Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2011 May 15

= May 15 =

Digital cable mystery
Dear Wikipedians:

I have an Insignia HDTV that is capable of directly receiving digital channels (CDTV channels). I get my TV through cable from a Canadian company called Rogers.

Normally I get my digital TV from Rogers' set-top box. However, recently I have successfully rented the basement of my house to a family, so i have given the set-top box to them. As a result, I am now directly connecting the original input cable for the set-up box directly into the "coaxial" port of my Insignia TV. After I let my Insignia TV scan the cable in its unfiltered and unprocessed state, I got some very interesting results:

Insignia TV picked up some 45 analog channels and 81 (!) digital channels. I wasn't expecting my TV to pick up any digital channels. When I go through the digital channels themselves I found the following channels:

78-764 This is the Rogers OnDemand preview channel.

78-765 This is one of the Rogers OnDemand channels with the logo permanently on. It keeps telling me to press the B button, but I press the buttons on my Insignia TV remote to no effect.

133-2292 133-2293 133-2294 The above three channels are "6-in-1" channels. I've never seen channels like this before and find them fascinating. Each channel has six small screens, each with its own content, the screens are arranged into two rows with 3 screens on each row. The audio track is set to the upper left screen initially. But I find that by pressing the "SAP" (2nd audio programming) button, I can actually cycle through each of the 6 sound tracks to listen in on each of the 6 channels. I feel like I'm becoming the Architect of the Matrix, overlooking everything with omnipotent power ;-)

The rest of the 81 digital channels that were picked up were all audio only channels with a black screen and continuously streaming music, like the variety heard before the start of movies at a theater.

MOST INTRIGUINGLY, I found these channels:

125-1551 126-1 127-2011 128-1631 131-1821 132-1

When I tune into these channels, the TV would wait a while, and then display a "Scrambled Video" message on screen. I am pretty sure that there must be more channels like this out there. More intriguingly, I am starting to develop a disturbing hypothesis that these channels (and other undiscovered ones) MAYBE the same channels that I got over my set-top box!

However, when I tried to Google this stuff I found nothing, absolutely nothing. I find this to be quite unusual. My hacker nature is now dying to know more about these channels, and perhaps to do something interesting about them. Yet I can't even begin to study how the nomenclatures of the channels on my TV came about (the number dash number channel format). I always thought that there are a maximum of 124 analog channels (channel 2 to 125), yet now I am seeing channels 131, 132, etc., popping up? Where did these channels come from, did the federal radio authority or CRTC allocate new bandwidths to the UDF region of radio waves?

If any of you could kindly provide me with some pointers to reading materials or forums devoted to this stuff I would appreciate it very much!

Thanks,

L33th4x0r (talk) 02:11, 15 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Search for QAM channels for more information about these types of channels. Search for Rogers QAM and maybe add the name of your city or region to find if other people have already documented the channel numbers for your area.
 * North American digital cable uses QAM to transmit channels. If you connect a cable outlet directly to a digital TV with a QAM tuner, you can receive unencrypted digital cable channels. However, your TV won't receive the virtual channel numbers (they're encrypted or transmitted in a proprietary format? ), so the TV displays a physical channel number. Also, none of the special features of the set-top box will work (guide, video on demand, interactive buttons). You'll only get unencrypted channels. The channels with the "scrambled video" message are the encrypted channels.
 * Older analog cable-ready TVs only go up to cable channel 125, but modern cable tuners go up to channel 135. Cable channels are only transmitted over a closed cable system, not transmitted over the air, so I suspect there's less or no need to allocate channels with any authority. From light investigation on the subject, I understood that as long as the STB tuner and cable office equipment are able to handle the higher frequencies, the cable provider can keep going to higher channels, but a digital TV will probably only go to channel 135.
 * --Bavi H (talk) 05:00, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks to all. The QAM model really made everything very clear to me. L33th4x0r (talk) 02:47, 17 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Wonderful! I found just such a site: [Rogers Digital Cable - Clear QAM Free Channel List|http://www.remotecentral.com/hdtv/rogers.htm]. There is also a brief explanation of the differences between digital channels in the States and in Canada. Many thanks to all of you who responded to my post with helpful suggestions and to the author of the site I found. 174.88.35.164 (talk) 00:14, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

A website displays my copyrighted material. What should I do?
Today I learned of the existence of a website, Jerk.be.

It appears to be some kind of content mill that harvests personal information (names, photos) from "searching free open internet searching databases" (their words) and displays them. They then claim to give information about whether or not the people listed on their site are jerks. To my surprise, I found myself on this website, complete with my name and facebook picture.

I have always been careful to not allow public search listings for my facebook profile (You will not find that photo by googling my name). I do not know how they got that information. Perhaps a friend of mine who could access the information used an untrustworthy app. It hardly matters.

According to facebook, I retain the copyright to all photos I post there (and thus also to the one now visible on the jerk.be site). Furthermore, I am an inhabitant of the country in which the jerk.be site is hosted (Belgium).

I am not listed as a jerk on jerk.be, in fact it claims I am not a jerk, but I still oppose this on principle. Of course the jerk.be site does not offer any contact information and their "remove me" button is useless.

