Digital cable not truly digital

[medic3]

I spoke with my local Cable rep and learned something I thought i would share with the group. The channels below channel 100 are certifiably analog and the ones above 100 are digital. This is why digital cable sounds better on paper than in performance.
Stick with me on this.

For most cable companies the most common channels are the first 50-60. They are the ones you can recieve if you pay the very least amount per month and don't even need a converter box. You have your local affiliates MTV, CNN and the other popular channels that are common houshold names.

As cable can only carry a limited amount of space consuming analog signals and their is about 6 flavors of HBO and god only knows how many other movie channels, the cable providers needed a way to get more channnels on a single line. Welcome digital cable.

The bottom line is that if you pay an extra fee for "digital cable" you can see about a two dozen of the newer channels in digital clarity. BBC America on channel 165 comes in noticable clearer than say.......all the local affiliates for ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox. Discovery health channel 156 comes in remarkably improved from say....CNN or MTV.

The Super Bowl may look grainy with analog noise however I can switch over to the digital History Channel and me and my football buddies can see the story of the fall of Rome in digital clarity. Bottom line ....the 30% percent of the channels in digital clarity are not the channels i watch.


Satalite is 100 percent digital. All the channels. All the time. The down side is the local channels in HDTV issue that my local cable company states they will be providing sooner than the satalite companies. I heard that you will need a second dish just for HDTV How confused would my wife be with a fifth remote control.

Digital cable is an improvement however i would much rather throw a widescreen DVD in my progressive scan player than watch the same movie on a digital cable movie channel in 4:3

Please feel free to correct me or tell me if your cable company does things differently. I know very little about video tech and what i do know i have learned from this forom.

[BigJohn]

Medic, this isn't really an epiphany for those of us on digital cable. Sub-80 channels just plain blow no matter what you do, and paying for HBO gets me 20 channels of Encore wherein I can watch a entertainment-free western or an 80's classic like Breakin'. I'm glad I signed up for this.

The only saving grace is having HD cable; even then I'm holding my breath and crossing my fingers that they will add more and more HD channels.

Maybe I'll call my congressman.

[57U]

medic3, welcome to the forum. Although you have a number of "truths" in your post, you also have a number of "half truths". I have the following feedback.

1. There are some cable companies that supply 100% digital signals. (Videotron in Montreal is one). (Videotron also supplies analogue to those withough STBs.)

2. What prevents most cable companies from going 100% digital is their vast subscriber base that has analog sets and not digital STBs. These people would get very angry if they were "forced" to require a STB, even if said box were "free".

3. This will all come to an end in a few years when all channels will be digital (end of 2006). This is what the cable companies are waiting for, because then they can say to their subscriber base, that only has analogue, "it's not our fault", but you need to get a digital STB now, if you want to watch TV.

4. Many subscribers get a pretty good signal on the analogue channels, especially if their cable system has been upgraded to 750+ MHz required for HD.

5. Some cable companies are already moving some of the analogue "premium" channels into the digital realm. ie "if you want HBO, you've got to rent a digital box". This frees up the analogue bandwidth to provide 10 more digital channels or two HD channels for each analogue channel "closed down".

6. Some cable companies are also offering "time shifted" channels on the digital service. This means that programmes like live sports are shown on these digital channels, typically at the same time as they are on the analogue ones, so you can see them there. We have >20 such channels in Toronto.

7. Satellite came long after Cable was already supplying all the analogue channels, so they "had their pick". This is a "short term" advantage since satellite lacks the "bandwidth" required to offer a lot of the services that cable will be offering in the near future (and are already offering in some areas.
(VOD, SVOD, timeshift, many HD channels, video telephony, wideband internet, etc. etc.

8. Although cable was caught "flat footed" for a short while, don't count them out to "win" in the long run. 70% of North American homes have cable and as long as cable can supply what these people want, this is likely the "best" route, especially after 2006.

9. DVDs are fine, but some movies are already shown in widesceen and DD5.1 on movie networks and in HD. I hate pan and scan too. Write or call your provider and state your prefernce. Our HD movie channel started showing movies in 1.85, that had an OAR of 2.35:1. I talked to the VP and he will now attempt to obtain HD movies in their OAR. Remember, passive viewing is not an option if you want things to change. The squeaky wheel will get the grease....

