Clear QAM-tunable Digital TV Channels on Memphis Comcast Basic Cable

UPDATE: This will be my last update to this post, mid-January 2012, since I unsubscribed from Comcast's new version of Limited Basic being phased in after January 24, 2012.

Here's why:

Armed with its FCC waiver to use their Digital-To-Analog set top boxes (whoops, I think they want us to call them "Digital Transport Adapters," still DTA though, right ;-), I believe they will finally shrink what was visible with your HDTV's QAM tuner down to: (1) the legally-mandated handful of local broadcast stations; (2) a few public access channels retained as an ongoing sop to local and national politicians who make the rules and approve price increases; and (3) shopping channels they get a cut from. Oh, and (4) a regional sports channel they can exploit for revenue from the Grizzlies and Memphis State basketball.

This was done to recapture the bandwidth formerly used for their Enhanced Basic product, so they can squeeze more digital channels into their pipe. It will be interesting to see if the federally required-to-be-non-degraded local digital broadcast stations' signals even survive as such via clear QAM.

For the life of me, I can't see how Comcast can describe bringing you local digital broadcast channels as digital when their free, FCC-waivered DTA's only output analog. Let's put it this way: these devices RECEIVE digital; but they only output ANALOG.

Perhaps Comcast will at least leave the undegraded true digital signals from our local broadcast stations on the cable in the locations as listed in another post of mine or some new locations, but I'm not holding my breath, and I'm not going to be doing any testing from now on, because:

I cancelled all TV service from Comcast last week. I figured, with Limited Basic being limited to channels 2-19 and the price going up to $20.95 per month, I'd try plugging a VHF/UHF antenna in and have a look and see how much I missed the public access stuff. I did ask the agent what it would cost to get Enhanced (now renamed "Expanded") Basic, and she told me I'd have to get one of the digital packages, Digital Starter, I think, at $55.00 per month! This was after seeing the better pictures that come to me less compressed when broadcast than when carried over cable's QAM scheme.

Check this out yourself: borrow a VHF/UHF antenna if you have to, unscrew the cable connector from your HDTV, and screw in the antenna connector. Change your HDTV's tuner to Air instead of Cable, let it scan for broadcast channels, and have a look. Wow! And the channels are numbered the way it makes the most sense, the FCC-mediated way, not the greedy cable corporation way: sticking subchannels and even main channels up at some strange ungodly number, and then haggling over numbering, subchannel carriage, and retransmission consent fees with local broadcasters, who themselves are trying to get in on some of the cable oligopolies' gravy from lazy customers, to go along with their traditional advertising revenue that cable cannot deprive them of.

I still have Comcast for broadband and will likely stick with them until AT&T builds "last mile" fiber optic to the customer or a wireless broadband company like Clearwire moves into the market here as it has into Nashville.

Meanwhile, I am WAY happier with the commercial-free movies and documentaries I get over my Roku box and Netflix subscription and the growing multitude of free or reasonably priced à la carte program sources, than I ever was with any of these cable company bundles.

It's called "cord-cutting", people; and it's what's happening. Look into it. Save bundles on cable's absurd bundles. Stop renting equipment from them too that you have to have to access all those channels. Oh, and did you know you can buy your own cable modem cheap and Comcast has to let you use it if it's compatible and on their extensive approved list? Read about THAT here!

UPDATE: What I describe above was done with an HDTV with the modern, ATSC tuner ready to receive digital broadcasts. The same can be done, however, using one of the broadcast digital to analog converter boxes the U.S. government subsidized to ease the adoption of digital broadcast television. There are lots of those boxes floating around as people replace analog TV sets with HDTV sets and no longer need the boxes.

BEGIN original post:

This list will change as Memphis Comcast engineers move channels around from one number to another and scramble and unscramble and even remove some of them from time to time. Click this term "Clear QAM" for a Wiki introduction to the subject.  If you have a fairly recent cable-ready HDTV, it can probably tune these channels in.  Just bypass any Comcast set-top box you're using and screw the cable connector straight in to your TV.  The best discussion of this Clear QAM on Comcast thing I've found is at this link.  If you're ready to change the way you consume and pay for entertainment, emphasizing choice made possible by broadband Internet, this may be the a useful method not to "cut the (cable TV) cord" entirely.  Experiment!

UPDATE: This article will explain what's going on technologically and legally.

The virtual channel numbers without decimal points are analog channels.  The Clear QAM channel numbers with decimal points are digital and sharper than their analog versions.  The whole number channels above 69 are not tunable without one of Comcast's set-top boxes.

