Future of Cable TV?

[Will Rickards]

I thought we could discuss the future of cable TV in this thread.

So merc says here that his cable company, Comcast, is getting rid of non-digital cable in the Chicago area. Chicago is probably a test run for the rest of the US.

I had not considered that cable companies would be doing away with non-digital cable. Is this the future of cable tv? For the record I have RCN near Philadelphia PA.

So for the cable companies digital cable gives them a few things
1. More Channels
2. A box that allows them to offer you more services like pay per view and on demand and dvr functionality.

For the consumer it doesn't give them much more than a more expensive cable bill. If you want a dvr spend the 13 per month on tivo instead of a digital cable box with dvr. If you want more channels, why don't they just offer them on standard cable? Because they want you to upgrade.
But seriously with my dual-tuner tivo I almost always have something to watch and I just have standard cable. It is true I don't watch sports or premium channels like hbo. We got showtime for 1 year for the explicit purpose of watching dead like me. It would have been cheaper to buy it on dvd. But then there would have been one less person watching so they would cancel the series due to no one watching. Well they did that anyway, bleh.

I have a 32" panasonic TV. Not HD, just SD I guess.
But the picture is great. Even better when I feed it svideo from my dvd player.

Next year I want to get a new tv. Because mine has some magnet induced color variations. I don't know if there is an easy way to fix these. I heard you can strap a hard drive magnet to a drill and go to town to fix it. They seem more noticable some times then others.

Either way I wanted to replace it with something that had a higher resolution and was based on some newish technology like SED or the laser DLP. And was hopefully much lighter than my TV so when we move I won't need like 3 people to carry it. I figure regular cable will just look the same on these new tvs, correct? Or will it look bad and I'll long for digital cable?

My in-laws have a westinghouse lcd and digital cable box and hd. Everything looks bloky and fuzzy like mpeg compression. I don't want that.

So what is the future of cable tv?

 

[Pradeep]

Apparently at least Time Warner will be simulcasting digital and analog channels for the forseable future. I.e. they receive the channels in digital form, and encode them into analog for those that choose not to use the cable company STB.

If you don't want to pay a fortune then there is always the option of free OTA reception if you can get it, DirecTV or DishTV, and I think in the future IPTV will take some of the market away from cable. There is usually also a "lifeline" or ultra-basic cable tier, where you get the locals and a few other channels via cable, this costs about $9 per month where I live.

Don't confuse digital with high definition. The law will only require that stations transmit in digital, not HD.

And yes, SD channels can look rather bad on larger screens. However more and more channels are switching to HD each year, in 3 years most of your favorites will be there.

 

[Pradeep]

The other problem is that more and more channels are being broadcast via cable as "switched digital video", i.e. the signal is only sent when you choose to watch that channel. Great to reduce bandwidth for the cable co, but screwed is the customer that cannot view those channels using other technology.

 

[Mercutio]

Comcast, at least, has gone about implementing digital cable in complete the worst way possible.

The carrot they use is more channel choices. They also claim better picture quality. The picture quality might be better under some conditions, but not when they keep adding lots of pointless channels.

Basically, what I saw with Comcast digital were channels filled with tons and tons of MPEG artifacts. The kind you get when you reencode something to a low bit rate. Which I presume is exactly what they're doing to fit hundreds of channels on their digital cable system.

Lots of blocky MPEGy artifacts might not be easy to see if you're used to having the staticky picture that comes from having your TV hooked up through your VCR with coax, but to me it's like watching streaming internet porno from c. 1998... ESPECIALLY on an HDTV.

Comcast's HD isn't very HD, either. It's also reencoded and looks crummy compared to anything from a real HD source (e.g. my HDDVD player, or a QAM signal or some of the ultra-high definition MPEG4 videos I've found online).

My experience with DirecTV is fairly similar, though I think their picture quality was generally better.

For what it's worth, even a upscaling DVD player or a PC connected to an HD set, DVDs don't look all that great either. Watching a DVD @ 720p or 1080p results in a very noisy image.

For me the appeal of an HD set is the fact that it's basically a large computer monitor. There isn't all that much HD content out there, particularly if you don't want to invest in a HiDef DVD format. HD is nice for games or sports (if they're broadcast locally), and for folk who REALLY like their HTPCs, but for everyday TV-watching it's kind of frustrating.

 

[Bozo]

Will "For the record I have RCN near Philadelphia PA"

Delaware county?

Bozo :joker:

 

[Fushigi]

So for the cable companies digital cable gives them a few things
1. More Channels
2. A box that allows them to offer you more services like pay per view and on demand and dvr functionality.

Three more:
3. Elimination of 'stolen' cable. By requiring the box they get back control over people stealing cable from others. Of course this will create a black market for cable boxes.
4. Ability to charge for more TVs in the house. With splitters & analog cable the cable companies have no way of generating extra revenue for extra TVs.
5. The real biggie, more important than all of the above: Data on customer viewing habits.

Without a box the cable company basically has no idea what you're watching. With the box they can have the box send data upstream (which it already does for PPV) back to the cable company. That data can be sliced and diced, aggregated, and sold to the highest bidder.

The cable companies can use the data in a number of ways:
- Determine if channels are actually being watched and by how many. Data can determine if channels are kept in the lineup and to adjust the amount of compression used on their signals. Can also determine the strategic shifting of channels from tier to tier to 'encourage' customers to move to more profitable channel tiers. IIRC, for instance, I wound up in the highest tier on DishTV because I watch the Science Channel.
- Target localized commercials in the dead air space.
- Sell usage info to data aggregators for other marketing purposes.
- Sell individual data. Or combine it with data from aggregators to flesh out customer profiles.

 

[sechs]

The other problem is that more and more channels are being broadcast via cable as "switched digital video", i.e. the signal is only sent when you choose to watch that channel. Great to reduce bandwidth for the cable co, but screwed is the customer that cannot view those channels using other technology.

Actually, I see this broadcasting of hundreds of channels one of the reasons that the digital cable that Comcrap offers is so awful. They're chewing up tons of bandwidth with stations I'm not interested buying. While I see your point on being able to view television with "other technology," there won't be any "other technology" with which to view this stuff; the cable companies, in general, encrypt all but the local stations, so you have to get their blasted box anyway.

So, they might as well send me a few high-quality digital streams, and use the rest of that bandwidth for something more useful.

 

[timwhit]

In the future, I plan to download more of the shows I want to watch rather than dealing with high monthly bills, commercials, shows I don't care about, etc.

There are really no shows I want to watch that aren't available for download an hour after broadcast.

If the MPAA/RIAA start to crack down on bittorrent, there is always usenet.

Currently I pay ~$90/month for extended basic cable and internet access. This amount of money seems pretty ridiculous to me.

 

[Will Rickards]

Will "For the record I have RCN near Philadelphia PA"

Delaware county?

Bozo :joker:

yes, drexel hill.

 

[Will Rickards]

So what I'm hearing is the future looks bleak even if I get a fancy new tv.

So how do I fix my current tv's magnet type color spots?

 

[Mercutio]

No idea on the TV, but AllUC.org is a HELL of a replacement for basic cable.

 

[Bozo]

yes, drexel hill.

I lived in Media (Actually Lima) for a few years. Hung out in Upper Darby.

Small world

Bozo :joker:

 

[Bozo]

So what I'm hearing is the future looks bleak even if I get a fancy new tv.

So how do I fix my current tv's magnet type color spots?

Sounds like the picture tube needs degaused. Just like a monitor. Maybe a TV service shop could do it?

Bozo :joker: