# They removed cable TV from my apartment building



## Mike Richardson (Sep 24, 2012)

removed


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## stahta01 (Dec 23, 2001)

Does that Series 3 support Over the Air (OTA) Digital TV?
(I think most or even all do; but, you might wish to confirm that hardware is working before paying for lifetime.)
If yes, then I think its a good deal to get lifetime for $99.

Tim S.


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## Mike Richardson (Sep 24, 2012)

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## nooneuknow (Feb 5, 2011)

Snag that $99 deal ASAP! Many people who meet the mostly established criteria are not getting offered the offer, and when they ask are turned down!

Others have also been told the same "the deal will still be good" line, only to find out otherwise. They have no obligation to keep their word. So, I strongly advise you do your best to get the money, or use credit is you must. Otherwise you could get told $399, take it or leave it, and that would be unfortunate.


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## Mike Richardson (Sep 24, 2012)

removed


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

They're also pushing out the latest Cisco CableCARD firmware globally in Houston, which is nice.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

Where are you located? Are they going to knock your building down as well at some point? That's rather unusual to knock apartments down... Usually they just refurb them.


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

Bigg said:


> Where are you located? Are they going to knock your building down as well at some point? That's rather unusual to knock apartments down... Usually they just refurb them.


I don't know OP but there are sections of Houston with low rises (2-3 stories) that are close enough to prime retail that can be converted into retail or turned into luxury apartments or high rises.

Houston has unusual zoning for cities of that size. I had a friend in the situation, said you can tell when they only offer Month-to-Month leases.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

telemark said:


> I don't know OP but there are sections of Houston with low rises (2-3 stories) that are close enough to prime retail that can be converted into retail or turned into luxury apartments or high rises.
> 
> Houston has unusual zoning for cities of that size. I had a friend in the situation, said you can tell when they only offer Month-to-Month leases.


Interesting. I've heard Houston is all jumbled up, without much zoning like we have here in New England.


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## Mike Richardson (Sep 24, 2012)

removed


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

Mike Richardson said:


> I'm a block inside the loop, Westheimer @ Westcreek near the Galleria. There used to be over a dozen 3 story apartment buildings here, all built by the same developer in the late 60s/early 70s. All but three have been demolished for new expensive high rise stuff or mixed use with retail, and two buildings are vacant and pending to be demolished for a high rise office building.
> 
> So that leaves one building which is mine, the last one standing and occupied in a sea of new construction - but the current landlord is really a developer. They are keeping the old building for now in order to collect some rent so that they can fund a new mid-rise apartment building. I think they are also waiting for some of the other construction to finish, otherwise the workmen would have nowhere to park.


Interesting. Very different from what I'm used to here in New England!


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## christheman (Feb 21, 2013)

Mike Richardson said:


> I'm a block inside the loop, Westheimer @ Westcreek near the Galleria. There used to be over a dozen 3 story apartment buildings here, all built by the same developer in the late 60s/early 70s. All but three have been demolished for new expensive high rise stuff or mixed use with retail, and two buildings are vacant and pending to be demolished for a high rise office building.
> 
> So that leaves one building which is mine, the last one standing and occupied in a sea of new construction - but the current landlord is really a developer. They are keeping the old building for now in order to collect some rent so that they can fund a new mid-rise apartment building. I think they are also waiting for some of the other construction to finish, otherwise the workmen would have nowhere to park.


I am not a city planner or anything, but my take on it is that they might also be keeping one building up just to leverage the burden of either the tax or zoning laws. There might be some benefit or allowance grandfathered in as long as they keep at least one original building on that property.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

christheman said:


> I am not a city planner or anything, but my take on it is that they might also be keeping one building up just to leverage the burden of either the tax or zoning laws. There might be some benefit or allowance grandfathered in as long as they keep at least one original building on that property.


Or to call it a "renovation" or something stupid. I've heard of places where you can't tear down a house, so they leave 10' of a wall standing and then "remodel" the rest of the house... Or maybe not. I doubt zoning is that strict down there...


