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Tuesday,
March 23, 2004 |
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Television
service fraught with problems, outages
TCU
Cable has had difficulties since the channel line up was
increased from 49 to 85 channels last year.
By
Ferrell Fields
Staff Reporter
Weather and poor signals from satellites are to blame
for recent on-campus cable problems ranging from missing
to duplicate channels, university officials said.
The most “infamous” incident was Feb. 22, when
a poor signal from the DISH network, TCU’s cable
provider, prevented students from watching the series
finale of Sex and the City, said Travis Cook, director
of business services for TCU Connect. The poor signal
blocked reception of HBO.
Students such as Libby Archer, a freshman music education
major, had to go off campus to watch the much-anticipated
final episode.
“My friends and I got together to watch the finale
and were disappointed when we could not watch it. It was
an inconvenience but we know that satellites can sometimes
be unreliable,” said Archer, who went to her sister’s
house on Stadium Drive.
In the spring, digital reception is prone to more weather
related problems from seasonal storms, Cook said. Problems
have also resulted from the cable channel line up increasing
from 49 channels to 85 channels when the university switched
to DISH network last year. Because students have more
program choices, more receivers are packed together tightly,
which has caused some of the problems, Cook said.
Twelve channels were recently lost for four days because
of a power pack failure.
“In response to the failures, we have brought in
spare receivers so the response time would be faster,”
Cook said.
TCU Connect has also had problems with channels “bleeding”
into other channels, Cook said. On one occasion students
were getting two ESPNs.
“When a technician goes to repair a receiver, there
is risk of the receiver bleeding over into another receiver,”
Cook said. “This causes channels to be replaced by
other channels.”
Every morning, the university tests channels see if they’re
all working, Cook said. He urged students to report problems
to TCU Connect. |
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