# IPTV Questions



## semaj (7 mo ago)

There are many references to IPTV in this forum but not a lot of info easily digestible by the common man. Would someone be kind enough to provide some pedestrian background for the uninformed? Recently, I switched from fios to xfinity. With xfinity there are some channels that are not displayed (e.g. newsmax on 1115). Question 1: is it true that some channels in the xfinity line-up (Popular 125+) use QAM and others use IPTV? Question 2: Is it true that Tivo does not process IPTV? Question 3: How do I identify the protocol used by each channel? Don't want to waste time troubleshooting channels that cannot be processed by my Bolt2. Thanks!


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## WVZR1 (Jul 31, 2008)

1). It certainly is 'true' there are QAM & IPTV, 2). again 'true', 3). IPTV varies market to market still I believe.

I don't recall ever seeing seeing a 'published' list of those IPTV by 'market'.

You might add your zip code and market to your post.

Back in 2020 someone posted a list of maybe 60+ channels/networks that were IPTV but many also responded that in 'their market' many were still available.


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## semaj (7 mo ago)

Sorry, my market is zipcode 32259 (Jacksonville, FL). When going to xfinity support, they go to the standard trouble cards (reboot cable box, pair cable card, cable box software update, new cable box). Then they tell you anything to get the ticket closed. Tech support was not aware of QAM vs IPTV problems. Apparently, there is scant knowledge of this problem at the lower support levels. Although, suppose their final solution (new xfinity cable box) would have provided my missing channel.


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## WVZR1 (Jul 31, 2008)

semaj said:


> Sorry, my market is zipcode 32259 (Jacksonville, FL). When going to xfinity support, they go to the standard trouble cards (reboot cable box, pair cable card, cable box software update, new cable box). Then they tell you anything to get the ticket closed. Tech support was not aware of QAM vs IPTV problems. Apparently, there is scant knowledge of this problem at the lower support levels. Although, suppose their final solution (new xfinity cable box) would have provided my missing channel.


I'm certainly CableCARD until QAM goes away, with Comcast/Xfinity. I also have an XG1V4 X1 box and it ain't TiVo but it's certainly a quality and versatile device. I have one to my 'primary' TV with an HDMI 'splitter' to my other display. I use it frequently. If my Roamio + and Mini(s) weren't 'lifetime' the XG1V4 would do me well.

** Xfinity 'Smart Resume' always works! I'd suggest maybe getting an XG1V4 for a month or so and 'try it'.


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## lart2150 (Jul 9, 2002)

I used to have tv service from comcast and there was some page the listed what required ip but you might want to check Xfinity TV Local Channel Line-up while logged in. 

While you can't record with your tivo you might want to look at using xfinity streem with a roku. It's similar to the streaming website Watch TV Online, Stream Episodes and Movies | Xfinity Stream and last I looked there was still no extra cost. Depending on your plan you might have some cloud dvr storage.


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## kdmorse (Jan 29, 2001)

> Question 1: is it true that some channels in the xfinity line-up (Popular 125+) use QAM and others use IPTV?


Yes. Most commonly, less popular channels, or new HD channel versions of existing channels. Newsmax is a channel that has in many markets been moved to IPTV only. (Some channels are IPTV HD, yet still carry the QAM version in SD)

Question 2: Is it true that Tivo does not process IPTV? 

Yes. And likely never will. 

Question 3: How do I identify the protocol used by each channel? Don't want to waste time troubleshooting channels that cannot be processed by my Bolt2.

Unfortunately, Xfinity does not make this easy. Or, really, they don't make it possible. When a channel moves to IPTV, or a new IPTV only channel is added to the lineup, there's a little service note in your bill that month that says something like "requires compatible Xfinity equipment", and that's it. Xfinity does not itself advertise which channels have moved to IPTV. When a customer calls with a problem on one of those channels the rep is supposed to simply push a new cable box which can tune the channel seamlessly. When Tivo's were popular, front line reps barely knew they existed, and now that they're such a small percentage of the user base, front line reps are not trained to deal with Tivo users in any useful way. Xfinity's basic answer is that if you use their current boxes, you receive all channels, if you use anything else, you're on your own.

