Tackling Cable's Bandwidth Crunch > Double Speed vs. One Analog Channel?

Double Speed vs. One Analog Channel?

...or another doubling of broadband [Internet] capacity (which today operates out of a single 6 MHz channel slot).

Speed increase by cannibalizing analog channels vs thousands of calls to the call centers complaining why such and such channel was moved to digital.

One is easy and cheap to do. The other is costly and kills call center service levels and could be used by a competitor to get customers from Comcast.
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LanCity forever!

reply to PolarBear03
Edit: Replied to wrong person. Reposted.

reply to MrChupacabra
Used by a competitor to get customers from Comcast? In my (and almost all) area, if Comcast is your cable provider, they are the ONLY cable provider in the area. That means the only competition is DirecTV and Dish Network. Both sat providers REQUIRE a set-top box just like digital cable. So how could Comcast lose customers?

I think killing just one analog channel to double their bandwidth would be great competition to things like FIOS. They would gain many more customers than they would lose.

IMHO, this is 2006; welcome to the digital era. If you want analog, go buy yourself a VCR and let the rest of us progress. You couldn't buy a cylinder record by 1956, and you shouldn't be able to get analog TV in 2006. Fifty-some-odd years is simply too long for any technology.
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"I invented it, Bill made it famous." --David Bradley, the inventor of Ctrl+Alt+Del.

reply to PolarBear03

There never have been any premiums on analog without being scrambled in one manner or another. There still are systems with the old system where you could use a notch filter to clear up premiums. The newer systems just dont put new channels in the analog teir, they just shift them around.

reply to PolarBear03

I think you misunderstood it. I understand my comment may have been taken a bit to generally and literally, but what I mean was not that a 50 year old technology should be discontinued, but should be upgraded and improved.

I'm not talking about shutting off TV completely, just advancing it to a new technology.

First, I don't see gas & water as technology (but I guess in a way, everything is a technology). On the other hand, I am sure methods used to deliver both have improved greatly over the last 50 years.

Second, I am certainly not a lineman, but I am sure that the way electricity is transmitted and delivered to your home is much different (and better and more efficient) than it was 50 years ago. If it weren't, I think the grid would have been so overloaded this country would have burnt to the ground decades ago (we use a lot more electricity than we used to!).

I know FOR SURE that my 2002 Explorer has MUCH newer and better technology than ANY car produced in 1952 (fuel injection, 5-speed auto, full-time 4wd for example).

Finally, fifty years ago, a computer that would've done what my current computer does today probably would have required about as much room as the city of Seattle. But new technologies came out, and now I can fit my computer in to a backpack.

None of these technologies are the same as they were 50 years ago (I could write for days about if they were), so thus, my comment is correct: Fifty years is too long for any technology.

Technology evolves. Television is no exception. It simply can't stay the same forever. Hell, in just 3 years, I witnessed Comcast go from 1.5m/256k in my area to 8m/768k. That is more than double the speed every year. The same advances need to be made with TV.
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"I invented it, Bill made it famous." --David Bradley, the inventor of Ctrl+Alt+Del.

reply to Fatal Vector