Jon Danniken wrote:
"Ed Pawlowski" wrote:
I was under hte impression that cable companies HAD to provide the
channels with no converter box. MetroCast is telling us to hook out old
TV's to the cable so no box is needed. Seems like Comcast is screwing
people.

I read somewhere (likely here) that they were only required to provide the
OTA channels in analog. No validation of that, however.


They are only required to provide OTA channels unecrypted. They aren't
required to do anything with analog regarding keeping it up or not.

They have to decide if turning off analog channels is a good business
plan or not since it would require users to do something. In the case of
cable the user would need to get a converter box or a new TV. So the
user just might decide to move to a satellite provider since they are
forced into doing something.

A nearby regional cable provider is doing extensive advertising right
now to attract such users: "get local channels on our cable for
$10/month, no converter box and everything will be the same"



It seems pretty hard to actually pin down reliable information right now.
Comcast, last year, ran a commercial for a few months telling people that as
long as they were on cable, they didn't have to do anything.

Of course, this was innaccurate information, as evidenced by my previous
post. Whether they were aware of this information being innaccurate at the
time I do now know, but I would be surprised if they didn't. You don't just
"upgrade" your entire analog infrastucture to digital on a few month's
notice.

If that is the case, then they are most certainly "screwing people".

Jon