Sadly, the best answer channel by channel is to google, or ask here if anyone knows. Newsmax specifically we've come across before, and is IPTV in most markets.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

DSLReports or AVSForum probably has info on which channels are which. Newsmax and ITV24 are both IPTV-only. TiVo is technically capable of IPTV, but there is no requirement for Comcast to allow third party equipment to be able to access it, therefore they don't.

I _think_ you can get those channels through the XFinity app anyway, there's nothing that's more than a curiosity unless you're Jewish or have some other connection to Israel for ITV24, and whatever the other channels are were so notable that I can't remember them off the top of my head.


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## chiguy50 (Nov 9, 2009)

semaj said:


> There are many references to IPTV in this forum but not a lot of info easily digestible by the common man. Would someone be kind enough to provide some pedestrian background for the uninformed? Recently, I switched from fios to xfinity. With xfinity there are some channels that are not displayed (e.g. newsmax on 1115). Question 1: is it true that some channels in the xfinity line-up (Popular 125+) use QAM and others use IPTV? Question 2: Is it true that Tivo does not process IPTV? Question 3: How do I identify the protocol used by each channel? Don't want to waste time troubleshooting channels that cannot be processed by my Bolt2. Thanks!


You can find an easy reference to which channels are delivered by Xfinity via IPTV by looking at the channel line-up card for your service area (see the attached example). The IPTV channels are identified with the footnote "Requires designated Xfinity TV service and X1 TV Box or compatible customer owned device." 

These cards are published periodically so look for the most recent one. You may even have gotten an email from Comcast with a link to the card for your area when it was published. If not, you can call support and ask to have a copy mailed to you (make sure to ask for the published line-up card as opposed to the on-line channel listing).



kdmorse said:


> Unfortunately, Xfinity does not make this easy. Or, really, they don't make it possible.


Not true; see the above.


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## WVZR1 (Jul 31, 2008)

I've tried several ways to get to that .pdf publication using the web and Xfinity. I've been unable to! The 'Rate Card' isn't an issue. How about providing the OP one for his 'zip code/market'. Maybe one for me also Ranson/Jefferson County WV 25414?

If the OP were near an Xfinity Store maybe just do a 'walk in'?

***Yours that you posted could actually be used by 'most/many' as a reference.


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## chiguy50 (Nov 9, 2009)

WVZR1 said:


> I've tried several ways to get to that .pdf publication using the web and Xfinity. I've been unable to! The 'Rate Card' isn't an issue. How about providing the OP one for his 'zip code/market'. Maybe one for me also Ranson/Jefferson County WV 25414?
> 
> If the OP were near an Xfinity Store maybe just do a 'walk in'?
> 
> ***Yours that you posted could actually be used by 'most/many' as a reference.


Unfortunately, it's no longer easy (possible?) to find the current published channel lineup card on-line for a specific locality.

However, if you call Comcast support and provide them with your account information, they are authorized to have a printed copy sent to you in the mail and they might even be able to send you an email or text with a hyperlink to the on-line .pdf file. Also, if you receive an email from Comcast with a subject line "Open for Important Xfinity TV Notices" that should provide you with an active hyperlink to the document if it was recently revised.

Sadly, many front-line CSRs confuse the generic channel listing with the published lineup card and will refer you to the former rather than the latter. You have to specify that you need the *current published "Channel Lineup" document for your service area*. Even then, confusion may reign.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

You should get an email every year with a link to a PDF rate card for your area. For actual pricing, they are nearly undecipherable, this is on purpose, but for a channel lineup, they are semi-readable.


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## CinciDVR (May 24, 2014)

chiguy50 said:


> kdmorse said:
> 
> 
> > Unfortunately, Xfinity does not make this easy. Or, really, they don't make it possible.
> ...





chiguy50 said:


> Unfortunately, it's no longer easy (possible?) to find the current published channel lineup card on-line for a specific locality.





chiguy50 said:


> Sadly, many front-line CSRs confuse the generic channel listing with the published lineup card and will refer you to the former rather than the latter. You have to specify that you need the *current published "Channel Lineup" document for your service area*. Even then, confusion may reign.


