Originally Posted By: eljefino
ClearQAM probably only gets MPEG-2 compression like the ATSC standard.
Fun fact, cable companies resample broadcast TV, so if a station has a HD .1 and SD .2, cable can choose to ignore the .2 and "smoosh" the .1 into less space... less space than the 6 MHz.
This isn't good enough... MPEG-4 can fit more junk in the same bandwidth, but isn't clearQAM. Dish and DirecTV also use MPEG4 and have pretty much had to to get enough transponder space for hundreds of local-into-local channels.
Long story short, Comcast wanted bandwidth for other stuff besides your TV... internet, phone, more TV channels you can't watch. Your stuff got bumped. Also your cable box tells the company what you watch (and record), which they turn around and sell to anyone who asks. They're going to keep doing this until customers tell them to go [censored] in a hat.
Broadcast TV used to go up to channel 83, then 69, now 51. The rest of that spectrum got gobbled up by cell phone companies and they're still hungry for more and are lobbying for it. The frequencies available to the cable company are only dictated by the quality of the RG6, switch gear, and expense in cable boxes to handle it all.
I find it offensive whenever I visit someone with cable, that they have to chuck their OE TV remote in a drawer and use the cable company's clunky universal remote to run the box, as the TV is neutered and unable to change its own channels! Even funnier, sometimes those remotes rent out at $4/ month!
I would find it interesting, that since a vast majority of the cable pipe is still "TV, receive only", if a hybrid cable box will come out that uses a satellite input as well as a cable one. It'd be an engineering masterpiece but marketing disaster... as cable has spent the last 15 years saying "You don't want that ugly (18 inch) dish making your house look ghetto."
> works in broadcast TV
Why exactly does using a universal remote offend you? Not to mention TVs don't come with most of the abilities that set tops do. IE on screen guide, onDemand, and if they have a DVR, DVR functions.
Also no, that is not quite true as far as frequencies availagble to cable company. There is specific spectrum that is owned by cable companies to use. And most cable plants operate between 5-1000mhz. DOCSIS takes up the middle portion of that for internet. Which is the reason that everything is going to digital for TV: digital channels take up only a fraction of the space that analog ones do.
But to be frank, cable companies are in a [censored] if you do, [censored] if you don't position. People demand faster internet speeds. So when they transition to digital so they have more bandidth available in the cable plant to do it, people complain because they need to get an adaptor or whatever with the argument that "_I_ didn't want faster internet. why do I have to be inconvenienced for other people!?"
Because it's ONE CABLE PLANT for EVERYONE. But people don't think want to think like that. They want to think that they are special, and the only customer so everything should be done to get them what they want exactly as they want it, everyone else be [censored]. "I don't see the value in more HD channels/better HD/faster internet so therefor I don't want any changes to be made to provide those for anyone else either"
See the problem with that kind of attitude?
