Liver&Onions

So I've got an interesting thing happening with my new TV and cable service, I'm really curious as to what's happening and hope someone out here knows what's going on.

Some backstory - I had a standard TV with a very limited cable package from Comcast I'd get all local channels, plus some other basic channels for $8 month (discovery, E, AMC).

I recently bought a Samsung HDTV with build in tuner and cablecard. When I connected my TV and scanned the channels, I ended up having over 300 channels "available" on the DTV band. When I say available, I mean I can flip to the channel but nothing is on it - usually. Some channels sometimes do get a nice clear signal and I end up with top tier channels that I shouldn't (ESPN, ESPN2, Cartoon Network, etc).

Is this because the TV amplifies the weak signal and is able to extract the data well enough through the inline filter that Comcast put on to prevent these channels?

The strangest part that I really want to know about is three channels in particular are odd. They look to be movie channels, or something that shows new movies. I've been able to watch shows like North Country, Jarhead and even new Soprano episodes on these channels. Then last night something strange happened. I flipped over to one of these channels and something equivilent to Skinimax was on, which I had no problem with. Then when the gyrations stopped and the talking scenes began, the show fast forwarded to the "action"... but it wasn't a smooth FFWD, and looked obvious of human interaction. Am I tapped into someone else's OnDemand feed? This is what I think because the person watching the show (who had control of it) even paused for a few seconds, rewound and rewatched a certain scene

Now I do not have the cable card installed in my TV, I have not touched the cable input to the house (the filter is still on), and am just really curious as to what's happening. Any insight would be nice to read.

Brian Shannon

Who knows with cable?

As far as the channels being "available" it probably is a case where the channel is a place holder for some future programming, I see things on my Direct TV HD and there is a message that says future programming.

As for the other things, that is why I got rid of cable.

Leedguitar

That's pretty funny. Ask your neighbor how his movie was... especially the part he kept watching over and over.

dleedlee

I read about something similar on another forum. I don't recall the details but it was a similar situation as yours. When the cable installer hooked you up he didn't actively block the premium channels, so in effect you're getting someone else's feed.

Liver&Onions

lol. yeah it's creepy. I watched him fast forward through a couple foreign films the other night looking for breasts.