficult.
>
> Right. As I understand it, it dynamically allocates channels as they are
> requested. In this way, they only need to push you the channels you
> actually need, thus saving them a ton of bandwidth over coax. Ars mentions
> it briefly here: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060605-6985.html

I assume that this means that the HDTV tuner has to send a signal to the
central office that says "I'd like to watch a pay-per-view movie - please
set it up on a free QAM channel for me."?  I assume the digital cable
signals are still broadcast to all subscribers in a neighborhood
indiscriminantly, or is each house treated as a separate node and the
signal my TV gets different than the one my neighbor gets?

I would suppose that the ability to masquerade as a digital TV tuner will
require some sort of encryption key to talk with the central office so
they can say which customer requested which pay-per-view movie.

I'll have to check out AVForums and brush up on the HDTV / digital TV
facts...

Dan

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