I have it integrate cctv into a modulated channel on a digital cable system. I haven't done this since the analog days. What are they making now to accomplish this? pretty simple... just an rf out from the dvr injected into the whole house feed. I don't want to block anything out channel wise though. If it's possible let me know.

Contact the cable company to see what they offer for condo/apartment complexes that require a "lobby watch" channel. There should be some sort of route.

Some issues to consider:

1) Digital modulation - even if you can find a random QAM modulator, the cable company's cable boxes will NOT tune it. QAM-enabled televisions would, though.

2) Lack of free channels - most digital cable systems use every single available channel, which means you need a device to clear off a channel before you could inject anything back in. Doing that will of course remove some channels, either a single analog or multiple digital.

3) If you go the analog route - do the client's digital cable boxes even tune in analog channels? I know where I am there are like 60 analog channels in the system, but the cable company's cable boxes only tune in digital versions of them. So replacing analog channel 5 has no impact on what shows up as digital channel 5, and there's absolutely no way to see the analog version with the box.

I have all the official equipment necessary to do this in my house for digital cable - it involves a device to strip off digital channel 59 (which is occupied with some foreign digital channels), an analog modulator to create a new analog 59, and a combiner to merge it all together. On the digital cable boxes this shows up magically as channel 999 "Lobby Watch", however it ONLY works if the box supports analog tuning.

Depressing as that is, it's totally true and beautifully expressed.

If the cable box is located in a rack away from the tv, and their is no actual cable connected to the tv, I think I may be out of luck.

ZeeVee? Fred's favorite supplier?

Won't work with cable company-supplied digital cable boxes.

Here's a product that does what Daniel is talking about. This is a Canadian company that has developed products for the Cable Companies in the province of Ontario, but it doesn't mean that they wouldn't work in your location. You just need to find out what channels your local cable uses for the lobby watch application.

[Link: logenex.com]

Doesn't Channel Vision make a product that it claims will modulate onto digital cable? Came out last year, don't know any details.

Affinity P-0321, P-0328

[Link: channelvision.com]

Press release:
[Link: cepro.com]

I will ask the somewhat obvious, you do NOT have a seperate coax running to your TV location, do you?

The problem with digital cable is you need to know how the cable company has created their channel system.

Digital cable packs multiple digital channels into a single analog channel assignment - ranging from single HDTV channels, to dozens of music channels. So you can't just create a 97.1 QAM channel and expect the cable box to pick it up somewhere, since the cable company may have instead created 97.100, 97.102, 97.200 and 97.201, which map to "box" channels 203, 219, 387 and 397 respectively.

The box linked to by FRR appears to be an all-in-one device that does what I describe above - notice the GTA ("Greater Toronto Area") model number is 59, which is the channel Rogers has assigned for deletion for analog modulation. As long as your cable box supports analog tuning, that is (most of the bigger ones do, but for example the tiny RNG models and I think even a newer version of the 8300 doesn't).

That Channel Vision product seems to be a modulator combined with some sort of diplexer - it appears to require dedicated receivers to receive the modulated signal.

Channel vision is an ir controlled rf a/b switch....

Then it's not actually modulating onto "digital cable", is it...

no, it's not. It's just a switcher. But in my case, it does me no good because my cable box is in a rack in another room and the tv does not have a coax connected to it!

So what connections exist between your rack and your tv?

If, for example, you had a spare cat5, and your tv had composite inputs, you could run your camera into a da (Xantech, Niles, Key, guess where you can buy them) and then run to the display. Switch input on display to see camera.

Not sure. I will be back there on monday to find out. The cctv was put in horribly years ago by another company who since went out of business. I couldn't take the tv down myself when I was there a few days ago to take a better look.