Buffalo Grove's gov't access TV down

Buffalo Grove is taking steps to resolve problems with the government access cable channels.

Last week, he said, there were problems with the system caused by an amplifier in a line that was down near Buffalo Grove High School. The situation took more than a week to resolve and was finally solved on Saturday. The problem was Comcast's responsibility, he said, and took a long time to fix because Comcast had trouble pinpointing the problem.

Robert Giddens, director of information technology, said that since April 2008, there have been 18 issues with the government access channels, which have ranged from 15 minutes to more than a week to resolve. Nine of the 18 outages were the responsibility of the village. Eight of the issues were the responsibility of Comcast and one was the responsibility of AT&T.

He said there is one video server feeding both AT&T and Comcast simultaneously. If that server is down, both AT&T and Comcast will be affected.

Giddens said the village has purchased and configured a new video server for Channel 6, which should reduce errors on the village side. That should be in place shortly, he said.

Giddens also said the village will meet with the government relations representative from Comcast in order to shorten the window to get problems resolved.

"It's not a perfect system. We do not have a constant monitoring. We don't actively watch the system," Giddens said, although the police department's front desk is able to spot problems.

Both Giddens and Village President Elliott Hartstein are advising people to contact the police department's nonemergency number, (847) 459-2560, if they are experiencing any problems with receiving the government access channels.