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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?'"
and it doesn't surprise me ... I finally dumped cable because too many channels came in looking like fuzzy analog channels, even though they were supposed to be all digital.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Does this surprise anyone?
The game.
this message brought to you by direct TV and dish network, losing signal from thunder storms and tree branches for over a decade!!! Seriously this was news like a decade ago.
The point about audio is very important the digital picture quality does vary mine is somewhat close for sd programming but the audio quality that goes to a receiver from the digital channels vs the analog channels is night and day in my market some networks are digital some are analog and the difference is very noticeable. I assumed using optical or coax from my cable box to my receiver all the content would be at least digital stereo not only available through the rca jacks in an analog format.
We have cable (Tivo HD with 2 cableCards, plus an MCE for our XViD movies and playing DVDs) and we're transitioning away quickly. Our cable bill is ridiculous, and more often than not, we'll download torrents of shows we want to watch rather than wait for them to be recorded by the Tivo.
Honestly, I'd rather pay a la carte for shows we like than deal with the cable mess. A la carte would mean better handling of their massive bandwidth, and a better distribution of proceeds for shows. No need for Nielsen when advertisers will know exactly who is buying what.
I think we'd honestly pay $5 for a 30 minute show -- what does it cost in our time preference to sit down for 30 minutes? I'd pay less with ads. If we liked the show,we'd pay for an annual subscription -- giving shows the chance to continue even without massive ad-funding (see: Firefly).
With our 8-12Mbps Comcast Internet (not oversold in our neighborhood, yet), we download moves quickly enough to make it worth the wait. If we like the movie, we'll buy it, but I have no problem reimbursing even without a physical medium to save it.
I can't figure the TV distro system out, really. Sure, the powers-that-be are paying millions (or more) to keep the monopoly they have, but as the next generation ages, I'm sure the old system will hit the toilet, to be replaced by what? Hopefully more a la carte.
On Comcast it's easy to tell analog from digital feeds: on digital cables the S/PDIF signal is present, on analog feeds it is not, so on the analog feeds I need to switch my audio receiver to use the line-level input instead of digital.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
But how to know for sure if a channel is digital or analog as received?'
Look at the noise characteristics. Analog and digital respond to noise differently. Digital pixilates and stutters but otherwise displays a perfect picture. Analog ghosts and snows.
If you're not getting enough noise to tell the difference then smile and be happy because you have a better cable TV signal than most of the rest of us.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
I think the analog vs. digital argument is a bit off-target. The point isn't the type of signal, it's the quality. I've heard people complain about artifacting in their TV shows because cablecasters are using low bitrates or are cutting the S/N ratio too close. I'd much rather have a good analog signal to encode than a crappy digital signal even I could tap it directly.
Begin unscrewing the coax cable from your cable box. As you very, very slowly pull it away, if the signal starts to fade/shows static/etc., it's certainly analog. If, instead, it suddenly goes from perfect, to black, it's digital. Also, in the latter case, it will probably start to show artifacts, perfectly square 16x16 pixel macroblocks that stand out in sharp contrast to the rest of the picture.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I only wanted analog cable, because I have two Series2 TiVos, but I ended up getting digital cable because it's cheaper and still includes all the analog channels. (It's a promotional price, but I'm still saving $12/mo for N months.)
When the promotion expires, the price is only $1/mo more than plain analog cable. At that point, I'll give back the cable box -- it isn't even hooked up, but Comcast insisted I take one -- and save a buck a month by going back to analog.
See, when you sign up for digital cable, you're doing them a favor. They want you to have digital cable so that (1) you'll be tempted to buy On Demand movies, (2) you'll have to pay them to lease that godawful box, (3) you'll be tempted to pay for one of their DVRs because third-party ones don't fully work with the box(*), and (4) once everyone is a digital subscriber, they can switch off the analog feeds to free up bandwidth and sell you more services.
(* Yes, there are DVRs that accept CableCards, but they're prohibitively expensive, you have to pay for the cards, and we've all heard how much trouble it is to get a CableCard installed correctly.)
