Weird TV channel I've discovered...

[TWCJim]

WTF?!? What channel is this?!?

I recorded this clip from my motel room earlier today. Looks like some sort of heart monitor. Maybe it's from the Charter cable headend building in Astoria? Anyone have any idea what this might be?   

[TWCCraig]

Very strange
Looks like a graph of some type of radio frequency.

I've seen some strange channels too. I used be able to get a channel of random security cams.

EDIT: After doing some research, I've stumbled upon a message board regarding a similar story someone else experienced. They also provide the answer to what this is.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-189942.html


So all it is, is your signal strength across a band of frequencies.

[TWCJim]

WTF is this channel?

Here's another clip of the similar thing, this time at another motel room with the same cable headend (Charter)

[Localonthe8s]

It's HMC: The Heart Monitor Channel.

[TWCCraig]

I've already said what it was 

[Zach]

I've already said what it was 

Considering you edited your post we dont get notified on those

[WeatherWitness]

It's HMC: The Heart Monitor Channel.

Lol!   And whose heart monitor are they showing?

[TWCmatthew]

I have that same channel on my television in my basement (channel 124), but not on my upstairs television, which is hooked up to a cable box.

I'm wondering what it is as well. By the way, I have Charter Communications in Monroe, MI.

[Mike M]

I used to have something similar to that on analog channel 122.

[texasstooge]

A friend of mine in Ft. Worth has Charter, I can ask her if she has something like that. But I wonder if it's a Bandwidth analyzer.

I have Time Warner Cable and the only "needless" channel we have on analog is a Test Card on Ch. 16 since they made all the Public/Educational/Government access channels available to digital customers only.

[xoddf2]

I remember with Cox Tulsa, in the 2000s, I would sometimes receive channels with test cards...

Also, when certain channels, such as the premium channels, Prevue^H^H^H^H^H^HTV Guide Network, Leased Access, and eventually the PEG channels moved to digital-only, I would sometimes see their analogue equivalents replaced with notices that they now required digital cable...

[Eric]

Wow - that mention of Prevue takes me back!  I remember when it was nothing more than a full-screen scrolling list of programming in half-hour blocks at a time.  Then they got fancy and added ads, trailers, and promos on the top half of the screen.  Then they got really fancy and showed 90 minutes of listings at a time.

In my house we upgraded to cable boxes with on-screen programming guides in the mid-1990s, so I stopped watching Prevue out of lack of necessity.  It was an interesting story about how we got those cable boxes so early - I happened to be flipping the channels, and the cable company's own promo channel happened to be showing an "infomercial" for them.  I watched, it looked very interesting, I told my mother to turn on that channel, and within half an hour we were already driving to the cable company's office to upgrade. 

[MultiJesse1995]

I remember seeing this on channel 76 on charter cable of dallas oregon.