[kevinw]

Just because the satelite is digital does not mean the source is. An analog signal digitized and sent to your home via a dish does not make it better.

As for satelite and HD Direct uses one dish and DISH uses 2. They are integrated so you still only use 1 remote.

[Tom]

Medic, I feel your pain. As a happy Direct user, I switched to my local cable provider (the one that starts with "I") after listening to them talk about digital cable being so wonderfully clear and that now they were offering HD as well.

After unhooking and abandoning the dish (it looked so pitiful and lonely there on my chimney), I turned on the set only to find what you did - they kinda neglected to point out that only the upper channels are digital, under that they s*ck. Being spoiled by getting ALL channels more clearly on Direct, I opted to send the cable boxes (2 mind you) including the one for HD back. This was after the main service tech came over twice to try and tweak my signal to improve it.

I don't think they are being dishonest, but they sure don't make it clear that digital doesn't = ALL channels on cable.

A grand or so later, I'm back with a new Direct HD dish and receiver and a little wiser...........

Good luck! :rolleyes:

[mikehbkwm]

You know I was going to post a big response but I think 57U said pretty much it all. Medic3 what you dont realize is that alot of your prog. on dish is not originally in a digital format but just digitized for small dish. If you all would really like to learn where all your prog comes from then click on this link EVERYTHING COMES FROM C-Band http://superstar.com/chart_index.asp read up a little Medic3 on how the prog gets to your small dish then post back.....

[BrianW]

Yep 57U said it all. Satellite has been around for almost as long as cable and back then it was also analog. And back then dishes where measured in feet not inches so they could catch the wide analog signal. Because of building codes is why I believe analog satellite went away. Now with digital they get two benefits, first the signal is smaller so can be caught with a smaller dish and they can squeeze a lot of additional signal in the same beam. The problem, both satellite providers are running out of bandwidth and it is really expensive to put more satellites up. Because of this they have to keep figuring out what to move to bring new stuff in. Now they will have to figure out how to carry every single local HD signal as well the existing stuff to provide HD to everyone.

Cable has already switched large number things to digital. But because of all those people out there that hate STBs (some who have satellite???) they have to keep some stuff in analog. One thing to think about though is the cable signal coming into you STB is digital (it went over fiber optics) and is only being converted to analog some where close to you house. Because of this we may see cable companies start converting to all digital neighborhood by neighborhood. Also, they have only just started tapping the total bandwidth of the cable, and when the fiber right to your house even better.

So to some it up.
If you live in a hilly area or a big city with lots of things to get between you and the OTA signals, and you don't want to wait for the satellite companies to figure out how to pickup and transmit all the local HD signals, then Cable may be your best choice.
Most cable companies are adding HD content month by month. Some areas only have HBOHD and SHOHD, and some have all the local HD stuff now too (like the ABC, NBC, CBS etc affiliates).

[mikehbkwm]

BrianW your the man.....

[medic3]

Thanks everyone for the education. I do notice that some of the "digital" channels vary in quality. On my digital cable box i notice that the HBO and Discovery channels have the clearist pictures. Behind my house is the pole and i have the option of choosing between two different cable companies. The other company has 7 HDTV channels and no internet and my company has no HDTV and a good broadband connection.

Are the cable boxes for HDTV tuners or do you still need to buy one?

Does anyone elses cable company have a waiting list for the HDTV Cable boxes?

Hitachi 51uwx20b

[BrianW]

I got mine from AT&T but all they offer is HBO and SHO in HD here in Seattle. They provide the STB so nothing to buy. The one they are using is the Motorola 5100 (http://broadband.motorola.com/digital/dct5100.pdf). It seems that the big cable companies like AT&T, Comcast and Time-Warner are doing the most HD stuff but others are jumping on soon too.

[IOStinks]

I was told up front about the lower channels being analogue so it was no suprise to me....... but it seems to me that here in NY time warner cable is well ahead of Cablevision where we have IO. Alot of the time, even on the Dig. channels the pix seems too compressed. Hopefull this will only get better in time......