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## christheman (Feb 21, 2013)

Bigg said:


> Or to call it a "renovation" or something stupid. I've heard of places where you can't tear down a house, so they leave 10' of a wall standing and then "remodel" the rest of the house... Or maybe not. I doubt zoning is that strict down there...


Based on another post, it sounds like their zoning is all over the place down there. I'll bet they make parts of it up as they go along.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

christheman said:


> Based on another post, it sounds like their zoning is all over the place down there. I'll bet they make parts of it up as they go along.


Yeah, I've heard their residential and commercial is all mixed up and sprawled.


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## Series3Sub (Mar 14, 2010)

Mike Richardson said:


> Because of the demolition of adjacent apartment buildings which were formerly part of one complex (those buildings contained the cable TV infrastructure), Cable TV has been removed from my building (the last remaining building).
> 
> So I have been forced to obtain DISH Network to continue watching TV and they provide a DVR.


Which DVR did you end up getting? The Hopper or one of the older DVR's, like the ViP's?


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## Mike Richardson (Sep 24, 2012)

Series3Sub said:


> Which DVR did you end up getting? The Hopper or one of the older DVR's, like the ViP's?


I decided to buy all of my equipment, because I did not believe at the time, that I would have the DISH service for longer than 6 months. So it did not make any sense to sign a long term contract while at the time time intending to move to another apartment with cable, and resume using my TiVo.

So I bought (from Amazon), a brand new ViP 922, and a brand new 1000.2 satellite dish from a dealer in Austin. The 922 seemed like the best choice since I mostly live alone but on occasion I do have company over for lengthy visits. I ran a coax to my guest room so whenever I have company, I can change the DVR over to the "Duo" mode and my guests can have their own TV to watch. To do the same thing with Hopper equipment would require wasting $7 per month on a Joey that would go mostly unused. (previously that room had a Comcast DTA with no monthly charges)

The dish was installed by myself into the side of the building outside my kitchen window on the 3rd floor, into a stud. The landlord is permitting any modifications without argument in light of the removal of cable TV. It was the first time I had ever installed a dish and so far it has held up through ~8 months of weather without any problems.


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## Mike Richardson (Sep 24, 2012)

removed


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## Mike Richardson (Sep 24, 2012)

removed


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## ajwees41 (May 7, 2006)

Mike Richardson said:


> As I predicted, my building is being evicted.
> 
> The lifetime TiVo Series 3 is still working fine. When I move I might decide to go with OTA for a while to save a little money.
> 
> I'm glad I got the lifetime deal when I could, I recommend to anyone else to go ahead and get the $99 deal. Worst case, you sell the TiVo for what most certainly will be more than $99. As long as it's a Series 3 or better, you will have a useful TiVo for several years to come. Even if you need a new hard drive, it's a pretty easy repair with all the guides available online, and you get a bonus space upgrade as well.


 the S3's will only be good for OTA soon since they can't handle mpeg 4 or channels in the 1Ghz area


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

ajwees41 said:


> the S3's will only be good for OTA soon since they can't handle mpeg 4 or channels in the 1Ghz area


You do know that there are still cable companies offering an analog feed, right?

They aren't all going to be jumping to the state of the art very latest thing right away.

So, for S3 owners, their mileage may vary, as the saying goes, depending on where they live and from whom they get cable.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

ajwees41 said:


> the S3's will only be good for OTA soon since they can't handle mpeg 4 or channels in the 1Ghz area


MPEG-4 and 1GHz are both still rare. There are only a handful of small regional cable companies that are entirely MPEG-4. There are some bigger ones that have MPEG-4 channels, but they're typically lesser watched fringe channels. 1GHz is even more rare as it typically requires replacing all the coax in the whole network. For 1GHz to work well you need top quality RG6 cabling and you need the individual nodes to be relatively close together. Most cable systems weren't designed well enough to do 1GHz and require major upgrades to support it. And even then it's a support nightmare as it's much more susceptible to interference and equipment issues. 864MHz systems combined with SDV are much more common.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

ajwees41 said:


> the S3's will only be good for OTA soon since they can't handle mpeg 4 or channels in the 1Ghz area


Depends on the provider. They are already broken for Cox and some packages on FIOS, since they use 1ghz/MPEG-4 and MPEG-4, respectively, and Comcast is going to convert, but it could be years before all their systems are converted, and they seem to be busy trying to buy up TWC right now.



