HDHR Prime and Philadelphia area Xfinity?

#1

Hello,

new user, doing a bunch of reading and learning a lot, but maybe someone has directly related experience.

I'm looking to watch Philadelphia market sports when I am away from home. NBCSports Philadelphia is the cable channel that will carry a lot of hockey, basketball and baseball, and then football is usually on the local FOX channel.

Does anyone have setup with an xfinity cable card and an HDHR prime working with channels? Have you ever watched it remotely? I am a little confused about which channels would be DRMd. Seems like just premium cable, so these sports channels would work ok.

#2

DRM is dependent on your cable provider and region. Some channels may be free of DRM (all of my sports channels are DRM free except for NBA), and some may not; it completely depends upon your carrier.

#3

Yep, that's my understanding, that's why I'm asking specifically for someone who has the same setup and provider that I would like to build.

#5

Xfinity usually only adds DRM to HBO/Showtime/Cinemax and the Fox cable channels (FOX News, FX, FXX, Fox Sports)

#6

Xfinity usually only adds DRM to HBO/Showtime/Cinemax and the Fox cable channels (FOX News, FX, FXX, Fox Sports)

As a matter of policy, I'm not aware of Comcast having DRM on any of those Fox channel in any of their markets. Here in San Francisco, none of those channels are DRM'd for me. There are some reports online of Comcast customers having DRM applied to their non-premium lineups, but it always ended up being a technical error that Comcast corrected once someone managed to escalate it.

Generally, Xfinity is one of the best cable providers for CableCARD DVR users. They offer online activation of CableCARD equipment, their customer support tends to be able to provide and support CableCARDs with no more than one escalation to a supervisor, and their low-bitrate H.264 feeds are very efficient for DVR storage and allow for remote streaming without transcoding.

#7

Sorry I got Xfinity and Verizon FIOS mixed up.

#8

Hello clarkbar6

I have a similar setup and I am able to watch Philly sports on NBCSports Philadelphia with no issues. I believe there are two channels and they both work for remote viewing.

#9

I also have the Prime with Xfinity in the Philadelphia area. NBC Sports Philadelphia and NBC Sports Philadelphia+ both come through just fine locally and remotely. If the Phillies are playing a 1:05 game during the week, I can use Channels on my work laptop just fine to catch the game (shh!)

Side note: If you ever make the switch to Verizon FiOS, the most interesting thing to me was it produced a weird strobe effect on the color red in the picture. So when the Sixers wore their red uniforms, or when the Phillies were playing (Spring Training at the time, where they exclusively wear red), it absolutely drove me bonkers. So just in case you get things working but are thinking of switching over, if you watch as much Philly sports as I do and can be picky about the picture... Something to consider :slight_smile: