So I got a QAM tuner and I'm picking up some weird stuff...

[Shawn]

It seems that whenever someone is playing a video through Comcast Ondemand I can pick it up. Took me forever to realize that it was ondemand videos that I was picking up. It's weird that every other non-local digital cable channel is scrambled and ondemand content isn't.

 

[SunnyD]

Which tuner did you get?

 

[LS20]

anyone know if QAM can be picjed up from cable tv going directly to tv? (not through cable box)

 

[Shawn]

Originally posted by: SunnyD
Which tuner did you get?

It's a Samsung SIR-T451 that I got on ebay for $131 shipped. It's basically brand new. Came with all the cables, remote and everything else Retails for $200.

 

[Shawn]

Originally posted by: LS20
anyone know if QAM can be picjed up from cable tv going directly to tv? (not through cable box)

Yep. That's what I'm doing. I just have the basic cable plan and I've managed to pick up around 10 channels or so plus several on-demand movies that were playing.

It's definitely a pain in the ass to use though because when you do the autoscan it can't tell what channels are scrambled and which aren't so it adds a ton of the scrambled channels. Then you have to go through and unadd them which takes forever because there is a long delay between changing channels since the box is trying to display them and it can't.

Some of the scrambled channels even manage to crash the box's software and it has to reboot. The unscrambled channels come it fine though and are in HD and 5.1 when available. I've even been able to pick up a few stray scrambled channels where it shows the picture, but there is no sound. Also none of the guide info works so it took me forever to figure out what some of the channels were.

 

[Shawn]

I got to watch Click last night for free. Thank god I didn't have to pay to watch it!

 

[mrSHEiK124]

Thought it was a PCI QAM tuner D), then I realized it was an STB(). Congrats.

 

[keeleysam]

I have the FusionHDTV5 Gold PCI QAM tuner, and ripped all six Star Wars movies in HD from On Demand.

Some people in my area watch a LOT of porn.

 

[MustISO]

Apparently this is pretty common for some tuners. I don't recall the reason why it happens but it's pretty damn sweet.

 

[Hyperlite]

Originally posted by: keeleysam


Some people in my area watch a LOT of porn.

:laugh:

 

[Shawn]

Originally posted by: mrSHEiK124
Thought it was a PCI QAM tuner D), then I realized it was an STB(). Congrats.

I don't think I'll be getting a PCI QAM tuner until it's supported by Windows Media Center.

 

[KoolAidKid]

My TV has a built-in QAM tuner also. I get between 1 - 10 ondemand channels coming in on average. About 20% of them are soft-porn. The first time I happened upon one of these movies the sex scene ended and whomever was watching it fast-forwarded to the next sex scene. Made me laugh.

 

[ZeroEffect]

could someone explain this a little bit?

 

[BUrassler]

What is shown on the "OnDemand" channel when noone orders anything? Or is there always something there?

 

[BornStar]

I noticed that with my new TV as well. I got sick of trying to remember that 4.2 was CBS HD and 2.1 was Fox HD and so on. I just got a HD box instead. I did find the quality to be better before the box, however.

 

[Indolent]

My tv has a qam tuner also. I haven't had much of a chance to figure it out yet since I've been gone this week.

My question is how do you happen to pick up these channels? I just had the tv auto program the channels I get. So, just flipping through channels, it wouldn't flip through on demand channels would it?

 

[Indolent]

Originally posted by: BornStar18
I noticed that with my new TV as well. I got sick of trying to remember that 4.2 was CBS HD and 2.1 was Fox HD and so on. I just got a HD box instead. I did find the quality to be better before the box, however.

at least those are easy channels to remember. Mine are 83.x for fox, and in the hundreds for the others. And of course they are not close to comcast's online channel listing for hd channels. Why is that?

 

[BornStar]

Yes, it would. I plugged the cable into mine and had it detect and it got most of the channels, including a lot of On Demand streams. You'll get a lot of blank channels too, unfortunately.

 

[Indolent]

Originally posted by: BornStar18
Yes, it would. I plugged the cable into mine and had it detect and it got most of the channels, including a lot of On Demand streams. You'll get a lot of blank channels too, unfortunately.

hrm, I'll have to check that out.

 

[Sphexi]

Probably the cable company just streams the OD stuff to your whole neighborhood, and your tuner happens to pick it up. No idea the actual process behind it, but free softcore porn? Why complain?