On Wed, 06 Jul 2011 19:40:02 -0500, Dave M wrote:

Meat Plow wrote:
On Tue, 05 Jul 2011 21:34:54 -0700, klem kedidelhopper wrote:

Recently we were notified by our local cable provider that they will
be eliminating the present analog service and going to all digital. I
realize the advantages this affords them and their digital customers.
However there are a great many of us who still have all our old analog
equipment, and don't give a rats ass about HD, never had and never
will. We just want to watch TV. So now they tell us that even if we
were to go out and purchae new digital sets they won't work because
the digital channels will be "encoded" or scrambled if you will. Each
analog device will need to have a little converter, (a box a little
larger than a pack of cigarettes). This box will process the digital
channels and provide a channel 3 NTSC output. You can only get this
box from them and it must be rented every month.
Is this even legal? Why should anyone go out then and buy a new
digital TV with a tuner? You will be paying for a tuner that you will
never be able to use. Might as well just buy a monitor. Is there any
way around this? Thanks, Lenny

I forget what they call it here but to save bandwidth the cable "box"
only streams TV to your set on the channel you are watching. That way
your converter is not being sent bandwidth from every channel. Does
that make sense? It really doesn't to me since you can only watch one
channel at a time.

That can't be correct. How does the cable company know which channel
you want to watch? That's the only way bandwidth into the box could be
reduced. The only bandwidth reduction would be between the cable box and
your TV set, which is only getting channel 3 instead of the entire TV
RF spectrum.

It's all done via TCP/IP through the DVR. I'm not going to go back and
research it but the idea I gleaned was to be selective to the needs of
the cable bandwidth. Google Time Warner headend and DVR or something like
that. It's been awhile since I looked at the data for their system but
they claim it saves bandwidth. Oh, just remembered it's called SDV or
Switched Digital Video or some crap like that. Good luck.



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