6 million may lose digital TV reception

[John Mullaney]

Cable companies going "all digital" does not affect this at all. The boxes
still have an analog modulator so they will still work with an analog TV.
What they are referring to is the box will no longer have analog channels
meaning more capacity and more HD channel bandwidth. Comcast is one company
that locally has always been giving you the HD channels on your analog sets.
They could shut off the analogs today and their customers would not see a
difference whether they had a digital or analog TV. 

-----Original Message-----
From: boston-radio-interest-bounces@tsornin.BostonRadio.org
[mailto:boston-radio-interest-bounces@tsornin.BostonRadio.org] On Behalf Of
A. Joseph Ross
Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 12:54 AM
To: BartonT
Cc: bri@bostonradio.org
Subject: Re: Re: 6 million may lose digital TV reception

On 19 Feb 2008 at 20:36, BartonT wrote:

> All Cable system will eventually be all digital.  Converting to 
> digital allows the cable companies to reclaim bandwidth that they can 
> then use for additional HD channels and services so they may better 
> compete with satellite.  What this will mean is eventually you will be 
> required to have a settop box or cable card TV in order to view your 
> cable service. There will be no analog channels available for your 
> TV's analog tuner via the cable system.
> 
> Several of the large cable companies are already moving to all digital 
> in some markets and I expect that this trend will continue to grow.
 
For awhile at least, I suspect there may be some competition in the opposite
direction, at least where there are competing systems.  If Comcast goes
all-digital, making everyone's TVs useless, it could be a tremendous
opportunity for RCN or Verizon to sign up a lot of customers.

-- 
A. Joseph Ross, J.D.                           617.367.0468
 92 State Street, Suite 700                   Fax 617.507.7856
Boston, MA 02109-2004           	         http://www.attorneyross.com