| reply to jmn1207
Re: Bah said by jmn1207:I think the perception many of us share is that the cable companies are not upgrading as much as they are thinly spreading available resources around. They are redistributing existing resources rather than truly providing customers with legitimate upgrades. The same carrot is simply being chopped up into smaller pieces. The only problem is that this carrot no longer feeds all of us anymore, so it is becoming more obvious to us that they sorely lack in infrastructure and support. So what happens when something like tru2Way comes out and a customer has a 2 way capable device, and then the CableCo upgrades from a 750mhz plant to a full 1Gig and customers suddenly discover that their brand new (or relatively new) television only has a 860mhz tuner in it so they can't gain access to anything in the new upgrade? And then what happens if the CableCo decided that they more effeciently utilize their plant's resources by moving some existing channels/services to the new 860+mhz frequency ranges?
A large part of the problem is that technology is advancing, and customers are wanting more and more from their providers. Because of the various factors that must be evaluated in the quest to deliver those services, there is no perfect solution and there are many options available to MSO's today. That's also one reason you can see different MSO's having completely different strategies.
A MSO must evaluate the ROI of the upgrade approach, the speed which they can get the improvements to the customer, customer impact during the upgrade process, FCC licensing and rules, future upgradability, cost, etc etc etc. Each option has it's own advantages and disadvantages. Sure, Every MSO could upgrade their plants to 1Gig systems with MPEG4 video, but the cost of replacing all the existing Settop boxes in the field with ones capable of decoding MPEG4 would be excessive...The customer impact of being told "You need to swap your box or else" would be a customer service nightmare, let alone a logistical one.... And the time, service disruptions, and customer impact while going thru an entire plant and upgrading every single component from the headend out to support 1Gig would be another major cause of problems. The ROI on that upgrade path would be such that for the large MSO's it would be career suicide for numerous people once the stockholders got ahold of them.
So you see different MSO's taking different approaches at finding ways to offer their customers more using the technology available today. Because each of them have their own measurements they used in evaluating their options, you can see the differing results. Obviously, it has to be something they can cost effectively do to a large majority of their systems... Then they need to figure out what kind of customer impact they can deal with, the technical costs and headaches of rolling it out without causing service interruptions, etc....And then you have them factoring in things such as their legal obligations with content providers, franchise authorities, content providers, etc; as well as cost, market competition, the speed they can have the customers see the benefits of the upgrades, and the ultimate ROI.
some are choosing to go the SDV route. Others are attempting to improve compression so they can squeeze another HD channel into a mux. Still others are just saying goodbye to analogs so they can replace it with all digital.
No matter the strategy they choose, someone gets pissed. Go SDV, Tivo and cablecard TV people get pissed because they can't get all the channels someone with a 2way box can get. Go 3-in-1 HD's, HDTV videophiles get annoyed because the picture can get a few more artifacts than it does in a 2-in-1. Go All Digital, People with multiple TV's plugged straight into the cable get annoyed that they don't get all the channels they used to get without a box. |
