At home (Downtown Vancouver), I subscribe to Novus Entertainment’s basic cable service which in my mind, is a mixed bag. Customer service and technical support is a bit of a drag and they’re a bit more expensive than SHAW (especially given SHAW’s latest promotions) but their Internet speeds are unsurpassed – better than Telus and SHAW, hands down and that portion of the service is cheap.

The other day, while trying to figure out where the HD channels on my TV came from (thinking that I was receiving ATSC over-the-air digital programming coming from Mount Seymour), I unplugged the cable from the TV and momentarily lost service.

So what’s the deal? In the end, after some experimentation and long channel scans and some handy work with the help of Peter Near (HERE), I was able to get free SD and HD content for a few channels via ClearQAM from my Novus cable feed without a digital cable box. Here’s the list – happy HDing:

QAM 112-2 or 112.2 – Global BC HD – CHAN – Analog 11
QAM 123-121 or 123.121 – KVOS SD – KVOS – Analog 12
QAM 126-4 or 126.4 – KSTW SD – KSTW – Analog 14
QAM 126-5 or 126.5 – CityTV SD – CKVU – Analog 13
QAM 126-5 or 126.5 – KING DT – NBC Affiliate
QAM 126-8 or 126.8 – CBS SD – KIRO – Analog 15
QAM 127-11 or 127.11 – CBC French SD – CBUFT – Analog 7
QAM 127-12 or 127.12 – OMNI SD – CHNM – Analog 8

All of the above appear to be modulated with QAM256.

There’s also music channels 84-12, 84-17, 84-18 and 84-32.

For further reading check out an old thread on the topic HERE, Peter Near’s blog post on enabling ATSC and QAM (you still need a QAM capable tuner) HERE and an FAQ HERE.