[Lex Computer & Tech Group/LCTG] Between February 27th and March 9th, 2022, you may experience brief, unavoidable interruptions to your TV services due to sun outages

Tue Mar 1 06:38:50 PST 2022

 As long as it stays out of Prime Time, I'm good with it. My daytime and early evening recordings are off the air, via TiVo.
-- Bob Primak

    On Monday, February 28, 2022, 05:46:03 PM EST, Steve Isenberg <smisenberg at gmail.com> wrote:  

 Why can't they schedule these solar outages to be between midnight and 5am when it won't affect most people?

On Mon, Feb 28, 2022 at 1:27 PM john rudy <jjrudy1 at comcast.net> wrote:

We should engage Joshua.  As I recall he was able to get the sun to stop for a small period of time without deleterious effect on the earth and then speed up so Lexington would not be affected.  It would probably affect Jericho.  

Luckily the problem seems small; not one of biblical proportions.

John

John Rudy

781-861-0402

781-718-8334 (cell)

John.rudy at alum.mit.edu 

From: LCTG <lctg-bounces+jjrudy1=comcast.net at lists.toku.us> On Behalf Of Ken Pogran
Sent: Monday, February 28, 2022 1:21 PM
To: Lex Computer Group <lctg at lists.toku.us>
Subject: Re: [Lex Computer & Tech Group/LCTG] Between February 27th and March 9th, 2022, you may experience brief, unavoidable interruptions to your TV services due to sun outages

The email I received from Astound/RCN said these outages would affect "TV service", but didn't mention Internet.

These cable channel solar outages have got to be affecting all local cable providers equally.

Cable channels are distributed via geosynchronous communication satellites.  During a period a few days before the spring equinox and after the fall equinox, for a few minutes each day the sun appears directly "behind" the satellite a cable provider's receiving antenna is pointed at, and the solar radiation overwhelms the receiver. A cable provider's "head end" site in a given region will have a small cluster of receiving antennas pointing in slightly different directions at the various satellites; each will experience slightly different solar outages.

There may be "landline" backups for the several major television networks (I don't know), but the so-called Multichannel Video Programming Distributors offer so many channels that satellite is the only realistic/economic way to distribute them.

The Wikipedia article Sun outage offers more detail, including the following:

Sun outages occur before the March equinox (in February and March) and after the September equinox (in September and October) for the Northern Hemisphere, and occur after the March equinox and before the September equinox for the Southern Hemisphere. At these times, the apparent path of the Sun across the sky takes it directly behind the line of sight between an earth station and a satellite. The Sun radiates strongly across the entire spectrum, including the microwave frequencies used to communicate with satellites (C band, Ku band, and Ka band), so the Sun swamps the signal from the satellite. The effects of a Sun outage range from partial degradation (increase in the error rate) to the total destruction of the signal. The effect sweeps from north to south from approximately 20 February to 20 April, and from south to north from approximately 20 August to 20 October, affecting any specific location for less than 12 minutes a day for a few consecutive days.

Ken Pogran

Mitchell I. Wolfe wrote on 2/28/22 1:05 PM:

Here is the RCN (Astound Broadband) explanation. It includes the following:

"The sun outage happens only during the day between 10:30 AM and 5:30 PM ET (no sun, no interference) and is brief, lasting for a few minutes—from 5 minutes, up to 15 minutes."

-- Mitch

On 2022-02-28 11:23, Robert Primak wrote:

Comcast/Xfinity has not made such an announcement. Maybe we on Comcast have a better backup system? Something to consider when choosing a provider? 

Or maybe Comcast is simply not telling us something? 

I haven't had any scheduled recordings yet since Feb. 27th, so I'll just have to stand by and stay tuned.

-- Bob Primak

On Monday, February 28, 2022, 11:06:14 AM EST, Martin Kafka <mpkafka at rcn.com> wrote:

I received this message from my Internet Provider, RCN, recently re-names as Astound Broadband.

There could be some brief internet ser4vice disruptions  between Feb 27th and March 9th.

Astound Broadband Powered by RCN <astound at connect.astound.com>

 I am posting to our group in case other provider satellites could be affected as well.

Marty Kafka

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