Well Megazone really beat me to it :) but...
Cheryl wrote:
> Hi Chris,
>
> Thanks for explaining this. It's helped me a lot. I do have a
> question regarding cable. We have cable but no cable box, it's
> connected directly to our TVs. Will we need to get a converter or new
> TVs? That's for the extra TV's that aren't on DirecTV with Tivo, of
> course. Long live Tivo!
As Megazone mentions, cable is not directly affected by the digital switchover.
Cable systems would very much like to go all digital for a number of reasons:
(1) It would let them cram more channels into the spectrum currently
used by the analog channels
(2) It would allow them to get more money for additional outlets (most
cable providers do not charge for extra outlets unless you also get
a digital cable box)
However, I expect it will be a while until analog cable switches off
completely. Instead what I expect they will do is continue to push popular
channels into the digital tier, thus encouraging people to "upgrade" to digital
cable on their own.
Still, sooner or later they will sunset analog cable. At that point you'll
need either a cable box, a CableCard-compatible TV, or a CableCard-compatible
box like a Series 3 Tivo. (If your TV has a QAM tuner, then you can tune
unencrypted digital cable channels, but there won't be many of those --
probably your local stations and nothing else.)
Just to make things more complicated, some cable providers are looking at
something called Switched Digital Video (SDV). SDV technology means that
instead of all stations being "broadcast" down the cable into your house, only
the stations that you're watching/recording would be sent. IPTV works like
this (AT&T U-Verse, for example). The advantage to this technology is that
providers can offer many more channels -- in fact, there's no practicle limit
to the number of channels they can offer, as you only need the bandwidth
necessary to support the stations being watched/recorded.
No TV can currently tune SDV that I am aware of, and it's not compatible with
CableCard either.
I have no idea where the cable providers are in terms of moving to SDV. I
expect it's a ways away yet.
--
Christopher D. Heer -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://chrisheer.wordpress.com (blog)
