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devolved
join:2012-07-11
Rapid City, SD
Ooma Telo

devolved to tidal

Member

to tidal

Re: Old Knology customer, new WOW customer

This Ars Technica article from 2006 sort of explains what cable companies are up against. If you want to complain about the lack of HD, blame all the analog SD channels that even "cable ready" televisions can receive:

Link --> HD channels stretch cable’s bandwidth

In short, everyone is going to have to get a digital set top box or DVR in order to see cable television in the future. Having a "cable ready" TV just won't cut it for long.

Cable TV will become truly digital instead of a amalgamation of digital and analog. Analog is a bandwidth hog. It was fine years ago when there were about 100 channels, but that's no longer the case anymore.

For services like DirecTV and Dish Network, they're both true digital and each single analog channel aboard their orbiting satellite has the bandwidth capacity to deliver up to 6 digital channels at the same time with minimal compression.

Cable providers everywhere are transitioning customers over. Just a few months ago, a friend of mine in Washington state who is a Comcast customer was told that her "cable ready" TV would no longer work on their system and she was forced to take a set top box. Luckily for her, she didn't have to pay extra for it.

Here in Rapid City, SD, Midcontinent went all digital last year and now ofter more channels and higher speed internet for the same price that us Knology/WOW! customers are paying. In short, Midcontinent subscribers got a free upgrade.
mogamer
join:2011-04-20
Royal Oak, MI

mogamer

Member

said by devolved:

This Ars Technica article from 2006 sort of explains what cable companies are up against. If you want to complain about the lack of HD, blame all the analog SD channels that even "cable ready" televisions can receive:

Link --> HD channels stretch cable’s bandwidth

In short, everyone is going to have to get a digital set top box or DVR in order to see cable television in the future. Having a "cable ready" TV just won't cut it for long.

Cable TV will become truly digital instead of a amalgamation of digital and analog. Analog is a bandwidth hog. It was fine years ago when there were about 100 channels, but that's no longer the case anymore.

For services like DirecTV and Dish Network, they're both true digital and each single analog channel aboard their orbiting satellite has the bandwidth capacity to deliver up to 6 digital channels at the same time with minimal compression.

Cable providers everywhere are transitioning customers over. Just a few months ago, a friend of mine in Washington state who is a Comcast customer was told that her "cable ready" TV would no longer work on their system and she was forced to take a set top box. Luckily for her, she didn't have to pay extra for it.

Here in Rapid City, SD, Midcontinent went all digital last year and now ofter more channels and higher speed internet for the same price that us Knology/WOW! customers are paying. In short, Midcontinent subscribers got a free upgrade.

There are plenty of cable-ready tv's that don't need a digital box to pick-up channels. Those are sets with digital clear QAM tuners. I agree that analog needs to die, but lets not kill providing service to secondary or spare tv's by requiring stbs (with fees) to get service. Thankfully WOW hasn't been killing clear QAM service like Comcast and some others have. The availability of receiving clear QAM is the one clear advantage that cable has over satellite and U-Verse (another is being able to use your own cable card dvr instead of renting the providers, often poor, dvrs).
Joe12345678
join:2003-07-22
Des Plaines, IL

Joe12345678

Member

to bad card cable kind of flopped and some systems have outlet fees with cable cards that can cost as much as renting a cable box.
mogamer
join:2011-04-20
Royal Oak, MI

mogamer

Member

said by Joe12345678:

to bad card cable kind of flopped and some systems have outlet fees with cable cards that can cost as much as renting a cable box.

At least with pc cable card devices and the new Tivo 4 tuner units, you only pay for one cable card and then buy extenders to cover more than one tv.