You're sure not helping yourself. Anyone who's ever used a cable box knows how much they blow. Changing channels is slow; and if you use a cable box with your own DVR, you can only record one channel at a time, your recordings will have cable-box banners all over them, and you'll have the ghettoest house on the block with that little infrared "blaster" dangling around.
And what do you get in exchange for that hassle... marginally better picture quality? Maybe not even that, because you're just trading analog noise for MPEG artifacts and blocking. Even if you do get a better picture overall, how long will that stay exciting? A week? After that, you won't notice the picture quality, but you'll be dealing with the drawbacks of digital cable forever.
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I get so pissed off at compression artifacts (mosquito noise; banding; blocks in fast-moving, busy shots) that I think I'd *prefer* analog (this is probably a curse of too many years in video post-production where I was paid to notice problems in video). Back when I had analog cable, I almost never had the noise associated with over-the-air analog broadcasts, and of course I didn't have compression artifacts. Alas, that was a long time ago. It really annoys me when cable companies (and others) tout "digital quality!" as if that means anything by itself.
In fact, this is why I haven't bought into HDTV yet -- if I spend a couple grand on a TV and extra per month for HD channels only to see compression artifacts in high resolution, something's getting sent through the front window.
My antenna gives me what is really a wireless video stream of 19 Mb/s in MPEG-2.
It's not like in the age of BitTorrent that you really need to be beholden to the cable companies, unless you have a real need for college football or MLB.
Don't forget what uncle Milt Friedman taught us: people vote with their feet. If you don't like what the cable company is doing to you, get a dish, an antenna or just download the shit out of everything you want.
Between my antenna and BT I'm pleased as punch paying practically nothing for the few TV programs I bother to watch. As long as the NFL stays on local TV, I could care less. And MY HD is just gorgeous.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Disclaimer: As mentioned before, I do work for a cable company.
Americans can get their traditional TV through a number of different providers, but it boils down to just a few methods of delivery: direct from the broadcasters over the air, from a satellite, via fiber owned by a telephone company, or via a hybrid fiber/coax network owned by a cable company. Of these options, cable providers are caught in the crossfire of regulatory demands and consumers who don't know enough about the technology itself to know what they really want. You never hear these complaints about satellite/FTTH (FiOS), only because the nature of their medium requires all digital transmission. But is 100% digital always "better" for the consumer? The answer is clearly no, not always.
As I'll explain later, much of the FCC's time is spent regulating the coax providers to help the "smaller players". Really, now...AT&T and Verizon are small players? When will the FCC step in to help the smaller players in the landline voice business, such as Vonage and VOIP? (Hint: they won't.)
Cable has been the incumbent for so long that they have become the Microsoft of TV. If there is any complaining to be done, lets complain about the cable company. But as I said, most consumers don't know what they are complaining about. Let's look at the ramifications if every cable company switched to 100% digital tomorrow...which seems to be to be what people want. Let's do a step by step breakdown:
The infrastructure in most cable systems does not need a rebuild for digital, just a little headend work and some maintenence in the field to fix issues that will visibly affect digital but not analog (CPD, microreflections, etc...). So, BAM! Cable is all digital. What happens the next day?
Firstly, ALL TV's without a digital tuner go dark. Great-aunt Maryrose and Gramma Clara turn on their perfectly good 1988 Zenith, and get static. They now have to go buy new TV's to use cable service, because consumers demanded digital transmission. In fact, this WILL happen when the OTA conversion happens in 2009, but OTA viewers may get subsidized boxes. (It will be interesting to see the FCC enforce the separable security statute with that one.) Cable companies get to eat the cost. In fact, this week the FCC guaranteed that cable companies eat the cost for an additional 3 years. They mandated that all cable providers (coax based only) provide a viewable analog OR digital signal to all subscribers until 2012. Linkage (pdf warning) It would be easier to comply by sticking with analog signals for the mandate, but customers (and the FCC) are demanding digital broadcast.
"But wait," you say, "they can get a digital cable box and keep the older TV!" Well, sure, but then we get to hear about how the cable company is bleeding it's customers dry by charging for equipment. I call horseshit on this one. Cable companies charge an average $7.50 monthly lease fee for the box that costs them $300 upfront, plus maintenance and repair. In "only" 40 months of maintenance free operation of that box, the cable company breaks even. Yeah...that's certainly not what I would call milking the customer.
