| reply to Greg2600
Re: First DTA dongle market identified: Portland, OR said by Greg2600:As expected, Comcast will be leasing the equipment out. The $1.99 is not bad, especially if they replace broken remotes for free. My question of course, will Comcast only charge $1.99 or will they slap on their unique "outlet fee"? Per new Comcast pricing in Connecticut / New England to take effect in December - February, a standard box will be $1.70 plus remote for the first TV. The digital additional outlet charge will be $6.95 for additional TV's and this includes the box.
I'd imagine the pricing for the DTA's will follow suit. No OnDemand with the DTA's, obviously. |
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| reply to Travelfan1
Curious why they didn't go all digital first in Philly. That's Comcast's home town, so if anything were to go wrong, headquarters is right there. They should be equipped with some sharp engineers in the labs ready to go out to the headends at a moments notice.
Plus isn't most of center city analog scrambled anyway? People should already be used to having a box. What makes Philly more complicated than Chicago or Portland? Is it the mix mash of previous operators architecture (Original Comcast, Greater Media, Wade Cable, Suburban Cablevision, etc..)? Seems like they had many years to clean that stuff up. |
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1 edit | reply to Travelfan1
A few questions in no specific order:
1) Does anyone know if this change is going to apply to all of the sub-networks that branch from Portland? I'm down in Salem and I'm wondering if we're going to get changed over too, as we tend to inherit Portland's changes.
2) I had never heard of a DTA up until today, so I'm trying to quickly figure out what's what. From what I understand it's a miniature cable box that just tunes digital channels with no frills? What does it have for outputs (e.g. component, composite, HDMI, etc)?
3) I see there's talk about a possible lack of encryption. I already have an HDHomeRun for tuning the local HD networks, would this mean that Comcast is going to stop encrypting the digital copies of their expanded basic (analog) channels, and that I would be able to tune them with my existing hardware?
Thanks in advance. |
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| reply to Travelfan1
all comcast or OREGON and SW WASHINGTON will be dta look at the oregon channel changes 2008 thread |
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| reply to cypherstream
said by cypherstream:Curious why they didn't go all digital first in Philly. That's Comcast's home town, so if anything were to go wrong, headquarters is right there. They should be equipped with some sharp engineers in the labs ready to go out to the headends at a moments notice. Plus isn't most of center city analog scrambled anyway? People should already be used to having a box. What makes Philly more complicated than Chicago or Portland? Is it the mix mash of previous operators architecture (Original Comcast, Greater Media, Wade Cable, Suburban Cablevision, etc..)? Seems like they had many years to clean that stuff up. I can't say for certain, but it could be related to some of those recent shakeups in the eastern division. There was recently that press release about some more reworking the layout of the eastern division at comcast, the merging of several regions (philly and NJ), and regional/division level headcount cuts. It makes some sense that with an initial test market for something as "big" as the dta's that they would want someplace with a bit more stability so there is less chance of something being overlooked or dropped in the midst of all the changes going on in merging two regions.
Or ya know, there is also the more cynical "evil mastermind" view of the situation.... It seems like there are a lot more Comcast customers active in this online forum (and I'll assume others) from the eastern part of the US, complete with a large Philly contingent. It could be they want to get the kinks worked on in an area without such a large vocal online population so that any problems don't end up scuttling the entire effort by generating alot of negative online press and word of mouth.
Either theory would seem logical. |
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ak3883
join:2005-08-20
Portsmouth, RI | reply to ViRGEdx
1. I have no clue
2. I believe it is just an in-line adaptor, coax cable in, coax cable out(to TV). All it is really is just a QAM tuner. It has a remote control. Not sure what/if there is a channel # display on the front. I'm guessing there is and if you hit channel 2 it would really be tuning to 77-1 or whatever the digital channel is, but show ch 2. Maybe it shows the real channel on the TV itself, I don't know.
3. Yes, the expanded basic tier(B2) will be unencrypted QAM, so you would be able to tune with any PC QAM tuner device(great news for HTPC users!). They are only unecrypting B2 tier, not like all of the HD channels will be unencrypted.
It looks like they are seeking a waiver from the FCC for the seperable box security mandate. If the FCC approved, then they could turn on the encryption. But if the FCC does not grand the waiver, then they cannot encrypt them. I bet Comcast wishes they deployed all these a couple years back so they could have used encryption. Too bad so sad. |
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| reply to Travelfan1
I talked to a Comcast rep named Dawn tonight. She was not 'high-level' by any means, but she did know about the DTA dongle adapters that were coming down the pike.
She claimed that they would not be rented out by Comcast, leading me to believe they would either be
a) sold by Comcast
b) purchased from a large retail store
Her exact statement is that you would 'get them from somewhere else"
She also claimed that this DTA would merely help you to receive channels from Basic/Expanded that were moved to a digital #. She also said that the digital outlet charge would not apply. |
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| reply to Travelfan1
So for the Portland market, will they be using a BroadLogic TeraPix in the telecom closets of Schools, Colleges, Hospitals, Assisted living, and Hotels ? I can't imagine Comcast fitting 1000 DTA's in a hospital when there's not even much room to place them (or in a school or Hotel for that matter). Especially in a hotel or assisted living, where not all of the rooms are occupied at once (normally). |
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