Re: Comcast and 8VSB

In article <24455-482422D4-317@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, 
TheWebJunkie@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 says...
>
>
>> "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.
>
Thanks for the detailed update on the conversation.

This is one of the most interesting things I've seen about what cable will

be doing over the next few months.  In the long run, I think this is 
acutally a good idea, but raises all sorts of other issues, including the 
fact that this is a new exception to what people have been told and 
understood for years about what cable will do.

whosbest54
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