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Technology Stocks : C-Cube -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Clarksterh who wrote (34169)	7/7/1998 8:50:00 AM
From: George Thompson	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 50808

Clark, Just a thought. DTV, in this case the HDTV component, takes a full 6 Megs of bandwidth for some formats. (Down quite a bit from the analog 20-30 megs.) The cable companies are balking at distributing HDTV because they want the bandwidth for more standard definition signals. The FCC or congress may invoke "Must Carry" rules that will force the cable operators to pass on HDTV in its original resolution and not downconvert to a standard definition one meg signal. Most people will opt for the noiseless DTV signal as acceptable quality. Those buying the more expensive HDTV compatible sets will want what they paid the big bucks for and demand full 1080i resolution. So, in order to carry the full compliment of HDTV channels available, something has to give. Either fewer channels or higher bandwidth backbones. Guess what the customers will demand? Later, GEorge

To: Clarksterh who wrote (34169)	7/7/1998 9:03:00 AM
From: BillyG	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

Clark, bandwidth is bandwidth if all else is equal. However, many old cable systems are not very well built and they have lots of noise and distortion that wreak havoc with digital signals. With analog TV signals, this causes snow on the screen and distortion of the signal that is noticable, but (sometimes) tolerable. With digital TV signals, the noise/distortion can cause you lose reception entirely, which is unacceptable. Hence, the statement about rebuilding cable systems. Dirty bandwidth doesn't equal clean bandwidth, and clean bandwidth is more important for digital TV signals than for analog TV signals.