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Re: Service Electric Cablevision News

Jed1, where did you get all the info on the multi-room DVR and fiber hub? Do you know someone or have you worked for SECV?

I noticed my 12/1 went to 20/2 two weeks ago. My router buggered up and I power cycled everything. After that power cycle I've been at 20/2 since.

I'm only on Phone and Internet though, so my only option is 20/2, unless I paid out the nose for 50/5.

Faster speeds in the future are certainly possible. I trialed 105/10 on a Comcast system that only had 4 bonded downstream channels at the time. It worked fine. SECV at least the Birdsboro headend is bonding 8 channels, so that's TWICE what Comcast was doing. Not only that, sources tell me the Birdsboro system is only like Node+1 or Node+2 at most.. meaning really small node sizes. Comcast was like Node+6, 750 MHz.

Yeah Eastern PA is dominated by SECV (860 MHz), Blue Ridge (1GHz) and Comcast (750 MHz). SECV borders all of them as well. Throw in a little RCN (860 MHz) in the Lehigh Valley as well.

cypherstream,
I do not know how I can answer your question as I am really not at liberty to say. Anything I mention here has been made public either by a customer announcement or by the customer service reps.

I can say that all the SECV divisions will be the same and all will have 8 downstream channels. I suspect that there will be a speed tier offered at or above 100 meg down. This is an assumption on my behalf.
I can report that there is about 8 nodes for the borough of Frackville, which has about 1500 homes total. Since the change over to SECV my speed has stayed well above the speed range I pay for, which is platinum plus. Your info in Birdsboro is correct.

I do know that Service Electric personnel is well respected in the industry. They were providing TVGOS service through all their headends and did it with no compensation and no requirement ever to carry it. Rovi engineers told me that Service Electric was the best company to work with. Because of this Rovi kept Service Electric TVGOS inserters running to the end of the very last day in the entire northern hemisphere. So Service Electric was the last place TVGOS was broadcasted when it was shutdown in the end of March.

I know you have Direct TV so I suspect that the 6 tuner DVR maybe an interest to you. I'll try to provide more info on it when I know its ok to say it. They also officially launched their TV Everywhere solution today as they went live with HBO GO and Cinemax GO.
»www.secv.com/tveverywhere/
»www.mysecv.com/?inc=4
I probably will never use this as I am not interested in watching tv on a phone or computer since I have an enormous outlay of cash on HDTVs and sound systems.

It looks like this is going to be an interesting year for SECV customers.

Thanks for the info. I know a few people who kept asking SECV when the heck they would get HBOGo.

I never knew of that mysecv site before. That new too? They do serve a pretty sizeable area in PA and its good to see they are keeping up with the big boys.

No matter if they roll out Arris or Tivo Q MR-DVR, I would be very interested in hearing how it works. I like DirecTV but I don't have the Genie.

Yeah that's pretty slick. Anyway SECV has to offer Multi-Room with a user experience for this decade (not last) for me to think about it. As long as I can hide the SD channels, or even re-map them so if you enter one it auto tune's the HD feed, then we would be good to go.

If they do some new system maybe its worth trying in tandem with DirecTV for a month just to see if I like it. I was checking out the lineup at my dads house yesterday and its really good. There's a lot of HD that DirecTV will never carry (Like shopping, religious, government, etc)... not that I watch that stuff but its a testament to the dedication to HD.

The only thing that really sucks about the lineup is that there's only one HD of each premium. We are HBO and Showtime subscribers and its great having all of those multiple screens in HD with DirecTV. That would be kind of hard to overcome, but you never know. SECV can sometimes really surprise you. Blue Ridge has all the multi-screens in HD and they are owned by Pencor, whom owns PenTeleData, which runs SECV's internet... so maybe there's some kind of relationship there. Those are two really good providers, one top Moto platform (SECV) and one top Cisco platform (Blue Ridge) both tied to PTD.net.

There are a lot of the new RNG set tops being issued at SECV, so maybe they could run the premium HD multi-screens in MPEG4 like Blue Ridge does. Blue Ridge also runs SDV (but they also have a lot of analogs still) and they are on the tried and true Cisco platform.

I just saw this on PTD's ticket system and figured it's worth posting as maybe it gives us an idea of when the Mahanoy City upgrades could be done.

SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE: Hazleton/Mahanoy City cable upgrades
06/04/2013 01:00 - 06/04/2013 06:00

Although Mahanoy City isn't listed as having any interruption of service.

Brief interruption of service during scheduled maintenance window.
Hazleton (HZL)

I have suggested to them about the auto tune HD channel option because they have a big problem with people watching the SD channels thinking that they are in HD.
Currently if you tune to a SD channel that has a HD channel equivalent you will see a "watch in HD" message pop up but the user must hit the ok/select button before the message goes away. Most people ignore it or do not know how to do it or think that the channel they are watching is HD.

I do know they are going to add more HD channels and I have been asking them repeatedly to add the premium sub channels in HD. They add the new HD channels as they go through the retransmission agreements.

It is pretty much likely MPEG4 is going to be the norm soon because all the source feeds coming to them is in MPEG4. I have the RNG200 and it is MPEG4 and 1GhZ ready. I do believe all the upgrades to the head ends will allow them to do this.

I am hoping that the Arris Whole Home setup brings a new guide and interface as it will be ruined with the old I Guide software.

Yeah I noticed that at my Dad's house. But there was a weird glitch with it. Some channels it didn't come up - despite there being an HD equivalent available. Some showed the button but then it disappeared.

Also some people see watch in HD and don't think its a button. They think its just telling you that it is in HD.

I don't think i-Guide has the ability to Auto map HD channels. Only Passport Echo / Passport 3.5 and later have this feature. Passport is a much better, faster and smoother guide platform.

The only thing they could do is roll out new software or do a reverse map, where ch 2 and up are mapped to the HD feeds. SD feeds could be made available higher up (like ch 1000+ the number).

Arris software may handle this better. I think in Tivo you can remove channels from your guide too.

I don't think the I Guide does. If I recall correctly the last update to the I Guide was in 2009 and was A28 or A29. I would have to look at the diagnostics on the Pace to make sure.
We had the Passport Echo guide from Aptiv Digital when we were with SECO, but I don't think it had HD auto tune enabled on it. I know shortly after we got Passport Echo, Gemstar bought them out and the TV Guide logo showed up on it. Of course Gemstar was bought by Rovi, aka Macrovision.
The change to SECV and the I Guide resulted in the most complaints and transition problems. People still want the Passport Echo guide back.

I have postponed my TiVo purchase until I get a look at the Arris system and test it. If they are not going to update the software then I will purchase the TiVo's.
Yes TiVo does give you the option of removing channels in the guide that you don't need or want.

I was told today that supposedly ground was only just being broke recently for the Delano construction to do the Mahanoy upgrades. Sounds like the upgrades won't be done any time soon.