Re: Comcast and 8VSB

> "Comcast has a knowledgeable member of a technical 
>staff who answers the phone??"

No.  He is a technical supervisor I ran into who told me that he
attended the planning meetings.

The conversation began when I asked him when Comcast would be suspending
analog delivery in my area.  He replied that the FCC required that it be
done in February.  I then spent five minutes arguing that the mandate
did not apply to Comcast; that their only mandate was to continue to
provide analog of the local broadcast stations until 2012.  He said that
Comcast had decided to make their schedule consistent with the
over-the-air changeover.

We then discussed converters.  He said that I could either get a Comcast
box *or* one of the government-subsidized ones.  I argued that the
subsidized boxes were 8VSB only.  That is when he told me of Comcast's
plan to make their service compatible with the boxes by feeding the
broadcast stations in 8VSB instead of in clear QAM.

I argued that I knew it was in Comcast's best interest to *remain*
QAM-only because it allowed for twice the bandwidth of 8VSB.
Nevertheless, he said that it was Comcast's mission to become compatible
due to customer pressure.

What gave me the impression that he was knowledgeable was that he knew
the difference betwen QAM and 8VSB, knew that they were incompatible
with each other, and knew that Comcast digital is *currently* QAM only.
He also mentioned that Comcast had decided to honor Cable Card
technology, and *is* currently issuing Cable cards as an option for
their proprietary boxes to receive encrypted QAM channels.

One of my sayings is: "That which was true yesterday is not necessarily
true today; that which is true today will not necessarily be true
tomorrow."  That is why I do not want to take the stubborn position that
this Comcast guy does not know what he is talking about.