afiggatt
join:2007-07-12
Sterling, VA
| reply to amungus
Re: probably
said by amungus  :So if I read all that correctly, they still pipe 'analog' signals out to coax in houses? I would bet that the reasoning was that there weren't as many HDTV's in use at the time. It's also convenient to just plug in a regular TV to ordinary coax and not even worry about an extra box to plug in, wire up, etc... Easy for the regular TV person with little technical experience who might get confused while hooking everything up. Fios TV is effectively all digital. All the channels you get with their SD or HD STB or DVR are digital on QAM256 channels. What they did was also provide for up to 40 analog channels to be piped to the home through the ONT (Optical Network Terminal) in the channel 2 to 49 block. You can hook up a TV with an analog NTSC cable ready tuner and get those channels. But these are local channels ONLY - local broadcast and PEG along with several throw-ins such as WGN and a weather channel. ALL the national SD and HD channels are digital only and encrypted so you need a STB or DVR or a TV/STB with a cable card to get those channels.
However the SD and HD locals are also provided in the clear (ie unencrypted), so you can get those with a digital TV or STB with a QAM tuner without an extra fee for a STB.
As Fios TV is a relatively new service, it is likely the vast majority of Fios subscribers are using the Fios STB/DVRs for their main TVs, so the analog channels are irrelevant to those setups. There are probably some with a kitchen or bedroom TV getting the analog channels. Verizon will be providing the minimal Motorola DCT 700 STB as a small cheap STB as an option for the analog sets. Once the DCT 700s have been provided and Verizon has regulatory approval to kill analog, it appears they will undertake an aggressive schedule to do so. This has been all discussed in the Fios TV forum, but maybe it is useful to rehash it here for those who have not kept up on the discussions. |
