# Why does Comcast have duplicate channels



## nrnoble (Aug 25, 2004)

Why does Comcast have duplicate channels?

I live in the Seattle area and Comcast has channels 2 - 1899 and it appears all the channels are duplicated. Not just HD channels, but SD channels too. And what is strange, the duplicated channels are not in the same order; they are some-what in the same order, but some channels are inserted differently 

Any insights


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

They duped all the channels to the 1000+ tier to standardize the lineups. I don't use any of them here except for FS2 because I still have them selected in the <1000 tier.


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## dishrich (Jan 16, 2002)

nrnoble said:


> Why does Comcast have duplicate channels?
> 
> I live in the Seattle area and Comcast has channels 2 - 1899 and it appears all the channels are duplicated. Not just HD channels, but SD channels too. And what is strange, the duplicated channels are not in the same order; they are some-what in the same order, but some channels are inserted differently
> 
> Any insights


Everything in the 1xxx range is their MCLU, which has been around for several years...here is a complete explanation on how it works:
Xfinity dropping linear HD channels?


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## PSU_Sudzi (Jun 4, 2015)

nrnoble said:


> Why does Comcast have duplicate channels?
> 
> I live in the Seattle area and Comcast has channels 2 - 1899 and it appears all the channels are duplicated. Not just HD channels, but SD channels too. And what is strange, the duplicated channels are not in the same order; they are some-what in the same order, but some channels are inserted differently
> 
> Any insights


Took me a while to embrace it but I only use the channels in the 1000's now and removed the "localized" Philly version of their lineup from my TiVo. It all fits together nicely in categories whereas the old lineup was kinda mix and match and not always consistent.


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## CommunityMember (May 22, 2020)

PSU_Sudzi said:


> Took me a while to embrace it but I only use the channels in the 1000's now and removed the "localized" Philly version of their lineup from my TiVo. It all fits together nicely in categories whereas the old lineup was kinda mix and match and not always consistent.


Same here. However, the Music Choice Channels are only in the 9xx number (I don't use them, but if one does, one has to accept the <1000's in that case). *AND* this was before the IPTV channels. It used to be the "best available" resolution (HD, or SD if that was the only thing available) was used for the channel numbers in the 1xxx range. However, now, Comcast removes the 1xxx channel from the CableCARD map entirely if the channel is now available in HD in the IPTV 1xxx range, leaving only the <1000 SD channel (if available). Quite honestly I wish they remapped the SD channel to the 1xxx CableCARD channel if the HD version is now IPTV only, but apparently they did not want to deal with people on X1 with IPTV capability getting HD and people on TiVo's with only linear QAM capabilities getting SD for the same channel number. The only good news (for me) is that the tier I subscribe to has almost no IPTV channels (and none I watch), so I can ignore those few outliers that would require me to enable the <1000's to get the channel at all, but others may have different requirements.


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## SNJpage1 (May 25, 2006)

I hate the way they arrange the channels into straight rising numbers and then grouping common things into other groups. At least on the Tivo you can delete them from the listing. With the Comcast box you can't.


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## spiderpumpkin (Dec 1, 2017)

Being able hide all the duplicate and unwanted channels is probably the best thing about Tivo to me. 

I had Comcast DVRs for 10+ years and hated all the duplicates and unwanted channels that were always showing. I also tried the X1 DVR and did set it up to only show favorites but it wouldn't allow me to chose which of the many channel numbers I wanted my favorites to be. For instance I like to have all my channels in the 1000s but with Xfinity X1 favorites that's not possible.


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## KevTech (Apr 15, 2014)

The channels above 1000 are supposed to be categorized.
Channels that provide news, sports, etc. will all be grouped together.


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## lhvetinari (Jun 24, 2019)

Comcast, as a company that expanded by hoovering up smaller cable services around the US, wound up with hundreds of disparate systems - and therefore, hundreds of channel lineups. Many made little-to-no sense in terms of grouping, since new channels (and later on, HD versions of SD channels) were just shoved in wherever there was space. This creates the "random order" issue many users complain about, where channels are in seemingly no order at all. (Hell, look at the mess that is the Metro Chicago lineups, and you'll see what I mean)

To combat this, Comcast started the MCLU plan - where every market would have roughly the same channel lineup from 1000-2000. This also allows better grouping (News together in a chunk, Sports in another chunk, etc.) However, this creates trouble for TiVo users - as the MCLU contains the "best" version of a given channel (HD if it's available, SD if it's not) - but when an IPTV stream for a given channel becomes available (X1 only!), the 1000's channel goes off the QAM and becomes a pointer, which TiVos can't use.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

When you say roughly, so you mean the same channel (CNNHD) is the same # above 1000?

I still have most duplicates enabled for no good reason.. and has long been talked about, Tivos can't handle this properly in a couple of ways. e.g. explore/view upcoming is confused about which ones are scheduled to record.. it seems to usually show the lower # twice and without the checkmarks..
So I should turn off one set of dups. I was thinking maybe one set would go away eventually, so if I turned off the 'wrong' one now, it'd be even more of a pain if/when one did go away.


