3) As a result of the single channel and two-way communication between your box and the digital provider system, there is the opportunity for the service provider to keep track of what you are watching. Privacy alert!

1) It costs more. Analog cable already costs too much. Oh, sure, you get more with digital. but look at what you get. For example, HBO East, West, Up, Down, whatever - if you look at the program guide, you'll see that these multiples of the same channel carry essentially the same programs as the standard one, repeated and rotated in various patterns. In other words, you don't get much more programming with these channel multiples, only more chances to see the same movie or whatever repeated over and over. I feel for the people on limited budgets, but I myself can well afford to pay more for the digital cable, but I just plain don't want to. You've got to draw the line somewhere.

2) You are only getting one channel at a time. With analog cable, all the channels available to me are coming into my house, so to speak, multiplexed together. Thus, when I want to channel surf, I experience no appreciable delay changing channels. With digital, there's only the selected channel coming down the line into my house. When changing channels, a request signal is sent to the local "server" which changes the single channel being piped to you, and there is a noticeable delay before the new channel's program is fully up and running on your screen. The problem seems worse with satellite. The delay is probably due to the latency of the digital switching equipment and the servers. I don't like this delay, as when I channel surf I want to do it quickly.

3) As a result of the single channel and two-way communication between your box and the digital provider system, there is the opportunity for the service provider to keep track of what you are watching. Privacy alert!