If you wish to contact me for any particular reason, please click here.

Sep

18

And Now For Something Completely Shallow…

Filed Under General | 7 Comments

Had myself a laugh when this suddenly appeared on our TV. I was amused, but a little bothered as well. “Telkomvision”?

I’ve long been dissatisfied with our cable service. I used to watch CSI regularly, but now I can’t. Because our AXN’s signal is terrible. Halfway through the show, the signal would pixelate and would become unwatchable. I’ve never been able to watch CSI, or in fact, any show on AXN straight through without any sort of pixelation/signal disruption.

Same is true for HBO, CINEMAX, Discovery, National Geographic, and CNN, although at least the signal is much better with them. But not without technical flaws as well. The sound is often out of synch with CNN, and the signals for the others seem oddly zoomed and/or cropped. At Discovery Channel for instance, the only part of the Discovery Channel logo you can see on the upper right portion of the screen is “DIS”, with the only half of the S peeking out of the screen. There’s also Indonesian subtitling on the channels, but on some of them, the picture is zoomed in such a way that you only see bits of the top of the subtitling, as if they’re trying NOT to show them. And in all of these channels, there is the “Telkomvision” Logo somewhere on the screen.

I’m starting to suspect that a lot of our cable channels are actually being pirated from Indonesian cable providers. Ok, it’s just a suspicion. I’ve no hard facts to back it up, so I’m not even mentioning our cable provider.

But looking at TELKOMVISION’s website, it is indicated that their coverage includes only Indonesia and nothing more. So that makes you think. How is the signal reaching us here, through our cable provider? With these channels experiencing a LOT of technical problems?

Hmmm…. any ideas? Similar experiences? Anyone in the know? Does these things happen?

A friend of mine says he’ll try and do something about it and investigate further. He’s pretty nuts about it.

Comments

7 Responses to “And Now For Something Completely Shallow…”

  1. Robby Villabona on September 18th, 2007 11:28 am

    Indonesian subtitles? That’s almost a give away sign that your signals are unauthorized. Not sure why the signals are bad — could be the cable provider’s decoder is bad, or their satellite dish is pointed to a satellite that wasn’t set up to send signals to the Philippines (so signal is weak).

    It’s also possible your cable provider is in cahoots with the Indonesian cable provider — buying signal from them (though still probably unauthorized by the content source).

    Usually piracy in cable is rampant in small towns and cities. The content providers don’t bother to go after them since the market is small.

  2. Gerry Alanguilan on September 18th, 2007 11:47 am

    They’ve already been raided once before, for showing movies still being shown in theaters. I guess I’ll just switch providers sometime soon.

  3. Ed on September 18th, 2007 1:19 pm

    At my parents’, their cable have same problems; pixelated, bad signals and tech-difficulties.

    Home Cable wala naman problema nung meron pa akong cable dito sa Pasig…ang malaking problema lang was they blacken the sex scenes and nudity sa Sex In The City at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning. WTF was that? Meron pa bang batang nanonood ng TV ng ganung oras? Nagbabayad kami ng kumpleto then di namin napapanood ng kumpleto ang gusto namin panoorin.

    Hay…I believe most cable companies sa countrysides pirated ang broadcasting kaya you can watch Wowow without cuts. :P

    -ed

  4. johnbecaro on September 18th, 2007 2:06 pm

    lols..bad english.XD

  5. Azrael on September 18th, 2007 3:48 pm

    they are feeding on signals without permission in Indonesia.

    same incident in our province in Quezon.

    meaning, they are sending cable tv signals to cable tv subscribers illegaly

  6. jerome dizon on September 18th, 2007 4:48 pm

    download nalang kayo ng TVU player meron din sci fi channel, cbs para sa CSI ni Sir Gerry, nickelodeon, comedy channel at b apa.. live feed nga lang so tanghali nyo mapapanood :)
    libre pa kaya lang kailangan DSL connection nyo..at sa mahihilig sa MMA/UFC live dun kahit pay per view.. meron this Sunday na main event UFC 76 around 9am pinas time..

  7. jose mari Lee on September 18th, 2007 8:06 pm

    Sounds like a horror story to me. He-he.
    Sounds as if you’re using a Sattelite Disk.
    May mga alam akong mga kabataang Pinoys dito sa north America na naglalagay ng Sattellite Disk sa bubobg ng bahay at ginagamit ang signal ng Cable System. They have the 400+ channels without paying. Funny how for a month or two, the cable company would descramble the signal and the young guys would crack the password again and tuloy ang ligaya. He-he.

    But if you are a legit subscriber, that kind of service is crap.
    Kung ako ang nasa katayuan mo, mag-sattelite disk na lang rin ako. He-he.

    2:00 am bawal pa ang nudity? Sobra naman iyan. Sa Canada nga, 8:00pm, scenes of penetrations and kinky sex are allowed. Lalo pa sa Showcase at Latino Channel.