If you can't find it online, and you have to tell a CSR exactly what it's called (and even then confusion might reign), aren't you saying exactly what @kdmorse said (i.e. Xfinity doesn't make it easy or perhaps not even possible)?


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## chiguy50 (Nov 9, 2009)

CinciDVR said:


> If you can't find it online, and you have to tell a CSR exactly what it's called (and even then confusion might reign), aren't you saying exactly what @kdmorse said (i.e. Xfinity doesn't make it easy or perhaps not even possible)?


If it were not possible (to determine which Comcast CATV channels are delivered via IPTV), then the document I posted would not exist. But it clearly does exist.

As far as easy, that I suppose is a subjective question (and one which I did not directly address). If you get the email from Comcast, all you need do is to click on the hyperlink to download the "Channel Lineup" card. Otherwise, a visit to an Xfinity store or a phone call to a CSR *should* suffice to obtain a printed document. Then it's just a matter of being able to read (and decipher) the listing. In today's video distribution marketplace (where there is a plethora of VOD apps which perform differently depending on the streaming platform and the phase of the moon), I would say that's a relatively easy process.


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## ITGrouch (Jan 7, 2015)

I was the person that posted the list of Comcast IPTV channels that I received from Comcast corporate back in November 2020. I am posting the list below but please note, some of the channels may no longer be in existence, no longer carried by Comcast, or may not be a IPTV channel in your area. The best way to check if one of the channels listed below is IPTV in your area, is to use your TiVo. If all you get is a black screen or a message that it is searching for signal, etc., then that channel is IPTV. There may be more channels that Comcast has moved to IPTV since November 2020.

I hope this helps.


Afro HD
Aspire TV HD
Band International HD
BET HER HD
BBC World News HD
Black News Channel HD
C-SPAN HD
C-SPAN2 HD
C-SPAN3 HD
CLEO HD
Comedy.TV HD
Cooking Channel HD
CTC
Discovery Family HD
DIY Network HD
FOX Sports 2 HD
FOX Deportes HD
Galavisión HD
Hallmark Drama SD and HD
i24NEWS HD
Jewelry TV HD
JusticeCentral.TV HD
MTV2 HD
NDTV 24x7
Newsmax TV HD
Nick 2 HD
Nick Jr. HD
Nick Toons HD
NTV America
Ovation HD
Pac-12 National HD
Pac-12 Regional HD
POP TV HD
QVC2 HD and SD
QVC3 HD and SD
Rai Italia HD
Recipe.TV HD
Revolt HD
RTR-Planeta
Rossiya 24
SEC Overflow HD
Smithsonian HD
Sundance HD and SD
Teen Nick HD
The Filipino Channel (TFC)
TUDN HD
TV Asia HD
TV JAPAN HD
TV5MONDE HD
Universo HD (formerly NBC Universo) (E&W)
Univision HD
UniMás HD
WGN America HD
Willow TV HD
Zee TV HD
Z Living HD
Zona Fútbol HD and SD


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## ITGrouch (Jan 7, 2015)

chiguy50 said:


> If it were not possible (to determine which Comcast CATV channels are delivered via IPTV), then the document I posted would not exist. But it clearly does exist.
> 
> As far as easy, that I suppose is a subjective question (and one which I did not directly address). If you get the email from Comcast, all you need do is to click on the hyperlink to download the "Channel Lineup" card. Otherwise, a visit to an Xfinity store or a phone call to a CSR *should* suffice to obtain a printed document. Then it's just a matter of being able to read (and decipher) the listing. In today's video distribution marketplace (where there is a plethora of VOD apps which perform differently depending on the streaming platform and the phase of the moon), I would say that's a relatively easy process.
> [/QUOTE
> ...


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## chiguy50 (Nov 9, 2009)

Good find!


