Re: Do I need to pay the cable company for a (non-HD) digital cable box?
- From: Alan F <afiggatt1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 18:58:03 GMT
whosbest54 wrote:
In article <qRV6i.3633$D31.1482@trnddc01>, afiggatt1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx says...Comcast and the other big cable companies have been to implementI was afraid this would start to occur and the cable cos. might use the digital transition as an excuse to do so. This requires subscribers to pay extra for boxes or cable cards, eliminates the use of built in tuners in TVs and recording devices and is a significant cost if you have several sets in a house - all will need a box. The reasons for doing this are simply greed and control; there is no mandate for cable to switch to only digital for some or all stations they carry.
digital simulcast of the analog channels in many areas. When you hook up
a digital STB or DVR in those areas, the box automatically displays the
digital version of the analog channels with better picture quality. The
real reason for digital simulcast is to wean people off of the analog
channels so they start to shut down the analog channels and eventually
go all digital. In the city of Chicago, Comcast recently shut down the
analog version of all the national cable channels and left only around
35 analog local broadcast and local government / public access channels.
Subscribers were forced to switch to digital STBs or have TVs/Tivos with
cable cards if they wanted to continue to watch CNN, USA, TCM, and so on.
whosbest54
There is no FCC mandate, but there is considerable competitive
pressure on the cable companies from DirecTV, Dish, and now Verizon
Fios. DirecTV is launching two satellites this year that will provide
them with the capacity to provide up to 150 national HD channels.
DirecTV has already announced a large number of new HD cable channels -
CNN-HD in September, FX-HD, Weather Channel HD, Sci-Fi HD - to name
just a few that will be starting up by later this year or early next
year. Here is DirecTV's own press release on this:
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=127160&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1006125&highlight=.
A significant chunk of the bandwidth for the cable providers is tied
up in the legacy analog channels, up to 70+ channels in most places.
Each NTSC analog channel takes up 6 MHz of bandwidth. With digital QAM,
they can fit up to around 12 digital SD channels or 2 to 3 HD channels
(if they want to over-compress) into that space. In order to add SD and
HD channels to keep up with the competition, they will have to start to
shut down the analog channels. The analog channels are bandwidth hogs.
By going to a core analog tier of maybe 30 analog local channels and
getting most subscribers to get a digital STB, they free up bandwidth
for a lot more digital SD & HD channels and revenue generating VOD &
PPV. And it cuts down on cable theft which may have been a large factor
in why the city of Chicago went all digital except for a legacy analog
core recently.
The two main DBS satellite providers have been all digital from the
start. People are going to have to accept that analog cable is going to
be phased out and more quickly than they expected. It is compete or die
time for the telephone, cable and DBS companies.
Alan F
.
- References:
- Do I need to pay the cable company for a (non-HD) digital cable box?
- From: dgates
- Re: Do I need to pay the cable company for a (non-HD) digital cable box?
- From: dgates
- Re: Do I need to pay the cable company for a (non-HD) digital cable box?
- From: Alan F
- Re: Do I need to pay the cable company for a (non-HD) digital cable box?
- From: whosbest54
- Do I need to pay the cable company for a (non-HD) digital cable box?
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