What should I do? 83.134.145.57 (talk) 08:00, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

(by the way this is a request for general information. I don't intend to sue them (yet) so this is not a request for legal advice.) 83.134.145.57 (talk) 08:01, 15 May 2011 (UTC)


 * The terms and conditions appear to have double-binds built in. I wonder if it would be worth asking on somewhere like Groklaw to see if this is some sort of scam. I'd find that out first. --Aspro (talk) 08:48, 15 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Why do you believe jerk.be is hosted in Belgium? A traceroute and geolocation for the server shows the US for me. Do note the ccTLD often does not tell you where a site is hosted. I'm not aware of any TLD which requires a site be hosted 'locally' (not saying it doesn't exist). Some ccTLDs do require registrants have some connection to the country (while still allowing them to host their site wherever they want) although it's usually possible to get around this by using a local agent (although in that case the agent's name will be in the registry and any disputes over control will depend on the agreement you have with the agent and local courts). In any case this doesn't seem to be the case for .be from a quick look at the T&C  or the FAQ  (which confusingly mentions stuff in the UK) which from what I can tell can be registered by anyone. A whois  gives a Romanian PO Box and suggests it is connected to or the same thing as jerk.com  and owned by John Fanning or NetCapital  none of which suggest there's any real Belgium connection by any of the parties involved other then the .be domain name. Nil Einne (talk) 12:39, 15 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Many copyright owners file a DMCA takedown notice with websites that happen to host the copyrighted data. Reputable sites that have seen these before generally take down the infringing material immediately.  Some indie game developers file several of these per week (and have found it effective).  Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:17, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Mumble
I recently installed Mumble onto my home PC which is running Windows Vista 64 bit, but when I attempt to run the software it freezes my computer. I have un installed and re installed it but it still wont work. I installed it onto my laptop using Vista 64 and have no problems and it runs perfectly. Any ideas what I can do to get the software to run on my PC, thanks Mo ainm  ~Talk  16:10, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
 * have you tried updating the firmware? do everything: board, HD, audio, video...even the optical drives just to be sure
 * http://mumble.sourceforge.net/FAQ#Mumble_gives_me_a_BSOD_.2F_crashes_my_PC_when_I_try_to_start_it. VulpineLady (talk) 09:44, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

graph in excel
I should be able to get my head around creating a graph in Excel 2007, but I can't. Please help me.

I want a line graph, and I want two lines on it, for, say, reaction with X and reaction without X. For each line there are five data points, I want v on the vertical axis and v/s on the horizontal axis (so ten figures to table for each line). It would be super simple to do this by hand but I need to do it in Excel, and I can't work out how to set up the table so that Excel has any clue what I'm after. How do I table this data so Excel's graphing function can make sense of it? Thanks a lot. Howie26 (talk) 19:00, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Also was posted to Reference desk/Science, already attracted my and another answer there. DMacks (talk) 20:55, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Are you trying to produce a Scatter graph? If so this guide should help - http://phoenix.phys.clemson.edu/tutorials/excel/graph.html. ny156uk (talk) 20:59, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Sorry just re-read your question - line graph!! Sorry. ny156uk (talk) 21:00, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Intel 82865G driver for Windows XP 64-bit edition
Dear Wikipedians:

I have recently discovered that my 4-year old computer is actually capable of 64-bit computing! I have installed Windows XP 64-bit on it, however, the driver package that came originally with the motherboard (P5PE-VM) is refusing to install the display driver under the 64-bit environment, complaining about files missing. Both the Asus and Intel sites have no drivers for 64-bit XP, which is very surprising! So I am wondering if you have any idea where to find Windows XP 64-bit driver for the Intel 82865G graphics controller.

Thanks,

76.68.6.215 (talk) 20:27, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Is it not available on Windows update? Nil Einne (talk) 06:33, 16 May 2011 (UTC)


 * MS doesn't typically provide third party drivers. Was this system built with XP or rolled back from Vista? If the latter you may want to take it back up as some hardware with factory Vista's didn't have XP drivers available...though I would say just get a new machine as support for that controller ended 4 years ago: http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/intel865g/sb/CS-028056.htm

but you want "10/16/2007 v.14.​17" from http://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=eng&ProductFamily=Graphics&ProductLine=Desktop+graphics+controllers&ProductProduct=Intel%C2%AE+82865G+Graphics+and+Memory+Controller+Hub+%28GMCH%29 select XP Home (or Pro) from the first menu and Drivers from the second, save the .exe to your HD then install from there.
 * Best I can do, hope it helps! VulpineLady (talk) 11:17, 16 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Actually I've come across plenty of third party drivers on Windows update including for modern graphics cards from Nvidia and ATI/AMD. Microsoft even recommends manufacturers do it . Because of Microsoft requirements/time taken and/or the manufacturers willingness means these are usually a lot older and less commonly updated then drivers direct from the manufacturer (and if you regularly update drivers using ones from manufacturers you might never see/be offered them) even if we only count WHQL ones. But when you have no other drivers it's an obvious option. For Intel and a relatively old chipset like that (at the time of XP x64 release) it wouldn't surprise me if they may have decided just to distribute the drivers via Microsoft and OEMs using their chipsets (but most motherboard manufacturers are slack at providing that sort of stuff). BTW the 865G is so old that it obviously was supported on XP. Since support only ended 4 years ago which was after XP x64 release by about 2 years I would have thought Intel would have provided XP x64 drivers too but can't say for sure. Nil Einne (talk) 00:01, 17 May 2011 (UTC)