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## WVZR1 (Jul 31, 2008)

Yes very good find! Now I guess I just wait and see just how many days it really takes. I wonder if maybe after the request they provide a person with an 'acknowledgement' it was received.






Sign in to Xfinity


Get the most out of Xfinity from Comcast by signing in to your account. Enjoy and manage TV, high-speed Internet, phone, and home security services that work seamlessly together — anytime, anywhere, on any device.




www.xfinity.com


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## semaj (7 mo ago)

A snip of the 32259 area channel line-up is attached. I'll keep looking a a better one. So does tivo exist by the benevolence comcast? Isn't it definite that in the near future all TV will be IPTV? Isn't this TV evolution similar to telephony going from circuit switched systems to VoIP? If all TV will be IPTV how can tivo not get onboard? On the other hand, if providers will not forward data streams to tivo then there is no reason for tivo to exist. For me, the whole point of tivo is to record content either without commercials, or to be able to skip commercials once recorded. Can xfinity dvrs do this for IPTV and QAM? How can this be done with streamed channels? I can watch newsmax in stream mode via roku or TCL TV but don't know of a way to filter commercials. Thanks for all of the great comments!


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

semaj said:


> A snip of the 32259 area channel line-up is attached. I'll keep looking a a better one. So does tivo exist by the benevolence comcast? Isn't it definite that in the near future all TV will be IPTV?


Two different issues. There was never a mandate for IPTV to support third-party STBs as there was until September of 2020 for QAM via CableCard. Comcast and Cox both have licensing deals for DVR IP related to X1/Contour that may include an agreement to support TiVo on QAM that is above, beyond, and separate from the now-defunct FCC mandate. It also may be simply that Comcast has by far the most CableCard users in the US, and doesn't want to bleed pay-TV subs any faster than they already are, even though their business is fundamentally broadband now, not TV.



> Isn't this TV evolution similar to telephony going from circuit switched systems to VoIP? If all TV will be IPTV how can tivo not get onboard? On the other hand, if providers will not forward data streams to tivo then there is no reason for tivo to exist. For me, the whole point of tivo is to record content either without commercials, or to be able to skip commercials once recorded. Can xfinity dvrs do this for IPTV and QAM? How can this be done with streamed channels? I can watch newsmax in stream mode via roku or TCL TV but don't know of a way to filter commercials. Thanks for all of the great comments!


OTA. That's the present and future of the DVR market, at least as long as OTA exists. Pay TV has been in a death spiral for 6+ years now, so it's not like access to IPTV would magically make things better for TiVo when the whole market is disappearing. I believe the X1 DVR can record IPTV, but I'm not sure if it's actually recording it to disk, or just recording it in the cloud, as the whole DVR system is a sort of hybrid.


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## semaj (7 mo ago)

Going back to my original line of questions, would some be kind enough to explain a little more about QAM vs IPTV? From my understanding, QAM is a modulation technique and IPTV is a protocol. Can't any protocol stack (to include IPTV) be modulated over QAM? Why are QAM and IPTV referred to as if both are communication protocols? Thanks!


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

semaj said:


> Going back to my original line of questions, would some be kind enough to explain a little more about QAM vs IPTV? From my understanding, QAM is a modulation technique and IPTV is a protocol. Can't any protocol stack (to include IPTV) be modulated over QAM? Why are QAM and IPTV referred to as if both are communication protocols? Thanks!


The terminology is a little loose, but those are the widely agreed upon and recognized terms.

In the US, QAM refers to MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 video sent as a linear stream over 6mhz ATSC-QAM channels using QAM256 modulation.

IPTV refers to some sort of video sent over some sort of private managed IP network. In this discussion, its referring to Comcast sending channels over a mostly unicast IPTV system in the last mile, often over DOCSIS running on channels with QAM256 modulation.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

So they're still using existing 'channels' to deliver IPTV instead of partitioning out the spectrum differently? I'm guessing that's the only way they can do it on DOCSIS since that's how the cable modems get spectrum for IP?


