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Unregistered guest | I use Comcast Cable in Albuquerque. I got digital cable hooked up for the first time today (using cableCard). I was suprised to find that I would still be receiving the old analog chanels in analog. The only channels that would be digital would be the digital only stations. I guess there are bandwidth issues. Anyway, my question is: Is this the norm for the industry, or is Comcast - Albuquerque providing substandard service? |
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Discovering Unregistered guest | We have Comcast in Dallas too. Here's the way it works. Before digital cable existed everything was analog from the head-end (dish garden) to your home, and still is for those not taking digital. If you were fortunate enough to be closer to the source, then your picture and reliability of service was excellent. Analog signal suffers from attenuation or resistince in the copper cable. Every 2000 feet or so an amplifier is needed to boost it along. The more amps, the more noise in the signal. I lived 26 amps from the source. My picture was grainy. Lots of active devices mean more fuses. My cable went out a lot. The amps were rated to boost only 360 mhz. An analog channel requires 6 mhz. Thus, not many channels could ride the line. (about 32) That's why Dallas has a dual cable system. Then, along came fiber-optic cables and amps. Source quality signal can now be delivered to your neighborhood and copper used for only the last few hundred feet. Analog signal improved greatly. So did bandwidth. (more channels) So did reliability. (far less active devices) Cable operators found that they could digitize the analog channels at the source and use a digital to analog converter at your set to improve picture quality even more. (and charge you more) Here's the catch. All of this has nothing to do with a true digital source signal, which is an entirely different format from the standard NTSC analog format. A true digital HD signal will provide twice the resolution as an NTSC analog channel that has been converted to digital and then back to analog. There isn't a lot of programming in this new HD format. Comcast offers our local Dallas off-air channels in true digital HD, but not all programming is true HD. One HBO out of seven is HD. One Showtime. There's HD Discovery Channel. (great channel) UHD and HD Net has also come along. More HD programing is on the horizon. The good news is you're ready for it. Here is an ABC link that explains more. Happy viewing! http://abc.go.com/site/hdtvfaq.html |
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ChuckieBuck Unregistered guest | Thanks, Discovering. What prompted my question is that my new TV has separate analog and digital cable inputs. I have to use the analog input to watch all the stations I've been watching and I have to switch over to the digital input to watch all the new "digital" stations, of which only a few are HD. Using the separate inputs for the cable is OK for me, but my wife gets a little frustrated that our TV operation has gotten so complicated. Comcast is not terribly simpathetic. They would prefer that everyone use the boxs and that the cablecard go away. Thanks again. |
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Discovering Unregistered guest | Sorry I got so long winded. I didn't know you had the Cablecard. It sounds like your not getting the benefit of digitally transmitted analog programming all the way to your set, though. If the picture is nice and clear it's no big deal. The analog programming is most likely digital on the fiber cable to somewhere in your neighborhood where it is converted back to analog for the last few hundred feet to your home. A few hundred feet isn't a big deal with an analog signal. The conversion is just not taking place on a set top box at your house. I picked up a Samsung SIR 360 Receiver because the price dropped drastically. It takes all input signals (off-air, sat, and cable) and combines them into one guide and menu. I'm using the component out on the receiver and my set is using just the one component input. In the case of local channels I actually have four different ABC channel 8's to choose from. The first is Direct TV Satelite, the second is off-air digital HD, the third is off-air analog, and the fourth is Comcast analog. During a real heavy rain I channel up to Comcast because the first three get flaky. I wouldn't have Comcast at all, but it's next to nothing when you already have Comcast Broadband Internet in the house. |