"Why can't they use a third-party box, like a TiVO?" you might ask. They certainly can but to access encrypted channels, the box will need CableCards, the abomination of technology that they are. I work in the billing department and since they are authorized through our billing software, I support and troubleshoot CableCARDs on a daily basis. They have potential, and would work SO much better if manufacturers would standardize on a set of firmware...but I'm diverging from the point. Besides, the bigger question is "WHY DOESN'T ANYONE ELSE MAKE A 3RD PARTY BOX?!" Personally, I think there is not currently a market for cable boxes. How much money did TiVO lose last quarter? Ah...only $17 million.
khasim (12/9/06): In a blind taste test, more people preferred Coke over the Pepsi that I had previously pissed in.
Currently shopping for alternatives.
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
Bandwidth is not really a problem for HDTV: from what I read, most current HDDVD and BluRay titles are encoded at less than 10Mbps total. Since a DOCSIS modem can pull over 40Mbps from a single 6MHz NTSC channel bandwidth, a digital cable box should be able to squeeze at least three very good quality HD channels in the same bandwidth as one analog channel. With about 900MHz worth of usable downstream bandwidth on coax, there is room for up to 450 high-quality HD channels. Of course, about half of that spectrum is used by analog channels, SD/ED digital channels and cable-modems so there should still be room for 150-200 HQ-HD channels.
As for the processing equipment, the heavy-lifting is at the source where initial encoding is done and at the head-end if there is transcoding to be done. The rest is standard fare digital broadcast over an HFC network just like it is for all other digital cable broadcasts. Since head-ends already have quite a bit of equipment dedicated to each channel they support on their networks, having an extra transcoding/scaling unit in loops that require it is (usually) a minor hurdle.
I feel the cable to see if the signal is rough and bumpy, or smooth and wavy. Why, how do you do it?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I had this problem a few years ago and called the cable provider. The technician who came out identified a simple barrel connector in the cable demarc box was attenuating the signal by about 12 db instead of the expected 0.5 db. It took him just minutes to trace out the wires and replace the connector (he also replaced the cable ends while he was at it,) and it didn't cost me a cent.
So I agree that you should do a bit more investigation before calling shenanigans.
John
When I had digital cable with comcast, I used hdmi for audio and video. Regular cable channels (2-100) Were 480i mono sound. The "digital" channels (which actually looked worse) were 480i stereo. The only watchable channels were the 10 or so HD channels (5 of which I get free OTA). The absolute worse offender though has to be comedy central. I don't know who exactly to blame, but when I can catch low bitrate degradation on an analog station on an analog TV (It almost gave me motion sickness on the HD) it's really bad. Combined with the fact that I just can't find enough content I actually want to watch to justify the extra $70/month, I recently went cable free and couldn't be happier.
Shift happens. Fire it up.
My cable company is Time Warner. As far as I can tell, all (or at least most) of the channels that are offered in analog format are also offered in digital format on a separate channel. Some are offered a third time in high definition.
Example:
Channel 27 = TNT analog (confirmed using analog-only TV tuner card)
Channel 401 = TNT digital (has visible artifacts when the signal is weak)
Channel 1827 = TNTHD
All three channels have the same programming at the same time.
I'm not condoning actions such as delivering a channel in Analog that you are paying to receive in Digital, but my question to you as Devil's advocate is this: You ask how you can be sure you are receiving the channel in digital; if you can't tell the difference, can it really bother you that much?
And I'm not talking digital as in ATSC (HDTV), because there's really no way to fake that; I mean the regular cable channels that get broadcast in "digital" format but really there's not much difference.
Aikon-
khasim (12/9/06): In a blind taste test, more people preferred Coke over the Pepsi that I had previously pissed in.
I don't moderate, so I can't mod you up, but you're right on the mark here.
The problem is not bandwidth, it is that the cable operators are locked into their antiquated equipment due to politics within the industry (for example, the CableLabs cabal/consortium), or due to the cost of the equipment (although I only do software at a company that makes this equipment, I have heard estimates of hundreds of dollars per channel in costs).
