I noticed some strange things happening with the QAM channels over the past month and specifically this week. For instance with the On Demand channels in Missisauga, (atleast on my Sony E50A10), my TV always had the same range of channels from the time I scanned them in a year ago like so:

88.22 to 88.41 (20 channels)
90.60 to 90.71 (12 channels)
92.60 to 92.71 (12 channels)
93.22 to 93.41 (20 channels)

Now I'm not sure how anyone elses QAM tuner scans in channels, by my Sony will only add a channel if it is broadcasting, whether it is encrypted or not. For the majority of the encrypted channels that's okay, but with the On Demand ones, they only 'broadcast' if someone is watching something. Now that's not a big deal because as long the Sony can scan in one of the sub channels, it would automatically add in any new sub channels as they were being 'used'. When the show stopped broadcasting, the good thing was the channel stayed in the channel listing which is how I knew that the channels in Mississauga were always in these ranges in my neighbourhood. So here's what I changed.

All of the channels have moved to a new range of sub channels within the main channel. I only realized it when my TV started adding all of these new stations on which I would find movies, but on the original range of sub channels I would find nothing. I thought I was getting 20 new channels when in fact Rogers was just moving the original 20 around. I finally decided to do a re-scan just to clean up the clutter and all of the old channels were dropped and the new range showed up. My TV hasn't captured all of the new channels yet and definitely none of the 'old' ones, but based on the ones I do have, I think they kept the same number of channels and just moved them as follows:

88.22 to 88.41 is now 88.42 to 88.61 (still 20 channels)
90.60 to 90.71 is now 90.20 to 90.31 (still 12 channels)
92.60 to 92.71 is now 92.20 to 92.31 (still 12 channels)
93.22 to 93.41 is now 93.42 to 93.61 (still 20 channels)

So what's the big deal? Well I was wondering if Rogers did this on purpose to screw up the people with QAM tuners which don't work the same way as mine does where it automatically adds channels. If your channel listing is only created on the initial scan and therefore 'static', once these stations stopped working, you might be inclined to think that this was just Rogers doing the same thing that they did with the other channels. i.e. Encrypting these channels as well when in fact they weren't. They were really just shuffling them around the range.

I'm not sure how many people actually watch these stations as picking up a movie, (especially in it's entirety), is a little 'hit and miss', but I do like the fact that I can preview a lot of movies without having to waste money renting some of the crappy ones. A lot of the HBO stuff is pretty good when you do catch it.

Now for the good/weird stuff. Hopefully I'm not jinxing anything by talking about it because God knows that 'Big Brother' Rogers is probably watching this thread. This is probably why they started nuking the unencrypted QAM channels in July because they could see how popular it was getting. In any case, during my new scan this week, I picked up a couple of new channels. ex. 72.71. Initially it just looked like a sports advertising channel as it lists all of the upcoming activity for the 'ActionPak', 'Nascar Hot Pass', 'Extra Innings', 'US College Basketball & Football', 'Centre Ice' and 'NFL Sunday Ticket'. The main thing it seems to do is broadcast the feed for the FAN 590. Last night however I couldn't believe my eyes when I found baseball being broadcast in HIGH DEF on two of the new stations I scanned in. I had the Dodgers/Rockies game and the Twins/Mariners games in HD, it was pretty cool!

Now perhaps this is just a fluke as one of the advertising screens mentioned that 'Extra Innings' was being temporarily moved to a new range of channels for both Rogers and Cogeco customers for the week of Sept. 23 to 30, so maybe the only range that they could use was some of the old 'unencrypted' QAM channels. I'm keeping my fingers crossed just in case.

I turned it on at noon today and caught ESPN HD so I'm not sure how I'm getting these unless one of my neighbours has just activated an HD cable box and now I'm picking up some of his feed like with the On Demand channels. It's a distinct possibility because tonight I picked up a movie (Something with Ryan Gosling and Anthony Hopkins in it.) on the regular On Demand channel 92.21 and I had to look twice to confirm that it was also in HD. (Okay I know it was only upscaled to 1080i as that's what my TV display showed, but it looked REALLY good.) I can't say I've ever seen an HD movie on the On Demand channels in the past year so it was definitely something new. Mind you I did see the Rogers Cable van in the neighbourhood twice this week, so maybe they're 'tweaking' something.

I can only wait and see if I lose everything after the weekend. I'm just hoping to catch some more games in HD. I already pick up all of the local and Buffalo HD stations with an antenna, but it would be cool to get some more free HD cable channels like ESPN.

Sorry for the long post, just a little excited! I'd be interested if Daniel or anyone else can scan in these new channels and get some HD via QAM.