[mythtv-users] Is cable going widescreen?

[Mark Knecht]

On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 10:40 AM, Steve Peters - Priority Electronics
<steve at priorityelectronics.com> wrote:
> When the digital cutoff comes in feb of next year…I'm kinda curious about
> the standard over the air channels that cable companies carry.
>
> Will they be going widescreen on me?
>
> Right now, I can have a 4:3 tv and watch the 4:3 local channels from my
> cable company, as oppossed to the 16:9 hd locals.
>
> But after feb of next year, will those 4:3 channels even exist? I know that
> if I was doing just OTA, then with a converter box, the answer would be yes,
> only widescreen, leaving black bars above and below the picture…but what
> about cable? They have not mentioned anything in their ads except that
> you'll be just fine with cable.
>
> -Steve
>

Steve,
   You've received a lot of answers so far so I'll not try to add
anything to those views. Just a couple of comments:

1) Do NOT assume that just because we are in a date range <Feb, 2009
that you are not ALREADY seeing exactly the same thing you will see
after the switch. In my case (Comcast, Los Gatos, CA) I believe I'm
ALWAYS watching digital TV these days. 6-8 months ago if I was to
channel surf on my cable box the box was noticibly faster switching
between analog channels (<75) than it was switching between digital
channels. (>120) I cound run through analog channels at the rate of
about 1/second or so, but digital channels took about 2-3 seconds to
change. Comcast started upgrading our system here 4-5 months back and
now EVERY channel switch is 2-3 seconds. We now have their On Demand
service on many of the older analog channels which is almost certainly
being transmitted to me in digital format, so if they're sending On
Demand digitally I figure they're already sending the live channel
feeds digitally also.

2) Do NOT assume that 'OTA' has anything at all to do with being over
the air today. It is my understanding that the networks already feed
all of their channels to the cable companies on private networks that
are fundamentally digital and the cable companies turn them back into
analog with on-site hardware. As they cable companies get digital
boxes into every subscriber's hands they no longer have to do that
step, but as I say above, I believe in my case what I see coming out
of my STB going to an analog input on my TV was sent digitally since
about March of this year.

   As for specific formats, the cable companies will just forward
along whatever the content providers give them although possibly the
cable boxes will allow settings to let you pick something that matches
your TV's format.

HTH,
Mark