Question about RCN's FSNE HD channel

[Eric Albert]

I don't know if I have an "answer", but here's what happened back on 
Wednesday:  I spent an hour on the phone with RCN's tech support,
and they sent various signals to my DVR box to reset it.  One of these
signals knocked the box out for half an hour (on purpose).  None of
them changed anything that I could tell.

The on-screen guide still said that FSNEHD was going to be "off air"
all day.  The RCN tech person looked up the FSNEHD schedule and
told me that there *was* a game scheduled, and that it should show
up on my screen, no matter what the guide said.

Luckily, I was home on Wednesday night.  (I also have RCN's dual-
tuner DVR, so I can record two cable channels at the same time.)
Lo and behold -- the Celtics game did indeed appear on FSNEHD, in
high-def, just like it should!  The game was ugly, but the picture was
great.

In fact, the pregame show *also* appeared on FSNEHD, which
surprised me, because it's not in HD.  It was displayed with black
side bars and looked OK.

Today, it's the same thing: FSNEHD says it'll be off the air all day.
But *right now* it's showing content -- some guy named Chris is
interviewing Kobe Bryant.  It's not in HD, but it's showing on that
channel.  And I expect that tonight's game *will* show up, in HD.

So, the story (for me, at least) seems to be that the on-air guide
is broken, and should be ignored.  Which is OK with me -- I set the
DVR manually when I program games, anyway, because I want to
make sure to catch triple overtimes, in case they happen.

I suggest you see if you can find content on your FSNEHD channel.
Just turn it on occasionally and look.  Maybe it'll help to have RCN
send some signals; I don't know.  If you can only record one
channel for tonight, and won't be there, it depends -- "Are you
feeling lucky, punk?"

I'd probably record in low def, because I can't stand to miss a
game, so long as I knew I was going to be around for a home game
soon, to see if I was actually getting HD.  Good luck!

-- Eric

>Ken Kokubo <ken_kokubo at harvard.edu> wrote:
> 
>Eric did you find an answer? I've been busy the past few days and just 
>recorded the SD broadcast to be safe. And as an aside... got home from 
>my "other" job ~1:15am stayed up to watch that travesty of a game and 
>had to get up ~6am so I'm pretty bitter about wednesday night.
>
>I will mess around tonight and see and maybe try and call them about it.
>
>It used to be on the program guide last year but RCN just switched 
>systems (the new one is beyond horrible) and it isn't there anymore (as 
>you've noticed).