lml- Thanks for the article.
"Presently, I am of the opinion that w/o a fiber upgrade to the plant, the improvement in digital quality is not going to comparable to what DBS offers."
An upgraded MSO HFC plant delivers the same digital content as a DBS player. And no MSO offers digital services without an upgrade to HFC already completed. So once available, they should be equal. This of course, assuming there are no glitches in the distribution network of the MSO. And if quality was less on your analog system vs a digital, are you sure you were watching digital stations? You may have been comparing analog to analog, of which plant condition causes substantial differences in quality. If you have an analog channel, and you were looking at the exact same channel on the neighbor's set, then chances are, his was not digital either.
"Also, when an MSO rolls out digital services, we still are not clear exactly whether the sub simply receives the additional channels over the newly available digital bandwidths & continues to receive previously provided channels via analog transmission, or whether ALL his programming is not delivered digitally. If the latter, than the MSO is transmitting the lion's share of its channel line-up both digitally, as well as via analog, which IMHO seems unlikely as its gotta suck up a lot of bandwidth in the coax in the streets."
A typical, upgraded digital MSO offers this for $40/month:
70 Analog channels
22 Digital channels
26 Digital premium movie channels(package includes choice of 6)
38 PPV digital channels
41 Digital music channels
"So my question is . . does digital transmission alone guarantee a near perfect digital quality picture. My guess is NO, as I contrast digital cable to what the DirecTV picture quality I witnessed at the Fox SkyBox restaurant this year prior to attending a few Laker games. Quality of picture: unbelievably perfect."
Were you comparing picture quality on apples to apples TV monitors? Maybe the SkyBox TV is a higher resolution digital TV monitor. Not necessarily HDTV quality, but a step above our current analog sets. Their is something in between, and I believe this is what has been sold today to the tune of around 50,000 sets. So it's not true HDTV quality, but it's still a digital TV. Kind of confusing I know. And that is one reason they are having so much trouble selling the things!
"But I think the article is correct in pointing out how the MSOs have the advantage over DBS providers by providing broadband access in the mix. The question is how long is it going to be before the DirecTV & Dish folks offer 2-way access, and how good is it going to be."
Yes. I agree totally. MSO have a huge advantage with two-way data services and don't forget telephony. I'm having my doubts about two-way Satellite service being for real. And there is zero PR on the DBS players doing telephony. That is why I thought the BellSouth plan was pretty interesting since, obviously that can offer voice as part of the package and even DSL to some. But I'm still doubting how successful they can be due to that 18" dish being bolted on. That would seem to me, to be a deterrent to a lot of suburb type customers. -MikeM(From Florida) |
