Sweeping Channel Changes Pending

[jamoody]

Comcast has announced a complete shuffle of the channel numbers in my area starting 4/12 (ESPN 1605->1205, etc). Nearly every channel will be effected. Do I need to make anyone in SchedulesDirect aware of the pending changes for pre-planning or are the changes going to be automatic and seamless from SD perspective?

[rkulagow]

That's known as the Comcast Master Channel Lineup changes - you can google it.

The published date and then the actual transition date aren't always in sync. If on "transition day" we still have the old lineup, then please open a ticket at the Schedules Direct website -> Lineup Issue and let us know one or two of the delta updates and we can see if Comcast provided the new lineup to our upstream.

[rmeden]

Only thing I would add to RobertK's response is while our data (I know SD-DD does, I assume SD-JSON does as well) has start/stop dates for channel lineups, most applications don't actually look at those fields, so it can cause some confusion.

[jamoody]

Thanks.

[jamoody]

The SD changes didn't occur as scheduled but the Comcast changes did. Disappointing. Nearly every channel is wrong. I opened a support request to SD. Looks like I'm out of luck until that happens.

[gtb]

The SD changes didn't occur as scheduled but the Comcast changes did. Disappointing. Nearly every channel is wrong. I opened a support request to SD. Looks like I'm out of luck until that happens.

There were reportedly a few special locations (you are apparently one of them) where Comcast had already been using the >1000 numbers which results in the need to reshuffle those >1000 channels and adjust the guide data, and that also meant that people who tuned to a remembered channel number (or who had programmed their Harmony) might now get an entirely new experience.

Most of the MCLU'd locations simply got new channels added (and while Comcast and/or Gracenote did not always get the changes happening at the exact same time, it was mostly just an annoyance of lack of data for the new channels, not wrong data), and people could continue to use their existing channel numbers to get to channels they remembered.

Don't you feel the Comcast special?

The only good news is that Comcast is unlikely to do this again for at least another decade (it took them a decade for this iteration).

[slim]

Since the Fresno, CA area Comcast is keeping the old numbers and has added the 1000 range my hope is that in my area the Schedule Direct data keeps the 1-999 format so I don't have to reschedule everything. That means starting over with several hundred programs.

[rkulagow]

The channel numbers are dictated by Comcast; if they re-shuffle in the lower < 1000, then that will be reflected in our data.