Re: OT - Off-Topic - Re: HDTV signal options.

On Thu, 2 Nov 2006, Josef Lowder wrote:
> The crux of the problem is the complete lack of any real free-market
> competition because of the complicity and collusion among the cable
> and sat signal providers to scam the public by not allowing people
> to just choose and pay for ONLY the channels they want.

This angst is largely misplaced. While sat and cable companies are the
fronts for this, the real drivers are the media companies. They want you
to get "bundles" of programming. I good example of this is the reported
negotiations with Fox News. (I don't want to talk about the politics,
let's just talk about them as a business today) The rumor mill is saying
that they're trying to increase their rate from 22 cents per sub per month
to almost a dollar. (CNN is 44 cents, but Fox has better ratings)
Rumors also say that the sat/cable companies can get a "significant
discount" if they agree to carry the Fox Financial channel that they're
trying to start. Boom, they're bundled.

While you can look at the economics of the situation as a company like
DirecTV with 15 million subscribers paying $50 a month; so they take in
$750 million/month. The vast majority of that goes to Viacom, News Corp,
CNN, etc. Realistically, the distributors (sat/cable) are just middle
men.

> The whole box converter thing is a needless scam anyway.
>
> When we first got our new HD in August, we were getting a bunch of
> great, crystal clear, 9x16 HD signals over the same cable that we
> previously had for our old analog TV. But when a couple of those
> channels just disappeared (after Cox took over), I called to find
> out what the problem was and they told me that there never had been
> any such channels as I had been watching for more than a month,
> that it was impossible, there were no such channels. That the
> only way you could get those channels was by getting their box.

Well, while I'm not sure of their specific conditions, there are some
reasons for this. The different cable network providers are wildly
incompatible. If Cox has a Motorola system and the old one was SA, they
have to replace everything as they start to upgrade. Also, they've
probably moved some of the channels to MPEG4 and your old boxes were only
MPEG2. Perhaps a modulation upgrade. It's all about bandwidth, they save
it with video compression and increase it with new modulation techniques.
All of which require box upgrades, headend upgrades, and usually a few
network upgrades.

I won't say they aren't scam artists, but there are a few real reasons for
doing some of this.

         --Ted

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