On Mon, Feb 21, 2005 at 08:45:30PM -0700, Garry Cook wrote:
> I asked Comcast about getting HDTV and if it was available with my
> Basic Analog cable. They told me that I would need to upgrade to
> Digital Cable, and then pay an additional monthly fee if I also wanted
> HDTV. I don't even have an HDTV yet, but I pushed them on it a bit
> anyway, asking why I would have to upgrade AND pay a fee if the FCC
> requires that they provide me with my local OTA HD channels. They told
> me that this requirement will not be in effect until 2006, and they
> were not sure how it would be handled at that time.
>
> Even if I had an HDTV and an Air2PC card, I doubt that I would get any
> HD channels. They successfully blocked my expanded basic a few weeks
> ago, even though I was getting it at no charge for many months, due to
> having Cable Internet.
>
> Are you using Expanded Basic or just Basic (the latter is about
> $14.00/month, as opposed to $42.00/month for the former). I would be
> interested to see if you can get anything with the Expanded Basic
> service, but I won't hold my breath.
While there are many forms of Comcast here is one data point in the
Bay Area. I have analog, expanded basic cable service. No set top
boxes. I also receive a variety of digital channels on the cable
with QAM. Most of them are encrypted. QAM does about 38 megabits
(ATSC is around half that) as I recall.
However, a number are not encrypted including:
a) Most, but not all of the HD locals -- in HD. I think UPN-HD and
WB-HD are missing. In theory we could call them up and force
them to carry those. But I do get abc, nbc, cbs, fox, pbs HD.
b) ESPN-HD is available, unencrypted. Also some home channel, not sure
which, but it's in HD.
c) TVLand, History channel are SDTV, unencrypted. May be a few others.
d) All the digital music channels are available, unencrypted. They
are low bandwidth, so there can be 20 or so of them on a channel
along with TV stations.
I see these on my QAM tv tuner, I have not yet modified my pchdtv 3000
to use the dvb/qam drivers, but I probably will if they put in UPN-HD.
I would not be surprised to see this elsewhere, but perhaps they will
start changing their system to block the digital channels from customers
who don't pay for digital cable.
The FCC regs require that they offer you a cablecard intead of a set top
box for your QAM enabled TV. That card will decrypt the digital channels.
Obviously, you must pay for digital cable to get this, I don't know if
you need to pay the HD surcharge.
I probably will move from my UHF antenna to QAM. More reliable signal,
and in theory (down the road) an ability to also tune the analog channels
with the pc-hdtv card giving me an extra analog tuner when there is no
HD recording to do.
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