On Fri, 09 May 2008 00:08:46 -0500 Mike O. <mike@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
| On Thu, 8 May 2008 18:54:56 -0400, "Guy" <nospam@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
|
|> Given this possibility,
|>if you were the cable companies, which option would you choose: millions
of
|>set-top boxes , or convert at HQ and send analog signal? The smart
choice
|>would be the latter. Do a little investigation and I believe you will
find
|>that they WILL be going that route.
|
| Well I have to disagree with you here.
| Do a little math and I believe you will find they're going the other
| direction. This is not about smart, it's about profit. Cox charges
| $6 a month for the most generic digital box. Take that times the
| "millions" of boxes, and start counting the money. Those boxes are
| very cheap when a cable company buys them in the quantities they do
| and there is a hell of a lot of profit built in to that monthly fee.
|
| Locally, Cox still has about 60 channels of analog but about 6 months
| ago moved all premium channels to digital only. When that happened
| it caused an uproar locally but also caused a shortage of the digital
| boxes. I expect that the move was just the beginning of a transition
| to all digital. With some of the other companies (mentioned in this
| thread) making similar moves, the writing is on the wall.
And even if cable companies are forced to deliver analog at the same price
on the basic tier (generally the tier a lot of communities mandate for the
low income people to get their OTA on a wire, plus some local access),
eating the cost for a cheapo SD-only box just for this tier still puts
them ahead considering how much bandwidth recovery is involved. If there
are 20 channels on the basic tier, that can be squeezed into 2 channels
of spectrum with QAM256, yielding 18 channels of spectrum that can be used
to generate more revenues from other higher paying customers. That can be
used to deliver 36 lightly-compressed or 54 highly-compressed HD channels.
And then, as mentioned elsewhere, is the clever trick of using CECBs to
bypass most of the box costs. Tell the basic tier customers to get a
coupon, buy a CECB, send in the receipt, and credit the customer for the
difference they paid for the CECB in 24 equal installments over the next
two years. Oh, they have to put those 20 channels on 4 8VSB channels to
make that work. That means 48 highly-compressed HD channels instead of
54.
Certainly an abuse of the coupon program. But one cable company may be
trying to do that.
| There is a window of just a few years here where people will still
| have analog sets that will still require a box. If you don't think
| the cable companies have plans to profit from that, I've got a bridge
| to sell you.
I don't mind getting a digital TV (wait, I have one now). What I don't
like
is the PoS box Comcast is offering in this area.
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|
| Phil Howard KA9WGN (email for humans: first name in lower case at
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|
