[PLUG] FiOS TV, MythTV, QAM, no sound on WGN and Weather Channel?

[zuzu <sean.zuzu@gmail.com>]

I asked about this before in passing, but after throwing myself
against the wall of Verizon bureaucracy for over 3 weeks, I'm also
trying to forensically assess the technical nature of this problem:

is anyone else using a Clear QAM tuner (such as the HDHomeRun) with
the FiOS TV service?  are any of you missing sound from the channels
for WGN Superstation and the Weather Channel (not Weatherscan)?  ...as
of about 3 weeks ago?

(all other unencrypted channels have sound and picture just fine.
picture is fine on WGN and Weather Channel, just no sound, only as of
3 weeks ago.)

I'm using an HDHR with EyeTV, although I've also tested this directly
off the ONT with a Miglia MiniHD tuner, and ever since Verizon mucked
with their network/infrastructure 3 weeks ago, those two channels have
been without sound.

on the phone I keep getting re-routed to either the "video" / "inside
your house" department or lied to that I have the Premier package when
actually I have the Local Plus (i.e. digital / HDTV) package ($13/mo),
and that the problem is either with my tuner (it's not, since two
different tuners produce the same result, and both tuners did work
before) or that because I opted not to take the free cablebox when the
TV service was installed that "I only ordered analog signal" (not
true, Local Plus is _only_ in digital).

I'm now starting to play with dvbsnoop or find some other (preferably
Free Software) utility to examine the MPEG-2 transport stream (a
friend of mine examined what FiOS sends out and said their header
packets for PMT are unusually large -- so large that they spread over
several packets).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG_transport_stream

one question Verizon shyed away from was that perhaps their boxes
don't have problems because they're actually outputting the analog
signal; I think this was a topic on Slashdot a little while ago:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/16/0238245

so among all you smart people who I'm betting have FiOS TV and MythTV
setup using an HDHR:

1.) do you have any problems tuning 256 QAM with an HDHR or similar
tuner and getting sound for WGN Superstation (411MHz) and the Weather
Channel (477MHz)?

2.) do you know of any tools, such as dvbsnoop, to examine the
transport stream packets to find out, precisely, what Verizon is doing
wrong so I can decisively bring it to their attention?

3.) anyone have any additional information about how Verizon's FiOS
network is deployed that you could bring to bear into this issue?  is
there jargon for the particular hardware used or office responsible
that I can cite?  or any other advice on how to squelch the run-around
Verizon is giving me?

p.s. the best way to get through Verizon's automated phone tree is to
say "speak to an agent" or "speak to an NT" (network technician).
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