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## semaj (7 mo ago)

Thanks for those good technical explanations. Clearly, TiVo understands how much commercials annoy many people. Do the providers have any interest in pleasing customers in this regard? Would there be too much blow-back from the entities that pay for commercials? Do the providers have enough incentive to provide commercial filtering capabilities? If they did, I suspect Comcast or Verizon would have bought TiVo.


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## WVZR1 (Jul 31, 2008)

semaj said:


> Thanks for those good technical explanations. Clearly, TiVo understands how much commercials annoy many people. Do the providers have any interest in pleasing customers in this regard? Would there be too much blow-back from the entities that pay for commercials? Do the providers have enough incentive to provide commercial filtering capabilities? If they did, I suspect Comcast or Verizon would have bought TiVo.


Xfinity has 'Smart-Resume' feature on their X1 boxes and it 'works'! It's very consistent. When TiVo wasn't even attempting 'SKIP' I used my XG1V4 pretty regularly. Still do but not as often.


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## ITGrouch (Jan 7, 2015)

WVZR1 said:


> Yes very good find! Now I guess I just wait and see just how many days it really takes. I wonder if maybe after the request they provide a person with an 'acknowledgement' it was received.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I received mine in four business days after I requested one to be mailed.


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## WVZR1 (Jul 31, 2008)

ITGrouch said:


> I received mine in four business days after I requested one to be mailed.


USPS Informed Delivery mentions I have a Comcast/Xfinity piece of mail for today. I imagine it's my 2022 CLN


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

slowbiscuit said:


> So they're still using existing 'channels' to deliver IPTV instead of partitioning out the spectrum differently? I'm guessing that's the only way they can do it on DOCSIS since that's how the cable modems get spectrum for IP?


On Comcast, a lot of the IPTV is done directly on the X1 boxes, and many of them are DOCSIS 3.0 only. Some of the newer boxes rely on a gateway, so they are often using DOCSIS 3.1, which has much larger chunks of spectrum. They have a ton of downstream bandwidth, as they've reclaimed spectrum by moving to overcompressed MPEG-4 CBR for linear QAM video delivery, most plants are now 750-860mhz, the addition of DOCSIS 3.1, and the move of lesser-watched linear channels to IP. What drives node splits is primarily upstream, as many areas are still 5-45mhz low split, so they often end up with a lot of downstream bandwidth available, hence ridiculously imbalanced speed tiers like 1400/40 (provisioned speed, 1200/35 advertised).



semaj said:


> Thanks for those good technical explanations. Clearly, TiVo understands how much commercials annoy many people. Do the providers have any interest in pleasing customers in this regard? Would there be too much blow-back from the entities that pay for commercials? Do the providers have enough incentive to provide commercial filtering capabilities? If they did, I suspect Comcast or Verizon would have bought TiVo.


TiVo, like Comcast, knows that linear TV is a dying market. Comcast's primary business is selling broadband, the way their packages are structured, they would make almost as much money if the whole TV market vanished tomorrow. TiVo was focused on smaller MSOs, but that market is dying too, OTA's future is pretty bleak. Rovi has all sorts of other businesses, as well as licensing TiVo's IP to other companies that are riding out the end of the pay TV market.

Comcast seems more focused on trying to get people to stream stuff on their various X1 devices, which seems pointless given that Google TV, Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, etc exist.


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## WVZR1 (Jul 31, 2008)

I did receive my Comcast/Xfinity information but instead of being maybe something that could be scanned and posted it was a several page pamphlet. The 'Channel Line-UP' is 7 pages by itself. It is very informative and if a person is new to Comcast/Xfinity it might be a very good read.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

Bigg said:


> Comcast seems more focused on trying to get people to stream stuff on their various X1 devices, which seems pointless given that Google TV, Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, etc exist.


They're trying to hold the eyeballs on one box to upsell other stuff like VOD and Peacock Premium, run their own ads etc.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

slowbiscuit said:


> They're trying to hold the eyeballs on one box to upsell other stuff like VOD and Peacock Premium, run their own ads etc.


I can see why they'd want to do it, I just don't think that they're ever going to have much success with it.


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