RCN Cable

[evilcrayon.livejournal.com]

I pay for basic cable, no cable box. But I don't use rabbit ears and now I have no channels whatsoever. Does anyone know what is going on? I thought that the only people affected by the switch to digital in February were people who did not get their tv signal through a cable already.

Comments

[warlord-mit.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, no, RCN is *NOT* using Clear QAM. They were, but back in May they started encrypting all their QAM, including all the local (non-premium) HD channels. I posted about this here (http://warlord-mit.livejournal.com/13759.html) back in June.

So if the franchise agreement is correct, yes, RCN *IS* violating it and has been since May.

[pzykotic.livejournal.com]

The FCC (and possibly franchise agreement) require that cable companies dropping analog channels continue to broadcast locals (over the air) channels in at least Standard Definition, which RCN is doing. There's no requirement for High Def from the FCC, you'd have to read Somerville's franchise agreement to see the language in it. ClearQAM is not automatically High Def (I'm sure you know it, but others might not)