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## lhvetinari (Jun 24, 2019)

mattack said:


> When you say roughly, so you mean the same channel (CNNHD) is the same # above 1000?
> 
> I still have most duplicates enabled for no good reason.. and has long been talked about, Tivos can't handle this properly in a couple of ways. e.g. explore/view upcoming is confused about which ones are scheduled to record.. it seems to usually show the lower # twice and without the checkmarks..
> So I should turn off one set of dups. I was thinking maybe one set would go away eventually, so if I turned off the 'wrong' one now, it'd be even more of a pain if/when one did go away.


The safest way is to turn off the 1000s. Many channels are duped in the hundreds as well, the easiest is to disable everything above 1000 and then export a list with KMTTG to use Excel to sort by name easier, and remove SD and dupes that way.

As for the "roughly" bits, there are differences in the locals between markets, and not all markets have all channels, but if a market has a network it will be on the same 1000 channel across all markets.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## CommunityMember (May 22, 2020)

lhvetinari said:


> This also allows better grouping (News together in a chunk, Sports in another chunk, etc.)


The (lack of) grouping in the old random channel number days was even subject to a complaint because (for example) a new "news" channel might not be able to be placed next to an existing "news" channel so, those new entrants argued, they were disadvantaged in viewership (for the channel up/down button surfers). The MCLU was intentionally designed to leave the groups with some empty (channel) numbers in the group to allow new entrants to be placed near the existing channels of that type. Of course, there are some cases which are still problematic (some channels want to be multiple things, and some channels change their focus to something else entirely), but the intention was to group like with like, and make things easier to find. Of course now one is supposed to (mostly) forget channel numbers entirely and just use voice to access your content.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

lhvetinari said:


> The safest way is to turn off the 1000s. Many channels are duped in the hundreds as well, the easiest is to disable everything above 1000 and then export a list with KMTTG to use Excel to sort by name easier, and remove SD and dupes that way.


I fine tune this by sorting by name in the guide, remove them, and avoid a bunch of extra steps outside of the box.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

lhvetinari said:


> The safest way is to turn off the 1000s. Many channels are duped in the hundreds as well, the easiest is to disable everything above 1000 and then export a list with KMTTG to use Excel to sort by name easier, and remove SD and dupes that way.


No I leave most SDs on on purpose. but ok, I guess I will then actually remove the 1000s. Part of my wishy-washyness was that I thought if they removed any, they'd remove the NON-1000s channels. If I know the non-1000s channels are here to stay, then I don't need to fear them going away and missing recordings.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

jrtroo said:


> I fine tune this by sorting by name in the guide, remove them, and avoid a bunch of extra steps outside of the box.


though I forget, can kmttg do this too? I actually have been using kmttg to clean up the to do list (my pilot|premeiere wishlist has a lot of false positives), though I very recently realized the iOS app will let you delete multiple to do list items at once AND stays scrolled to the same place... (yes the UI is actually RIGHT THERE, except the strings are sometimes truncated)


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## PSU_Sudzi (Jun 4, 2015)

lhvetinari said:


> The safest way is to turn off the 1000s. Many channels are duped in the hundreds as well, the easiest is to disable everything above 1000 and then export a list with KMTTG to use Excel to sort by name easier, and remove SD and dupes that way.
> 
> As for the "roughly" bits, there are differences in the locals between markets, and not all markets have all channels, but if a market has a network it will be on the same 1000 channel across all markets.
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


Why is it easier to undo channels in the 1000s? If you ever get a new channel added to your lineup now it will always be in the 1000s (on Comcast).


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## lhvetinari (Jun 24, 2019)

PSU_Sudzi said:


> Why is it easier to undo channels in the 1000s? If you ever get a new channel added to your lineup now it will always be in the 1000s (on Comcast).


It depends on the system but by and large, Comcast isn't adding new channels to the QAM. They're adding them in the 1000s but they're just IP pointers, useless on a tivo.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

PSU_Sudzi said:


> Why is it easier to undo channels in the 1000s? If you ever get a new channel added to your lineup now it will always be in the 1000s (on Comcast).


This is not true in my area, new channels such as Epix and Streampix have also been added <1000.

There's no downside either way, keep either set but don't use both.


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## PSU_Sudzi (Jun 4, 2015)

slowbiscuit said:


> This is not true in my area, new channels such as Epix and Streampix have also been added <1000.
> 
> There's no downside either way, keep either set but don't use both.


I had some HD channels added while back like BBC America and C-Span and they only gave us slots for them in the new >1000 range. For new premiums like Epix they did give us both in the lower and upper range.


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## schatham (Mar 17, 2007)

PSU_Sudzi said:


> Took me a while to embrace it but I only use the channels in the 1000's now and removed the "localized" Philly version of their lineup from my TiVo. It all fits together nicely in categories whereas the old lineup was kinda mix and match and not always consistent.


I mixed and matched them to suite my needs.


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