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rsweet@cogeco.ca
03/18/2005
10:11 AM
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Dear Sir: I have just returned from Florida where the cable company was COMCAST. I knew that the US has a law that prevents copyrighting (scrambling) any signal which can be received over the air. I talked for about 20 minutes with an engineer at Comcast and he informaed me that they would be passing the major network HD signals through to their customers unscrambled. Canada does not have such a law.
Cogeco, my cable company, is transmitting over 100 digital carriers which my QUAM tuner picks up. I have put up a UHF antenna and I receive HDTV sporadically with the 8VSB tuner. I called Cogeco and asked them when they would be putting OTA digital channel 39-1 (CBS) on the digital cable channel 80-2 (CBS analog). They replied "We don't know what you are talking about". Many of the digital cable channels I receive produce a message that says "Digital Signal is Encrypted". I have written my Federal MP about this situation and she has passed my concerns on to the Minister of Industry under whose wing is the CRTC. I had previously contacted the CRTC about this signal highjacking and they replied that this was beyond their jurisdiction.
I urge everyone to write their MP or in a few years when you buy a TV set in Canada and connect it to your cable you will receive nothing until you get a descrambler from the all-powerful cable company.
Yours truly,
Bob Sweet
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shifangming@yahoo.com
11/20/2005
11:02 PM
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Hello Mr.Sweet,
My name is Fangming Shi living in Ontario.I recently bought a HDTV and I'm using Rogers Cable.I got to learn the fact from your remarks that Canada dosen't have the similar law that inhibits the cable companies to scramble HDTV signals which are already open to the air.This is really not a good thing for consumers who can only receive HDTV via cable.So far I support your stand to assert our rights as consumers.
I am also interested in how DTV/HDTV work over the cable in its differences from the OTA and satellite.But I don't know much about it.I am looking for an expert who I can answer questions to.One thing that I'm not clear about is as follows:
I think Canadian cable companies also use 64/256-QAM to transmit DTV/HDTV signals as Americans do.This modulation is different from ATSC's 8-VSB for OTA.My HDTV set has both NTSC and ATSC tuners but not QAM's,however it can receive and display some SDTV programings through the CADTV channels(from Chl#74 to Chl#133).So I think Rogers Cable is delivering these programings using ATSC's standard while using QAM with its major programings delivery.
Mr.Sweet,or anyone seeing this note,please comment on what I think,could you?
Thank you in advance,
Fangming Shi
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