June 9, 2015
The replacement of the Johnson Center roof this summer will cause multiple CATV (Cable TV) service outages. These outages include several limited scope outages and one total CATV outage.
As the roof replacement progresses, there may be multiple outages to specific content when the antenna(s) that provide that content are temporarily blocked by construction equipment. At one point, currently scheduled to start July 20th, all of the antennas will need to be removed from the roof to replace the section of the roof where they currently sit. This should be a 7-10 day period of no CATV service.
ITS is taking advantage of the forced CATV outage to schedule the replacement of the CATV headend with the latest technology that will allow ITS to extend our CATV service beyond the Fairfax Campus. All equipment in the current CATV headend will be removed and replaced.
There will be two CATV changes that will occur due to the equipment change: 1) the channel numbering will change and 2) Analog CATV service will be discontinued. Mason currently uses a 'whole number' method where each content stream has it's own channel number. As of this time, the new COMM2000 equipment does not support this method and uses the channel.sub_channel method (like off-air TVs). Channel numbers will change from 74, 75, 76, etc to 30.1, 30.2, 31,1, 31.2, etc. The new lineup for cable can be downloaded here (PDF format).
As a result of the new equipment, the ability to easily provide Analog CATV service will be lost. The Analog CATV equipment will be removed as part of the headend cleanup and decommissioned. From this point on, only digital TVs will work on the CATV plant. ITS was planning to drop Analog CATV service in 2016 and it is now being done one year earlier. ITS currently provides 16 Analog channels in the channels 3-29 range.
If you have any questions on these CATV changes or outages, please contact the ITS Support Center.