dylking
join:2001-07-31
Saint Paul, MN
| A la Carte
the local paper had a column about a la carte cable choices in today's paper: »www.twincities.com/mld/twincitie···4681.htm
I personally would take a la carte over bundles or tiers, but then I'm on DirecTV, and I have one of thier bigger bundles - but not the sports package. If they could/would go a la carte on the satellite, I'd probably jump in and remove some channels (ESP-x, Shopping, SOAP, and so on) that I never ever look at, and have taken out of my 'channels I receive' list.
I'm glad the FCC is looking at it, but it's not like they can MAKE the cablecos actually do anything...if I understand it right, it's the laws that need to be changed, in addition to the policy... |
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WangFubar
join:2003-10-02
Paradise, CA | That is a great article, I love the analogy. |
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b10010011
Whats a Posting tag?
join:2004-09-07
Bellingham, WA
 ·Comcast Formerly ..
| It's really a bad analogy because thats not whats happening really.
The reason cable channels are bundled is because the only way to block analog channels is with a filter in the line for each channel. So in the early days the basic tier was the lower channels, one filter blocked the higher ones, and a separate filter or two for the premium channels.
As I said before if you only wanted 10 miscellaneous out of 99 analog channels they would have to put 89 filters on your cable.
The satellite companies has ALWAYS had the technology to do a la carte programming, (conditional access cards at the receiver) fact is back in the C-band days you could get anything you wanted a la carte, but a package was ALWAYS cheaper if you wanted more than three or four channels. I expect the same thing will happen with cable. |
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fiberguy
My views are my own.
Premium
join:2005-05-20
| said by b10010011  :It's really a bad analogy because thats not whats happening really. The reason cable channels are bundled is because the only way to block analog channels is with a filter in the line for each channel. So in the early days the basic tier was the lower channels, one filter blocked the higher ones, and a separate filter or two for the premium channels. As I said before if you only wanted 10 miscellaneous out of 99 analog channels they would have to put 89 filters on your cable. The satellite companies has ALWAYS had the technology to do a la carte programming, (conditional access cards at the receiver) fact is back in the C-band days you could get anything you wanted a la carte, but a package was ALWAYS cheaper if you wanted more than three or four channels. I expect the same thing will happen with cable. You're statements are true, but not quite. You can very much do ala cart programming in analog cable as well. Not all systems transmitted basic 2 in the clear. In Sacramento, for example, when cable started and for the majority of it's existence, basic 2 and 3 cable was always scrambled. You always required a analog addressable box to receive those channels.
It's very easy for any cable system today to offer ala cart programming along analog lines. It just requires a box - traps are not an option.
(A little side note: Sacramento was all scrambled, then trapped and went to the clear, then pulled the traps and rescrambled, then re-trapped and went clear again today. It takes several months each time we did this.
This will just be the straw the broke the analog cable's back. It may be a good thing in the long run.. but bad in the immediate future. |
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