Once upon a time S a n r shaped the electrons to say... > Aren't ALL channels digital now?
Yes, and no. This is speaking just for the US, not the world, by the way. Nearly all over-the-air (OTA) broadcast television is now digital (ATSC) and nearly all analog over-the-air TV (NTSC) is now gone. For all intents and purposes you could really say *all* OTA TV is now digital, but there are a small number of stations in the US with waivers to keep operating analog for now, low power stations, etc. But those are pretty rare - still, I wanted to be accurate. DirecTV and Dish Network satellite TV is all digital, and always has been. (Not all satellite TV is digital - the old C-Band system (the BIG dishes) is analog.) AT&T U-Verse is basically a Fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) DSL IPTV system and is all digital. Verizon FiOS, which is a Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) system, is now all digital but when it launched it is hybrid - analog lower channels and digital upper channels. Cable networks are a mix. RCN has gone 100% digital across their network, if I'm remembering correctly. Comcast has gone 100% digital in a handful of their markets. But most cable companies are still hybrid - analog and digital. As a rule of thumb cable channels 1-99 are analog, 100+ are digital. Cable MSOs are generally migrating more and more content to the digital tier to free bandwidth and increase the total number of channels. One analog SD channel can be replaced by two digital HD channels or six digital SD channels - or more of the cable MSO turns up the compression more. (Or a mix - say one HD and three SD.) This can be multiplied even more by using the freed frequency for switched digital video (SDV) content. -MZ -- megazone-at-megazone.org http://www.MegaZone.org/ Gweep, Geek, Human, me. http://www.GizmoLovers.com/ http://www.Eyrie-Productions.com/ -><- Hail Eris "A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men" 508-852-2171
