.
Thanks for the information you shared, Ted.
While I do not question anything that you said, the problem still
lies with the consumer's inability to choose what programs they
want and what programs they >>do not<< want coming into their homes.
I would gladly pay $1.00 per month for Fox news, but I wouldn't pay
a plug nickle for CNN or MSNBC. In fact, I would gladly pay 50-cents
a month to >>not<< have their hate-America-first politically biased
garbage forced on me.
Likewise with all the Spanish language channels. I have no
anti-Hispanic bias (we have lots of fine Hispanic people in
our neighborhood and I like them all), I just don't want to be
forced to have to click through a bunch of channels in a language
that I don't understand. I just want the channels that >>I<< want,
and not a bunch of other garbage (to me) that I do not want.
Regarding the converter boxes, your explanation of "wildly
incompatible" factors may abe true; however my point remains ...
and that is that my experience proved to me that it was and still
>>IS<< possible to receive a perfect HDTV signal via cable >>without<<
any nuisance converter box (and without any special card inside my TV).
Therefore, all of Cox's fabricated excuses are, imho, just part
of their great scam.
Joe
------------------
On Thu, 2 Nov 2006, Ted Gould wrote
> 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.
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