-- Joe
HDTV is actually better-looking TV (doesn't help the plot, unfortunately, except for sports channels where it really _is_ better when you can see the puck.) But Standard-Definition Digital TV isn't better than analog - it degrades differently with noise, but its primary advantage is that it's easier to put more channels on the cable using digital. The channels you get don't look better than the ones you get on analog, but the channels you didn't get on analog might look better in digital.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If the transmitted program was recorded digitally, ie. recently, it does look better, and is mpeg2 standard (DVD) with bit rates up to 15 Mbs (thats the highest I've seen so far).
If the transmitted program was recorded to tape and then converted to digital for transmission, then of course it doesn't look any better. Try recording a cassette tape to cd and see if you get "digital" quality. The problem is that most programming schedules consist of ancient repeats and so are not digital in origin.
Here* is a screenshot of the tech details for a random DVB-t program I just looked at (BBC1). Notice the picture size, bitrate and encoding. They are all substantially better quality than analogue tv provides.
*The reason the background is black is due to the video using overlay.
However, the artifacts are the worst drawback of digital tv. With analogue transmission, you may get ghosting or lines on the picture, but you get a picture. If there is interference with digital transmission, you very frequently get no picture at all, or it's so blocky and halting that it's unwatchable. Mobile receivers will be up in arms when the analogue gets switched off, as they will not be able to get a picture in places they currently enjoy, albeit a crappy one. I know, I live in and drive a truck weekdays. I have resorted to satellite to ensure I get a signal.
Not true.
Not True.
I think what the grandparent was saying is its not neccessarily better
. If the transmitted program was recorded digitally, ie. recently, it does look better, and is mpeg2 standard (DVD) with bit rates up to 15 Mbs (thats the highest I've seen so far).
I'm sure that would look better. What if it were transmitted at 256 kbps instead? Would the quality still surpass a virgin dub from a high quality master onto broadcasters professional tapes (1/2" Beta as I recall)? No way in hell. And broadcasters I'm pretty sure don't generally use DVD's to store their material. So the bitrates you see on you DVD player are irrelevant. Actually, in general the quality of the source material is irrelevant. Yes, good tranmission won't help bad source material, nobody is arguing that. Assume pristine best case source material.
Now think, does an CD (digital representation of an analog sound wave) or an MP3 (compressed digital represntation of an analog sound wave) sound better? At higher bandwiths the compression losses (MP3 is part of the MPEG2 standard, a "lossy" standard) become negligible, sure. But almost nobody argues it is better than the original source.
Now lets think bandwidth. An analog signal consumes some amount of bandwidth (I think 38 Mbps). By compressing it via MPEG2, the cable company can now fit 7 (very good quality) to 12 (Ok quality) channels. With all the bandwidth pressure though (more channels, faster internet, HDTV), cable companies are being tempted to add even more channels in each slice, I've heard of up to 24 less popular digital channels being squeezed into 1 "analog" channel.
So why is "digital" sold as cleaner? Interference. While a very clean signal is injected at the head end, By the time it runs through all the splitters, amplifiers, it can be very muddled. The benefit of digital assuming about 85% of the signal can be ressurected at the far end, and near ideal picture can be constructed. Problem is, at about 75% loss, no picture can be reconstructed. Analog pictures can yield usable content with much higher loss level (we used to what OU football games out of NYC (OTA) with maybe 40% of the signal surviving. A staticy mess, yes, but we knew what was happening on the field.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
If water scenes macroblock, it's digital. If you get fuzziness on letters and text, it's analog. I was agast at a Direct TV broadcast of a college football game. HDTV format, correct colors, and such huge compression that the screen just blocked whenever there was fast action...what was the point of HDTV then ? Much like sound has been "dumbed down" for the iPod generation and digital satellite radio, you can expect the providers to send out the lowest level product that the masses will accept. For the time being, I get HDTV over the air...where if they don't sub'channel too much, it still looks great. Digital is in theory perfect...but then the marketers and suits get involved.