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Are You Being Cheated by Digital Cable?
Lauren Weinstein writes "Even though your cable company may claim that a channel is in a digital tier that you're paying for, they may be sending it to you in analog form, with associated negative effects. Surprise! Are You Being Cheated by Digital Cable? 'You're paying for digital, you should get digital. Outside of the lower video and audio quality that can be present on many analog feeds, third-party devices (like cableCARD TiVos) which could otherwise record a digital signal directly, will be forced to re-digitize an analog signal, with inevitable quality loss in the process. But how to know for sure if a channel is digital or analog as received?'"
Replied the same time as the first guy. So how is this redundant?
The game.
Current cable boxes don't provide H.264 decompression such as the Scientific Atlanta 8300 series and below. The new 8550 box does support it however, but I don't know of any region that has them yet. I'd give it a few more years before they're available for pickup.
Due to the increase in HDTV content and additional channels, your local cable company is already hurting for bandwidth. I know for sure Austin, TX has changed over to switch-channel technology to save on bandwidth. Surely moving to the H.264 codec will also provide further bandwidth savings.
FYI, I'm a former Time Warner Cable TSR agent.
Life is not for the lazy.
...me three.