Dan203 said:


> MPEG-4 and 1GHz are both still rare. There are only a handful of small regional cable companies that are entirely MPEG-4. There are some bigger ones that have MPEG-4 channels, but they're typically lesser watched fringe channels. 1GHz is even more rare as it typically requires replacing all the coax in the whole network. For 1GHz to work well you need top quality RG6 cabling and you need the individual nodes to be relatively close together. Most cable systems weren't designed well enough to do 1GHz and require major upgrades to support it. And even then it's a support nightmare as it's much more susceptible to interference and equipment issues. 864MHz systems combined with SDV are much more common.


This is all true, although the entire state of RI is Cox, with many areas having FIOS. I think all of Cox is 1ghz, and FIOS is using MPEG-4.

AFAIK, no one has combined all of the bandwidth-saving technologies available, as there are no 1ghz plants running all-digital. Cox is making themselves nuts with a 1ghz plant when much of it is squandered with analog. I wonder if they give up on 1ghz and go to an 870mhz plant when they finally get around to killing analog? Comcast did it right by killing analog, but many of their systems are positively decrepit. Ours is 625mhz.

A 1ghz plant running all-digital H.264 would be pretty amazing. FIOS is the closest thing, since they're running 870mhz, with no internet, phone, or VOD to clog up the pipe, but even they are completely out of bandwidth.


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

Bigg said:


> A 1ghz plant running all-digital H.264 would be pretty amazing.


Cable companies have waited so long to even start deploying H.264 that at this point they might as well just skip it and go straight to H.265.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

tarheelblue32 said:


> Cable companies have waited so long to even start deploying H.264 that at this point they might as well just skip it and go straight to H.265.


No. Most boxes today support H.264, while zero boxes support H.265. So to switch to H.264 would only require swapping a small proportion of the oldest boxes, while H.265 would require all new boxes, which isn't economically feasible.


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## Mike Richardson (Sep 24, 2012)

Bigg said:


> A 1ghz plant running all-digital H.264 would be pretty amazing. FIOS is the closest thing, since they're running 870mhz, with no internet, phone, or VOD to clog up the pipe, but even they are completely out of bandwidth.


Several years ago, FiOS used to offer analog channels, delivered over the fiber.

When I had analog cable, of course, each channel varied in quality, with a few being quite bad. But they all had this faint, sparkly type artifact, that is always inherent to an analog cable system (but is NOT something everyone notices).

I assume this was due to the cable sharing so many channels, ingress, weaker signal at the edge of the network, etc. I remember in the 90's, my mom calling the cable company to complain about the terrible picture - Warner Cable had not yet implemented the full HFC (hybrid fiber coax) system in the area, so there was a lot of coax between our house and the headend.

I wonder if FiOS had this same artifact, when it offered analog stations? Considering the signal was damn near *perfect* until the point where it entered your home. I can't imagine herringbone patterns on FiOS analog cable.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

Mike Richardson said:


> Several years ago, FiOS used to offer analog channels, delivered over the fiber. .........


Ummmmm, this is impossible. You can't modulate analog RF TV signals over fiberoptics. Fiber "optics" is a pulsed light technology and is inherently digital (on/off). The only thing that they "could" have been doing is some A->D conversion somewhere going from an analog source channel then converting it to digital and sending it along on your fiber system.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

Mike Richardson said:


> I wonder if FiOS had this same artifact, when it offered analog stations? Considering the signal was damn near *perfect* until the point where it entered your home. I can't imagine herringbone patterns on FiOS analog cable.


It would have been much, much cleaner, since it generated a hot, and very clean signal locally. Local wiring could still screw with it, but it's far less likely when the signal is so clean. Even the evolution of HFC networks and node splitting has likely improved analog quality on the carriers that are still squandering their precious bandwidth with analog channels, since HFC pushed the fiber to coax transition point further out, and FIOS, in effect, just continues that right to the edge of the house, while separating out the internet (VOD) and phone capabilities at the hardware level.