QAM	Comcast	Name	Description	Picture
107.4	1	On Demand	small box only, no functionality
63.12	2	WREG	CBS	4x3
3.1/99.x	803	WREG-HD	CBS	16x9
3.2/63.4	930	WREG2-SD	News/Weather 24/ 7	4x3
66.5	919	WREG DT3	Antenna: old series & movies	4x3
63.9	4	WMC	NBC	4x3
5.1/80.x	805	WMC-HD	NBC	16x9
5.2	906	WMC2-SD	Weather 24/7	4x3
5.3	905	WMC3-SD	This TV: old series & movies	4x3
79.4	6	C-SPAN	U.S. House & public affairs	4x3
63.10	7	WPTY	ABC	4x3
81.4	807	WPTY-HD	ABC	16x9
81.5/112.13	915	WPTY-DT2	TheCoolTV: music videos	4x3
63.8	8	WLMT	CW	4x3
81.8	809	WLMT-HD	CW	16x9
65.14	911	WLMT2-SD	MeTV: old series	4x3
63.7	9	WKNO	PBS	4x3
10.1	810	WKNO-HD	PBS	16x9
10.2	910	WKNO2-SD	Create TV	4x3
63.5	10	WBUY	Trinity Br. Net. (Christian)	4x3
63.11	11	WPXX	ION	4x3
20.9	808	WPXX-HD	ION	16x9
63.6	12	WHBQ	Fox	4x3
13.1	813	WHBQ-HD	Fox	16x9
79.6	13	QVC	Quality Value Channel	4x3
65.4	14	WTWV	Christian Worldview Br. Corp.	4x3
65.1	15	WTWV-DT2	Flinn station; old B&W	4x3
79.5	16	HSN	Home Shopping Network	4x3
98.5	17	PubAc	Local public access	4x3
75.7	18	LIBRARY	Memphis Public Library	4x3
98.6	19	SCHOOL	Memphis City Schools	4x3
76.12	22	WGN	WGN Chicago	4x3
79.9	84	CSPAN2	Public affairs	4x3
66.2	87	INSP	Religious	4x3
65.5	89	ShopNBC	Yet another shopping channel	4x3
65.11	101	RADAR	Comcast Weatherscan local	4x3
75.5	151	HiEd/EWTN	Catholic	4x3
74.26	727	MCKID	Music Choice Kidz Only!	4x3
65.6		Corner Store	Infomercials 24/7/365	4x3
98.8		KATV	Little Rock, AR (ABC)	4x3
98.9		Local	West Memphis weather/info	4x3
98.10		MSCC	Mid-South Community College	4x3
98.11		KVTJ	Jonesboro, AR (Christian)	4x3

For a printable list, click here.

Memphis Comcast Price Increase

(This is a letter I just wrote and sent off to City officials and the news media.  Let's see if it does any good.  I will update this post one way or the other.)

(UPDATED to recount how I bought my own cable modem instead of leasing Comcast's.)

I just got an email notice of my bill for January's Comcast Basic Cable and Performance Internet, and I saw a total increase of 6.9% over my bill for December.

They went up 3% on Basic Cable, from $17.95 to $18.50.

They went up 8.342% on Performance Internet, designated as a $2, or 40%, increase in their "Modem Lease" fee; and a $2, or 4.66%, increase for the service itself.

{I had never seen where they offer to let us buy a cable modem and use it instead of leasing theirs, but I had a vague memory that the FCC required them to do so; so I looked that up on their site, and lo and behold they have a page of approved modems that you can buy and place in service in place of the ones they lease.  On that list, I liked the Motorola SB6120 because it is of recent vintage, supports DOCSIS 3.0 for higher speed access, and will likely have a service life of at least several years on Comcast and other cable ISP's. That model has been replaced by the SB6121, that Comcast likes even better, at about the same price, $85.  Do the math: $7/mo. to lease a modem from Comcast x 12 months = $84.  After the first year, I'm going to save $84/yr.+tax!  So I went and bought one and went through the process of substituting it for their older RCA DOCSIS 2.0 job.  All I can say about the performance of the new modem is WOW!}

I never saw any notice of these fee increases from Comcast itself, by our local news media, or by my "Local FCC Franchise Authority, City of Memphis," whose authority permits Comcast to use city rights of way to make their income here.

I am calling on Mayor Wharton and the City Council to call this distantly-owned corporation into their offices to explain why we are getting such large price increases when the economy is in such bad shape.

I am also suggesting that Herman Morris' plan to provide Internet access as a part of our publicly-owned utility company needs to be revisited, but this time without needless rich insider shareholders, so that our city can provide us with guaranteed Net Neutrality, and this time with the power and authority also to provide a la carte TV channels over our City-owned rights of way, in competition with the two monopolistic-minded oligopolists who are the only real providers in Memphis: Comcast and AT&T (not counting the few companies providing some form of Internet access through cell-phone towers).  It can be looked at this way: our governments build and maintain roads; and the Internet is just the electronic road of the future, and one that cannot be subject to the whims and profiteering of a private company. 

For those who never saw the names of the needless insiders who got in on the Networx thing, I tracked them down and published them on my inimitable, if lately neglected, blog:

http://dailydocket.blogspot.com/2007/08/memphis-networx-local-investors.html

I challenge our local news media to look into this large price increase, realizing local TV station employees may in so doing be bucking their own stations, some or all of which may be in the process of negotiating for higher fees from Comcast and AT&T for allowing their signals to be carried on cable, rather than being satisfied with the "must-carry" provisions of federal law and making their traditional revenue through advertisements.  I suspect from considerable study of these matters that broadcast outlets wish to partake of the "monopoly"-style profits enjoyed by cable companies with the complicity of local government entities which share in those profits through fees charged to those companies, which fees are passed through to cable customers.

Wharton v. Norris: Showdown in Ho Town

The Vote - Memphis City Schools Charter Surrender 01/12/11 from Mayor Wharton on Vimeo.