Anyone have "hidden" channels?

[mdovell]

this is kinda a weird thing but I've found one (others?) hidden channels on the cable. When I mean hidden I mean on my PVR when I scan for analog ones I find some that aren't showing up on the digital cable. It's odd because it's somewhat listed on their company website. I have adelphia and BCTV shows up as channel 98 by the PVR but not on the digital (I don't exactly watch it but it's just the principal of having something hidden)

I scaned it again today and it came up with another channel. Now the tuner only recognizes analog channels so it is supposed to be up to channel 99 (I run some av cables to record beyond it). Something popped up today on 118 which showed a test pattern (color bars) with "This is only a test" in block lettering. Maybe it's just something on the side they are using for a EBS or just testing color bars

There's also one that shows up in the guide on the digtcomtv channel 990 that from what has been said on other boards is a type of community channel? I'm not sure why that would be because we have one for the public, one governmental and then one educational one already in town...

 

[NYRANGERS]

I remember back when I had Adelphia before they switched over to Comcast the Odyssey Channel was not listed on my system but I believe if you just went to channel 80 it showed up but the picture was a little fuzzy. It was cool to watch some ALF but as soon as the contract ran out they took it off. I have been all digital for 4 years now so I haven't notice any more hidden channels.

 

[mdovell]

The thing that getss to me is I emailed them and all they said back is they didn't know about the 990 channel or that one on 118...this is like back in the day of game systems that had expansion ports and reps saying "Future use"

 

[colebert]

the best hidden channels are obtained using QAM.

 

[codee]

this is kinda a weird thing but I've found one (others?) hidden channels on the cable. When I mean hidden I mean on my PVR when I scan for analog ones I find some that aren't showing up on the digital cable. It's odd because it's somewhat listed on their company website. I have adelphia and BCTV shows up as channel 98 by the PVR but not on the digital (I don't exactly watch it but it's just the principal of having something hidden)

I scaned it again today and it came up with another channel. Now the tuner only recognizes analog channels so it is supposed to be up to channel 99 (I run some av cables to record beyond it). Something popped up today on 118 which showed a test pattern (color bars) with "This is only a test" in block lettering. Maybe it's just something on the side they are using for a EBS or just testing color bars

There's also one that shows up in the guide on the digtcomtv channel 990 that from what has been said on other boards is a type of community channel? I'm not sure why that would be because we have one for the public, one governmental and then one educational one already in town...

If you see the stations on analog, but not digital, they aren't hidden by any means. That is more then likely a ingress problem that your pvr picks up when connected directly to the cable feed. When you go through your digital STB, the STB knows what is actually being fed to it, so it doesn't show the channel(s) that are in your line due to RF leafage, and just the ones that are supposed to be there. I'd be curious if these analog channels show up at a neighbor's house also, or just yours. If its just yours, then the leakage is occurring in your house. If its at neighbor's house also, then its occurring at the tap, or somewhere else up in the line even.

If they were trying to "hide" a channel, they would be of the digital variety, as they can be encrypted and not added to the programming on a STB. That way Digital cable ready TVs, along with the STBs won't pick them up.

And yes, there are some "hidden" digital channels. They aren't anything malicious though. They are a lot of times what feeds the ads in on-screen guides, menus, ONDemand, etc.

 

[mdovell]

I don't think it's an exact problem....

with the bctv thing it's mensioned on their site and shows up with just a cable ready tv....

the color bar thing I just thought was interesting because it said "This is only a test" making me think something was going to come up.

Then again the company has done odd things in the past. Once the cable channels were a bit moved and we got pay channels and didn't get others...ended up getting the washington state congressional channel (not even offered here...probably a problem with the hq office a few towns away).

 

[mnfishnut]

If I bypass the HD box and go directly into my cable input with the cable I see all the "cable ready" channels (some numbers incorrect) however I also see channels like 69-1 to 69-3, channel 85-1 to 85-10, 86-1 to 86-10 and many others like this. Some of these are HD 1080i (example 69-1). I see the local networks in HD without the box.
I would like to see a complete channel lineup. In other words everything coming in on the cable before the box sorts it out.
It appears to me I can view all the HD channels without the box.
Any one else aware of this? Any way of getting a breakdown? I suppose I can sit and scroll through them all however it is difficult to identify what channel you are looking at.
Mpls Comcast

Thanks

 

[Mike_CA]

If I bypass the HD box and go directly into my cable input with the cable I see all the "cable ready" channels (some numbers incorrect) however I also see channels like 69-1 to 69-3, channel 85-1 to 85-10, 86-1 to 86-10 and many others like this. Some of these are HD 1080i (example 69-1). I see the local networks in HD without the box.
I would like to see a complete channel lineup. In other words everything coming in on the cable before the box sorts it out.
It appears to me I can view all the HD channels without the box.
Any one else aware of this? Any way of getting a breakdown? I suppose I can sit and scroll through them all however it is difficult to identify what channel you are looking at.
Mpls Comcast

Thanks

Normally all standard channels (non package channels) as well as local HD channels are on the cable system unencrypted so they can usually be picked up with the bultin QAM digital tuner in a HDTV. If your cable system is an ADS system (Analog/Digital Simulcast), you should also pick all of the digital equivalent of all your analog channels. However, since you do not indicate any channels above channel 88, I suspect that you are on a 550 MHz system which does not have any room for ADS.

Generally premium channels and other package channels such as most of those displayed by the STB as being above channel 100 (except music and a few other channels) are on the system encrypted and even though your tuner can see the channels, it cannot unencrypt those channels.

However, ocassionally the Systems Administrator will unencrypt some channels to allow you to preview the channels (eg. Starz was unencrypted a few weeks ago) so this can be displayed by the builtin tuner or an STB without subscription. Also sometimes the Systems Administrator will accidently unencrypt package channels (eg. this week my local cable system has ESPN HD and ESPN HD2 unencrypted but I'm not sure if it is a preview or an accident).

Accidents seem to happen on a regular basis whenever the Systems Administrator adds or removes channels from the system. Usually my local national channels (NBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX) and PBS are aliased (PSIP) on the HD channels to make them appear to be on a subchannel of the analog channel (eg. 2.1, 4.1, 5.1, 7.1, 9.1) when viewing the channels with a builtin tuner. When my system was reconfigured over the past week, my digital PBS channels weren't aliased so instead of them appearing to be on 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, and 9.4 they were displayed as channels 117.1, 117.2, 117.3, and 117.4. During the reconfiguration prior to last week, the Systems Administrator forgot to configure in my local CBS HD channel so I lost that for 4 days on both the STB as well as the builtin tuner until he discovered he made a mistake.

It is very difficult to determine where each channel is on your system due to the following reasons.

• There are 3 different size cables systems (550 MHz, 750 MHz, and 860 MHz) and they probably contain diferent channels.
• Even one city could have a mixture of those systems.
• Some systems support ADS and others do not.
• Local channels vary between cities.
• Different areas of the country have channels that other parts of the country do not have (eg. Some east coast cities have UHD but California does not carry the channel).
• Channels are added or removed at different times on different systems (eg. INHD2 was removed from California and Washington but is still available in other parts of the country).
• Each System Administrator of each cable system (about 1,000 cable systems for Comcast) tweaks his cable system making errors and inconsistencies.