January 28th, 2005

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Media
4 Comments »

Travis’s Chart Channel

Chart ChannelTravis writes, wondering about a strange channel that appears on his television. I’ve never seen such a thing, but maybe some reader is a, what, telescientist? Electronic engineer? TV phreak?

Does anyone know what the deal is with this channel on my TV? It used to have a sister channel one click higher: same thing in black and white. But that was cancelled and disappeared a month ago–maybe it had lower ratings. The graph changes several times a second. I don’t have a cable box, but on my TV it’s channel 104 or something like that.

This sounds to me like the sort of thing that Tod Maffin might know about. As a bonus link, Travis also references “a kick-ass venn diagram”. I concur. The ass, it does kick. Thanks to that diagram, I now know what kreplach are, and why I should avoid them.

Comments: 4 Responses so far

urbanenomad
January 28th, 2005
4:46 am

Until Shaw finally got around to putting a filter on my cable line, I was able to see this too (in addition to all the non-scrambled channels in the lineup). You know you’re a geek and there’s nothing on when that was the most interesting channel to watch.

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Sue
January 28th, 2005
10:25 am

I once heard it was something to do with Shaw measuring the strength of the signal. I’m not sure what that actually means, though, and I sure won’t be calling Shaw - they might twig on to my 2.5 years of free cable usage and cut off the juice.

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Tod Maffin
January 28th, 2005
10:47 am

Sue’s more or less right. It’s a signal strength meter. There is a different signal generator at each substation, so what you’re looking at is the signal strength of the substation that’s feeding your signal.

They usually do this so that if they make any changes at the “tap” (the source, usually the cable company’s HQ), they can see how it affects the signals down the line.

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jo
January 28th, 2005
7:38 pm

I remember something like kreplach from my childhood; it was a food made by Latvian friends of my parents. I never knew what it was called though.

Anyway, the Kreplach were goooood; I’ve always remembered them fondly. You may like them if you try them!

[Reply]

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