HarperVision said:


> Ummmmm, this is impossible. You can't modulate analog RF TV signals over fiberoptics. Fiber "optics" is a pulsed light technology and is inherently digital (on/off). The only thing that they "could" have been doing is some A->D conversion somewhere going from an analog source channel then converting it to digital and sending it along on your fiber system.


You are 100% wrong. You can stick anything over fiber that can be put on a QAM channel, including analog channels. Verizon just sends the entire ~810mhz of downstream signal from ~50mhz to ~870mhz, it doesn't matter if it's analog or QAM256 modulated, or something else entirely. They used to have analog on FIOS, which was later eliminated, much in the same way Comcast eliminated their analog, in order to reclaim bandwidth on their QAM system.


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## Arcady (Oct 14, 2004)

Verizon used to offer analog programming over FiOS. It was output from the coax on the ONT and only required a cable-ready (analog) tuner to receive.. I believe they discontinued it in 2009 or so.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

HarperVision said:


> Ummmmm, this is impossible. You can't modulate analog RF TV signals over fiberoptics. Fiber "optics" is a pulsed light technology and is inherently digital (on/off). The only thing that they "could" have been doing is some A->D conversion somewhere going from an analog source channel then converting it to digital and sending it along on your fiber system.


If it can carry "pulsed" light, it can carry modulated light.


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## tootal2 (Oct 14, 2005)

no cable would be very bad, I hate to lose my 100mbps cable internet.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

Bigg said:


> .......... You are 100% wrong. You can stick anything over fiber that can be put on a QAM channel, including analog channels. Verizon just sends the entire ~810mhz of downstream signal from ~50mhz to ~870mhz, it doesn't matter if it's analog or QAM256 modulated, or something else entirely. They used to have analog on FIOS, which was later eliminated, much in the same way Comcast eliminated their analog, in order to reclaim bandwidth on their QAM system.





unitron said:


> If it can carry "pulsed" light, it can carry modulated light.


I'm not 100% wrong, I'm only half wrong.  What I said was, fiberoptics can't carry "modulated RF TV signals", which is 100% true. RF means "radio frequency" and fiber modulates light, (see unitron's and my original posts) so the signal must be converted from an electrical signal to an optical light signal, which is what I was trying to explain I guess.

I was wrong that it is inherently digital, yes. My brain was trying to say being converted from electrical to light, with the pulsing light being "digital". There does need to be a conversion process in there from optic to electric, which is performed in the ONT in this case.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

HarperVision said:


> I'm not 100% wrong, I'm only half wrong.  What I said was, fiberoptics can't carry "modulated RF TV signals", which is 100% true. RF means "radio frequency" and fiber modulates light, (see unitron's and my original posts) so the signal must be converted from an electrical signal to an optical light signal, which is what I was trying to explain I guess.


That's semantics, because the modulated light is turned back into modulated RF by the ONT.



> I was wrong that it is inherently digital, yes. My brain was trying to say being converted from electrical to light, with the pulsing light being "digital". There does need to be a conversion process in there from optic to electric, which is performed in the ONT in this case.


Right, it's converted, so it doesn't matter whether it's analog or digital.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

Bigg said:


> That's semantics, because the modulated light is turned back into modulated RF by the ONT. Right, it's converted, so it doesn't matter whether it's analog or digital.


Agreed. I never was lucky enough to ever be in an area that offered FiOS TV service so never knew they had analog via fiber at any point. All fiber I have dealt with has always been of the digital variety.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

HarperVision said:


> Agreed. I never was lucky enough to ever be in an area that offered FiOS TV service so never knew they had analog via fiber at any point. All fiber I have dealt with has always been of the digital variety.


Yeah, I just know they used to have it. I don't even think I've ever seen FIOS TV, other than in a restaurant, or a friend who used to have it, but only in SD. I'm hoping to be living in an area that has FIOS soon.


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