To follow up on this, Comcast released these figures yesterday for the most recent quarter:
Basic subscribers: 24.406 million down 147,000 Digital subscribers: 16.8 million up 417,000 (69% of customers) Advanced subscribers: 10.6 million up 300,000 (43.5% of customers) (advanced means they have HD or DVR service, too.) At the present pace, they will have no significant analog customers remaining by the 2nd half of 2011 even if they do nothing further to force the changeover. While the pace will probably slow as they will begin to have only the "die-hard won't change" customers left on analog, the reality is that those numbers will be so small they may not care if they lose them. -- -Rob de Santos -----Original Message----- From: Joe Buch [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, October 24, 2008 11:57 AM To: SW Programs Subject: Re: [Swprograms] BBC Newscast Shifts Lineup on U.S. Public TV Stations Rob is correct. FCC rules require cable companies to convert digital signals to analog for any full power stations within a certain radius from the company's head end. (I think it is 38 miles.) They are required to do so as long as they have any analog channels left on their system including shopping channels, "gospel huxters", etc. Another FCC rule prevents cable companies from encrypting the must-carry OTA digital signals. That means that if you buy a TV with a QAM digital tuner you will be able to watch these channels without renting a cable box. If the station is broadcasting in HD format you will see the program in HD if your set is also capable of displaying HD pictures. You do not have to rent a separate cable HD box or pay for HD service to see these channels in HD. (You may have to subscribe to more than basic cable to do this as legacy systems typically insert traps to chop off any signals above channel 23 or so including those that carry the digital off-air signals.) Cable systems are allowed to reduce the data rate of digital signals but not to the point where the picture becomes perceptably degraded. "Perceptable degradation" is not defined by the FCC so it is in the eye of the beholder. (If you can get your local stations over the air, you may get a sharper picture if the cable guy's perception of degradation is less critical than yours.) These rules are to be revisited in 2011 and if not amended or extended will sunset in 2012. After that you will need a cable box to see anything. Joe Buch --- On Thu, 10/23/08, Rob de Santos <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > From: Rob de Santos <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Re: [Swprograms] BBC Newscast Shifts Lineup on U.S. Public TV Stations > To: "'Shortwave programming discussion'" <swprograms@hard-core-dx.com> > Date: Thursday, October 23, 2008, 3:29 PM > Side note: all of the major cable companies are already > phasing out "analog" > cable. Because of the high bandwidth it requires and the > demands for adding > more channels, they are eliminating their analog cable > offerings in favor of > expanding digital cable. In addition, most cable and > satellite channels do not > offer analog satellite feeds to them, so the cable systems > have to do a > conversion to even offer the channel via analog. Within 2 > to 3 years, very few > cable operators will be offering anything via analog cable. > > > -- > -Rob de Santos _______________________________________________ Swprograms mailing list Swprograms@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/swprograms To unsubscribe: Send an E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], or visit the URL shown above.